Talks on the Path of Occultism - Vol. III

Commentary on

The Light on the Path

by

Annie Besant  and  C.W. Leadbeater

THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

Adyar, Chennai 600 020, India • Wheaton, 111., USA

First  Edition   1926

FOREWORD

THIS book is merely a record of talks by Mr. C. W. Leadbeater and myself on three famous books—books small in size but great in contents. We both hope that they will prove useful to aspirants, and even to those above that stage, since the talkers were older than the listeners, and had more experience in the life of discipleship.

The talks were not given at one place only; we chatted to our friends at different times and places, chiefly at Adyar, London and Sydney. A vast quantity of notes were taken by the listeners. All that were available of these were collected and arranged. They were then condensed, and repetitions were eliminated.

Unhappily there were found to be very few1 notes on The Voice of the Silence, Fragment I, so we have utilized notes made at a class held by our good colleague, Mr. Ernest Wood, in Sydney, and incorporated these into Bishop Leadbeater's talks in that section. No notes of my own talks on this book were available; though I have spoken much upon it, those talks are not recoverable.

May this book help some of our younger brothers to understand more of these priceless teachings. The more they are studied and lived, the more will be found in them.

ANNIE BESANT

PART I

LIGHT ON THE PATH

CHAPTER  1 INTRODUCTION

A.B.—Light on the Path is one of a number of different occult treatises which are in the care of the great Teachers and are used in the instruction of disciples. It is a part of The Book of the Golden Precepts, which contains many treatises which were written in different ages of the world, but have one characteristic in common, that they contain occult truth, and have therefore to be studied in a different way from ordinary books. The understanding of these treatises depends upon the capacity of the reader, and when any one of them is published to the world only distorted views of its teaching will be acquired, if it is taken literally.

Definitely intended for the quickening of the evolution of those who are on the Path, this book puts forward ideals which people of the world are rarely prepared to accept. Only as far as a man is able and willing to live the teaching, will he be able to understand it. If he does not practise it, it will remain a sealed book to him. Any effort to live it will throw light upon it; but if the reader makes no effort, he will not only gain very little, but he will turn against the book and say that it is useless.

4                 TALKS  ON  THE  PATH  OF  OCCULTISM

This treatise falls naturally into certain divisions. It was given to the Western world by the Master Hilarion, one of the great Teachers belonging to the White Lodge —a Master who played a great part in the Gnostic and Neoplatonic movements, one of the great persons who made attempts to keep Christianity alive. His incarnations have run very much in Greece and Rome, and he takes special interest in guiding the evolution of the Western world. He obtained the book as we have it, without the notes, from the Venetian Master, one of the great Teachers whom H.P.B. spoke of as Chohans.

Fifteen of the short rules that you find in the first part of this book, and fifteen in the second part, are exceedingly old, and were written in the most ancient Sanskrit. To these short sentences which are used as a basis for the instruction of the disciple, the Chohan added other sentences, which now form part of the book, and are always to be read along with them, to supply complementary ideas without which the reader might be led astray. All the rules in both parts of the book, except the thirty short aphorisms, were written by the Chohan who gave it to the Master Hilarion. The following table shows the fifteen short rules in Part I as they existed in the exceedingly ancient manuscript; the number at the beginning of each is the original one, but the number at the end is that which appears in the modern book.

This does not refer to color but is a term used for the Brotherhood of Perfected Men (ed.).

INTRODUCTION

It will be noticed from the above table (which covers only Part I of the book) that rules 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 and 21 are absent from the list. That is because they do not belong to the most ancient part of the book. Those rules and the preliminary and concluding comments are the portion added by the greater One who gave it to the Master. In addition there are notes, which were written by the Master Hilarion himself. The book as originally published in 1885 contained these three portions: the aphorisms from the ancient manuscript, the additions of the Chohan, and the notes of the Master Hilarion. All these were written down by Mabel Collins, who acted as the physical instrument, as the pen that wrote it. The

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Master was himself the translator of the book, and he impressed it upon her brain. His was the hand that held the pen. Then there subsequently appeared in Lucifer under the title of " Comments " a few articles which were written by Mabel Collins under the influence of the Master, and which are exceedingly valuable, worth reading and studying.

Now, taking up the book itself, we first find the following statement:

These rules are written for all disciples: Attend you to them.

A distinction is made here between the world and the disciples; this is not a book intended for the world in general. The word disciple is to be considered in two senses—the uninitiated and the initiated. In reading the book carefully we can trace the two distinct lines of teaching clothed in the same words; each sentence contains a double meaning, one intended for the more and the other for the less advanced. We will try to trace them out when we come to the preliminary statements. The second part of the treatise appears to be intended entirely for the initiated disciple, but this duality runs through the first part.

Many persons not yet approaching discipleship entirely misunderstand these rules, and often criticize them as holding up an ideal which is hard and wanting in sympathy. This is constantly the case when an ideal is presented which is too high for the reader. No person is helped by an ideal, however noble in itself, which to

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him is not attractive; it is a practical lesson for dealing with human beings that we should put before them only such ideals as may attract them. With all books of this kind that which a man gets out of them is what he brings to them; his understanding depends upon his own power to answer to the thoughts which they contain. Even material things exist for us only if we have developed the organs which can respond to them; hence at the present time there are hundreds of vibrations playing upon us to which we are incapable of giving heed. Sir William Crookes once illustrated this very well when he was trying to show how circumscribed was our knowledge of electricity, and how great therefore was the possibility of progress in electrical science. He said that it would make an enormous difference to us, would in fact revolutionize our ideas, if we had organs answering to electrical vibrations instead of eyes sensitive to light vibrations. In dry air we should not be conscious of anything, for it does not conduct electricity. A house made of glass would be opaque, but an ordinary house would be transparent. A silver wire would look like a hole or tunnel in the air. What we know of the world thus depends upon our response to its vibrations Similarly, if we cannot answer to a truth, it is not truth for us. So, when dealing with books written by occultists we can only catch their thought in proportion to our own spiritual advancement. Any part of their thought which is too subtle or too high simply passes by us as if it were not there.

