LIGHT ON THE PATH - 64 : Kill out all sense of separateness - 9

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 64 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 5 - THE 5th RULE

🌻 5. Kill out all sense of separateness - 9 🌻

264. To stand alone and isolated means that one must not be dependent on anyone outside oneself, because no separated person or thing can really ultimately be of use to us. Help must be found within ourselves.

The Master can help us all the time in our efforts, but even He cannot do the actual work for us. He is constantly suggesting things to us, pouring help into us in every way, but at every step it is we ourselves who must do the work. As we go on we must learn to stand apparently entirely alone, without the Master’s direct help, but that is an illusion because no one can ever really be separated from the Master, or from the Deity of whom that Master is a part.

Still, we must act as though we were alone, and at certain stages in our evolution we shall feel absolutely alone; yet if we can bring the intellect to bear upon it, though it is a difficult matter under such circumstances, we at once recognize that we never can be really alone. We are part of God and cannot cease to be so, because if we did we should altogether cease to be, we should be unconscious.

265. We are part of something which can never cease to be, and therefore the idea of loneliness is an illusion, though it causes great pain and suffering. On the physical plane a man is often least alone when he thinks himself most alone; when he is in the midst of a crowd the higher things can touch him less easily, therefore he is more separated from them.

But when these separated selves are not so close around him the influences of the non-separated Self can play upon him much more fully, and so it is really true to say that the man is least of all alone when he thinks or feels himself most alone.

266. It is hardly possible to form any conception of the awful feeling of being absolutely alone in the universe – a point floating in space. That is the condition called avichi, which means “the waveless state”. It is a condition of consciousness in which a man appears to himself to stand outside the vibrations of the Divine Life, and is said to be the most terrible experience that can come to a man. That is the end of the black magician, who for many lives has striven definitely and determinedly for separateness, who has directly set himself against the unifying forces of evolution.

The pupil of the Master must learn to sympathize even with the black magician who suffers avichi; therefore once in his development a man must experience that state of consciousness. He touches it only for a moment but he can never forget it, and henceforth he will always be able to understand the suffering of those who remain for ages in. such a condition as that.

When for us that moment comes, we should remember that whatever is, is God, and that we cannot be separated from Him even though we feel that we are – we must realize that it is a final illusion which must be conquered.

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30 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 63 : Kill out all sense of separateness - 8

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 63 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 5 - THE 5th RULE

🌻 5. Kill out all sense of separateness - 8 🌻

261. Physically, we try to make other people do things our way and to give way to us; we are perpetually trying to get them to adopt our particular plan, whatever it may be. Because it is ours it is the best plan in the world and we want to force it upon every one else. We find the same thing at the intellectual level. People try constantly to force their opinions and their ideas upon others.

When a man has developed a keen intellect he begins subtly, slowly, to want to dominate other people by means of that intellect. Just because his thought becomes keener and stronger than that of others he tries to mould their thought by his. It is well and good that we should want to share with others all that we know; that we should set before them what we have found so good for ourselves. But as a rule that is not the idea which exists behind this desire to dominate other minds. It usually co-exists with a certain amount of contempt for the other people.

We think: “These people are like sheep; we can sweep them along; we can make them think what we like.” It is to a large extent true that a man who has learned to think, as we should be learning by meditation and study, can dominate the thoughts of others very easily; but we should not do it, because anything like domination is bad for the other man’s evolution and not good for our own. So even this desire for intellectual domination must be resisted. It is part of the vice of separateness.

262. When we have got rid of that there is still a higher possibility along that line – in the realm of the spiritual we may also try to make people take our path. That is at the back of all endeavour to convert people from one religion to another. It is perhaps not quite fair to put it in that way, because Christianity at least starts with the gigantic delusion that unless people believe its particular shibboleths they will have a very unpleasant hereafter, therefore its attempt to convert others comes to have the colour of altruism. It assumes: “Orthodoxy is my doxy and heterodoxy is your doxy,” and: “What I believe is true and you must come into line with it.”

When we have developed spirituality, when we have learned many things that others do not know, it is right and proper that we should preach our gospel, that we should wish to tell others what we have found and give them every opportunity to follow us into these realms of higher thought; but if that wish is tinged with a desire to dominate them – a desire that is often found along with many good qualities – there is still a touch of the old separated self about it, and the “giant weed” is not finally uprooted.

263. We must also get rid entirely of the wish to dominate others because so long as a man is working for the separated self he belongs to that great mass of separated selves which is such a terrible burden in evolution. The moment he begins to realize the unity, he ceases to be part of the weight which has to be lifted and begins to be one of the lifters.

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27 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 62 : Kill out all sense of separateness - 7

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 62 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 5 - THE 5th RULE

🌻 5. Kill out all sense of separateness - 7 🌻

258. The power of identification is gained not only with regard to the consciousness of people but with regard to everything else on the buddhic plane. Everything is learnt from the inside instead of from the outside. If we wish to study any subject, any organism, the working of any law of nature – it does not matter what – up to and including the consciousness of the causal body we have to study it from without, looking out at it. In the causal body we are able to examine it with an enormously widened’ consciousness, with the power of knowing vastly more about it than we could possibly know on lower planes.

But when we get to the buddhic plane the difference is a fundamental difference. That which we are examining has become part of ourselves. We examine it as a kind of symptom in ourselves. It is difficult to put into words because down here we have nothing exactly like it, but this looking at things from within instead of from without does give one a very great advantage.

It is so different in its characteristics that we are probably justified in saying that that is the first glimpse we get of the way in which the Deity looks at His universe, because He must have exactly that experience – that that at which He looks must be part of Himself because there is nothing which is not part of Him. Therefore His consciousness must be this buddhic consciousness raised to the power, and with all the insight and glory and splendour of which we can have no idea on any plane as yet.

One can understand very clearly why that world is spoken of as the real, and all these lower ones as the unreal, because the difference is so great and the attitude is so entirely changed that any other way of looking at things does seem unreal, even ridiculous when once one has learned to see them from the inside.

259. It is not so utterly impossible as many students think to attain to that higher sight. A reasonable number of people have succeeded in this incarnation, here and now, in gaining it. It is certainly within reach of those who will try hard enough, if they are willing to follow the rules – willing to adopt the utter selflessness which is required, because so long as there is anything personal in the disciple’s point of view he cannot make any progress with this buddhic consciousness, which depends on the suppression of the personality.

260. The idea of separateness shows itself in certain ways in daily life, and it is well to watch against those manifestations. One way in which people show it very much is by their desire for power over other separated selves. One half of the world is everlastingly trying to interfere with the other half.

This habit is so ingrained in us that we do not notice it; we usually regard it in the light of good advice. About one case in two thousand may happen to be that, but in most of the others we are simply asserting our separated self by endeavouring to impress ourselves upon the other people.

