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The Five Fetters - Ernest Wood

Obstacles to Intuition

It appears that intuitions come and go in a spontaneous manner. Yet their coming depends entirely upon certain precise conditions, and there is a definite science in these matters. Unquestionably the "higher self", like the sun in the sky, is shining all the time, and if its light does not penetrate into the personal mind and heart in the form of intuition it is because of earth-born clouds which obstruct its light. When a man has had some glimpses of the higher light and power, he afterwards wonders why they do not constantly irradiate his life; he feels that they ought to do so, that he should be able to enjoy them when he will. He feels in some way fettered or bound: He knows that he has wings, but finds that somehow when he flaps them he does not rise. All this is because he is actually fettered or bound by certain defects in this personality. There are five of these fetters on what is sometimes called the ladder’s lower rung; he must deliberately remove them one by one.

The First Fetter

The first fetter is called the delusion of the body. This means that the person lives in the belief that he or she is the body. Imagining himself to be a material thing he loses status as a spiritual being, and enters the ranks of slaves or careerists. That person must forever be watching out to avoid dangers, or to discover what direction someone else is going to give him or her.

It is not always the case that men and women with this fetter still upon them are highly conscious of their personal appearance. But still they may live in sensation. The stream of life for them is a succession of bodily sensations; they aim at comfort or pleasurable excitement in body, emotions or mind; their interests are confined to these things.

However, to ignore the personal life is as much an error as to deify it. You must give it full attention in your consciousness, and picture in the most unequivocal terms of unrestrained imagination exactly what you would have it be. The men and women whom we see around us are pictures painted by themselves; the artist has remembered some things and forgotten others.

You must not wish anything around were at all different from what it is, but you must not wait for it to change. Nothing better than the past comes to her or him who waits.

The Second Fetter

The second fetter is doubt, which must be removed, not by compulsory belief, but by knowledge. The traveler on this road has had some glimpses of intuition, but sometimes on looking back wonders whether they were true, whether they were just fancied. This sort of doubt or uncertainty is sure to come, and there is only one way to remove it – that is by knowledge. Certainly not by waiting. Sometimes people say: "I doubt whether the higher things exist." Then they remain in that state. But you must help yourself to knowledge. Therefore cease to worry about the matter, but provide the conditions which make direct knowledge possible. Until that is done, the feeling of uncertainty is itself an obstacle to progress.

If you have been at this work for some time, and progress seems slow, doubt not that the fault is your own; consider the matter a little and find out what is wrong; remove the defects of your character, one after the other. Sometimes it is but a small piece of ‘grit’ which blocks the flow of power; sometimes it is a lack of will. You must deal with these in the following manner.

1. Sit quietly as in meditation and consider your personality until you find something in it which you clearly feel to be a fault. Then stop. Do not seek complete knowledge of your defects; do not look for a number of them; but when you have found one – even a small one – stop meditating on the subject, and go and do something against that defect, or in spite of it. And do not meditate again on the subject of your character until you have done that. An illustration of this way of working occurred in the life of a young man whom I knew in India. He found that he was absurdly shy. The same morning it happened that two visitors arrived at the place where we were staying. The young man’s first impulse was to avoid them and seek his own room; but he deliberately compelled himself to approach the strangers and converse with them. I believe that in this one act with his will behind it, he removed the fault of shyness from his character once and forever.

No doubt you have been at some time in a motor-car which vibrates badly when it reaches a certain speed. Some people are like that when they begin to make quick progress; they achieve a certain rate of speed – not perhaps very great – and then begin to vibrate and quiver with qualities like impatience, jealousy, anger, irritability and fear. They are unable to "suffer fools gladly", though the world is full of them, so they too become fools.

I once heard a dream told by a young woman, which illustrates exactly what is required for the removal of doubt by knowledge. She had found herself going along a path up one side of a wooded ravine, when she came to a house, and after waiting a while in the passage which served as a hall, entered a large front room with big windows overlooking the other side of the ravine. There she saw sitting at a table a man of powerful and kindly aspect whom she recognized as a well-known Indian Adept or Master. He spoke to her in a friendly way, and presently took her for a walk up the valley. Then they came to a flat table of rock of some little eminence, and mounted it, and the master drew the young woman’s attention to a lake they could see in the distance, which reflected with great perfection the mountains beyond it, and he said: "Make your mind as calm as the surface of that lake, and my thoughts will always be with you." With these words ringing in her ears she awoke.

2. Sometimes it is the will which is lacking, so that obstacles to the increase of knowledge remain in the character. You have been making efforts for some time – and conspicuous results do not appear. You go slack, and wait for something to happen. But remember the proverb; "Where there is a will there is a way." It is absolutely true. When the will is in operation it keeps your face in the direction in which you want to go, and you soon find a way. If you are not making apparent outward progress your power is then banking up (unless you lose patience) and in due course its greater strength will sweep all obstacles from your path.