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Much more can be got out of this book by meditation than by mere reading; its greatest value is that it gives directions to our meditation. Pick out a single sentence and then meditate upon it; stop the working of the lower mind and awaken the inner consciousness which conies directly in contact with the thought. One may thus get away from images of the concrete mind to a direct perception of the truth. Meditation thus enables one to obtain in the brain a large amount of the direct knowledge of the truth which the ego has acquired in his own worlds. Still, a man who meditates, but does not read or listen to a teacher as well, although he is sure to progress on the spiritual plane, will do so only slowly. If he had had the additional advantage of reading or listening, he would advance far more rapidly. The lecture or study can tune the brain of the student so that it will obtain more knowledge through meditation. But for a man who only listens or reads, and does not meditate, hardly any advancement is possible, and progress is exceedingly slow. Both should be combined ; much meditation and a little hearing or reading will carry a man far indeed.

C.W.L.—On the title-page of the first edition of Light on the Path, published in 1885, it is described as: " A treatise written for the personal use of those who are ignorant of the Eastern Wisdom, and who desire to enter within its influence." But the book itself begins with the statement that these rules are written for all disciples. The latter description is surely the more accurate one, as the history of the book will show.

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As we have it at present it was dictated by the Master Hilarion through Mabel Collins—a lady well known in Theosophical circles, who at one time collaborated with Madame Blavatsky in the editorship of Lucifer. The Master Hilarion had in turn received it from his own Teacher, the Great One who among Theosophical students is sometimes called the Venetian. But even he was the author of only a part of it. It has passed through three phases; let us set them down in order.

It is but a small book even now, but the first form in which we have seen it is smaller yet. It is a palm-leaf manuscript, old beyond computation; so old that even before the time of Christ men had already forgotten its date and the name of its writer, and regarded its origin as lost in the mists of prehistoric antiquity. It consists of ten leaves, and on each leaf are written three lines only, for in a palm-leaf manuscript the lines run along the page, not across it as with us. Each line is complete in itself—a short aphorism—and the language in which they are written is an archaic form of Sanskrit.

The Venetian Master translated these aphorisms from Sanskrit into Greek, for the use of his Alexandrian pupils, of whom the Master Hilarion was one, in his incarnation as lamblichus. Not only did he translate the aphorisms, but he added to them certain explanations, which we shall do well to take along with the original. For example, if we look at the first three aphorisms, we shall see that the paragraph marked 4, which follows them, is clearly intended as a commentary

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on them; so we should read it thus: " Kill out ambition; but work as those work who are ambitious. Kill out desire of life; but respect life as those do who desire it. Kill out desire of comfort; but be happy as those are who live for happiness."

In the same way rules, 5, 6 and 7 form a group, followed by 8, which is a comment by the Chohan—and so on far into the book. These groups of three are not put so by mere coincidence, but intentionally. If we examine them we shall find that there is a certain bond between the three in each case. For example, the three rules grouped together above point to purity of heart and steadiness of spirit. One may say that they indicate what the man must do with himself, what is his duty to himself in the way of preparation for work.

The second set of three aphorisms (numbers 5 to 8) states that we are to kill out all sense of separateness, desire for sensation, and the hunger for growth. They indicate man's duty to those around him socially. He must realize that he is one with others. He must be willing to give up selfish and separate pleasures. He must kill out the desire for personal growth, and work for the growth of the whole.

In the next set of three (numbers 9 to 12) we are told what to desire—that which is within us, that which is beyond us, and that which is unattainable. These are clearly a man's duty to his Higher Self. Then follow aphorisms (13 to 16) on the desire for power, peace and possessions. Those are all desires which fit us for the

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work of the Path. The next group of rules (17 to 20) tell the aspirant how to seek the way.

The rules now numbered 4, 8, 12, etc., are explanations and amplifications by the Venetian Master. They, with the original aphorisms, formed the book as it was first published in 1885, for the Master Hilarion translated it from Greek into English and gave it in that form. Almost immediately after it was printed, he added to it a number of most valuable notes of his own. For that first edition those notes were printed on separate pages, the backs of which were gummed so that they might be attached at the beginning and the end of the little book which had just passed through the press. In further editions, those notes have been inserted in their appropriate places.

The beautiful little essay on Karma which appears at the end of the book is also from the hand of the Venetian Master, and was included in the book from the first edition.

The archaic Sanskrit manuscript which was the basis of Light on the Path was also translated into Egyptian; and many of the explanations of the Venetian Master have more the ring of Egyptian than of Indian teaching. Therefore, the student who can enter to some extent into the spirit of that old civilization will find it a great help to his understanding of this book. The conditions which surrounded us in ancient Egypt were radically different from those of the present day. It is almost impossible to make people understand them now; yet if we could get back into the mental attitude of those

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ancient times we should realize a very great deal which now, I am afraid, we miss. We are in the habit of thinking too much of the intellect of the present day, and are fond of boasting of the advance we have made beyond the old civilizations. There undoubtedly are certain points in which we have advanced beyond them, but there are other matters in which we are by no means at their level. The comparison is perhaps a little unfair, however, because as yet ours is a very young civilization. If we go back three hundred years in the history of Europe, and especially the history of England, we find a state of affairs which seems very uncivilized indeed. When we compare these three hundred years, including the one hundred and fifty years of scientific development which have played so large a part in our civilized history, with the four thousand years through which the Egyptian civilization flourished practically unchanged, we see at once that ours is a very small affair. Any civilization which has lasted as long as four thousand years has had an opportunity to try all sorts of experiments and to obtain results which we have not had yet, so it is not fair to compare us at our beginning with any of the great civilizations at their zenith.

