The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (Reading Group)

Discussion on literature other than by the Star of Azazel.
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Re: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (Reading Group)

Post by Benemal »

About ten years ago I encountered my feminine, and/or gay side. I didn't know it was there. It was not a crisis, but a friendly and loving encounter. After that I have become more masculine. Probably because there was no insecurity left anymore. Because this was connected to the awakening of the buddhi, I also became more honest and emphatic.
Fortunately the SoA seems mostly immune to whatever form of popular hate movement is burning through society. It's always the same and it'll always happen again and most people are always blind. It's weird being a member of the currently most hated minority, but I'm proud of it, feeling absolutely none of the shame, that I'm supposed to. I'll leave it there, unless we want to discuss the esoteric aspect. The psychic atavism of blind hate.
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Re: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (Reading Group)

Post by Yinlong »

Benemal wrote:Fortunately the SoA seems mostly immune to whatever form of popular hate movement is burning through society.
This is so straightforwardly put and contains the right kind of pride and appreciation to our dear little organization that it made me both smile and feel warm inside! Poetic even! I too, definitely, feel the same!

Especially, since:
Benemal wrote:It's always the same and it'll always happen again and most people are always blind.
...this is too often true. Actually, I wonder should I read something between anthropology and social psychology to understand better what both academia and just creative thinkers have thoughts of these always reoccurring currents and trends. Providing straight-forward solutions to circumvent this always tends to get political, and that wasn't actually my intention either with my opening / commentary. However, providing far-reaching thought patterns might fit more the philosophical / occult work and art we mostly are doing.
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Re: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (Reading Group)

Post by Smaragd »

From the No 59 — a letter touching many and interesting subjects I've enjoyed reading you fratres discuss — we head on to a short No 60.

Shakespeare appears again in the letters, last time being in letter 55 touching on the speculation of Shakespeares ”real” identity. I guess the fandom in our brotherhood had a kindred soul at the roots of the Theosophic movement.
Mahatma Letters wrote:My good friend — Shakespeare said truly that "our doubts are traitors." Why should you doubt or create in your mind ever growing monsters? A little more knowledge in occult laws would have set your mind at rest long ago, avoided many a tear to your gentle lady and pang to yourself.
From a satanist point of view this is a important notion indeed. One aspect of the being, emphasized by us, is the critical attitude towards information. This attitude itself is unipolar as it works under both positive and negative mental states. With it we can seek the thruths, but what KH is warning about here is its voracious potency for creating targets for itself. If the critical attitude is not elevated or turned on to itself it becomes a vicious cycle. Vicious in that if it was just a clear loop it would turn the critique towards itself and one would be allowed to see the situation from above. While ”our doubts are traitors”, our critical thinking may allow us to open our hearts to faith, safe enough from credulity, for the fruitful — individual lives, cultures and civilizations outlasting — Work to commence.
Mahatma Letters wrote:Know then that even the chelas of the same guru are often made to separate and keep apart for long months while the process of development is going on — simply on account of the two contrary magnetisms that attracting each other prevent mutual and individualized development in some one direction.
How do you, fellow readers, see this process of individualization in the joined hands context? I mean how far does one have to tread the LHP for certain advances? I guess some might have gone through part of the process, for example, through art before realizing it's significance to an occult development, or realizing possibilities of such development clearly. Actively choosing the path of an occultist the mindset is under change and so the individualization process also affected by it. One might feel it like a homecoming after a long pilgrimage in solitude and embrace the RHP side of it, but is something important lost in this? If one doesn't embrace the RHP there's the danger of the vicious cycle talked above, but turning towards the RHP in such a definite way that the LHP processes one has gone by is left altogether carries the ills of credulity, following thought patterns of the masses linking to ”the psychic atavism of blind hate” frater Benemal mentioned etc.

The letter ends with a warning that leaves the outside reader in a cloud of mystery, but I speculate the meeting might have been between the two ”chelas” Sinnet and Hume. If so I understand Sinnets doubts for if the discipline suggests the chelas to separate it points towards the direction our parents warned us of religious cults and all this happening in a strange land. But this is just an image of what might have been working in Sinnets head, while the understandable perspective of the teachers have been made clear in the letters.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (Reading Group)

Post by Nefastos »

Smaragd wrote:
Mahatma Letters wrote:Know then that even the chelas of the same guru are often made to separate and keep apart for long months while the process of development is going on — simply on account of the two contrary magnetisms that attracting each other prevent mutual and individualized development in some one direction.


How do you, fellow readers, see this process of individualization in the joined hands context? I mean how far does one have to tread the LHP for certain advances? I guess some might have gone through part of the process, for example, through art before realizing it's significance to an occult development, or realizing possibilities of such development clearly. Actively choosing the path of an occultist the mindset is under change and so the individualization process also affected by it. One might feel it like a homecoming after a long pilgrimage in solitude and embrace the RHP side of it, but is something important lost in this? If one doesn't embrace the RHP there's the danger of the vicious cycle talked above, but turning towards the RHP in such a definite way that the LHP processes one has gone by is left altogether carries the ills of credulity, following thought patterns of the masses linking to ”the psychic atavism of blind hate” frater Benemal mentioned etc.


Do you mean situations where, for example, one has advanced in a Left Hand Path "phase" to a point where he thinks he can leave it altogether, and return to the comfort of the Right Hand Path – perhaps because he now can see through its symbolistic language?

I think that here the pure pragmatism of the practise (of separation, because of reasons concerning personal magnetism like KH said) is the answer. When we think of LHP or RHP as constructs, cultural phenomena, other than pragmatic things also belong to them, and this "other" of all religiosity/spirituality shows its common magnetism, so to say. Should I, for example, join to a church, I would face not only its accurate enough occult symbolism, but also some cultural, sociological &c. phenomena which would be too much for me. I might notice that actually almost the whole church or society is about those secondary and tertiary functions, its first functions (the spiritual ones) atrophied almost totally. Thus the factual, therefore also magnetical (which also has to do with practise and not with philosophy, theology or symbolistic accuracy) natures would have proven to be too different.

