Theos-Talk Archives (March 2005 Message tt00664)

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" He realises that he is paying in a few short lives all the karmic obligations accumulated during his past, and that the payments must be correspondingly heavy. The very struggle into which he is plunged develop in him the fifth attribute, faith – faith in his Master and in himself, a serene strong confidence that is unshakeable. He learns to trust in the wisdom, the love, the power of his Master, and he is beginning to realise – not only tosay he believes in – the Divinity within his own heart, able to subdue all things to Himself. The last mental requisite, balance, equilibrium, grows up to some extent without conscious effort during the striving after the preceding five. 
677. The very setting of the will to tread the Path is a sign that the higher nature is opening out, and that the external world is definitely relegated to a lower place. The continuous efforts to lead the life of discipleship disentangle the soul from any remaining ties that may knit it to the world of sense, for the withdrawal of the soul’s attention from lower objects gradually exhausts the attractive power of those objects. They "turn away from an abstemiousdweller in the body," ( Bhagavad Gitâ, ii, 59.) and soon lose all power to disturb this balance. Thus he learns to move amid them undisturbed, neither seeking nor rejecting any. He also learns to balance amid mental troubles of every kind, amid alternations of mental joy and mental pain, this balance being further taught by the swift changes already spoken of through which his life is guided by the ever-watchful care of his Master. 

678. These six mental attributes being in some measure attained, the probationary chelâa needs further but the fourth qualification, the deep intense longing for liberation, that yearning of the soul towards union with deity that is the promise of its own fulfillment. This adds the last touch to his readiness to enter into full discipleship, for, once that longing has definitely asserted itself, it can never again be eradicated, and the soul that has felt it cannever again quench his thirst at earthly fountains; their waters will evertaste flat and vapid when he sips them, so that he will turn away with ever-deepening longing for the true water of life. "

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