Our fifth sub-race has by no means reached its highest point or its greatest glory, and that point when reached will be a definite advance upon all other civilizations, especially in certain respect: It will have its own characteristics and some of them may seem to us less pleasing than those of the earlier civilizations, but on the whole it will be an advance, because the successive races

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are like the tide when the waves are coming in. Each conies in and recedes, and the next one conies in just a little further. They all have their rise and climax, and their decay. With us the tide is still rising, so we have not yet the settled order in certain respects that they had in some of the older civilizations. We are, unfortunately, far as yet from the realization of unselfishness—from the feeling that the community as a whole is the chief thing to be considered and not the individual. That was attained in some of the older civilizations to an extent which would make it seem to us now a kind of Utopia, but on the other hand we are growing into possession of powers which those older peoples did not possess. There was a short period in the early history of Rome when " none was for the party and all were for the State ", as Macaulay put it. Pythagoras, speaking to the people at Taormina, told them that the State was more than father and mother, more even than wife and child, and that every man should always be ready to give up his own thoughts, feelings and wishes for the sake of unity—for the res publica, the original of ' republic ', the common weal or well being of the whole, to which every one should be willing to sacrifice his personal interests. In England, too, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, there was a period of such true patriotic feeling and activity.

I do not mean that in ancient Egypt or in ancient Greece, or anywhere else in the world, all the people were unselfish. Not by any means, but all educated people took a very much wider view, a much more

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communal view of life than we do. They thought very much more of the State and much less of their individual welfare or progress. We shall attain to that too, and when we do we ought to realize it more fully than any of the ancient races, and also bring to it some development which the older races had not.

If, then, we could get back into that old Egyptian outlook, we should understand Light on the Path very much better. The student will do well to try to produce that attitude in himself in his study of it, so that it may help him to put himself into the place of those who studied it in the olden times.

It is easy for some of us who have undergone the training that enables us to remember our past lives. I remember my own last incarnation in Greece, where I took part in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and another life much earlier in which the great Mysteries of Egypt, of which some remnants still exists in Freemasonry, figured largely, and that enables me to get more good out of such books as this than I could without such memory. Even impressions from the past, giving a sense of atmosphere, are a great help. Egyptian or Indian, there is no more precious gem in our Theosophical literature—no book which will better repay the most careful and detailed study.

As already explained, Light on the Path was the first of three treatises which occupy an unique position in our Theosophical literature, as they give directions from those who have trodden the Path to those who desire to tread it. I remember that the late Swami T. Subba Row

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once told us that its precepts had several layers of meaning—that they could be taken over and over again as directions for different stages. First, they are useful for the aspirants—those who are treading the probationary path. Then they begin all over again at a higher level for him who has entered upon the Path proper through the portal of the first of the great Initiations. And yet again, when Adeptship has been attained, it is said that once more, in some still higher sense, these same precepts may be taken as directions for one who presses onwards to still higher achievements. In this way, for the man who can understand it in the whole of its mystic meaning, this manual carries us farther than any other. These books which are definitely written for the quickening of the evolution of those who are on the Path put forward ideals which men in the world are usually not prepared to accept. Even among students there may be some who wonder at the form in which the teaching is given. The only way to understand it is to take it for granted and try to live it. In At the Feet of the Master it is said that it is not enough to say that it is poetic and beautiful; a man who wishes to succeed must do exactly what the Master says, attending to every word and taking every hint. That is equally true of this book. The man who does not try to live according to the teaching will constantly come up against points in it which will ruffle him—with which he will find himself quite out of agreement; but if he tries to live it, the sense in which it is to be taken will eventually dawn upon him. Any honest effort really to live the

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teaching always throws light on it, and that is the only way in which this priceless pearl can be appreciated. In such books there is a great deal more meaning that the actual words convey. Therefore to a large extent each man gets out of them what he brings -to them—he brings the power to assimilate a certain part of their message and obtains only that part. Merely to read these books, even to study them, is therefore not enough; it is necessary to meditate over them as well. If one takes the passages that sound a little difficult—the cryptic, mystical, paradoxical statements—and thinks and meditates over them, one gets a great deal more out of them, although often one can hardly express it.

I try to express what occurs to me with regard to these different points, what they have meant to me, but I am conscious all the time that I am not at all fully conveying my meaning. I know, very often, I cannot express the whole idea that is in my mind; when I put it into words it sounds quite commonplace, and yet I can see for myself a vast amount of higher meaning. I see that perhaps with my mental body. The same thing is true at each level. In addition to what we can realize with the mental body, there is still more that can be realized only with the causal body and through intuition. Whatever we express, there will always be something deeper still budding and coming to flower within us. That man is only an expression of the Eternal, and that nothing that is out of the Eternal can aid us, is true, and it is the truth upon which the three writers of this book constantly insist.

CHAPTER 2 THE FOUR PRELIMINARY STATEMENTS

Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears.

A.B.—This is the first of four statements which describe the four qualifications preliminary to the Path proper. They describe true sight, true hearing, true speech and true standing in the presence of the Master, that is to say, true ability to serve mankind under his direction.

This and the following three statements are intended for two classes of disciples. In the first class are those who are on the probationary path, and are therefore being taught to get rid of all that we speak of as the personality; these preliminary instructions are intended to show them that they must begin by eliminating the lower self. In the second class are those who are already initiated. Something more is demanded from them. They must get rid of their individuality, the reincarnating ego, so that at the end of the Path their life will be entirely under the direction of the Monad.

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We shall see therefore that each of these four statements can be taken as affecting the personality or the individuality, and according to the position of the student who is trying to live out their teaching will be the point of view from which he will understand them.

It is worth while to notice and remember that these statements can be taken from two quite different points of view in another way also. These teachings come from Masters of the White Lodge,1 but exactly the same statements are made by those who follow the black magic of the dark side of life, whom we sometimes speak of as the Brothers of the Shadow or of Darkness.1 There are two ways in which the eyes may become incapable of tears, and according to his motive will be the path along which the aspirant will go. One way is that of the man who aspires to become a disciple of the dark side; he will take this statement as teaching complete indifference to pleasure and pain by means of hardening the heart and avoiding all sympathy. Anyone who tries to become incapable of tears by killing out all feeling will be going towards the dark path. The man on the other way is becoming incapable of tears only as far as his own personal sorrows are concerned. His own lower nature does not move him, but he is fully awake to the feelings of others. Only at his peril can a man become indifferent to the sufferings of others.

1Readers are reminded that terms "white" and "dark "do not relate to color, but to the light and dark sides of life.

THE  FOUR  PRELIMINARY  STATEMENTS

We may contrast the two ways in a table:

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The fundamental difference between the two ways is that the first tends towards separateness all the time, and ends up in a condition of absolute isolation, while the second aims constantly at union, and ends in a state of perfect unity.