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26 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 61 : Kill out all sense of separateness - 6

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 61 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 5 - THE 5th RULE

🌻 5. Kill out all sense of separateness - 6 🌻

256. It is only after the buddhic body is fully developed on all the seven sub-planes that the man has the full fruition of the whole plane, a complete power of identification with the whole of humanity, so that he can learn through that relation what all these people think and feel.

Before that buddhic consciousness is gained we may labour to reduce the sense of separateness and it may be done with great success intellectually, but we still remain outside, in the sense of not understanding others. They will still be an absolute mystery, for man is the greatest of mysteries to his fellow-man.

We may come into very close relations with people for quite a long time, and yet not really know them inside. It may be that until the buddhic level is reached no man ever really knows any other man thoroughly.1 (1 Ante., Vol. II, p. 67.) When a man reaches that condition he is able to pour himself down into the consciousness of others and see what they do and why they act in that particular way. There all things are within him instead of outside, and he studies them as parts of himself. It sounds impossible down here, but that is something of what he feels.

All the joy of the world is his joy; its suffering is his suffering. When he chooses to put himself down through any one of the million tentacles – the consciousnesses of other people with which he is one – then he can and does experience all which that person is experiencing. In this way all the world’s suffering is within his reach, but he knows with absolute certainty that it is a necessary part of the plan and has no existence on those higher levels.

He is in no way less sympathetic with it, yet he knows that “Brahman is Bliss”, and that to be one with the divine is a state of perpetual inner joy. It is only when one gains that development that one can fully help others.

257. When a man touches that consciousness he has for a time withdrawn from these lower physical levels where he can be perturbed or upset, and he is himself part of the divine joy. When he comes back again into his mental, astral and physical bodies he may permit little troubles to annoy him.

This ought not to be so; but still there is a great gap between the higher life and that lived in the physical body, where small things can still be very irritating. The possibility of being momentarily annoyed by something on the physical plane remains even when a very high level has been reached, but it is then merely superficial. The things from which people really suffer in this world are those which they feel to be hopeless.

No one can ever have any feeling of hopelessness after he has touched that higher consciousness, because when we are absolutely certain that the reality is always joy, we know that all suffering at lower levels is only temporary, and that even that would not come to us if we were nearer to perfection.

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25 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 60 : Kill out all sense of separateness - 5

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 60 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 5 - THE 5th RULE

🌻 5. Kill out all sense of separateness - 5 🌻

253. One whose consciousness works on the buddhic plane during meditation finds that although he is one with all the wonderful consciousness of the plane, yet there is a little circle of emptiness shutting him out from the rest. This little barrier is, of course, the causal body. In order that the buddhic vehicle shall be developed, even that must disappear. Then the man feels the reality of unobstructed Life in a way impossible to describe down here.

Madame Blavatsky expressed the idea as a circle with its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere – a very beautiful and expressive description.1 (1 Ante., Vol. II, p. 67.) Of course it is a paradox, but all things that can be said about these higher conditions must necessarily be paradoxical.

254. When the unity is fully realized the man feels, however paradoxical it may sound, as though his vehicle at that level filled the whole of the plane, as though he could transfer his point of consciousness to any place within that plane and still be the centre of the circle. It is an experience which is quite indescribable.

Along with that feeling, permeating and accompanying it always, is a sense of the most intense bliss – bliss of which we can have no conception at all on these lower planes – something vivid, active, fiery beyond all imagination. Most bliss down here, at the rare moments when we feel anything deserving of the name, consists chiefly in the absence of pain. We are happy and blissful down here when, for a moment, we are free from fatigue and pain, when we can relax and feel that we are taking in pleasant influences. That is rather a negative feeling.

The bliss of the buddhic plane is the most intensely active, vivid feeling. I do not know in the least how to express it. If you could imagine the most intense activity that you have ever felt and then replace that vivid and strenuous activity by a feeling of bliss, then somehow raise it – spiritualize it – to an altogether higher plane, to the nth power, it would convey some idea of what that feeling is.

255. It is an active reality which is quite overpowering in its strength. There is nothing at all passive about it; one is not resting. Down here we live lives of so much strain and strenuousness that rest is always a very prominent part of any ideal we may have; but there it is not in the least a feeling that one is resting or wanting to rest.

One is a tremendous incarnate energy whose expression is to pour itself forth, and the idea of rest or the need of rest is entirely outside one’s consciousness. What to us here seems rest would seem a kind of negation up there. We have become one with the expression of the divine power, and that divine power is active life.

People talk of the rest of nirvana – but that is from the lower point of view. It is the intensity of power that is the real characteristic of this higher life – a power so intense that it does not show itself in any sort of ordinary movement at all, but rather in one vast resistless sweep which might look like rest when viewed from below, but which means the consciousness of absolute power.

It is impossible to express all this in words. When we have achieved this we have finally conquered the giant weed – the great enemy, the sense of separateness. It is the hardest task, on the whole, that is before us, because it involves everything else.

Continues...

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24 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 59 : Kill out all sense of separateness - 4

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 59 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 5 - THE 5th RULE

🌻 5. Kill out all sense of separateness - 4 🌻

251. After a man has taken the first Initiation the sense of separateness is one of the failings which have to be entirely conquered before he can take the second. It is the first of the ten sanyojana or fetters which he has to cast off on his way up the steps of the Path.

It is made possible for ‘him finally and irrevocably to cast it off by the experience which is part of that first Initiation. He gets then merely a touch of the buddhic consciousness. It does not mean necessarily that he can go back into that condition of consciousness whenever he will, but at least he has experienced it, and having once felt the unity, he knows that it exists even though he may be incapable of re-entering it without the aid of the Master.

He knows, therefore, that the sense of separateness is an illusion. It is practically impossible for us down here in the physical body to grasp that really. We constantly speak of it and we try to persuade ourselves that we feel it, but as long as one is in a physical body and until one has had that higher experience, frankly I do not think one can feel it. We persuade ourselves of it intellectually but really to feel it is a different thing.

252. When a man begins to function on the buddhic plane, he enters it at its lowest level, but he is unable at first to make the most even of that lowest sub-plane. He will feel an intensity of bliss which no words can express, and an extension of consciousness which by contrast with anything which he has ever felt before, will no doubt give the idea that the whole world is included.

Nevertheless it is not so at all. When he is sufficiently accustomed to this higher level to analyze it, he will find that the extension of consciousness, though a very great one, is by no means as yet full or universal. Gradually he extends the sphere which he can effectively occupy. It is somewhat like the way in which an army occupies a conquered territory.

He establishes himself first, and then gradually extends that part over which he has definite power, until it includes the entire country. He then proceeds to try to push his consciousness into the next sub-plane; but even after he has worked his way through sub-plane after sub-plane until he reaches the highest, he has not necessarily built the buddhic vehicle. The man who has the buddhic consciousness within his reach by meditation or by effort can always raise himself into that condition.

The man who has definitely built a buddhic vehicle has that consciousness all the time in the background of his lower physical, astral or mental consciousness. That is another and separate achievement and a difficult one, because to do that the causal body must be eliminated, must be destroyed as a separating wall.

