LIGHT ON THE PATH - 127 : Seek it by testing all experiences - 3

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 127 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 10 - THE Note on 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it by testing all experiences - 3 🌻

480. There is one other thing for which this experience is valuable; until you have passed through it you cannot help the person who yields. You cannot help any human being unless you are above him, and yet you cannot lift anyone unless you understand what he is feeling. There is a stage where you yourself are in the grip of desire; you cannot then help others who are in the same difficulty.

Later, you escape. You repel desire, and reach a point where you cannot understand why another man should fall into temptation; not understanding his feelings, you cannot help him; you can point out the evil to him, but you cannot give spiritual help. You cannot pour strength into him because you are outside him, and as you are not feeling with him you feel a shock of horror.

When you get that horror you are useless. You can never help anyone from whom you are repelled; it is better to leave him alone when you feel like that. You must be able to feel with a person in order to help him.

481. Even though you can feel with a person you cannot help him if he makes a wall about himself; in such a case, it is better to drop him for a time, for help given from the outside is of no use. You may have to give up trying to help a person on the physical plane, but you need not stop doing so from the inside. To help from the inside requires more courage than to do so from without. It is far more gratifying to give outside counsel and advice; it is much more satisfying to the lower nature than giving inside and unseen help.

482. Another thing – if you can help a person, do not be turned away by the opinion of someone else that he does not deserve help, nor by his own idea that you are not helping him. H.P.B. was sometimes condemned by her own pupils.

They said harsh things of her, but she was good and strong, and did not repel them, but went on helping them from the inside, leaving them to think what they would. By helping from the inside we wear away antagonism. When you have felt antagonism, antipathy of mind, to others, possibly even to your own teacher, as you do sometimes, you perhaps blame them.

Where you have felt a wall you have thought it was their wall, but later on you realize that the wall was an illusion – a thing you had yourself created on, the mental plane. When going through this stage we have built wall after wall, and have suffered by the existence of the walls, until we threw them down.

483. There is a still higher stage, which is difficult to explain. There are men who make a link between the Great Ones and the mass of humanity. It is the stage where the person is in an absolutely pure desire-body; all dead matter has been cleared away from it, and only the power of reflecting images is retained. The man is incapable of sin.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


31 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 126 : Seek it by testing all experiences - 2

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 126 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 10 - THE Note on 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it by testing all experiences - 2 🌻

477.When the centre of consciousness has separated itself from the body of desire and moved to the manasic plane, a considerable advance has been made.

The man no longer looks on the body of desire as himself, but as merely a vehicle. Yet its vibrations can still affect him, for it has a life of its own, and sometimes it is as if the horses had run away with him. That is the stage spoken of in the Kathopanishat, when the driver has reined in the horses and they are going quietly, but are still liable to rush away now and then. The disciple knows when they have run away by the excitement of the senses.

It is a stage of great trial. The whole nature of the man is shamed and pained by the degradation; he cannot yield without suffering. In his normal condition of consciousness the senses do not attract him, he does not feel the temptations of the body, which are really astral. Yet times come when he does feel them. This happens because the old mould of desire is not broken up, and it has been vivified from outside.

The channel has not disappeared, though it is wearing out, and the danger exists that it may suddenly be filled from the outside, and then the desire-form is revivified. Astral influences cause vibrations in it strong enough to affect the man’s consciousness again; left to itself it would not affect him; but he comes to a place, time or person on account of which strong influences from outside vibrate through him and revivify this old form.

478. They are to be recognized as coming from outside, not from himself, so the disciple ought to understand what they are. With shame, degradation and horror he feels this thing, and wonders how he can feel it. The answer is that there is a stage in growth when seductions coming from the senses may be experienced but need not be yielded to. The man then passes them by. He says: “I feel you; I recognize you; I weigh you; but I refuse to be moved.”

That is the meaning of the passage in the Kathopanishat, where it says the man has come to the point where he can hold the horses in. He can hold the senses under control. It is the last lesson with regard to the temptation of the senses. When it is learned, their power over the man has passed for ever. Never again will they have the power to affect him; it is the last struggle with them, and when it is over the soul has escaped.

479. When that time of struggle comes, and it will come to every one, after the centre of consciousness is moved on to the manasic plane, it is an immense help to realize its nature and to know how to deal with it, to be able to say: “It is not I; it is simply a vibration from the lower nature sent out to me; I reject it; that is my answer.”

The moment you repudiate it, the sense of horror goes; you refuse to feel its influence. When you have done that, you can test yourself, and see what part of your nature it is working upon. Then you will wait with patience for the time when you will feel it no more.

You trust in the law; you sit down and patiently wait, and presently it will be unable to set up any vibrations; the senses cannot make you respond to them. You say: “I can wait patiently for the time when I shall not feel this thing. It is a dead form revivified that I feel, and it will soon be broken up and will fade away.”