The Third Fetter

The third fetter is superstition. It is usually assumed that this term refers to religious beliefs. But superstition is a bigger thing. It means literally the substitution of one thing for another, of the false for the real; or the covering-up of a big thing with a little one, as if one should hold a plate between the eyes and the sun and then declare that the sun does not exist or is not to be seen.

Superstition is the enemy of reality, and of breadth of vision. Narrowness and intolerance and false and aggressive humility are some of the defects in character which accompany it. So it behoves the aspirant to be watchful, if not suspicious, of names and forms, and eager for realities. In the religious life, for example, people sometimes forget that goodness, truth and beauty are the supreme objects, that, as Boehme said, "in some way, Love is greater than God", and that Christ, Buddha, Krishna, are only advertisement signs for these goods. They show these qualities as worn in the highest circles. Let us not forget that. We must learn not to worship at a distance, but to stand up and be like them.

In the Patanjali-Yoga system, it is taught that God is to be thought of as a being free from ignorant motives and unaffected by external interferences. By meditating on such a nature we are to realize what freedom means, and through that illumination achieve its fullness for ourselves. You must tread the path on the initiative of your own will, by your own self-devised efforts, not only at the beginning, but all the way, and to the very end. In this you will make use of certain things and you will make use of certain teachers. That is what they are there for, to be used in your work for mankind and yourself. The supposition that outside persons or things can govern our lives is the greatest superstition. They do not if you are an occultist.

Great numbers of men and women who would not recognize themselves as mystics are entering into this state, and when they do so they become somewhat conscious that religious teachings exist only for their assimilation. For them the test of truth in any religious teaching is in the answer to the questions, "Does it make my deepest and broadest thought deeper and broader; does it make my greatest love still greater; does it inspire me to face the adventure of life with increasing purpose?" If it does not do these things it is not beneficial to the person concerned.

Religious knowledge, like every other sort of knowledge, becomes ours through thinking or mental assimilation. Once a person has said to her or himself: "Henceforward I accept and respect as religious teaching only that which can make my deepest thoughts deeper, my warmest love warmer and my willingness to face the affairs and the work of life stronger," he or she becomes a member of the one religion of the world. Little as they may realize it they have become mystics. It is now only a question of time before beginning to find that in this life they are being taught in two ways – through tuition and intuition. Having accepted the outward tuition which the world offers in the spirit of truth, love and adventure, they begin to be aware of intuition coming to them from within on account of their increasing contact and harmony with the mind and heart and life behind all things. Flashes of insight and illumination irradiate their minds; the sphere of their interest and affection broadens out suddenly and immensely; they feel inward strength and power such that no material disaster can shake them.

In life, such a person lives by principles, not by rules. All the commandments of all the religions, all the customs of societies, mean nothing to him or her. They are merely rules. But she or he follows the living law of the higher self –– the principles of will, love and thought – which make a new rule for every experience and event, and one that cannot go amiss from virtue. This does not mean that those persons are angular and disagreeable. If such people conform to society they have a good reason for it; if they flout convention in some particular, there is a good reason for that also. They do not force their aims to fulfillment, like a bull charging a gate, but consider the weaknesses of others. So, on occasions they may follow the Japanese proverb:

Before thou has forded the

river, O brother, Revile not

unduly the crocodile’s mother.

The Fourth and Fifth Fetters

There are two more fetters which bind a man or woman while they are still upon the ladder’s lower rung, and will trouble them to some extent until they have completed that stage. They may be described as prejudice for and against certain things and persons, preconceived opinions in favor or to the contrary, or simply the possession of strong likes and dislikes. Attachment to the ideals of truth, goodness and beauty, are not in this class, and, he or she aims to fill their every thought, word and deed with these qualities, and to propagate them in the environment and lives of others. Such a person knows perfectly well that they are not sentiments but powers, which can give both internal happiness and external prosperity to those that have them.

In removing these fetters the wise aspirant will permit the energy and power of love to do its own work. He or she need only be obedient to divine impulses. They disregard their former likes and dislikes, or re-examine them and discover that many of them had a poor foundation, that many things to which they had clung are no longer needed, and many things from which they shrank are good. If we may symbolize this divine and inner leading as the Christ within, the true disciple soon learns to give all that he has to the poor and follow him. It is in the following that all is given or used, as is indicated in the Bhagavad Gita, when Krishna says that the greatest sacrifice which man can offer is that of wisdom. You do not lose wisdom in employing it for the benefit of others, but you make it sacred or holy, as the word sacrifice implies.

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