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23 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 58 : Kill out all sense of separateness - 3

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 58 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 5 - THE 5th RULE

🌻 5. Kill out all sense of separateness - 3 🌻

248. Suppose that all of us could develop the buddhic consciousness within ourselves simultaneously. Each one would realize that he had risen to that level, and that his consciousness included that of all the others, but he would still feel that inclusive consciousness to be his consciousness.

None of us would have lost his sense of individuality at all, only in it he would include very much more than he had ever done before. He would feel himself as manifesting through all these others as well. Really what we are experiencing is the one consciousness which includes us all, the consciousness of the Logos Himself.

249. It is on the nirvanic plane that we realize most intensely that all that we thought to be our consciousness, our intellect, our devotion, our love, were in reality His consciousness, His intellect, His love, His devotion, manifesting through us somewhat as a light might shine through a lens. That realization does not come fully to the man in the buddhic world, but it does so come to him in that next above.

250. In the Stanzas of Dzyan it is said, referring to man; “The spark hangs from the Flame by the finest thread of Fohat.”1 (1 The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 66.) That, I believe, is applicable at various levels; for us it may be taken to mean that the ego hangs from the Monad by the finest thread, and that thread runs through the buddhic plane. The finest thread of which you can think is all that represents the ordinary man at these buddhic levels.

As soon as he turns his attention to higher matters – when he is regularly thinking of them and aiming at them – that thread begins to thicken. It gradually becomes more and more like a cable, and later on it appears as a funnel, because it widens out up above (I am speaking of it now as one would see it clairvoyantly), and comes down into the causal body, which is a thing of definite size for the time.

Later on the causal body itself is enlarged by the inrushing of forces, and the funnel becomes very much larger, widening out at the bottom as well as the top. At the first Initiation (for many, this experience comes before that), the man abandons the causal body and plunges into the buddhic plane.

At that time, as I have explained before, the causal body absolutely vanishes – the one thing that has seemed permanent through his long line of lives, since he left the animal kingdom, disappears.2 (2 Ante., Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 2: The Life of the Bodies.) When that occurs this funnel shapes itself into a sphere. There are more dimensions there, so that I cannot actually describe it, but this is how it appears to one who is able to see it.

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22 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 57 : Kill out all sense of separateness - 2

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 57 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 5 - THE 5th RULE

🌻 5. Kill out all sense of separateness - 2 🌻

244. That should be the thought of any disciple if he should find himself under special temptation. He should realize that he must not yield to the temptation, because in his fall there is a fall for the whole of humanity. Such knowledge ought to be sufficient to keep him from evil.

Suppose you attempt to realize in consciousness the life of humanity, and then try to conquer a particular weakness; you will then feel that your own conquest is not a conquest for yourself, but for all. The whole of humanity is helped because one part of it has struggled and conquered. This idea will very often give you great strength. It is indeed worth while to struggle for the sake of the whole, if not for your own personal self.

245. C.W.L. – People sometimes make these instructions harder for themselves than they need be, and perhaps also a little unreal, by exaggerating them. We have to face the fact that there is separation down here on the physical plane. We may feel as completely fraternal as we can, but the fact nevertheless remains that in space our physical bodies are separate. Sometimes people want to deny that fact; they try to carry the idea of non-separate-ness to such a point as to make it unreasonable.

That can never be right in occultism. Occult teaching is always the very essence of reasonableness and common sense, and whenever anything is put before us which is obviously unreasonable, we may feel sure there is a mistake somewhere. In some cases it may appear unreasonable because we are not in possession of all the facts, but when the facts are all before us and the statement still has an unreasonable appearance, we are justified in doubting it and waiting for further enlightenment.

246. Though our physical bodies are separate in space there is really less separation than there appears to be. We all react upon one another to such an extent that no man can in any sense really live to himself alone. If one physical body has a certain disease, all the others near are liable to contract it. If the astral body is diseased in the sense of being, let us say, given to irritability, envy, jealousy, selfishness and so on, it is also infectious, because it radiates out its vibrations, and other astral bodies in the neighbourhood must be to some extent affected by such radiation.

When, for example, people sit together at a meeting their astral bodies interpenetrate to a considerable degree, because the astral body of an ordinary person extends about eighteen inches around the physical body – in some cases still further – so that, although they are still quite separate, they must react considerably on one another. The same is true of the mental body, and even our causal bodies are separate in space and in condition. So we must understand this killing out of the sense of separateness in conformity with the facts of nature.

247. There is no separateness on the buddhic plane. There consciousnesses do not necessarily merge instantly at the lowest level, but they gradually grow wider and wider until, when we reach the highest level of the buddhic plane, and have fully developed ourselves through all its different subdivisions, we find ourselves consciously one with humanity. That is the lowest level at which the separateness is absolutely non-existent; in its fullness the conscious unity with all belongs to the next plane – the nirvanic.

Continues...

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21 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 56 : Kill out all sense of separateness - 1

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 56 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 5 - THE 5th RULE

🌻 5. Kill out all sense of separateness - 1 🌻

238. Yet stand alone and isolated, because nothing that is embodied, nothing that is conscious of separation, nothing that is out of the Eternal, can aid you.

239. A.B. – This teaching is specially given in this book, intended for the disciple, because he has to learn to stand utterly alone. Nothing that is embodied, that is out of the Eternal, can aid him. All help that comes from the embodied is secondary help and may fail him in the moment of his greatest need. The biographies of the great Christian mystics show it to have been an invariable characteristic of their lives that they felt forsaken by every one, and had to stand absolutely alone.

These experiences are connected with the fourth great Initiation, when the man is thrown back upon himself and learns to rest upon the inner Self alone, to realize that he himself is only an expression of the Eternal in the outer world. There is always a danger that in this last great test the disciple will break down.

240. A double task lies before the disciple. He must kill out the sense of separateness, but he must learn to stand alone in order that he may be strong with the strength of the divine within himself. He must be like a star in heaven, that gives light to all but takes it from none. He can learn that only from the experience of isolation. Yet the sense of isolation is illusory, for he is in the Eternal. The illusion is due to the breaking away of all the forms before the realization of unity – of being the Eternal – develops in the consciousness.

241. This aphorism with its comment also contains other important thoughts. There is a stage at which the aspirant must stand aside from the body of men, because of his weakness, not of his strength.

Sometimes a man is so near the condition of other men around him, who still lead the lower life that he has left, that he feels that by keeping company with them he is likely to be- dragged down into their vices. At that time the sentiment of repulsion is useful; and although it does show that he is in a lower stage of development yet he will do well to follow it and avoid their company.

242. When a man speaks with horror of a certain vice you may be sure that in the near past he has been in the grip of it. In the recent past there has been a fight against that vice, and his inner consciousness, from which nothing, disappears, now warns him against it. There is a stage when a man has risen higher, when he need not seek such isolation from those who are still sinning.