The aspirant on the white path has gradually to eliminate everything in himself which can receive from the outer world anything which he feels as pain affecting himself, anything which shakes him through his personality, any sorrow or trouble of any kind which works upon him as concerning his personal self. He must reach a point where he is incapable of feeling sorrows for his own separate interest. In fact, he is to aim at making his kamic sheath entirely a vehicle of the Higher

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Self, with no independent life of its own. It is to have neither attractions nor repulsions, neither desires nor wishes, neither hopes nor fears—the whole of that is to be eliminated. This should not convey the mistaken idea that the sheath is to be destroyed; but it must cease to respond on its own account to impressions from the outer world. Only the separated life must be killed out, but the sheath must be kept for use in the service of humanity.

This change that the disciple must make in his own character is definitely shown in the constitution of the sheath. In the ordinary disciple it is constantly changing its colours; but when it is purified and all the separate life is purged away it remains a colourless and radiant vehicle, only affected by the reflections that come from the inner life; it has then no colour of its own, but only that which is thrown upon it from the Higher Self, it resembles the appearance of the moon on water—a pearly radiance, in which there is a certain play which can hardly be called colour. This change takes place very gradually in the astral body of the disciple while he is working at the difficult task of making himself responsive to all the sorrows of his fellow-men, but more and more indifferent to all which affects himself. It would be very easy for him to kill out every feeling, but to become increasingly sensitive to the feelings of others and at the same time not to permit any personal feelings to come in, is the much more difficult task set before the aspirant. As he goes on with the work, however, he will find that his selfish emotions quietly

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disappear   as   they   become   converted   into   unselfish emotions.

The disciple may test the quality and genuineness of his sympathy by looking to see whether or not he feels it when the suffering of others is not intruded upon his notice. If you see a person suffering, or if you come across a case of gross ill-usage, no doubt you feel pain, but do you feel the same pain when the person is not before your sight ? Our sympathy is an exceedingly poor thing if it is excited only by the sight of suffering. Send a person out into a great city like London, and he may be terribly affected by the suffering that he sees around him; but take him away from it all and he will soon forget the miseries he has witnessed and will become perfectly happy. The disciple has to learn to live as if the whole of that suffering were present before him all the time; to relieve it must be the motive of his work.

No one has reached the stage where he is responsive to the great cry of pain, spoken of in The Voice of the Silence, unless his motive in life is to help humanity whether the suffering be before his eyes or not, for that is the real motive-power of a disciple. The best way to get rid of personality, to grow indifferent to one's own personal joys and sorrows, to become incapable of tears, is to let the mind think upon the sorrow of the world and the ways of helping it; that causes the personal self to be seen in. its true place beside the larger self of the great orphan humanity.

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When the disciple passes through Initiation and begins to develop the buddhic consciousness, this incapacity for tears takes on a new character. He then begins to understand the word evolution, to realize that in man it means the unfoldment of the higher triad; then he begins to see the real use and object of all the suffering and pain. He gradually becomes incapable of tears because he understands the value of the suffering to those who are undergoing it, because he sees that when pain comes to a man it does so as an absolute necessity for the higher development of his soul. It is true that theoretically the man might have avoided that suffering if he had acted wisely in the past, for it is the result of his past karma when it is not produced by his present follies; but the practical aspect of the matter is that the man has been foolish, has elected to learn through this kind of experience instead of through wisdom, because he has not always chosen to follow the best he knew, and now he is suffering, and the pain is bringing him wisdom for the future, and is thereby promoting his evolution.

Realizing this, the disciple reaches a condition in which he may be described as full of the most perfect sympathy but without regret. The sense of regret conies in only when the consciousness is unillumined by the buddhic life. When the buddhic consciousness is felt, the disciple's sympathy increases enormously, but his regret disappears, and as he rises higher this wider view makes him incapable of-tears, because in the face of the bitterest suffering to which he is learning to respond and

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to feel in himself, he feels also its object and end. He can share in the suffering to the full, but without the slightest wish that it should be anything other than it is. The absence of any wish to get rid of the suffering before it has done its work, can only exist when the consciousness has buddhic illumination. That is the condition which has been described as the Christ state. The law is good and the will of the Supreme is perfect, and the suffering works for a perfect end; therefore the disciple is filled with content and satisfaction; he feels the suffering, but of grief and sorrow he feels none at all.

When the disciple reaches this stage his consciousness has become part of the life of the world. If he thinks of himself as " I " it is as part of that " I " in which all other " I "s also exist. Now there is for him nothing which is outside or separate from himself; he identifies himself with the one great life in whatever stage it may be, whenever it is in need of help. He entirely loses the sense, which is so common in the world, of some people being outside; he is in all and with all.

This realization of union makes an enormous difference to the help that the man is able to give to the world. When he is helping any person he feels his troubles as his own, not as the difficulties of another, separate from himself. He sees them exactly as that person does; therefore instead of assisting him from the outside he is helping him from within. There is a world of difference between the help given by one from the outside and that which is given from within: the former

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is a temporary and adventitious aid, but the inside help adds to the power of the man's life.

The disciple can reach this state only because he has cultivated sympathy, has learnt to identify himself with the joys and sorrows of others, has made his own life a life common to all. Without that, this loss of separate-ness would be unattainable. The only incapability of tears that he has to know is that which makes him indifferent to the things that touch the personal self, but leaves him keenly alive to all that affects the other souls around him.

C.W.L.—Dr Annie Besant has explained with regard to the first four statements in this book, beginning " Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears," that they may be taken in quite a wrong way, and are then as acceptable to the black magician as to ourselves. He would understand them to mean that he must kill out all feeling, build himself into a shell and shut the sorrows and the troubles of the world outside it. That is exactly the opposite of the teaching given to the pupil on the white path, who is taught to increase his power of feeling until he attains perfect sympathy with the sufferings of his fellow-men.