There is nothing left but to wait so – perhaps for months or for years. The victory is won when you are able to do that – the mould is broken. Recognition of your patience gives the last blow to shatter it, and never again can it affect you, unless you turn your back upon the goal, which seems an impossibility.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


29 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 125 : Seek it by testing all experiences - 1

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 125 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj


CHAPTER 10 - THE Note on 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it by testing all experiences - 1 🌻

473. A.B. – The Master Hilarion adds the following note to Rule 20.

474. Seek it by testing all experiences; and remember that when I say this I do not say: “Yield to the seductions of sense in order to know it.” Before you have become on Occultist you may do this; but not afterwards.

When you have chosen and entered the Path you cannot yield to these seductions without shame. Yet you can experience them without horror: can weigh, observe, and test them, and wait with the patience of confidence for the hour when they shall affect you no longer.

475. In the earlier stages of human evolution the ego is not sufficiently developed to know right from wrong. But the moment he has learned to distinguish between them, to know them as different, morality begins. When, for example, he begins to understand the difference between destroying life and guarding it, there is for him the birth of morality on that line.

The kind of experience which taught him that knowledge is then not wanted any longer. But though the man no longer needs to test that experience, there is still sometimes a rush of the senses, compelling him to some wrong action, and that afterwards causes him to suffer, because he recognizes that it was wrong to yield to it.

The saying of the pseudo-occultist, that a man may do wrong in order to gain experience, is never justified. When an act is done while a man is unconscious of its being wrong he is gaining necessary experience; but when there is knowledge that it is wrong, then each yielding means a fall, and keen suffering must follow.

476. The condition of yielding under stress of circumstances lasts for many lives; even after a man has entered on the Path the conflict with the desires of the senses often continues. Before one can make rapid progress there are long stages of conflict between the wish that works through the astral and mental bodies, and the knowledge that its gratification is a hindrance to the higher life.

The conflict on the lower stages is long, and when it passes on into a higher stage, and arises when mental images are mixed up with the desires of the senses, temptations become more subtle, for the mind idealizes the sense-objects, refines the grosser impulses, and presents desires in their most alluring aspect.

Another stage comes when the aspirant is on the Path proper, for even there the keen force of old temptations is sufficiently strong to assail him. It is in this connection that we have the statement in the Master’s note, which shows the disciple how he may utilize them; he can weigh, observe, and test these seductions, waiting patiently for the time when they shall affect him no longer.


Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


27 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 124 : Seek it not by any one road. - 17

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 124 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 17 🌻

470. The differences at these levels are sufficiently great to warrant such a classification. On the physical plane everything depends very much upon its form, and that is also true in the astral and lower mental worlds. At the level of the causal body, though it is not quite true that we are without form, at least the forms are different and more direct. The thought of the causal body is like a flash of lightning darting directly to its object; instead of making a definite separated form, it is simply an out-rush, straight ‘to the object, of the impulse which the thought has given.

471. When we rise above that to the buddhic we reach a condition which, as I have explained before, can hardly be described in words. There the thought of each person is a pulsation of the whole plane, so that every person at that level enfolds within himself the thought of all the others and can learn from it and can experience through it, as it were. One cannot hope to make it very clear; one can only suggest.

472. It is well for us to try to understand those higher states. Almost the only way in which we can do this is by the method adopted in the Hindu books, which is always a negation.

They do not describe a state of consciousness; they gradually eliminate all the things that it is not. After doing that, if we can manage to retain a sort of sublimated essence of the thought of the thing, we are coming a little nearer to what it really is. The followers of the Buddha often asked: “What is nirvana?”, or sometimes they would say: “Is nirvana, or is it not?” – that is to say, has it an existence, or has it not?

The Buddha on one occasion answered: “Nirvana is; beyond a doubt it exists, and yet if you ask me if it is, I can only say that it is neither a state of being nor of not-being in the sense in which you understand those words.” Perhaps even He could not make it clear to us at our level. In our own far smaller way we have the same kind of experience.

I can bear witness that when one develops the buddhic consciousness and uses it, much which we now cannot make clear becomes absolutely plain; but the moment one drops back from that condition of consciousness one can no longer express that which one has understood. That it is not readily to be expressed is shown by the fact that the Buddha Himself, so very much greater, was yet unable to put it into words to be understood down here, except by negatives.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


25 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 123 : Seek it not by any one road. - 16

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 123 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 16 🌻

467. It may be asked: “Why seek it by what it is not, if you can have a touch of atmic consciousness?” Frankly speaking, it is not atmic consciousness you get in the brain, but a little vibration from the manasic aspect of atma differing from any other vibration in the manasic consciousness.

Vibrations started on higher planes are different from those that begin on the manasic plane. When a person attains to the highest stage of the Path proper – the fourth or Arhat Path – then, in meditation out of the body, he can pass into samadhi and reach the atmic consciousness in nirvana.

468. C.W.L. – This twofold triple division, of the methods by which we are to seek the way and the laws which correspond with those methods, is illuminating and without a doubt intentional. Plunging into the depths of one’s inmost being leads to the study of the laws of being – the laws of that plane which lies beyond all that is manifestation for us, that is to say, nirvana. The higher planes are, of course, still planes of manifestation, and even what lies beyond them is not really unmanifested, but it is so to us, at our present stage.

