Theos-Talk Archives (December 2003 Message tt00398)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <leonmaurer@aol.com>
To: <theos-talk@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2003 5:15 AM
Subject: Re: Theos-World Esoteric Truth


<Alden> If truth is esoteric in any religion, why has it not been completely discovered? 

<Leon> Because it can't be spoken or written -- since we can only know it through our own inner vision. Try to explain the smell of a rose, or the way a beautiful sunset feels. 

<Steven> Hi Friends: The exchange above reminds me of one of my favorite passages from the Mahatma Letters: 

The Occult Science is not one in which secrets can be communicated of a sudden by a written or even verbal communication. If so, all the "Brothers" should have to do would be to publish a Handbook of the art which might be taught in schools as grammar is. It is the common mistake of people that we willingly wrap ourselves and our powers in mystery, that we wish to keep our knowledge to ourselves, and of our own will refuse "wantonly and deliberately" to communicate it. The truth is that till the neophyte attains to the condition necessary for that degree of Illumination to which and for which he is entitled and fitted, most, if not all, of the Secrets are incommunicable. The receptivity must be equal to the desire to instruct. The illumination must come from within. Till then no hocus pocus of incantations, or mummery of appliances, no metaphysical lectures or discussions, no self-imposed penance can give it. All these are but means to an end, and all we can do is to direct the use of such means as have been empirically found by the experience of ages to conduce to the required object. And this was and has been no secret for thousands of years. Fasting; meditation; chastity of thought, word, and deed; silence for certain periods of time to enable nature herself to speak to him who comes to her for information; government of the animal passions and impulses; utter unselfishness of intentions; and the use of certain incense and fumigations for physiological purposes have been published as the means since the days of Plato and Iamblichus in the West, and since the far earlier times of our Indian Rishis. How these must be complied with to suit each individual temperament is of course a matter for his own experiment and the watchful care of his tutor or Guru. Such is in fact part of his course of discipline, and his Guru or initiator can but assist him with his experience and will power but can do no more until the last and Supreme initiation. 

I am also of opinion that few candidates imagine the degree of inconvenience-nay, suffering and harm to himself-that the said initiator submits to for the sake of his pupil. The peculiar physical, moral, and intellectual conditions of neophytes and Adepts alike vary much, as anyone will easily understand; thus, in each case, the instructor has to adapt his conditions to those of the pupil, and the strain is terrible, for to achieve success we have to bring ourselves into a full rapport with the subject under training. And, as the greater the powers of the Adept the less he is in sympathy with the natures of the profane who often come to him saturated with the emanations of the outside world-those animal emanations of the selfish, brutal crowd that we so dread-, the longer he has been separated from the world and the purer he has himself become, the more difficult the self-imposed task. Then-knowledge can be communicated only gradually; and some of the highest secrets, if actually formulated even in your well-prepared ear, might sound to you as insane gibberish, notwithstanding all the sincerity of your present assurance that "absolute trust defies misunderstanding." This is the real cause of our reticence. This is why people so often complain with a plausible show of reason that no new knowledge is communicated to them, though they have toiled for it for two, three, or more years. Let those who really desire to learn, abandon all and come to us, instead of asking or expecting us to go to them.---Mahatma Letters, 283-84


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