We hear a good deal about the black magicians, but I fancy that few people know much about them. I have met many specimens of the genus, and can therefore claim to know something of their nature and methods. Some of them are very interesting people, but by no means desirable acquaintances. There are many different types who are classed under the general title of black

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magician. For instance, the Negroes in South Africa and in the West Indies, and probably the Aborigines of Australia, practise a good deal of petty black magic. It. is a very poor thing; even they themselves admit that it does not work on white people. One has heard of certain cases in which they have succeeded in making white people exceedingly uncomfortable, but one must add that it was made possible by the kind of life those people led. Such magic depends for its success largely upon the fear of the people upon whom the incantations are laid, yet it is a real enough thing in its feeble way. These primitive people have certain drugs, they know how to hypnotize, and they have power over some low-class earth-spirits and similar entities. They contrive to cause sickness to a man, or in his family, or among his flocks and herds, or to blast his gardens and fields so that they will not bear crops; though in the latter case they are not above aiding their magic sometimes by saltpetre as well.

There is another set of people, somewhat more dignified, who are pursuing occult power for their own ends. They have learnt a certain amount of occultism—sometimes quite a good deal—but they are using their power selfishly. They often contrive to gain money and position by such means, and to maintain themselves in that position until they die. After their death they sometimes make an attempt to carry on the same general line, but it meets with indifferent success, and their plans break down; every thing sooner or later fails them and they fall back into a condition of considerable

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misery. A life such as that means quite a definite step back for the ego.

Yet another and more advanced type of black magician does not desire anything for himself. He does not seek to obtain money or power or influence or anything of that sort, and that at once makes him very much more powerful. He leads a pure and self-controlled life, just as some of our own people might do, but he has set before himself the goal of separateness. He wants to keep himself alive on higher planes, free from absorption into the Logos; he looks with horror upon that which for us is the greatest felicity. He wishes to maintain his own position exactly as it is, and furthermore he claims that he can do it, that the human will is strong enough to withstand the cosmic will up to a certain point.

I have met men like that, and Dr. Besant, who is always trying to save even the most unlikely souls, has set herself once or twice to convert people who have got themselves into that condition, so as to bring them round to our way of thinking—though not with very much success, I am afraid. She sometimes says to them. " You know what the end will be. You know quite enough of the laws of nature, and you are sufficiently intelligent to see whither your path is leading you. It is quite certain that in the end you must collapse. When this manvantara ends, when this planetary chain is over you will be absorbed, whether you will or not, into the Logos at higher levels, and what will be your condition then?"

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" You do not actually know that," they reply, " yet we admit that that appears to be what will happen. But we tell you frankly that we do not care. We are well satisfied with our present position; we are able to maintain our individuality against any effort to draw us into the Logos for a very long time, even till the end of the manvantara. Whether we can hold it after that we do not know, and we do not care. Whether we can or not, we shall have had our day."

That is an arguable position, and the man who adopts it may be not exactly a good man, but he need not be a bad man, in the ordinary sense of the word. He certainly has a great deal of satanic pride in his composition, but he is not necessarily spiteful nor evil-minded with regard to other people. Still he is absolutely unscrupulous. Anyone who happened to get in his way he would brush aside with far less consideration than we should give to a mosquito. But te a man who did not stand in his way he might be quite a good friend, and there is not necessarily any active evil in his composition. He is not at all a monster of evil, but he is a man who has struck out a line for himself and is following it at the cost of all that to us means progress. That is all we have a right to say against him. We are confident that he will end in great disaster; he is not so sure of that, and in any case he is willing to face it.

As a rule these people are sufficient unto themselves, and they distrust and despise everybody else. That is always characteristic of anyone who is on the dark path; he is right and everybody else is wrong. He looks down

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on everybody else. People talk sometimes about a black brotherhood. There is no such thing. There could not be any true brotherhood among them, but they do occasionally join together in face of an imminent peril or when something threatens any of their plans. At best it is a very loose alliance, formidable only because of the tremendous power that some of them possess. It does happen now and again that the work that some of our Masters are doing for the evolution of the world crosses their tracks, and then they become formidable enemies. They cannot touch our Masters— I think that must be very irritating to them—but they sometimes get hold of one of their pupils, and so cause them a little trouble or some disappointment, if we can suppose that a Master would feel disappointment. The reason of all the warnings given to us to beware of these people is that we shall find them trying sometimes to mislead us. Madame Blavatsky, who knew a great deal about them and had a wholesome respect for them, rather gave the impression that they were tempting demons who exult in evil for its own sake. This would be true only of those at a lower level; the more powerful of them would consider it quite undignified to exult in anything; but their plans, which are always entirely selfish, may sometimes involve a great deal of harm to certain people. They are as calm and self-contained and as passionless as any disciple of the Master; in fact, they are more so, because they have killed out all feeling intentionally. They would not injure a man merely for the sake of doing harm, but, as

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I said before, in pursuit of some end of their own which his existence interferes with, they would not hesitate to sweep him out of their way. Those whose work it is to assist people astrally sometimes come across their victims, and in that case the man who tries to help often brings down upon himself also the determined opposition of the black magician.

To return to our main topic. It is very difficult to learn to respond to feelings, and yet not permit one's personality to show itself in any way—to be in perfect sympathy with the feelings of others, and yet have none our own. Many people are very much disturbed by the sight of the suffering of others, but if they do not actually see that suffering they forget it. Many of the richer people in a city like London, for example, when taken to see the terrible misery in the slums, are very much affected, and will at once do all they can to relieve the particular cases that they see: yet the same people will go off to their hunting and fishing and pleasure, and absolutely forget that there is any misery. In that case the sorrow is only partly for the other person's suffering; it is largely merely the personal pain of having that suffering intruded on their notice. That kind of sympathy is a poor thing—it is not real sympathy at all.

When we fully realize the suffering of humanity we gradually lose sight of our own. We forget that we have personal sufferings because we see that the sufferings of humanity are so great, and we realize that that which falls to our lot is after all only our part of the general burden. A man who can get into that state of mind has

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already very largely transcended his personality. He sorrows still for humanity, but no longer for himself; he has become incapable of tears as far as his own personal joys and sorrows are concerned.