Only by study of the laws of being shall we be able to fulfil the real purpose of plunging into the depths of our inmost being, which is to “make obeisance to the dim star which burns within”. Clearly that is a very high stage in development – when we look for the atma and follow only that.

469. The testing of all experience corresponds with the study of the laws of nature, that is to say, the laws of the phenomenal world, those which work on the physical, astral and mental planes into which the personality plunges.

Then we are to learn to understand the individuality by the study of the laws of the supernatural, by which evidently are meant the laws of those worlds in which the ego, as such, moves, that is to say, the laws of the buddhic plane and the higher part of the mental plane. Of course there is nothing supernatural, but that word is used here evidently in a somewhat technical sense.

Through all the planes it is the one Life which expresses itself in different ways, and there is no break of natural law and order in the whole scheme; only when we come to a region beyond anything that any of our physical, astral or mental senses can touch, are we reaching up into something beyond the nature which most of us know, where other and wider laws operate.

I think it is in that sense that the Chohan uses this word “supernatural”. Beyond the sphere of these senses we pass into a region above the phenomenal, to what the Greeks called the noumenal world, which is the source and cause of the phenomenal worlds.

So the meaning of this passage appears to be that when we thoroughly understand the personality we shall have grasped “the laws of nature”; when we are seeking to understand the individuality, we shall be dealing with the “laws of the supernatural”, and when, beyond that, we try to realize the atma, we shall be studying the “laws of being”.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


23 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 122 : Seek it not by any one road. - 15

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 122 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 15 🌻

463. A division may be made for purposes of classification, by taking the laws of nature as covering the world of phenomena, the world of observation, the laws of super-nature as those of the higher manas and buddhi, and the laws of being as those of the real existence of nirvana. By the laws of nature we then mean the laws which work on the physical and astral planes and the rupa sub-planes of manas.

464. The laws that are above these, but below those of “being”, may be called the laws of supernature. This includes both the arupa planes of manas and the buddhic plane. That is the region where life expresses itself more than form, where matter is subordinated to life, altering at every moment.

There is nothing there to represent a definitely outlined entity. The entity changes form with every change of thought; matter is an instrument of his life and is no expression of himself; the form is made momentarily – it changes with every change of his life. This is true on the arupa plane of manas, and also in a subtle way on the buddhic plane.

It is true also of the spiritual ego, which is buddhi plus the manasic aspect of the One, which was drawn up into buddhi when the causal vehicle was cast aside. That state is called by Christian mystics that of spiritual illumination; it is the stage of the Arhat, of the Christ in man.

465. The word supernatural is commonly used to cover anything that cannot be explained by the common experience of the- world. Anything that appears irregular or out of accord with the laws of nature has been so ticketed, much to the confusion of thoughtful people.

There is a wide-spread revolt in the world against all that is called supernatural; people feel that there cannot be anything supernatural, because there is no irregularity or disorder in nature, no region where law does not exist. The law is working everywhere and it is one. “As above, so below” is the universal truth.

One nature is expressing itself in different ways, but is itself the same always. But when we come to what is here called supernatural, we arrive at a state beyond all that can be touched by the senses – even using the term in its fullest meaning. We pass altogether beyond everything which is phenomenal, into the spiritual worlds themselves.

466. The plane of atma, beyond that, is nirvana, the region of being, where all is reality, where true consciousness resides. We are to seek this way by study of our inmost being. Not until we can reach the nirvanic plane in higher meditation can we get a touch of true atmic consciousness; but it may be sought for.

We begin to search for it by trying to realize its existence. Think of it as in a region where all is reality, where all limitations have vanished, where unity is recognized. In meditation try to imagine it, try to figure it to yourself. You can only do so by a series of negatives.

You think: “Is it phenomenal? It is not so. Is it intellectual? It is not so.” You seek it by eliminating what it is not. You then say: “It is not a thing that the senses can perceive; it is not what the intelligence can imagine; it is not found even by the illuminated intelligence, with its vast extent,” and so on.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


21 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 121 : Seek it not by any one road. - 14

 

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 121 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 14 🌻

459. When people once reach some of these higher levels the rate of their progress is very greatly increased.

I remember once being asked in India whether a man’s progress on the Path might be measured by arithmetical progression. I replied: “I think when once progress is definitely started it is very much more like geometrical progression.”

That was rather doubted. The Indians seemed to feel that that was an extreme statement, so I asked the Master Kuthumi whether geometrical progression would be a fair statement of the progress of one who had entered upon the Path.

“No,” He said, “that would not be a fair statement. When once a person enters upon the Path, if he converges all his energies upon it, his progress will be neither by arithmetical nor geometrical progression, but by powers.” So it would not be in the ratio 2, 4, 8, 16, etc., but as 2, 4, 16, 256, etc.

