Theos-Talk Archives (August 2005 Message tt00018)

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"No one has reached the stage where he is responsive to the great cry of 
pain, spoken of in The Voice of the Silence, unless his motive in life is to 
help humanity whether the suffering be before his eyes or not, for that is 
the real motive-power of a disciple. The best way to get rid of personality, 
to grow indifferent to one's own personal joys and sorrows, to become 
incapable of tears, is to let the mind think upon the sorrow of the world 
and the ways of helping it; that causes the personal self to be seen in. its 
true place beside the larger self of the great orphan humanity.

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When the disciple passes through Initiation and begins to develop the 
buddhic consciousness, this incapacity for tears takes on a new character. 
He then begins to understand the word evolution, to realize that in man it 
means the unfoldment of the higher triad; then he begins to see the real use 
and object of all the suffering and pain. He gradually becomes incapable of 
tears because he understands the value of the suffering to those who are 
undergoing it, because he sees that when pain comes to a man it does so as 
an absolute necessity for the higher development of his soul. It is true 
that theoretically the man might have avoided that suffering if he had acted 
wisely in the past, for it is the result of his past karma when it is not 
produced by his present follies; but the practical aspect of the matter is 
that the man has been foolish, has elected to learn through this kind of 
experience instead of through wisdom, because he has not always chosen to 
follow the best he knew, and now he is suffering, and the pain is bringing 
him wisdom for the future, and is thereby promoting his evolution.

Realizing this, the disciple reaches a condition in which he may be 
described as full of the most perfect sympathy but without regret. The sense 
of regret comes in only when the consciousness is unillumined by the buddhic 
life. When the buddhic consciousness is felt, the disciple's sympathy 
increases enormously, but his regret disappears, and as he rises higher this 
wider view makes him incapable of-tears, because in the face of the 
bitterest suffering to which he is learning to respond and

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to feel in himself, he feels also its object and end. He can share in the 
suffering to the full, but without the slightest wish that it should be 
anything other than it is. The absence of any wish to get rid of the 
suffering before it has done its work, can only exist when the consciousness 
has buddhic illumination. That is the condition which has been described as 
the Christ state. The law is good and the will of the Supreme is perfect, 
and the suffering works for a perfect end; therefore the disciple is filled 
with content and satisfaction; he feels the suffering, but of grief and 
sorrow he feels none at all. "

Complete book can be read at

http://anandgholap.net/Light_On_Path-Commentary-AB_CWL.htm