It is not an easy matter to regard the sufferings of others accurately. Dr. Besant and I some years ago investigated the question of the influence of pain upon different people undergoing what from the outside would be regarded as the same physical suffering. We found that in an extreme case one person was suffering perhaps a thousand times more than another, and that in ordinary life one might quite often feel pain a hundred times more than another. If one shows signs of suffering and another does not, it must not be assumed that the latter is necessarily braver or more philosophic. It may not be the case. We looked into the question of the amount of suffering which was inflicted on different people by the ignominies of prison life; to some persons they meant practically nothing, to others the most intense mental and emotional suffering. So it is futile to say: " I do not feel such and such a thing, and therefore other persons ought not to feel it either." One does not know to what degree or in what proportion others are feeling. I have found that many things which do not matter in the least to me may nevertheless cause serious pain to others; whereas it has been quite the reverse as regards other things, such as unpleasant sounds, for example which often cause suffering to those who are developing their finer senses. I have seen Dr. Besant in a condition of positive agony when a great ammunition

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wagon went clanging by the house where we were staying in Avenue Road, in London. This does not mean, of course, that she lost control of her nerves. She has often explained that while the disciple must increase his sensitiveness he must also control his nervous system, so as to bear without flinching whatever pain or disturbance may come to him.

Before the ear can hear it must have lost its sensitiveness.

A.B.—The disciple must become entirely indifferent to the opinions of others about himself, as far as his own feelings are concerned. If they think and speak well of him he is not to be elated; if ill, he is not to be depressed. Yet at the same time he must not be indifferent to the opinions of others as they affect the people who hold them. He is not, therefore, to be careless with regard to the impressions which he makes upon others, for if he repels them by his conduct he loses his power to help them.

The disciple, in the course of his progress, develops his psychic powers, and so becomes conscious of what others are thinking about him; he is then living in a world in which he may hear everything said about him, and may see every criticism in the mind of another. He reaches this point when he has risen above all criticism, and is not affected by the opinions of others. Some people are very anxious to develop clairvoyance before they have reached this stage, but if they realized

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this fact the astral consciousness which they so much desire would lose its attraction.

C.W.L.—It must not be thought that the developed person who hears uncomplimentary remarks about himself and is profoundly indifferent to them deliberately nerves himself against the feeling of irritation, and says: " That is all very dreadful, but I refuse to care; I will not pay any attention to it." He passes, no doubt, through a stage like that, but very soon he reaches a state where he absolutely and utterly does not care, when it is just like the twittering of birds, or like the cicadas whistling in the trees—they may be a nuisance, but that is all. He does not pick out one particular cicada and listen to its tone alone, nor does he single out the thought or the word of any one person who is saying something silly.

We must all try to reach that stage. We are constantly putting it before people, because it is the attitude of our Masters into whose " world " we are trying to go. They may very properly think: " How can we hope to attain to the attitude of these Great Ones?" Of course, no one can do it immediately, but we ought to be aiming at it and trying to get as near to it as we can, and one of the ways of doing that—a method which is really quite easy—is just not to mind in the least what other people say.

When we have reached that attitude the next step is to think of the bad karma these people are making in thinking or speaking wrongly about us. We may then regret it for their sake, and for that reason it is well that

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we should endeavour not to give more cause than we can help for foolish and depreciatory remarks—not in the least because they matter to us, but because they make bad karma for the people who indulge in them.

Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters it must have lost the power to wound.

A.B.—The disciple must lose everything in himself which can give pain to another. In the earlier stages he has to learn to eliminate from his speech all that can give pain—not merely harsh criticism or unkind language, but every form of word that hurts another by implying disparagement or drawing attention to a fault in his character. It is true that some people are in a position in which it is their duty sometimes to point out his fault to another; but it is a mistaken view that he is justified in inflicting pain while doing so. When the fault is pointed out in a perfectly friendly manner, the element of wounding is not present. Whenever the speech wounds it is due to some imperfection in carrying out the duty; the would-be helper has failed to identify himself with the person addressed; he is giving advice only from the outside, and therefore it hurts. If he had unified himself with the other person, and tried to help at the same time feeling as he feels, he would have brought out the other person's emotion in a sympathetic way; through the consciousness of his sympathy the other would have had his nobler and wider side awakened, and then the advice would not have been wounding. If it is your duty to criticize another and you find that

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it wounds him, look into yourself to find the imperfection that caused the wound. If we are to lose the power to wound, the separate individuality must go; when we feel ourselves as one life, it becomes impossible for us to inflict suffering upon anything, as it is part of ourselves. The way to reach that point of evolution is to begin by gradually purifying the speech, taking the more salient faults first.

C.W.L.—Anyone who wishes to approach the Master must already have given up the desire to wound others by his speech. But there is still the possibility of wounding unintentionally and unconsciously, on account of want of sensitiveness. As we go further and raise our consciousness to a higher level we shall more and more understand how things strike others. Those who have been practising meditation for many years will notice that they have become more sensitive, have made a certain amount of progress towards unity, and therefore they understand the people about them just a little better than those who have not made such an effort. We hear someone make what we think an unfortunate remark, in all good faith and without noticing that there is anything wrong with it and that they have wounded somebody. We who have sharpened our senses just a little by thought and study and the endeavour to live the higher life feel instinctively how the third person will take that remark. We can see that it is an unfortunate one, and wish it had been put in some other form.

A Master could not possibly say anything that would hurt another. He might find it necessary to give

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something in the nature of a rebuke; but he would manage to put it in such a way that the man would not be wounded by what he said. Sometimes a disciple finds it in the line of his duty to act sternly, and he is tempted, through his own feeling of sympathy, to avoid the task. But if the Higher Self asserts its dominance he will, if it is absolutely necessary, speak sternly, but also calmly and judicially, and without indignation.

Before the soul can stand in the presence of the Masters its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart.

A.B.—This sentence has behind it a very long occult tradition, which has been given out to the world in many ways. It has to do with the teaching of sacrifice, which still appears in different religions in various forms, though they have generally lost its true meaning. The expression used here is connected with what is sometimes called the blood-sacrifice and the blood-covenant, of which the strangest traces are to be found among the tribes which are descended from very ancient races.