That throws a very different light on the matter, and we begin to see that what is before us is not so impossible and not so wearisome as it sometimes seems. We have taken all these thousands of years to reach our present stage, and it does not seem a great achievement when we consider the time spent upon it.

If our future evolution were to be equally slow the mind would fall back appalled before the contemplation of the aeons needed for us to reach the goal. It is encouraging to think that when we definitely begin to tread the Path we make progress with very great rapidity indeed.

460. I suppose that the average good person is devoting a hundredth part of his mind to making himself a little better. Many people are not doing even that. We who are studying and trying to live by the principles of occultism have gone further, and are beginning to devote a reasonable part of our time to it.

When once the stage is reached where all our force and thought is concentrated upon this great task we shall go ahead by leaps and bounds; however backward we are now, when we can devote all our powers to the work to be done we shall be able to do it much more perfectly than now seems at all possible.

461. Seek it by plunging into the mysterious and glorious depths of your own inmost being. Seek it by testing all experience, by utilizing the senses in order to understand the growth and meaning of individuality, and the beauty and obscurity of those other divine fragments which are struggling side by side with you, and form the race to which you belong.

Seek it by study of the laws of being, the laws of nature, the laws of the supernatural; and seek it by making the profound obeisance of the soul to the dim star that burns within. Steadily, as you watch and worship, its light will grow stronger. Then you may know you have found the beginning of the way. And when you have found the end its light will suddenly become the infinite light.

462. A.B. – In this comment we again consider the triple method of seeking the way.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


18 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 120 : Seek it not by any one road. - 13

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 120 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 13 🌻

455. When in addition to this there is complete control of the astral and mental bodies, progress may be swift indeed. Normally, when the ego wants to deal with one thing through his lower vehicles they persist in bringing in a hundred others, in sending in reports which are not asked for and not desired by the ego. Control of the mind has to be gained so that it will report to the ego only what he wants to know.

Then, when the ego turns some problem over to his mind, and says: “Think that out and give me the information I want,” the controlled mind obeys perfectly, whereas under similar circumstances the average mind reports a hundred things which are useless to the ego, because all sorts of wandering thoughts break in and assert themselves.

456. The system of yielding up the results of the lower work, but not the detailed experience, is going on all the time until we attain Adeptship. As the ego develops, the first decided change that the man makes is to draw up the intellect, the manas, to the buddhic level; he still remains triple, but instead, of being on the three planes he is now on two, with atma developed on its own plane, buddhi on its own plane, and manas level with buddhi, drawn up into the intuition.

Then he discards the causal body because he has no further need of it. When he wishes to come down and manifest on the mental plane again he has to make a new causal body, but otherwise he does not need one.

457. Much in the same way those two manifestations on the buddhic plane – the buddhi and the glorified intellect which is intuition – will be drawn up presently into the nirvanic or atmic plane, and the triple spirit on that plane will be fully vivified. Then the three manifestations will converge into one. That is a power within the reach of the Adept, because He unifies the Monad and the ego, just as the disciple is trying to unite the ego with the personality.

458. This drawing up of the higher manas from the causal body, so that it is on the buddhic plane side by side with the buddhi, is the aspect or condition of the ego which Madame Blavatsky called the spiritual ego. It is used to call ‘ spiritual illumination” – that is, the state of the Arhat.

It is the unfolding of the Krishna principle. We speak of the birth of the Christ principle when there is the first stirring of the buddhic consciousness in the man, but when it is said the Krishna is fully unfolded within him, I think it must mean this state.


Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


16 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 119 : Seek it not by any one road. - 12

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 119 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 12 🌻

452. People think it would simplify their lives if the personality could remember all those past incarnations. In some ways it might, but I think that if in the personality we had the full remembrance of all our past lives before we had reached Adeptship, it would do more harm than good. In the first place, we have not the power to weigh all these things calmly. We should find it distinctly depressing to look back at the ghastly crimes we had committed in the past lives.

I have long ago learnt how to look back at my own past lives, but it is by no means a pleasure to do so. There are certain beautiful actions, some fine incidents in the past lives of everyone, and one is able to look back with a certain degree of pleasure on those, but we have found that in looking back upon a past life the thing that immediately strikes one most forcibly is the number of opportunities which one did not see.

Here, there, everywhere, we were surrounded by opportunities, and we cannot help feeling amazed that we took advantage of so few of them. It was not, usually, that we failed to take them because we did not want to do so; our intentions were good, though rather feebly good, perhaps, and if we had seen the opportunities we should have taken them. Now we look back and wonder at our own blindness.

We say: “If only I had taken this or that course of action certain results would have followed, and by this time I might have reached Adeptship.” But we did not. When we rise to that level the power to look back will be useful to us, but with the amount of intellect and free-will we have now it would certainly not be an unmixed pleasure.

453. Let us consider the general principles involved. The whole of this scheme of which we are a part is intended to further the evolution of man, therefore there can be no doubt whatever that if it were best for him that a personality should remember all his past lives, most certainly that would have been so arranged.