But so long as that is not the case, so long as he is liable to fall into vice on account of an impulse from outside, a man’s safety lies in his running away from the temptation, until he is strong enough to go amidst that vice without being attracted by it. Only when a man has got beyond the power of falling into attraction by vice will he usually get over his horror and repulsion.

243. Then he has come to the stage at which he ought to think of the sinner as in need of his help. The very thought of his own past faults will now enable him to help others. We cannot help them as long as we ourselves are liable to fall, but only when we are neither attracted nor repelled, when we recognize our identity with those who are struggling.

We then remember that the sin of the world is our own sin-^-the profound truth that no man can be perfectly clean while another remains unclean. While a man remains part of humanity its life is his; to escape from that, he must go outside humanity. The vice of any man is our vice, until he also has got rid of it. Upon that truth the saving of the world entirely turns.

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20 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 55 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 12

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 55 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 12 🌻

233. Keep your thought hopefully on the future, not regretfully on the past. The present is very largely an illusion; so we are not really dissatisfied with what we are doing, but with what we have just done. If we want to get on we must keep our eyes in front of us.

To look behind is not the way to make progress. If that course were persisted in on the physical plane we should not go far without meeting with an accident, and the same thing is true in these higher realms also. The more we think over it the clearer it becomes that in the three aphorisms we have just been examining, viz., “Kill out ambition, kill out desire of life, and kill out desire of comfort”, all that moves the ordinary man to exertion has been absolutely cut away.

234. A man’s life is first of all directed by the desire to keep himself and his family alive, “to keep his head above water”; he has always the ambition of rising to higher levels; he wishes for greater comfort for himself and for his family. These are precisely the mainsprings which move the ordinary man, and it is obvious that if all of them should be absolutely removed from him, he would be left supine – he would be left without any reason to bestir himself at all; he would be like a log.

He would say: “If I am not to have ambition of any sort, if I am to cease to desire either life or comfort, why should I do anything? Why should I move at all?” He would be left without any adequate motive for exertion of any kind, and all progress for him would be at an end. It is obvious that for him the killing out of these things would have a bad effect.

235. Even the man who is nearly ready to tread the Path, who has ceased to feel any interest in lower things, reaches a stage when there is danger of his falling into a state of inaction. Intellectually he is absolutely convinced that all these lower things are not worth pursuing, and because they have ceased to attract him he does not feel inclined to put forth energy in any direction. That is an experience which comes to nearly every one in the course of his evolution, and is a very real trouble to numbers of people.

They have got rid of the lower and not taken on the higher. They are at a transition stage between the two; they have not sufficiently realized the unity for that to be the great motive power in life, but they have realized enough of it to know that the desires of the separated self are not worth following. So they remain in a condition of suspended animation. It is for some students a very great difficulty to rouse themselves out of this state. Nothing is worth while; nothing has any longer any interest for them. They want to die and be done with it.

236. The only way for a man to get beyond that unsatisfactory condition is to go a little further, and then he will begin to see that there is a higher and truer life which is infinitely well worth the living. He will find that when he has glimpsed the divine scheme he wants to throw himself into it – he cannot do otherwise. In identifying himself with the One Life, and acting as part of that Life, he finds the one motive which can stir him to action.

When he takes that one step further and begins to realize the Life of the Self, then instead of wanting to fall into annihilation and to be done with everything, he will long to possess more and more energy in order to throw it into this glorious work. The motive power of the One Self will stir him to far greater activity than ever before, because it is infinitely more powerful than any lower motive, and the man who works with it to fulfil the high purposes of the Deity will gain infinite happiness and infinite peace.

Continues...

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19 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 54 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 11

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 54 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 11 🌻

230. At the same time we must try to be very tolerant about it. We often feel impatient with the rampant, the brutal selfishness found everywhere, but that is useless. These unfortunate people are only carrying on now what was necessary for their development thousands of years ago. We should help them, if possible; we should always be gentle and tolerant, but very firm as to the necessity for getting rid of this point of view.

Some of us find it helpful to try to realize the progress of humanity as a whole and to make a practice of thinking of ourselves as part of it. We try to act on the advice given by one of our Masters who once put it thus: “If you succeed in taking a step of some kind, if you succeed in making definite advancement, you should not think: ‘I have done this, I am really getting on’.

The better way to put it is: ‘I am glad that this has happened, because humanity through me is just that much nearer to finding itself – that much nearer to the final goal which God means it to reach; humanity through me has taken this step, and the fact that it has done so means a very little advance for every other unit.” One may thus think of the whole of humanity, as a man thinks of the whole of his family, as a unit, from the baby to the old grandfather, and so considers the welfare of all.

231. We are told that we should live neither in the present nor the future, but in the Eternal. He who lives in the Eternal is the Logos, the Deity. He, living in the Eternal, sees the future as well as the present, sees the fulfilment of all these things. If we could raise ourselves up into His point of view we should be able to live in the Eternal as He does. That is not a thing that we can achieve to-day or to-morrow.

We must fight our way towards it. A divine dissatisfaction is a necessity for our progress towards it. We must never be satisfied with the condition we have reached; that would at once mean stagnation. We must always aim at doing better and better, and by living in the future we shall learn how to do that.

232. At the same time, while we are always reaching forward, always striving upward, it is a mistake to allow ourselves to feel discontented or worried with regard to transitory happenings to the temporary condition of ourselves and others. It is wiser and better to project ourselves into the future and live in it. We should say: “I am at the moment such and such a person, with certain faults and failings. I am going to transcend these faults and failings.

Let me look forward to the time when they will no longer exist.” It is a great thing to live for to-morrow and not for yesterday. The world at large is living for the centuries which lie behind it and is clinging to old prejudices. We should look forward to the future and live for that.

Continues...

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18 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 53 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 10

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 53 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 10 🌻

228. Later there comes a stage when self-reliance means reliance upon the Higher Self. The man no longer relies either on the skill of his hand, the fleetness of his foot and the strength of his muscles, or on his intellectual powers, but comes to realize that there is a strength of the spirit which is greater far than all these outer manifestations, and when this stage is reached he soon begins to see that the strength of his spirit is the strength of the infinite that lies behind it, because it is one with God Himself. Thus our self-reliance at last becomes reliance on Him – on the mighty Power behind.

We are He, and in relying on God we are relying on ourselves, because each of us is a spark of the Divine, and the Godhead is in us. We only need to realize that and to unfold it, and then the self on which we rely becomes the great Self which is the All.

229. This idea of the separated self is ingrained in us and is part of the very ego which is the one permanent thing about us as far as we know.

We have still to learn that there is the Monad; that will seem the true Self when we have laid aside the individuality. Yet when that time comes we shall see far more clearly than we do now that those Monads are only sparks of the Eternal Flame.

We know it now theoretically, and true realization of it will come to all in due course; it has come to some already. I have explained before that when the consciousness is focused in the highest part of the causal body it is possible to look up the line that joins the Monad and the ego.

