That which meets a vital and real need ever exists within the divine plan
That which is unnecessary to the right expression of divinity, and to a full and rich life, can be gained and possessed, but only through loss of the more real and negation of the essential
Caution:
Students,
however, need to remember that that which is ‘necessary’ varies according to
the stage of evolution that has been reached by the individual
For
some people, for instance, the possession of that which is material may be as
great a spiritual experience and as potent a teacher in life expression as the
more elevated and less material requirements of the mystic or hermit.
We
are rated as regards action and point of view by our place upon the ladder of
evolution.
We
are rated really by our ‘point of view’ and not by our demand upon life.
The
spiritually minded man and the man who has set his feet upon the Path of
Probation and who fails to attempt the expression of that which he believes,
will be judged as caustically and pay as high a price as does the pure
materialist — the man whose desires centre around substantial effects.
Bear
this in mind and sit not in ‘the seat of the judge or the scornful’
It is the first destined to disappear.
Students would do well to remember that all forms of possessions and all material objects, whether it is money, or a house, a picture or an automobile, have an intrinsic life of their own, an emanation of their own, and an activity which is essentially that of their own inherent atomic structures (for an atom is a unit of active energy).
This produces counterparts in the world of etheric and astral life, though not in the mental world.
These subtler forms and distinctive emanations swell the potency of the world desire
They contribute to world glamour and form part of a great and powerful miasmic world, which is on the involutionary arc but in which humanity, upon the upward arc, is nevertheless immersed.
Therefore the Guides of the Race have felt the necessity of standing by whilst the forces set up by man himself proceed to strip him and thus release him to walk in the wilderness.
There, in what is called ‘straightened circumstances,’ he can readjust his life and change his way of living, thus discovering that: -
Freedom from material things carries with it its own beauty and reward, its own joy and glory
Thus he is liberated to live the life of the mind.
Love, for many people, for the majority indeed, is not really love but a mixture of: -
The desire to love and the desire to be loved, plus
A willingness to do anything to show and evoke this sentiment, and consequently to be more comfortable in one's own interior life
It is pseudo-love, based primarily on a theory of love and service, and characterises many human relationships such as those existing between husband and wife, parents and their children
Glamoured by their sentiment for them and knowing little of the love of the soul which is free itself and leaves others free also, they wander in a dense fog, often dragging with them the ones they desire to serve in order to draw forth a responsive affection.
Affection is not love
Affection is that desire which we express through an exertion of the astral body and this activity affects our contacts
Affection is not the spontaneous desirelessness of the soul asking nothing for the separated self
This glamour of sentiment imprisons and bewilders all the ‘nice’ people in the world, imposing upon them obligations which do not exist, and producing a glamour which must eventually be dissipated by the pouring in of true and selfless love
It is today one of the potent glamours of the really devoted aspirant
They are devoted to a cause, a teacher, a creed, a person, a duty, or to a responsibility
Ponder on this
This harmless desire along some line of idealism can become harmful both to themselves and others, because through this glamour of devotion they swing into the rhythm of the world glamour that is essentially the fog of desire
One illustration of this is the sentiment of devotion poured out by probationary disciples upon the Masters of the Wisdom.
Around the names of the Members of the Hierarchy and around Their work, and the work of the initiates and the disciplined disciples (mark that phrase) a rich glamour is created which actually prevents Them ever reaching the disciple or his reaching Them.
Then: -
This activity produces the glamour of the pairs of opposites, which is of a dense and foggy nature, sometimes coloured with joy and bliss and sometimes coloured with gloom and depression as the disciple swings back and forth between the dualities.
This condition persists just as long as the emphasis is laid upon feeling
Feelings will run the gamut between a potent joyfulness as the man seeks to identify himself with the object of his devotion or aspiration, or fails to do so and therefore succumbs to the blackest despair and sense of failure.
All this is, however, astral in nature and sensuous in quality and is not of the soul at all.
Aspirants remain for many years and sometimes for many lives imprisoned by this glamour.
Release from the world of feeling and the polarising of the disciple in the world of the illumined mind will dissipate this glamour
The moment a man differentiates his life into triplicities (as he inevitably must as he deals with the pairs of opposites and identifies himself with one of them) he succumbs to the glamour of separation
Ponder deeply on this thought
As
the aspirant learns to free himself from the glamours upon which we have
touched, he discovers another world of fog and mist through which the Path
seems to run and through which he must penetrate and thus free himself from the
glamours of the Path.
What
are these glamours, my brothers?
Ø Study the effect the affirmation schools, which emphasise divinity (materially employed), have had upon the thought of the world
Ø Study the failures of disciples through pride
Ø Study the ‘world saviour complex’
Ø Study the ‘service complex,’ and
Ø Study all distortion of reality that a man encounters on the Path, which hinder his progress and spoil the service to others he should be rendering
Ø Emphasise in your own minds the spontaneity of the life of the soul and
Ø Spoil it not with the glamours of: -
o
High aspiration selfishly interpreted
o
Self-centredness
o
Self-immolation
o
Self-aggressiveness
o
Self-assertiveness in spiritual work—
For such are some of the glamours of the Path
Soon we will consider glamour on the etheric plane and the theme of the Dweller upon the Threshold, thus completing the outline of our problem the first part of this teaching was intended to convey.
Before doing that, I would like to add something to our previous consideration of the problem of glamour.
In your last instruction, I elaborated on various types of glamour and their great importance in your individual lives.
The ‘battlefield’ (for the man nearing accepted discipleship or on the path of discipleship, in the academic sense) is primarily that of glamour. [Page 81]
That is the major problem; its solution is urgent for all disciples and senior aspirants.
It will be apparent to you why emphasis has been put, during the Aryan age, on the need to study Raja Yoga, and submit to its discipline.
Only through Raja Yoga can a man stand steady in the light, and only through illumination and the achievement of clear vision can the fogs and miasmas of glamour be finally dissipated.
Only as the disciple learns to hold his mind "steady in the light," and as the rays of pure light stream forth from the soul, can glamour be discovered, discerned, recognised for what it essentially is - and thus be made to disappear, as the mists of earth dissolve in the rays of the rising sun.
Therefore I counsel you to pay more attention to your meditation, cultivating ever the ability to reflect and to assume the attitude of reflection—held steady throughout the day.
You would find it of real value to
ponder deeply upon the purposes for which the intuition
must be cultivated and the illumined
mind developed, asking yourselves if those purposes are identical in
objective and synchronous in time.
You would then discover that their objectives differ, and the effects of their pronounced unfoldment upon the personality life are likewise different.