LIGHT ON THE PATH - 40 : Kill out desire of life - Respect life as those do who desire it - 2

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 40 🌹

🍀 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 - 2 🌻

183. Granted that a man in a low stage is foolish, sensual idle, exceedingly unattractive; his lack of attraction lies in the form, not in the Life. We are blinded by the form. Because our looking down upon another, our turning aside from him, is a sign of our, superiority, there follows a feeling of superiority, which breeds contempt.

But the truth is that the only thing in which we are superior is the evolution of the form. The essence is the same; his possibilities are equal to ours, and looked at from the centre he is as we are. The man who is on the Path tries to see things from the centre as well as from the circumference.

He must therefore respect Life, and realize that the Life of Ishvara is the only Life; the form is that in which Ishvara chooses to manifest for a certain time, and if it is good enough for Ishvara it is quite good enough for us.

184. In the universe there must be form in all stages of growth. No one is higher or lower; all are equal. There is difference when we ourselves are in process of evolution; but no difference when we have outgrown it. When we have given up interest in it and thrown aside all question of forms and fruit, then we can respect Life in all its manifestations.

The partially evolved man, bound up by the forms, is willing to help those who are comparatively near himself and who can repay his trouble. He will not be inclined to help those who are low down. But the man who helps from the standpoint of Ishvara helps all. His duty is to help them wherever they are.

His activity is to be the activity of Ishvara. He helps those who come in his way, whether they be high or low, and he respects the Life in each of them, and helps that where help is required.

He does not allow himself to be confused by the fact that the whole of the Life is not present in the man. He knows that the work of Ishvara is carried on so that that life may be brought out, and he works to unfold it into manifestation.

He is not led astray by thinking that to be in the Self is everything. He works for manifestation, respecting and loving Life. And so he utterly avoids the danger of contempt, which would otherwise hinder the unfolding of the Life in himself by producing a wall of separateness.

185. There is in this an immense difference between the way in which Life is regarded by an ordinary man and by one who lives in the Eternal. The latter sees the Life in its full possibilities, those possibilities to him being in view now, even though undeveloped; for he lives in the Eternal, and when Life is looked at from that standpoint it is seen in the beauty of its fulfilment. Below that state we see it only in a particular stage, in time and not in Eternity, and therefore we do not respect it as we ought to do.

But the liberated soul who lives in Eternity sees it as it is, and although he looks at the -stage at a particular time in which it has arrived, he cannot feel repulsion, because he knows that that stage is perfectly normal.

186. The practical outcome of it is that the higher a man stands the more is he tolerant of all Life, and the greater is his compassion with all, approaching as it is the compassion of the Logos Himself.

As a man destroys in himself the desire of Life, that is the desire of the separated self, and yet respects Life as those do who desire it, he begins to acquire that sense of Eternity which enables him to respect life in whatever way it may be manifested.

For him then any contempt for those who are below him becomes impossible; he recognizes each in its place as an expression of the Perfect Life.

Continues...

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01 Dec 2020