– Hugh Ripman
We are embarked together on an adventure. It is the same adventure which was once called the quest of the Golden Fleece, and which in other times was known as the search for the Philosophers' Stone, for the Elixir of Life, for the Secret of the Golden Flower, and for the Holy Grail.
Some speak of it as the striving of what is divine in man to grow into the place that is its home; others speak of it as the second birth, the transmutation of existence
into life; others again, as the creation of a spiritual body which can survive the death of the physical organism.
All who speak of this adventure are at one in holding the goal to be the true purpose of man's life. All are agreed that to attain this goal is the supreme achievement. To have achieved it is to know it with joyful and unshakeable certainty as the supreme value, beside which all else is worthless in itself.Itis the light in the face of which the sun is a shadow. It is the bliss compared with which all other joy and happiness are a feeble foretaste. Itis the peace beyond agitation and tumult and conflict.It is the unity which has no bounds.Itis beauty. It is truth. It is life.
Only heroes can hope to reach this goal. Only a desperate courage can brave the dangers of the way. Only constant persistence in the face of every failure can overcome the obstacles. Only an ever-alert reason can avoid the pitfalls. Only an aching love of the goal can bring the goal to life.
Through the ages, many have striven towards this goal. Many have fallen short of attainment in the brief span of life. Some have won through.
No man is a hero by birth. If he grows to be a hero, it is by virtue of the way he meets what life brings to him, the way he accepts difficulties and struggles and pain and fear, and will not accept weakness and failure and defeat. Defeat, failure, weakness -- these are his stepping stones. From them he learns. On them he builds.
So with us. Let us strive together to forge strength out of weakness, unity out of chaos, hope out of despair, victory out of defeat. It can be done. It is the supreme adventure of life.
Ripman, Hugh – Search for Truth. Forthway Center Palisades Press. Washington, D.C. 1999 (C) Christopher Ripman. Also picture in the same book.