Looking up that line into the Monad of which we know so little, and beyond it, we can see and know with a definiteness and certainty that no words can express down here, that all we have thought of as the Self and as belonging to us, is not we, but He; that if we had any intellect, any devotion or affection, it was not we at all, but it was the intellect, the devotion, the love which is God, which was showing itself forth through us.

When a man has had that experience he can never be quite the same again; he cannot come down again in the same way to the personal point of view, because he knows with the certainty that convinces.

Some experience like that is needed to counteract the result of the development of the separated self which at present is a great trouble and causes us much sorrow and suffering by obscuring our view of Life.

We are in this curious position that our self-development is due to the idea of separateness up to a certain point, and it is only when we have reached that point that it becomes an evil, and we have to get rid of it. Humanity has now reached a stage where it ought to be realizing that.

That is why the duty of unselfishness is impressed upon us so strongly by all occult and high religious teaching. Humanity as a whole needs that. It is still in the selfish stage, trying to grasp this and that for itself. The whole of our strength must be turned against that tendency.

Continues...

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17 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 52 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 9

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 52 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 9 🌻

225. C.W.L. – This is the remainder of Rule 4, the Chohan’s comment on the first three rules. The giant weed is the heresy of separateness – the idea of the separated self – which is truly the source of evil. We are directed to kill it out by stages. We are told first to unify the lower and the higher self, that is to say, to merge the personality in the individuality.

For most of us the personal self is still so near that it tends to shut out the higher things. We have to work our way through that and gradually to transcend it, to get entirely rid of all selfishness. Then we have to begin upon the individuality.

226. Now, the individuality, the ego, is a very wonderful thing – complex, exceedingly beautiful and marvellously adapted to its surroundings, a glorious being indeed; yet eventually we must realize that even that is only an instrument that we have created by the working of many ages for the sake of the progress of the Monad.

Because we have had to develop the idea of the separated self in the earlier stages of our progress, the giant weed; or the seed of it, is in the heart of everybody. That has to be killed out at one time or another, yet only the strong can tear it out from themselves at the beginning of their development.

The weak must wait and let it go on growing while they are developing sufficient strength to kill it out. That is unfortunate for them, because the longer it is allowed to persist the more closely it becomes intertwined with the nature of the man.

Those who can summon the courage to tear it out now will make rapid and much surer progress. Terrible as the struggle is to get rid of this separated self at any time, it will be thousands of times more difficult if we leave it until the later stages of our progress.

Until it is finally destroyed we shall be subject to all kinds of difficulties and dangers from which we can escape only by getting rid of it here and now. Obviously, therefore, it is best to kill it out in the beginning.

227. All systems of occult teaching agree in advising students to try from the very beginning to get rid of this illusion. The difficulty in the way, apart from the habit of thinking of ourselves as separate, is that this idea has been the source of all our strength in the past.

When the ego was first formed as an individual he was distinctly weak. He had been, until then, part of a group soul, and the idea of separate identity was not strong in him. It had to be intensified through the savage life.

The man’s strength gradually grew from the feeling, “I am I”. In the earlier days it would be: “I am a great fighter and a swift runner; I am a mighty headsman; I can lead armies; I can guide men; I can make them do as I will.”

Later on, it would express itself on a higher level as: “I have a mighty intellect; I can trust myself; I am proud of myself; I am a great man; I can think more strongly than other men and therefore I have power over their minds, and can sway them to do this or that.” It is through the sense of separateness that we have learnt to be self-reliant.

Continues...

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16 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 51 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 8

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 51 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 8 🌻

223. The student of occultism finds that he cannot get time enough to do all that he would like to do. All those who are really willing to work are overwhelmed with work; there is always more to be done than they can possibly do.

Dr. Besant works indefatigably from early in the morning until very late at night without any rest, and hers is a very different thing from the ordinary man’s idea of work.

Some men who are in business are certainly closely occupied the whole time, but most people’s idea of work is to do a little and have a rest, and then take the matter up again and spend a little more time at it. They would call that very close attention to work.

That is not the way in which she works. Even while she is listening to some story that is being told to her, she will continue writing and still know every word of what one is telling her, and be perfectly ready at the end of the story to give help or advice. She loses no single moment. She is always prepared, if she happens to be waiting at a railway station, to take out a little dispatch box and begin writing articles or letters at once.

It is not given to every one – and think of the age which her body has now reached – to do that, especially as a great deal of the work is of a very searching character, and calls for quick decision in many different directions. People who are paid for work do not do it in that way. It is precisely because all that she does is done for the love of it that she is able to do so much.

Certainly she is happy in her work, always ready to meet people with a friendly smile, and is thus a great inspiration to all those who come into contact with her. We would do well to follow in her steps as far as we can, remembering always the duty of happiness.

If we are not happy, then we are not doing enough; it is a sure proof that we are wasting time. We should get to work and do something, and at once the unhappiness will vanish, because there will not be time for it.

The interest in the work is so keen and the amount to be done so great, that we shall find ourselves thinking of that, and we shall have no time to think of anything in the nature of unhappiness.

224. Seek in the heart the source of evil and expunge it. It lives fruitfully in the heart of the devoted disciple as well as in the heart of the man of desire. Only the strong can kill it out.

The weak must wait for its growth, its fruition, its death. And it is a plant that lives and increases throughout the ages. It flowers when the man has accumulated unto himself innumerable existences. He who will enter upon the path of power must tear this thing out of his heart.

And then the heart will bleed, and the whole life of the man seem to be utterly dissolved. This ordeal must be endured; it may come at the first step of the perilous ladder which leads to the path of life: it may not come until the last.

But, O disciple, remember that it has to be endured, and fasten the energies of your soul upon the task. Live neither in the present nor the future, but in the Eternal. This giant weed cannot flower there: this blot upon existence is wiped out by the very atmosphere of eternal thought.

Continues...

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15 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 50 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 7

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 50 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 7 🌻

220. One may say that it is very difficult to do that, if other people are aggressive or insulting. But is it not obvious that the effect produced by the insulting and aggressive attitude depends upon the way in which it is met? If we allow ourselves to be affected by it, a great deal of disturbance is set up.

We on our side show something of the same nature, and to the onlooker it would seem that some of that aggression is justified. But if we are perfectly calm, the man who abuses us puts himself in the wrong, and the outsider can see that we are not in the wrong.

Of course, we should not remain calm in order to appear in the right, but we should adopt a philosophical attitude, because we do not feel these attempts to attack us or to interfere with us; and thus we can be happy.

221. That seems a sort of negative happiness, to avoid pain or suffering. We can do a great deal more than that; we who are trying to live according to the precepts of occultism – students of the inner life – must be doing something of the world’s work.

Assuredly no one can see the Plan of the Logos, and the work that is to be done to carry out that Plan, without trying to do as much as he can for it, and the fact that he is engaged in that work keeps a man busy and happy.

We should have no time for depression, no time to worry about all these outer things. If we are all the time busily engaged in pouring out’ good thought, in sending strong wishes, strong currents of goodwill to all around us, we are fully occupied, and are happy in the work itself.

