Preface
Chapter 1 Discrimination
To Those Who
Knock
From the unreal
lead me to the Real.
From darkness lead me to Light.
From death lead me to Immortality
The first of these
Qualifications is Discrimination; and this is usually
taken as the discrimination between the real and the
unreal which leads men to enter the Path.
It is this, but it is also much more; and it is to be
practiced, not only at the beginning of the Path, but at
every step of it every day until the end. You enter the
Path because you have learnt that on it alone can be
found those things which are worth gaining.
Men who do not know, work to gain wealth and power, but
these are at most for one life only, and therefore
unreal. There are greater things than these—things which
are real and lasting; when you have once seen these, you
desire those others no more.In all the world there are
only two kinds of people—those who know, and those who
do not know; and this knowledge is the thing which
matters. What religion a man holds, to what race he
belongs–these things are not important; the really
important thing is this knowledge–the knowledge of God’s
plan for men. For God has a plan, and that plan is
evolution. When once a man has seen that and really
knows it, he cannot help working for it and making
himself one with it, because it is so glorious, so
beautiful. So, because he knows, he is on God’s side,
standing for good and resisting evil, working for
evolution and not for selfishness.
If he is on God’s
side he is one of us, and it does not matter in the
least whether he calls himself a Hindu or a Buddhist, a
Christian or a Muhammadan, whether he is an Indian or an
Englishman, a Chinaman or a Russian. Those who are on
His side know why they are here and what they should do,
and they are trying to do it; all the others do not yet
know what they should do, and so they often act
foolishly, and try to invent ways for themselves which
they think will be pleasant for themselves, not
understanding that all are one, and that therefore only
what the One wills can ever be really pleasant for any
one. They are following the unreal instead of the real.
Until they learn to distinguish between these two, they
have not ranged themselves on God’s side, and so this
discrimination is the first step.
But even when the
choice is made, you must still remember that of the real
and the unreal there are many varieties; and
discrimination must still be made between the right and
the wrong, the important and the unimportant, the useful
and useless, the true and the false, the selfish and the
unselfish.
Between the right
and wrong it should not be difficult to choose, for
those who wish to follow the Master have already decided
to take the right at all costs. But the body and the man
are two, and the man’s will is not always what the body
wishes. When your body wishes something, stop and think
whether you really wish it. For you are God, and you
will only what God wills; but you must dig deep down
into yourself to find the God within you, and listen to
His voice, which is your voice. Do not mistake your
bodies for yourself—neither the physical body, nor the
astral, nor the mental. Each one of them will pretend to
be the Self, in order to gain what it wants. But you
must know them all, and know yourself as their master.
When there is work
that must be done, the physical body wants to rest, to
go out walking, to eat and drink; and the man who does
not know says to himself; “I want to do these things,
and I must do them.” But the man who knows says: “This
that wants is not I, and it must wait awhile.” Often
when there is an opportunity to help some one, the body
feels: “How much trouble it will be for me; let some one
else do it.” But the man replies to his body: “You shall
not hinder me in doing good work.”
The body is your
animal–the horse upon which you ride. Therefore you must
treat it well, and take good care of it; you must not
overwork it, you must feed it properly on pure food and
drink only, and keep it strictly clean always, even from
the minutest speck of dirt. For without a perfectly
clean and healthy body you cannot do the arduous work
preparation, you cannot bear its ceaseless strain. But
it must always be you who controls that body, not it
that controls you.
The astral body has
its desires—dozens of them; it wants you to be angry, to
say sharp words, to feel jealous, to be greedy for
money, to envy other people their possessions, to yield
yourself to depression. All these things it wants, and
many more, not because it wishes to harm you, but
because it likes violent vibrations, and likes to change
them constantly. But you want none of these things, and
therefore you must discriminate between your wants and
your body’s.
Your mental body
wishes to think itself proudly separate, to think much
of itself and little of others. Even when you have
turned it away from worldly things, it stills tries to
calculate for self, to make you think of your own
progress, instead of thinking of the Master’s work and
of helping others. When you meditate, it will try to
make you think of the many different things which it
wants instead of the one thing which you want. You are
not this mind, but it is yours to use; so here again
discrimination is necessary. You must watch
unceasingly, or you will fail.