In looking up past lives we came across an incident which may be told to illustrate the idea behind the blood-sacrifice and covenant. Very long ago he who is now the Master Morya was a great king; he had an only son who was H.P.B., who as a boy was placed in charge of the captain of the guard, who was Colonel Olcott. One day, when the boy was alone with the captain, some conspirators who had plotted to slay him rushed in and would have killed him, but the captain threw himself in

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between and saved the boy at the cost of his own life. The youth was only stunned, but the captain lay upon him dying, and as the blood poured from his death-wound he touched it with his finger art placed it on the feet of the king. The king asked: " What can I do for you who have given your life for me and my son ? " The dying captain replied: " Grant that your son and I may serve you in other lives for ever." Then the monarch said: " For the blood which has been shed for me and mine, the bond between us shall never be broken." In the course of time the king became a Master, and the bond between them remained and ripened into that between Master and disciple, and it will remain for ever unbroken. In sacrificing the life of the body the captain made a tie which gave him the true life which the disciple gains from the Master.

I mention the story because it illustrates a great truth; just in proportion as we are strong enough to sacrifice whatever to us is the life, to pour out the life-blood of the lower at the feet of the higher, is the life really gained, not lost. All evolution of young humanity is made by the voluntary sacrifice of the lower life to the higher; when that sacrifice is completely made, it is found that life instead of being lost is made immortal. The outer sign of the sacrifice helped persons to understand the principle more readily, and drew attention to the fundamental truth that it is only when the lower life is sacrificed to the higher that it finds its own true fulfillment of evolution. On that truth the sacrifices which are found in many religions were originally based; that

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is how what is called the blood-bond is really made. The lower life is sacrificed for the higher life, and the higher accepts the lower and lifts it up by the bond that is never broken.

The disciple must wash his feet in the blood of the heart. He must make a complete offering of everything that he loves and values, of what seems to him his very life; but he loses this only to find his higher life. It is not usually an actual shedding of blood that is required, though that does become necessary sometimes; it is symbolically the shedding of blood always so far as the pupil is concerned at the time, because he feels the loss. He does literally sacrifice what to him amounts to life, and it looks as though he were giving it up completely, without any future possibility of regaining it. The great testing of the completeness of the disciple's sacrifice is made in order to discover whether the soul is strong enough to throw itself voluntarily into nothingness, to draw out the heart's blood completely, without any hope of reward. If the disciple is not strong enough to do that he is not ready to stand in the presence of the Master. But if he can completely throw away everything that he knows as his life, then all the testimony of the past and the truth of the law declare that he will find that life again in a life stronger and higher than that which he laid down. It is only when that sacrifice is made that the disciple finds himself in the higher life, standing in the presence of the Masters. Then the degree of his strength is the extent of his power to make the sacrifice without feeling it.

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C.W.L.—The meaning of this sentence is that the man who wishes to stand in the presence of the Masters must have sacrificed the lower self to the higher. The feet of the soul, the personality on earth, must be washed in the heart's blood of the emotions before the higher life can be gained.

That is a general law of life. The little child takes great pleasure in playing with its toys; soon it grows up into boyhood, and the lower playthings have been outgrown and put aside, in order that proficiency may be gained in the higher kind of sports. When the youth goes to college he will many a time perhaps give up a game in the fresh air, which he would very much prefer, in order to work at his books. At other times he will put aside something he would very much like to read, in order to slave at Greek verbs or other apparently uninteresting and not very useful studies. If he goes into training for a race, or for rowing, he has to sacrifice the enjoyment of good dinners, and live in a frugal and rigid way until the race is over.

On the occult path many pleasures connected with the outer world are seen to be a waste of time. There may be cases when it is a real effort to part with them, when there is a call from the higher life, and the aspirant responds to that call at a certain amount of cost to the lower nature. Then he must cast aside the lower in order to have the higher; but later on the attraction of the lower will have disappeared entirely. When a man once fully realizes the higher, the lower simply ceases to exist for him, but in many cases he has to cast aside

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the lower before he really enters into the glory and the joy and the beauty of the spiritual life.

I have known many whose opportunities were good but who shrank back just at that point, and failed because they were not ready to give up all that they had previously enjoyed, and apparently receive nothing in return for it. Sometimes a man is afraid to let go of one thing until he can grasp the other, and so he holds fast to the lower; but it does not satisfy him, because he has glimpsed the higher. To give up everything at the Master's call—one wonders whether one could do it; one always thought and hoped that one would, but when it comes to the point can you do it fully and cheerfully ? Many have worked for years and years, and wonder why they do not attain, why they are not among those whom the Master is able to draw very close to himself. The reason is always the same; it is the personality in some form that keeps them back. This giving up of everything is not a thing to be done with constant backsliding —giving up one day, and grasping and trying to keep the next—nor is it to be done with pride, with the pose: " I have given up everything." That is quite the wrong attitude; it should be done as a matter of course, and cheerfully. The person who is going to succeed will feel that there is nothing else for him to do but to make the great renunciation when the moment comes.

CHAPTER 3 THE FIRST RULE

Kill out. . . .

A.B.—The expression " kill out" appears at the beginning of the first six short rules. It is important not to misunderstand it. There are two ways of getting rid of or killing out an evil thought, an evil habit or an evil act. Let us consider the thought first, because when that has been removed the other two very easily follow. Suppose an evil thought comes into a man's mind. He finds that it tends to repeat itself. Then his first inclination is generally to fight with it to throw his energy against it and violently turn it out, just as he would deal with a physical enemy. He wants to get it out of the mind, so he takes it by the shoulders and flings it out.

That is not the best way. It ignores the great law, which works throughout nature, that action and reaction are equal and opposite. Take a ball and throw it against a wall; it will rebound and strike you, gently if you have thrown it gently, but with great force if you have flung it violently. The same principle is true everywhere. Suppose you turn a thought out of the mind

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with violence; there will be a decided reaction. The recoil will give you a definite sense of exhaustion, and the thought may come back to you with increased force. The strength that you have put out has then taken form as thought, and has come back to you again, and you have to repeat the struggle. In that way a man may in some cases fight for weeks and months and even years, and yet be none the better for it. Still, in time it is possible to kill out evil thought by this means, though with it you will also kill out a large amount of your own force and energy, of your thought-power, so that a certain hardness and lack of responsiveness of some area of the mental body will be the result of the struggle.