As that has not been done, we should at least have faith enough to see that it is best as it is. When a man has the power to look back he also gains with it a wider insight and a more balanced view of things, and by that time he is so imbued with the certainty of justice in the scheme that if he cannot see exactly how a result followed from its cause he will say: “Well, I do not see the reason for this, but I am sure I shall do so presently.”

It would not occur to him to think that he had been unjustly treated. The person who is always talking of being unjustly treated and is perpetually accusing high heaven of neglecting him, does not understand the rudiments of the case. We know that the law is absolutely just – as just as the law of gravitation – but it does not follow that we can always tell exactly how it will work itself out.

454. As I have said, the ego makes a note of that which produces evil results. Warned by past experience, he tries to influence the personality before it becomes so strong, so definite and decided that it will not be guided by the vaguer touch from the ego behind. It distinctly thinks that it knows best along its own line. Very often it declines to be helped from above, and so the ego cannot influence it to the full extent that he would like.

But he tries to gain control, and as we go on we shall feel this higher self more and more endeavouring to take the reins. If we will identify ourselves with him, we shall find that then he can do Very much more for us. His chief difficulty is the fact that the average personality identifies itself with the lower vehicles and rather resents his interference, but if it can be persuaded to identify itself with him, then at once the whole difficulty is very much lessened.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


14 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 118 : Seek it not by any one road. - 11

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 118 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 11 🌻

448. Each man is to himself absolutely the way, the truth, and the life. But he is only so when he grasps his whole individuality firmly, and by the force of his awakened spiritual will, recognizes this individuality as not himself, but that thing which he has with pain created for his own use and by means of which he purposes, as his growth slowly develops his intelligence, to reach to the life beyond individuality. When he knows that for this his wonderful complex, separated life exists, then, indeed, and then only, he is upon the way.

449. C.W.L. – The way – meaning the true spiritual life – can only be found after the experience of building up the individuality. The expression used here by the Venetian Master – that complex thing which man has built with much trouble and pain for his own use – is true of the individuality, and again, of each personality.

The individuality itself is so built by the Monad; it builds in turn its various personalities, but all for the use of the higher, and for that alone; the mistake all men make is that of identifying themselves with the lower nature, and allowing it to delude them into supposing that it is the “I”, instead of which the “I” is in reality the Monad far behind, which is using all these vehicles.

450. The whole evolution of man can be stated as a withdrawing into himself, but always bringing his sheaves with him, never returning empty-handed. This process of handing up the result of experience by the lower to the higher is going on at all levels all the time.

There are many ways in which we are doing that in every-day life, only we do not think of it in that light. For example, we know how to read; we gained that power in this incarnation by passing very slowly through a long process of learning. Now we can take up a book and understand its meaning at once, without having to think of being able to read.

We have forgotten the details of that experience, and it would be of no value to us to remember them. Some of us have learnt to read music, and can play it off at sight, but at first when we were learning we bad to look carefully at each note and then look down at the piano to find it.

Now the fact that we had to pass through all that labour is forgotten. We do not need to remember all the separate music lessons in order to be able to play, which was the object of the whole process.

451. It is just the same with the memory of past lives. People who believe in reincarnation often have a sense of resentment at the back of their minds, because they do not remember that for which they are now suffering, even while they are ready to admit that it is the result of wrong doing in the past.

That feeling is perhaps quite natural, but it really does not matter in the least; the soul does know, and has made a note of that which has brought the evil result, and will do all it can to influence the personality so as to prevent the same mistake from occurring again.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


12 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 117 : Seek it not by any one road. - 10

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 117 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 10 🌻

445. In the same way the intellectual people must not destroy intellect, but must bridle it and guide it. It is quite true that intellect like devotion may run away with people. They do not always realize that; they say that the intellect in itself is a guarantee against anything extreme, but I am afraid it is not. Many people make a kind of god of intellect; they say:

“Our reason is the only thing we have to guide us and we must always follow that out to its logical conclusion.” That would be quite true if all their premises were always right to begin with, but usually they are remarkably deficient. They are generally considering the physical side of the problem only and leaving out of account the far more important hidden side, and therefore their conclusions are inevitably wrong.

As I said before, we must be balanced; we must learn to see all sides of a question, and we must endeavour to avoid developing any one quality, however good, to such excess that it is altogether out of proportion to all the other qualities, because often the most admirable quality may become dangerous if it is taken in that way apart from the whole.

The man who possesses keen intellect is much to be congratulated because of that intellectual development, but all the more if he has that should he be careful that the other side, that of love and sympathy, is not neglected nor forgotten.

446. In exactly the same way those who possess the power of love and sympathy must see to it that they develop the intellectual side of their natures, so that they will not be led away by their sympathy into foolish action which will not help, but hinder.

A person with the keenest sympathy but no knowledge is often perfectly helpless, just as many a man would be in the presence of some sad accident, lacking the knowledge which a doctor would have. Many people, though full of sympathy and anxious to help, do not know what to do, and the efforts which they make, if ignorant, may be just as likely to do harm as good. Very clearly, there is the need of knowledge as well as emotion.