Between right and
wrong, Occultism knows no compromise. At whatever
apparent cost, that which is right you must do, that
which is wrong you must not do, no matter what the
ignorant may think or say. You must study deeply the
hidden laws of Nature, and when you know them arrange
your life according to them, using always reason and
common-sense.
You must
discriminate between the important and the unimportant.
Firm as a rock where right and wrong are concerned,
yield always to others in things which do not matter.
For you must be always gentle and kindly, reasonable and
accommodating, leaving to others the same full liberty
which you need for yourself.
Try to see what is
worth doing; and remember that you must not judge by the
size of the thing. A small thing which is directly
useful in the Master’s work is far better worth doing
than a large thing which the world would call good. You
must distinguish not only the useful from the useless,
but the more useful from the less useful. To feed the
poor is a good and noble and useful work, yet to feed
their souls is nobler and more useful than to feed their
bodies. Any rich man can feed the body, but only those
who know can feed the soul. If you know, it is your duty
to help others to know.
However wise you
may be already, on this Path you have much to learn; so
much that here also there must be discrimination, and
you must think carefully what is worth learning. All
knowledge is useful, and one day you will have all
knowledge; but while you have only part, take care that
it is the most useful part. God is Wisdom as well as
Love; and the more wisdom you have the more you can
manifest of Him. Study then, but study first that which
will most help you to help others. Work patiently at
your studies, not that men may think you wise, not even
that you may have the happiness of being wise, but
because only the wise man can be wisely helpful. However
much you wish to help, if you are ignorant you may do
more harm than good.
You must
distinguish between truth and falsehood; you must learn
to be true all through; in thought and word and deed. In
thought first; and that is not easy, for there are in
the world many untrue thoughts, many foolish
superstitions, and no one who is enslaved by them can
make progress. Therefore you must not hold a thought
just because many other people hold it, nor because it
has been believed for centuries, nor because it is
written in some book which men think sacred; you must
think of the matter for yourself, and judge for yourself
whether it is reasonable. Remember that though a
thousand men agree upon a subject, if they know nothing
about that subject their opinion is of no value. He who
would walk upon the Path must learn to think for
himself, for superstition is one of the greatest evils
in the world, one of the fetters from which you must
utterly free yourself.
Your thought about
others must be true; you must not think of them what you
do not know. Do not suppose that they are always
thinking of you. If a man does something which you think
will harm you, or says something which you think applies
to you, do not think at once: ” He meant to injure me.”
Most probably he never thought of you at all, for each
soul has its own troubles and its thought turn chiefly
around itself. If a man speaks angrily to you, do not
think: ” He hates me, he wishes to wound me.” Probably
some one or something else has made him angry, and
because he happens to meet you he turns his anger upon
you. He is acting foolishly, for all anger is foolish,
but you must not therefore think untruly of him.
When you become a
pupil of the Master, you may always try the truth of
your thought by laying it beside His. For the pupil is
one with his Master, and he needs only to put back his
thought into the Master’s thought to see at once whether
it agrees. If it does not, it is wrong and he changes it
instantly, for the Master’s thought is perfect, because
He knows all. Those who are not yet accepted by Him
cannot do quite this; but they may greatly help
themselves by stopping often to think: “What would the
Master think about this? What would the Master say or do
under these circumstances?” For you must never do or say
or think what you cannot imagine the Master as doing or
saying or thinking.
You must be true in
speech too—accurate and without exaggeration. Never
attribute motives to another; only his Master knows his
thoughts, and he may be acting from reasons which have
never entered your mind. If you hear a story against any
one, do not repeat it; it may not be true, and even if
it is, it is kinder to say nothing. Think well before
speaking, lest you should fall into inaccuracy.
Be true in action;
never pretend to be other than you are, for all pretence
is a hindrance to the pure light of truth, which should
shine through you as sunlight shines through clear
glass.
You must
discriminate between the selfish and the unselfish. For
selfishness has many forms, and when you think you have
finally killed it in one of them, it arises in another
as strongly as ever. But by degrees you will become so
full of thought for the helping of others that there
will be no room, no time, for any thought about
yourself.
You
must discriminate in yet another way. Learn to
distinguish the God in everyone and everything, no
matter how evil he or it may appear on the surface. You
can help your brother through that which you have in
common with him, and that is the Divine Life; learn how
to arouse that in him, learn how to appeal to that in
him; so shall you save your brother from wrong.
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