222. It is sad to see the way in which people all about us are constantly talking about doing things “to pass the time”.

They do this or that for the sake of having something to do. It is both ludicrous and pitiable, because the world is full of opportunities to do good and noble deeds, and these people are not even looking for the opportunities.

They are just trying somehow or other to amuse themselves, that they may get through the time – a most extraordinary attitude to take.

Continues...

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14 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 49 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 6

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 49 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 6 🌻

217. All this suffering can only be altered now by bringing in new forces. We can sometimes relieve sorrow and suffering to a certain extent. Whenever we do that, it is not in the least that we abrogate the working of the law, it is not at all that everything does not flow in harmony with that law, but that we introduce a new force which also comes within the operation of the law, and mitigates much which otherwise would have been the effect of what went before.

But though we can sometimes relieve and help, it is, as I explained before, quite difficult for many of us to get always into the attitude of being perfectly sympathetic and yet recognizing the necessity of the suffering, though we can do it quite well in certain things.

Suppose some friend whom we love very much has to undergo a surgical operation. Of course we are sorry that it should be so, but it does not occur to us to say that it ought not to be so, because we recognize that the operation is intended to do good, and we trust that its result will be an improvement in his health.

Therefore however sorry and anxious we may be, we regard it is an unfortunate, a regrettable, necessity. All sorrow and suffering are nothing but that – operations to remove dangerous growths.

218. Much of the sorrow of the world can be avoided, because a great deal of it does not come from the past but is the result of men’s present foolishness. They take things in a wrong way. For example, we frequently allow ourselves to be hurt or offended or worried.

That is not karma from the past. In many cases seven-eighths of the trouble which comes to people is not from without at all; it is due entirely to the way in which they take their experiences. The karma that comes to us from without is only a small amount, but we magnify it very greatly; that is our present fault, and it can be remedied.

219. Most people who live for happiness seek to attain that happiness in various ways: by surrounding themselves with the people with whom they feel happy, by going where they expect to find enjoyment, and so on. That the disciple should not do, because he ought to be in the position of being perfectly happy in himself, without reference to particular outer conditions.

That is difficult for us, because, through many lives we have been very largely the sport of circumstances. If we observe people we shall find that most of them are in that condition still. The majority of people in the world make very little effort to change the conditions in which they find themselves.

If they find themselves depressed or readily offended and therefore unhappy, they should set to work to change those conditions. Instead of doing that they grumble about those who offend them, and say that it is quite impossible to get on with such people. Yet those others are probably people very much like the rest of the world. Our happiness depends upon how these people are taken, upon our attitude towards their attitude.

If our study of occultism has brought any fruit we will say: “I do not mind what position they take up; that is their business, not mine; my business is to take care that I am not offended and worried, that I preserve a peaceful condition, whatever these other people do or think.”

Continues...

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12 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 48 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 5

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 48 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 5 🌻

213. Each ego has his own way, his own power of appreciating the truth; he must receive it along his own line. For others to try to force him to take it along their line, which is not his, is a mistake; the whole inner Self revolts against it. The result, in hundreds of cases, when children have been intellectually pressed, is that they fall away altogether from their parents’ beliefs.

Again and again, for example, the son of a clergyman ends as an atheist, because the father and mother have unwisely tried to force him to think along their lines. This harm is done only because they themselves want to be intellectually comfortable.

The disciple must always be careful that his desire to be emotionally or intellectually comfortable does not make him interfere with other people’s rights, and that he does not let it stand in the way of duty or of help that he might give.

214. It is essential that we should be happy, as the Chohan says here, although certainly we do not live for happiness. I think many forget the duty of happiness.

They do not regard it as a duty, although most emphatically it is that. It is a necessary part of progress. The person who is always mournful and depressed about what is happening is making no progress, and it is well that he should understand that.

As I have said before, it is necessary that we should become more and more sensitive, because unless we bring ourselves into that condition we cannot answer in a moment to the slightest signal from the Master. It is unquestionably difficult to be very sensitive and at the same time radiantly happy, yet that’ is what we must be.

There is a great deal that calls for the deepest sympathy, and it is difficult to feel sympathy with those who are suffering, without also feeling sorrow; yet, as I have explained, the Master sympathizes far more than we can, but certainly does not feel the sorrow as sorrow.

216. There might be very much less suffering and very much less sorrow if the people to whom the sorrow and suffering are coming now had lived quite differently in other lives, perhaps thousands of years ago, but considering that they lived as they did, that which is now happening is the best that can happen for their progress. We cannot help being sorry that it is not better, but our sorrow is not for what is going on now, but for the previous happenings which made this necessary.

Possibly that sounds a little cold, but when we understand how utterly the result is part of the cause, we can see that what is happening now is actually part of the causes which the people themselves set in motion long ago, and it could not be other than it is while the divine law of cause and effect is operating.

Continues...

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10 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 47 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 4

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 47 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 4 🌻

210. There are two objects with regard to the position of the body during meditation. First, it should be comfortable, so that one can easily forget it, for that is what one wants to do. Secondly, it should be such that if in meditation we leave the body – which may happen at any time – it will not hurt itself. In such a case the effect on the body will be as though, we had fainted.

The Indian who is sitting on the floor simply falls backwards, and no harm is done. When we meditate we shall do well, therefore, to sit in some sort of armchair, so that we may not fall out of it, if the body loses consciousness. The recumbent position is not good if it increases the tendency to sleep.

211. There are joys of the emotions and of the intellect, and many people who would despise the idea that their physical comfort mattered to them in the least, are yet exceedingly unhappy when they are not emotionally comfortable, that is to say, when they imagine that they are not getting the response they deserve to their emotions. Many people are painfully sentimental and expect the rest of the world to be equally so, and are much hurt because it is not.

They pour out what they call affection, but it is often tinged with selfishness. They will create all kinds of disturbance, and even do things which harm those whom they profess to love, all for the sake of what they call the return of their affection.

They do not understand that there are different types of affection, and that it may be absolutely impossible for the person concerned to return it in their particular way. This difficulty comes from the insistence of the desire for emotional comfort, which should never be permitted to interfere with our own progress or that of those whom we love.

212. In the same way there is intellectual comfort. People want others to think exactly as they do, so that they may rest mentally content, without disturbance. Constantly we come up against that difficulty. There will be some promising young person deeply interested in Theosophy, for example, who wants to join the Society, but his parents vigorously oppose him.

They would not be intellectually comfortable if they thought that their son or their daughter were adopting a line which they could not share. They feel sure that they are right and that there can be no real wisdom outside the limits of their own particular opinions.

Therefore if a son or a daughter thinks differently from them they are quite outraged, not realizing that the fact that an ego happens to be born in their family does not necessarily mean that he is of the same temperament as themselves.

Continues...