447. Emotion is the driving force in our natures. It is said in the old Indian books that the emotions are the horses, but the mind is the guide; the mind takes the reins; therefore we need to develop both. We must have our horses, because they are the means of progress, our storage of force; but we must also have reasonable guidance, or else they will run away with us.

All that is perpetually inculcated in all occult study, yet it cannot be said too often, because people forget. There are always those who develop one side only and are sadly lacking in the other, and that is one of the ways in which even an advanced person may come to grief.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


09 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 116 : Seek it not by any one road. - 9

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 116 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 9 🌻

442. It is not difficult to understand how the vehicles are for their “own use”. As we advance we rise above the bondage of each vehicle manifesting outwardly, and learn to use it only for the higher work, without any consideration of self. Doing this as far’ as the physical body is concerned should be the disciple’s daily practice.

The physical body must be mastered so that it cannot throw its own reflection upon you; it exists only for you to use, and you must learn to control it completely, so that it cannot compel you to attend to any experience that you do not want.

It should be only an instrument for use; you are training it to hand on its experience to the ego. There will come a time when you no longer want to hand on any experience at all; then the “I” takes what it wants for its own purpose. This is a high condition to reach, for it is the stage of the Adept.

443. In The Secret Doctrine it is said that a Master’s body is illusory. That means only that the physical body cannot affect or disturb Him. The forces playing around cannot influence Him through it, except in so far as He allows them; they cannot throw Him off His centre.

H.P.B. has also said that a Master’s physical body is a mere vehicle. It hands nothing on, but is simply a point of contact with the physical plane, a body kept as an instrument needed for the work He does, and dropped when done with.

The same thing is true of the astral and mental bodies. When the causal body becomes an instrument only, the individuality perishes, atma having acquired the power of manifesting its third aspect on the mental plane at will, and no longer needing a permanent vehicle thereon.

444. C.W.L. – This statement seems at first sight to contradict some of the earlier ones. For example, we were told to kill out desire – to kill out various parts of ourselves. It is said in The Voice of the Silence that the pupil must learn to slay the lunar form1 (1 Ante., Vol. I, Part I, Ch. 2: Initiation and the approach thereto. Vol. II, p, 128.) at will – to get rid of his astral body. The words “at will” give us the key to the expression.

We must not destroy the astral body, because if we did so we should become monsters, with great mental development but without any sympathy. Many people find emotion a great trouble to them because it overwhelms them, but they must try not to destroy it, but to purify and control it. It must be a force which we can use and not something which overwhelms us.

We must not kill it out, because without it we could never understand emotion in others, and we could therefore never help people who are along that line; but it must be refined and all self must be weeded out from it.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


08 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 115 : Seek it not by any one road. - 8

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 115 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 8 🌻

438. The disciple rightly puts before himself, as his aim, the realization and purification of the individuality. It is a thing created for the use of its creator. Sometimes it is technically called a creature; then we hear of the man – the true man – meeting his creature.

So also the individual, the creature, meets his own creator. This meeting occurs only in a high stage of evolution. When a man meets his creature be is perfect and transcends individuality.

439. The creation of the individuality takes place at a lower stage; the man is busy building it up for a very long time.

The less evolved members of humanity are for a long period shut up in their lower vehicles – that is necessary for their progress, before the individual is fully built – so the causal body remains an unconscious shell for a long time, while activities are busy in, the personality. Think of the ages taken in building the physical vehicle; think of the rounds and the stages that the pitris went through on the moon chain before becoming fit to pass into human evolution.

There is an immense difference in the time that human beings take in building the individual, though all take long. The building goes on more rapidly in the higher stages under the inspiration of the more evolved ego than in the lower stages; when the intelligence reaches a high stage it is utilizing higher forces and learning not to waste them, and then the building goes on with immense rapidity.

This gives us great encouragement; for in looking back to the moon chain and thinking of the time we have taken to advance, it would seem very long if it had to be repeated, but looking forward we see that progress may become almost incredibly swift.

440. The divine fragment can do nothing by itself; all its development must come by contact with outside forces, and through the vehicles – it cannot grow without them. As H.P.B. said, spirit is senseless on the lower planes. It cannot bring forth any power without a vehicle of expression on the plane in which it has to act.

Further it can only have control of the vehicles when they are perfected. The work of bringing the vehicles to perfection develops the powers of the spirit to perfection, so the two developments go on together.

And when that work is complete, spirit has in itself the power to disintegrate its individual vehicles the moment it leaves them, and to reintegrate them in a moment when it chooses to do so.

441. Think of the perfected Spiritual Beings. Only while they were evolving at and below our human stage were vehicles necessary for Their growth, but when such a one, having drawn all the experiences of that evolution into His essence, wishes to manifest, He can at any time create what He wants for manifestation, and after having utilized the forces of the plane, can withdraw the vehicle again.

