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...

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27 Mar 2021