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09 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 46 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 3

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 46 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 3 🌻

207. C.W.L. – This rule does not mean that people may not be comfortable, though many have taken it in that sense. Yogis, hermits and monks have taken similar statements in other scriptures in that way, but it is absolutely wrong and foolish.

Some monks in the Middle Ages wore hair shirts; and some Indian yogis sit on spikes and sleep in the hottest weather in the midst of a circle of fire, all with the object of making themselves uncomfortable. That is, the result of choosing one text and running it to death. It is particularly stated in the Bhagavad-Gita that those who torture the body torture the Divine One seated in that body, and their way is not the way of progress.

So this rule does not mean that we may not be comfortable, but simply that we must never let our desire for comfort stand in the way of any work which we have to do. If to do what ought to be done will cause us great discomfort, we must not on that account refrain from doing it.

208. To make ourselves unnecessarily uncomfortable only puts difficulty in our way. People talk much about the virtue of suffering and the extent to which progress is made through it; but if we look at the cold facts we shall find that the progress is made after the suffering is past. It is not actual suffering itself which causes the progress, but in many cases that wakens a man to conditions which otherwise he would not have sufficiently noted.

It sometimes weeds out of him qualities which made progress difficult for him, but it is only after the suffering is over that the progress is made, because only then is he in a fit state of mind to attend to higher things.

209. We must not think that there is any virtue in making ourselves uncomfortable. On the contrary, when the physical body is comfortable we are much better able to think of higher things. Yet I have known people who would persist in doing it. For example, in India where meditation is best understood, it happens to be the custom to sit cross-legged.

I have known scores of white people who would weary themselves out and even cause themselves pain by trying to follow the Indian custom in meditation, not understanding that that is merely an outer detail and the Indian only adopts that position because he has been accustomed to it from childhood.

It is exceedingly futile for people who are not accustomed to it to force themselves into what is to them a position of discomfort. Patanjali’s direction is to take a posture “easy and pleasant”.

Continues...

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08 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 45 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 2

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 45 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 2 🌻

202. How shall the man become happy? The answer is: by realizing that the Self is bliss. It is said in the Brahma Sutras that Brahman is Bliss, Brahman is Ananda. The man has now to realize this. He is no longer moved by pleasure nor by pain.

They have ceased to attract him; they came from contact between forms, but he has reached equilibrium. He is therefore likely to sink into the condition of being neither happy nor unhappy. But he must learn to be happy as those are who live for happiness.

203. It is the bliss of the Self, that deep abiding bliss, the sense of contentment and joy, which is an essential part of the spiritual life, and the most difficult part of that life to realize in consciousness.

It is a very marked fact about the great Mystics and Saviours of men that the side of sorrow has shown itself very much in their lives. Jesus was a man of sorrow. Gautama, the Buddha, left his splendid palaces and gardens and loving friends to seek the cure for the sorrow of the world.

The same is true when we look on the lives of all the great leaders of mankind. Sorrow touched them very deeply. But they were not overcome by the sorrow. In those men there was an abiding joy, and the sorrow is profoundly exaggerated by the man who looks upon them from outside.

As grief hovers over them, as anxiety, harassments, troubles, worries, and woes rain upon them from all directions, naturally they are judged’ by men to be sorrowful. But that does not follow.

They are not worried, harassed or distressed by these things, however much they may attend to them, and may do whatever may be necessary for the sake of the world. Underneath it all there is the heart of peace. Therefore you always find them saying: “My peace remaineth.”

204. The disciple feels the sorrow of the world. That he cannot escape; it will throw a shadow over him – an unavoidable shadow. The whole of the world’s sorrow has to find its echo in him. He feels sorrow, and continues to feel pity for the ignorant and the suffering, for their rebellion and revolt.

At the stage we are considering there is danger for him – that he may cease to feel for others; then just in proportion as he ceases to feel he loses his utility. The Great Ones feel helpless pity for those under the sway of karma; pity because of Their own inability to help them, for there are places where They cannot help, where men must go through their experiences by themselves.

Despite the knowledge that it should be so, and despite Their absolute contentment with the Law, They are standing aside and watching it work; still there is this pain and sympathy – pity, which has in it a certain element of sorrow.

205. That will always remain as something of a shadow. In losing the power to sympathize a man would lose the power to help. Just as his life flows into the ignorant he feels the pleasure and pain of the ignorant, and he lightens their trouble by feeling it himself.

206. With all this pressing upon him it is ever necessary that the disciple should be reminded that the Self is bliss. He must keep the heart of joy, must deliberately cultivate in himself the spirit of contentment and happiness. One way to do this is to practise meditation upon the divine bliss – deep, intense bliss, not equalled by anything belonging to this earth, because it is the very essence and nature of the Self.

A man can develop that aspect only by the deliberate cultivation of joy and contentment, and by looking at the world and recognizing that evil is avidya, unwisdom. In the midst of sorrows he is to be happy; he must teach himself that pain is in the vehicle while the life is ever joy.

Continues...

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06 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 44 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 1

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 44 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 1 🌻

198. A.B. – In the early stages of growth a man puts out all his efforts pf brain and body in order to gain the means which will make him comfortable; the desire of comfort forms the motive of the majority of mankind.

It is a very useful stimulus to bring out certain qualities of man. It teaches him that he must control his body, that he must dominate his lower nature, and that he has also to develop his bodies, so that they may subserve his purposes, of enjoying comfort in them.

199. The desire for comfort gradually disappears as the things that attract the man rise higher and higher in the scale. A man may get rid of desires for physical comfort and enjoyment by throwing his interest into the mental life, for example.

At first there will be a sense of effort, a certain feeling of pain and loss; but the man prefers the mental to the physical pleasures because he knows that they will last longer.

Then, as he practises self-denial, he finds that the feeling of loss becomes less and less as the joys of the intellect attract him more and more, until the lower desires do not attract him at all.

200. At first there is deliberate self-denial at each stage, and then comes the loss of the power of attraction in the physical object of the desire. Later on, the same change will come with regard to the joys of the intellect.

When the man is looking up to the spiritual life his great attraction for intellectual things will gradually diminish, and he will be less and less attracted by the enjoyment of the powerful intellectual force; he will deny himself the joys of the intellect and rejoice in those of the spirit; he will withdraw himself from the intellect and fix his consciousness on the spiritual level.

201. The destruction of the desire for comfort also brings its danger. This is the third great danger. The first was inactivity, the second was contempt, and the third is the tendency not to be happy, but to be neither happy nor unhappy, neither one thing nor the other.

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05 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 43 : Kill out desire of life - Respect life as those do who desire it - 5

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 43 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 2nd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of life - Respect life as those do who desire it - 5 🌻

193. When we see a man showing selfishness and greed and lack of self-control, we say: “What a pity!” Yet it is a pity only in the same sense that we might say that it is a pity that a little child of four has not grown up to be a man.

If we allow ourselves to be uncontrolled, or to show greed and selfishness we might feel a sort of contempt for ourselves, because we know better, but it would be wrong to feel that for any other man.