When speaking of the Planetary Spirits, H.P.B. mentions that They have come through humanity. They could not appear as helpers if They had not through the human stages drawn up into their essence the experience necessary.

Thus Beings exist who may not be manifest, but who can manifest Themselves, by drawing from Their essence the experience They require and creating a vehicle in which to work.

Continues...
🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


05 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 114 : Seek it not by any one road. - 7

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 114 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 7 🌻

434. The divine fragment is the Monad, which is reproduced in the triple spirit on the nirvanic plane. There atma is threefold, and it puts down one of its powers into the buddhic and another into the mental plane. It contains the possibilities of the Logos, but is at first quite incapable of expressing them.

Atma pouring itself forth appears in Manas as the individualizing principle, the “I”-making faculty that gives rise to individuality in time, as the opposite to Eternity. It draws round it matter to express itself on the upper manasic plane, and thus creates as its vehicle the causal body, which lasts .throughout the long series of human incarnations. That is the body created with pain, by means of which the man purposes to develop.

435. Think of Atma as pouring itself forth on to the third plane downwards, the manasic plane. It draws around itself matter of the highest level of that plane, and forms the causal body. That body is then its vehicle for the expression of the manasic aspect of itself on that plane. It is manas working through the causal body.

This manas becomes dual in incarnation. It reaches down into the lower levels of the mental plane, and forms there a vehicle – the lower manas – which in turn builds the astral body. In its turn that provides the force which builds the etheric and physical bodies.

Each body on its own plane is a means for gathering experience, which when suitable is handed on to that which formed the vehicle; so after the personal incarnation is over the lower manas hands on to the causal body all the experience that it has gained, and the personality perishes. The causal body takes whatever experiences are of a nature to help its growth, and they remain with it through all its future incarnations.

436. The causal body also has a relation to what is above it. What happens on the inner or upper side of that vehicle is the passing on into the third aspect of atma of the essence of all experiences which may have entered into it; what is thus poured into the manasic aspect of atma renders it capable of acting without the causal body – that is, without a permanent vehicle which limits it.

437. The student who thinks this out, will find that it will throw light on the perishing of the individuality. The same idea appears in the Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. The causal body is the individuality,, that which persists throughout the cycle of incarnation. It comes into existence at a certain period of- time; it has to perish at another period.

It is born and it dies. As the Gita says: “Certain is death for the born.”1 (1 Op. cit., II, 27.) This is true not only in the outer world, but in the widest sense; as there is birth of the causal body, so must it perish. It is the thing which the divine fragment has built for himself with much pain.

It is the “I” to the disciple. In some the “I” is thought of as even lower, in the personality, but this is the “I” which has to be reached at the beginning of the Path. It is finally transcended at the close of the Arhat stage of growth, at the real liberation.

Up to that time it is diminishing and changing in character as the Arhat grows. It will ultimately be found to be a defective I”, not the real “I” at all, but at this stage of human evolution any attempt to describe its future condition would be misleading.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


04 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 113 : Seek it not by any one road. - 6

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 113 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 6 🌻

430. We see the same thing at a very much higher stage working out in the case of an immensely powerful man, an American millionaire of the old type, for example, who made a great amount of money very often by ruining other people.

He was doing a very wicked thing, but he was developing tremendous powers of concentration and generalship. Having learnt in that position how to do all this and how to manage his fellow-men, he might perhaps in another life be a general of an army. Very likely at first he would use his generalship as Napoleon did – for his own advancement and to gratify his ambition.

Later on he would learn to use his powers for the service of his fellow-men. In that way it is clear that the very vices of men are steps on the way to something higher and better. The advance from vice to virtue is very largely a matter of learning to control our energies and directing them aright.

We begin to transmute our vices into virtues when we realize that the energy which is going so to waste and doing so much harm might be applied for good purposes. Each time an evil quality is finally conquered, it is changed into the opposite virtue, and so becomes a definite step raising us higher in evolution.

431. The whole nature of man must be used wisely by the one who desires to enter the way.

432. A.B. – The word “way” here means the real spiritual life. Man is a spiritual being, so in living the spiritual life he is being his true self. If he would tread that way he must use all his faculties and powers, the whole of himself. What man is in his essence, that he becomes in truth – a manifestation of the divine.

When the disciple is at a certain stage he is told: “Thou art the Path.” Before this time his Master is to him his Path - he sees the divine manifesting in the Master; but when the divine in him manifests, he himself is the Path. He becomes the Path in proportion as he advances.

Therefore the whole nature of the man is to be used wisely. When that is done the divine fragment, with the help of the thing which he has created for his own use, may unfold its latent powers into active and positive life.

433. The words “divine fragment” are not used merely as a poetic phrase; they contain a truth we cannot afford to forget, which any other words would be inadequate to express. The same idea is found in the Catechism quoted in The Secret Doctrine,1 (1 Op.cit,, Vol. I, p. 145.) where the Guru asks the pupil what he sees.

He sees countless sparks, which appear as though detached; the ignorant look upon them as separate, but by the wise they are seen as one Flame. Such a fragment, inasmuch as it is a centre of consciousness, is a point without magnitude; it cannot be separate.

