Theos-Talk Archives (January 2007 Message tt00072)

Friends,
 
Surprising as it may sound to some,   there is a number of suggestions in the theosophical literature according to which the search for Truth is not meant to be a lukewarm experience.  
 
In  the occult treatise  “Light on the Path”, for instance,  we can see these words, in the culmination of  the first group of rules valid for all candidates to occult learning: 
 
“21. Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows the storm : not till then. It shall grow, it will shoot up, it will make branches and leaves and form buds, while the storm continues, while the battle lasts (....)  .” (1) 
 
If that is true, there may be  nothing wrong with discussions in “Theos-talk” these days.  Next  comes the second group of rules of “Light on the Path”:
 
“ 1. Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior.”
 
“2. Look for the warrior and let him fight in thee.”
 
“3. Take his orders for  battle and obey him.”
 
“4. Obey him not as though he were a general,  but as he were thyself, and his spoken words were the utterance of thy secret desires ; for he is thyself, yet infinitely wiser and stronger than thyself. (...) He is thyself, yet thou art but finite and liable to error. He is eternal and is sure. He is eternal truth.”
 
 
Who is ‘the warrior” here?  Of course he  is one’s  own higher self,  or Atma-Buddhi. He’s our conscience, free and unattached to anything except to Truth. 
 
And there are more rules: 
 
“5. Listen to the song of life.”
 
“6. Store in your memory the melody you hear.”
 
“7. Lern from it the lesson of harmony.” 
 
“8. You can stand upright now, firm as a rock amid  the turmoil, obeying the warrior who is thyself and thy king. Unconcerned in the battle except  to do his bidding,  having no longer any care as to the result of the battle (...)  –  standing thus cool and  awakened, use the hearing you have acquired by pain and by the destruction of pain.”
 
So the obtacles one may find along the way are all but lessons to be decoded, understood and learned in the long battle for spiritual knowledge.  
 
As in Shakespeare’s plays, occasional  traitors,  scoundrels and hypocrites we may have the privilege to deal with are certainly  among the most precious tools of our spiritual learning.  They will cooperate by providing us with the conditions to lead our learning to further levels.  In the second half of 20th century, Carlos Castaneda also wrote about this.  The idea is also in the “Mahatma Letters”.  
 
Best regards,   Carlos. 
 
NOTE:
 
(1) “Light on the Path”,  written down by M.C., Theosophy Company (India), Bombay, 1991, 92 pp.
 


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