If it seems that he ought to be doing better, probably he has not taken advantage of his opportunities; then we should feel sorry for him and try to help him, when we can, to see the better side, the higher possibilities, but it is the greatest mistake to draw away from him, though we cannot always help feeling repugnance towards the things that he does.

For example, if a man gets drunk it is because he is at that stage. He is a younger soul, therefore it is possible for him to yield to temptation of that kind instead of making a stand against it, as he ought to do.

In many cases he has tried, perhaps, but be has so far failed. All that we can do to help him should be thoroughly and entirely at his disposal, but we must not feel repugnance for him. It is the old Christian idea; we may hate the sin but we must be sorry for the sinner, otherwise we are doing worse than he, because we are losing the sense of brotherhood and destroying our power to help.

194. The one Life is behind all and we must respect it even in manifestations which we dislike and feel to be undesirable. We must never forget that it is divine. It is difficult to remember that sometimes when the things that are done are so very ungodlike; nevertheless we must try.

It is the old idea of the hidden Life, which was taught to us in the Egyptian mysteries thousands of years ago. The hidden Life was in every man, and however deeply it was buried and however little it showed forth, we were always to remember that it was there, even when we could not see it.

The hidden light in us could not shine upon and evoke the hidden light in another at once, but if we were sufficiently patient and sufficiently forceful we must call forth a response, sometime and somehow. In these days we put the teaching in somewhat different terms, but it is equally true now as then.

195. The man who lives in the Eternal sees what will be as well as what now is, and when he looks at a manifestation of Life which is eminently undesirable he says: “Yes, at present, from the point of view of time, that is what I see it to be – a low and unworthy manifestation; but the divine Life in sit will some day blossom out.” Many people do not think how very illusory a thing the present is. No sooner have we thought of it than it has passed.

We say: “Such and such a thing is in existence at present,” and while we are uttering the words that present moment has become the past. In reality there is no such time as the present; it is a kind of knife-edge between the past and future; it is merely a term which we use for convenience – the thing itself is shifting every second of time. v-

We must read the future into the present, and see what will be. If we could only get out of these bodies and these brains for a few moments into an altogether higher life and look down upon it, we should understand this matter exactly.

We should see that by thinking of that future we make it more easily attainable for the present. If we look at a man who is definitely sinning, and think of his sin, we fold that sin more closely about him, but if we look at him and think of the future, when he will have risen out of it, we open the way to that future for, him, and bring it more within his reach.

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04 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 42 : Kill out desire of life - Respect life as those do who desire it - 4

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 42 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 2nd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of life - Respect life as those do who desire it - 4 🌻

190. As soon as a man feels unity he gains the dispassionate view of things. All lines of work are then, in effect, the same to him – not that he can equally easily take up all, but he sees that, they all lead to the same point. The undeveloped man never understands this.

Always he thinks that the man taking the, higher standpoint is cold and hard and unsympathetic; that is because the lower man is thinking of himself and is wanting all sorts of personal satisfactions, whereas the other man is thinking only of the work to be done and is putting all his energy; into that.

When once the Plan of work of the Logos dawns upon a man’s horizon he sees that to the exclusion of every thing else, and throws his energies into it, and whatever is best for that work he tries to do, even as regards the smallest detail of every-day life.

191. He hitches his wagon to a star. He puts before himself ideals very high and very remote from the ordinary understanding, and it is quite inevitable that the people who still look on things from the personal point of view will misunderstand him. If he suffers because of that misunderstanding, there is still a little personal touch in that; he still wants to be understood, but even that he must give up.

He must give up hoping that his efforts will be appreciated, and realize that it does not matter whether they are appreciated or not. All that matters is that the work shall be done. If people will not give us credit for our work, no matter; let it be done as perfectly as possible.

We shall have the appreciation of the Master – that much is sure – but even that must not be our reason for doing it. Our reason for doing it is that it is God’s work and as we are one with Him what He wills is our will, what He would have done it is our highest pleasure and privilege to try to do.

192. When we realize that all Life is divine Life, of course we shall respect all the manifestations of it. We, who see partially, do not always respect life in all its forms and in all its manifestations.

We see that many of them would be eminently undesirable for us, and therefore there is a tendency to regard those particular manifestations with contempt. That is always a mistake. We see a great deal around us which from our point of view is going very wrong, and often it really is going wrong.

All the expressions of selfishness and greed and uncontrolled desire that we see in the world are certainly wrong in the sense that it would be very much better if they were different. It is not at all a mistake for us to think that, because it is a fact; but when we allow ourselves to feel contempt for the people who are at that stage, we are going further than we have any right to go.

Their state of development accounts for these manifestations, and they are very often the only expressions possible for them at that stage, and it is through them that they will learn.

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03 Dec 2020

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 41 : Kill out desire of life - Respect life as those do who desire it - 3

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 41 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 2nd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of life - Respect life as those do who desire it - 3 🌻

187. C.W.L. – Here, as in the case of the former rule, we may take the teaching at two different levels. Undoubtedly the beginner has to kill out the desire for one kind of outer life rather than for another, such as would interfere with the work to be done.

A man who becomes a pupil of the Master must be absolutely willing to do whatever is put in his way, to go here or there, to leave this thing or that, and have no feeling about it. If he thinks: “I am doing this kind of work and I am doing it well, and I want to keep on doing it,” he may come to harm because he is becoming conceited.

Suppose he is taken away from the work he feels he can do and is put to something which is new to him; he must accept it with perfect cheerfulness. The change may be made because this other work is more necessary, or because, since he has learned to do that one thing, he must now learn to do something else.

188. Quite outside the special training of the pupil, we frequently find that the evolutionary forces work in that way. Every man likes to do what he feels he can do well, but the evolutionary forces want to develop the man all round, and very often they take him away from what he can do and put him to something else that he cannot yet do well, because they want him to develop some new power. If at first he cannot do it, he must work at it until he can.

That is the way that evolution in general works, and the same thing applies to the training of the .pupils of the Master. If they can do a thing well they may be kept at it for some time, but then quite suddenly they may be sent along some other line, and they must be equally willing to do that other work also. So, certainly, the desire for one kind of physical life more than for another will have to be killed out.

189. At the higher level the same thing is true with regard to the life of the ego. The disciple knows, if he looks back on past incarnations, that his ego has come along certain lines, but he has developed certain qualities and can, from the point of view of the individuality, do well along those lines, He may be suddenly taken away from them.:

The individuality, the ego, must accept that which comes to it in the course of its training, and there also we must be free from any feeling that this work or this way is better than that: This is brought home to us when we meet with people of other ray& or types.

We feel that our ray and type is the best one. In theory we would admit that the others must be just as good as our own, but very few of us can feel really hearty sympathy with them.

Thus, for example, one who has been working along philosophic or scientific lines might find it a little trying to have to turn his activities to art or ceremonial service. It is difficult to turn our sympathies round and let them flow freely along another line, but that is one of the things we must learn to do if necessary.

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02 Dec 2020