The other way of killing it out is to substitute for the bad thought a good thought of exactly opposite nature. You first deliberately study the matter and decide what is the opposite, the exact antithesis, of the evil thought. You formulate the new thought quietly in your mind, and then, at the very moment when the evil thought comes into your mind, you substitute for it the opposite good thought. Thus for pride you might substitute kindness, for anger affection, for fear admiration, and for low material desires thoughts of purity, dignity, honour, and the like; or you might dwell with devotional thought upon the mental image of the Master as having the good quality, and forget yourself in thinking of him.

The human mind cannot concentrate on two separate things at once; so when you give your attention to the good thought the result is that the evil thought is

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expelled without your directing any force towards it. Thus no mental energy is wasted, no vitality is lost. The good thought soon gains strength, and the mind becomes impervious to the attacks of the bad thought, and irresponsive to its kind; so you have practically killed out the evil by intensifying and vitalizing the opposite good. It is as if we sucked the life out of the bad thought, and left it a mere shell. Bad thoughts are most effectively killed by such devitalization.

We have thus two ways of killing out; the former on the line of death, the latter on that of growth. One is the plan which is chiefly used by those who are beginning to tread the left-hand path, who are turning against the way of the divine Will. The other is that of evolution in accordance with the divine Plan. We are free to choose which we will follow of these two great roads. All the things of the world are in evolution, moving on one or the other of these paths.

Those parts of the world in which Ishvara is developing His Image have a certain free will, which consists in their being able to work with the divine Will or away from it as separate individuals. Those who work with Him ultimately tread the right-hand path, but those who deliberately choose the separated self are preparing themselves to tread the left-hand path. Speaking generally: all that leads to isolation tends to turn a man's direction to the left, and all that tends to unity towards the right. People of the left-hand path kill out sympathy, affection and love, because they find that those qualities bring misery, and also stand in the way of their gaining

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power. The killing out process is generally taken therefore by those who want to gain power and the other things that they consider desirable in this life, for the firm establishment and the enjoyment of the separated self, careless of the good of the whole, entirely bent upon their own individual progress and gain. They will kill violently all that side of their own nature the response to which would be an obstacle in the path of power. They will kill out affection also, because it is an avenue of pain, and it is far easier to become indifferent by killing out affection than by becoming more and more sensitive.

But the way we have been taught is that of union, the path in which the disciple becomes responsive to every cry of pain, as was so emphatically taught in The Voice of the Silence.1 The disciple must intensify his life, not minimize it; he must submit to the law, not fight against it. Then of course the law will be with him. His method is something like that art of wrestling which is taught in Japan, in which conquest is gained by yielding to one's antagonist; the man constantly yields to his opponent, but at the critical moment he turns in such a way that the force of his antagonist tells against himself. This is the nature of the yoga of the right-hand path; of it Shri Krishna says in the Gita: " In this there is no loss of effort, nor is there transgression." 2

C.W.L.—Many people, when they are told to kill out a desire, start making what may be described as a violent raid upon it. They want to kill out a certain

1 Ante., Vol. II, pp. 137-45. 2 Op. cit., 11, 40.

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evil quality, so they set themselves very strongly, angrily almost, against that quality. One result of this is that one stirs up whatever forces exist, inside and outside, which are tending in the opposite direction, into the most violent opposition possible, and the consequence is a serious struggle. If a man is sufficiently determined he will come out conqueror in the end, but in many cases he will waste a large amount of his own force and energy and thought-power, and leave himself much exhausted and depleted.

I can testify that the method of substitution works very much better, for I have tried both. It is a sort of moral ju jutsu whereby you employ the force of the hostile power to help you. You do not so much attack the foe as concentrate all your attention on the opposite virtue. If for example, a man is inclined to be readily upset and disturbed, he should not fight hard against that, but instead should think constantly of calmness, of peace and philosophy. Presently that thought will become established by habit, and he will find that the old worry and lack of calmness have passed away without his making a desperate fight. If he surrounds himself with thought-forms such as "Do not be irritable," and so on, they are still of the colour of irritability, and they react undesirably on him. But if he thinks strongly, " Be calm, be gentle, be peaceful," he sets up vibrations appropriate to and productive of peace and harmony. We do not want to set one vice to fight another vice, but we want to ignore all these things and work up the opposite virtue; by doing that the effect

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will be just as good and we shall achieve it with far less trouble.

We say: " Kill out desire," but not, " Kill out emotion." l The higher emotions must be encouraged always, and the stronger they are the better. Especially is this true of love and devotion, which one should deliberately cultivate. When a man feels a great rush of such an emotion as these his aura expands; his astral body becomes perhaps ten times its normal size in the case of the ordinary person, and much more than that when the man really knows how to use his higher vehicles. When the great paroxysm of feeling is over the aura contracts again, but not exactly to what it was before; having been much stretched it remains at least a little larger than before. The first effect of the expansion is a rarefaction of the astral body, but it very speedily draws in more astral matter to fill the larger space, so as to make it up to about its normal density.

The astral body is definitely needed in order that by means of it one may be able to sympathize with people, and also because of its function as a reflector of the buddhic body. In the case of a developed person there is no colour in his astral body except what is mirrored from the higher planes; it only reflects and shows the most delicate tints of colour. 2

There are three ways in which the higher Self is connected with the personality.3 The higher mind is

1 See also ante., Vol. II, pp. 139-40.

* Ante., Vol. Ill, Chap, on The Four Preliminary Statements.

' Ante., Vol. II, p. 333.

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reflected in the lower. The buddhi or intuition is reflected a stage lower than the mind, in the astral body. There is also the possibility of connection between atma and the physical brain. The last is the most difficult to understand; it shows tremendous power of will, which moves without consideration of the means by which its object is to be achieved. It is the method of the first ray, to which Dr. Besant belongs. She has that great power of deciding that something shall be done, without stopping to consider the methods to be employed until afterwards. We do not know the limits of the human will. It has been said that faith may remove mountains and cast them into the sea. I do not know whether there would be any particular purpose to be served in doing that, if it can be done, but I have certainly seen very wonderful results accomplished by the human will, and I do not know where the limits of that power are set. Incredible things are done, more especially on the higher planes, by the mere action of will. W