All centres are fundamentally one, since there is only one ultimate sphere, one universe. But the mystery of the unity of being cannot be understood below the nirvanic plane; it cannot be expressed in the lower worlds, and all attempts to symbolize it must be imperfect.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


03 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 112 : Seek it not by any one road. - 5

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 112 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 5 🌻


426. In former times we may have been murderers or drunkards; if these things have been our particular experience, we now know them as wrong because we did them before we knew better, and found that their results brought suffering.

At a further stage we learned that such things delay our progress, and are therefore wrong, but without some experience we should never have realized this consciously. No amount of advice could have given us the vivid knowledge we have gained from experience.

Having learnt our lesson along one line we never again under any stress of temptation make that particular mistake. You would never be safe if there were any possibility of your falling. You must have conscious knowledge of these things; the typical thing you have to know, the fundamental experience you must have, if you wish to be safe and helpful.

427. C.W.L. – Here again the Chohan reminds us that the object of occult training is not to produce merely good men, but great spiritual powers who can work intelligently for the Logos. Moral goodness is certainly a prerequisite, but it is useless alone.

428. When a man begins his evolution in the quite primitive stage he has no ideas of right and wrong, so we could hardly speak of him as having vices and virtues. The salvage is after all nothing more than a centre of outrushing energy – the irresponsible kind of outrush of which we see so much in the lower kingdoms.

A creature like a fly has a very tiny body, but it is a mass of energy which is terrible as compared with its size. Imagine an entity of our own size endowed with as much energy in proportion and as little idea of what to do with it – it would be a terrible, wild thing, a source of danger to all around.

429. The savage has that kind of energy. It bursts out in fighting and in lusts of all kinds, which are certainly vices from our point of view, although we are hardly justified in regarding them as such in him.

He does not murder from any sort of unholy, vitiated pleasure in murder, as has happened with people of higher races. He certainly has a kind of pride in being able to dominate and kill other people, and in that way he works off a vast amount of energy which, many thousands of years later, will be directed into useful channels.

He has to learn how to handle that energy; how to let it run through him without doing hurt to himself or others, but that is a matter of long training and development, and of gaining control of the vehicles by the ego.


Continues...
🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


02 Mar 2021

LIGHT ON THE PATH - 111 : Seek it not by any one road. - 4

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 111 🌹

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

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 8 - THE 20th RULE

🌻 20. Seek it not by any one road. - 4 🌻

422. But, as is said here, self-sacrificing labour alone is not sufficient to gain for the man the highest development.

He also needs to develop his devotion, and above all to develop his power of response to the inner light, because without that he will not be a perfect instrument. Without that he might be working away most energetically, but would be unable to respond to the touch, the hint from above, sufficiently quickly.

He would need, as it were, to be pulled round energetically, instead of requiring just a gentle touch, which is all that should be necessary, and so would cause more trouble to his Master in training him. He must also learn something of the great plan, because, glorious as the work is, the man cannot do it perfectly unless he has knowledge.

Therefore he must make a definite effort in the way of study to attain that. Much knowledge comes in actually doing the work, but there is every reason for us to take advantage of the accumulated experience of our forerunners and learn whatever we can by study, so that our work may be better done.

423. The vices of men become steps in the ladder, one by one, as they are surmounted. The virtues of men are steps indeed, necessary – not by any means to be dispensed with. Yet, though they create a fair atmosphere and a happy future, they are useless if they stand alone.

424. A.B. – Here both vices and virtues are called steps. This broad view cannot harm students, and is indeed necessary for the disciple, but it would be right in the world to take the narrow view, for vice must mean vices, and virtue must mean virtues, to undeveloped people.

The broad view would confuse their ideas of morality; they cannot apply principles with understanding, and think of the moral bearing of each action, so they must have a list of things that are bad, for their avoidance, a set of religious and social commandments for their guidance. , It would be a mistake to upset the popular view of vice and virtue, although it permits many actions the disciple has outgrown.

425. But esotericists should learn to understand what they both mean, as manifestations of the Divine. The way to regard it is to think of every soul as a divine being, as a centre of outgoing energies pouring into the world.

The life of man consists in the expression of the life of atma, and it finds expression outwards. In the earlier stages of its evolution there was nothing to be called vice or virtue, but simply an outrush of energies, very largely along lines which the standards achieved by society to-day would not approve.

It is true that from the beginning of our human career most of us, especially those who had individualized at a high point from the animal kingdom, were in a position to use our intelligence to some extent, and so were able to learn many things by observation of others.

But it remains a fact that nevertheless all of us in earlier stages must have done many things which would now be accounted evil. Those experiences taught us to do better, so they were steps or means of progress.

And they also helped to make it possible for us to understand and help others who are going through such experiences now. All types of experiences are equally necessary; we could not know even partly what they are without every kind of expression, and should never be able to help other people if we did not understand.

Continues...
🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


01 Mar 2021