Of course, when KH talks about occult students, a more nuanced, subtle & etherical magnetism is meant. The hypersensitivity that comes with occult advancement along with the other perks (or hells) of heightened energetical presence makes one's "magnetism" - which is just the correct word, even though laughed at today - that more difficult a puzzle. It really takes an adept to sort out those kind of energetical nuances, of which the modern culture is wholly unaware.

Smaragd wrote:Shakespeare appears again in the letters, last time being in letter 55 touching on the speculation of Shakespeares ”real” identity. I guess the fandom in our brotherhood had a kindred soul at the roots of the Theosophic movement.


Yeah, Shakespeare's secret identity seems to be one of the occult world cliches. This brings to mind another theosophist's claimed correspondence with his master, namely "The Occult Diary of Geoffrey Hodson". In it the Australian theosophist GH communicates clairaudiently (in the latter half of the 20th century) not only with his own master Polidorus Isurenus, but occasionally also with other master adepts, including Morya, KH and even "the one who was H.P. Blavatsky". I attach below a few pages from his clairvoyantic & clairaudientic Shakespeare-studies, for they might amuse some of our Shakespeare fans here. Personally I am not convinced that GH's astral connections were unblemished, i.e. that he indeed was in contact with the masters and not at least partially with - "dugpas and elemental residue". One might also note that the masters seem to hold a different opinion of Bacon in their correspondence with Hodson, as they did earlier with Sinnett. For in the texts attached Hodson's idea of Bacon as a spiritually advanced adept is contrary to KH's earlier statement where he seems to use Bacon & Aristotle as exemplars of people who, despite of their great genius, were so unspiritual they were practically invisible to the mahatmas. But who knows, maybe he meant Roger Bacon instead...

(Light of the Sanctuary: The Occult Diary of Geoffrey Hodson. Compiled by Sandra Hodson. The Theosophical Publishers, Inc. Manila, Philippines, 1988.)
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (Reading Group)

Post by Smaragd »

Nefastos wrote:Do you mean situations where, for example, one has advanced in a Left Hand Path "phase" to a point where he thinks he can leave it altogether, and return to the comfort of the Right Hand Path – perhaps because he now can see through its symbolistic language?
I'm not sure. Hard to understand and express the language surrounding this. Part of what I wrote was also about trying to see the balance between the "hands" through extremes. I guess I tried to express the question of when do you, fellow readers, see fit to turn from separation to unity, or turning altruism outwards after first seeing altruism as sacrificing the lower self in the LHP process to find close enough unity with the higher self, so that active working with others, for example in the Star of Azazel, feels natural. Natural in that you don't feel like your left hands grip is slipping and still be able to really take in what others have to offer. Asking "when" might be pointing towards thinking the coiling process as a straight line, but maybe the initiations we take in differing orders is more interesting concept to approach this with.

Interesting detective work from Geoffrey Hodson. We don't se that kind of stuff much these days.
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Re: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (Reading Group)

Post by obnoxion »

The question of LHP and RHP is a difficult one. As far as first impressions go, the prospect of belonging to some well organized and generally respectable RHP institution conjures up feelings of peace and comfort. I would love to go to church once a week and attend the well organized ceremonies and the depth of the universal symbolism. But in my case that would be an easy way out. And a long time ago I have sworn an oath not to bail out when things get hard

At the heart of the LHP I see the ideal of nonduality. It is, I believe, the heart of the RHP also. But to me, the LHP is more sacred, more direct and more sincere. Sometimes I feel blessed and other times cursed that it is so, but this is the only way to God I know. It is such a deep calling that it cannot really be put into words.
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Re: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (Reading Group)

Post by Nefastos »

Letter no. 61 is just a brief interlude to Sinnett from Morya. He notifies Sinnett of his mistakes, like letting an Indian student of theirs, Mohini Mohun Chatterji, to be left in a cold room without a fireplace, when he was visiting Sinnetts' house in London (emphasis mine):
M wrote:K.H. had to surround him with a double shell against a death cold that threatened him. Remember Hindus are exotic plants in your inclement pays and cold, and those who need them have to take care of them.


In the next letter KH himself also relates the incident, making it clear that he (that is, a part of him that the theosophists call mayavi rupa) was present unseen and used his occult powers to shield "exotic plant" from the northern cold.

Morya ends the letter with another warning about Sinnett's feelings on London theosophist Anna Kingsford (of whom something has been said earlier, here and here):

M wrote:I must not close without letting you know that in the Kingsford row Justice is no longer on your side. Though unwilling to confess — you show spite Sahib, personal spite. You have defeated her and you now would mortify and punish her. This is not right. You ought to learn to dissociate your consciousness from your external self more than you do if ye would not lose K.H. For he is much annoyed at what goes on. Excuse my remarks but it is for your own benefit. So begging pardon.


And, speaking about "losing KH", we move on to the letter 62.

* * *

The next letter, no. 62 is once again from KH, and has been received July 18 1884. Now, this is very interesting to us modern time esotericists, and I would encourage to keep a close eye on it.

The whole letter, which is some six printed pages long, is about Sinnett's problems with occultism. It becomes very clear that KH has factually given up hope for Sinnett, and even though he suggests him "to shake the ghastly influence" that has fallen upon him, he no longer seems to except satisfactory results. Why so?

While there is not anything really new in the letter, it makes clear that all those formerly challenging attitudes of Sinnett have now brought him to the point which separates his path to that of the "masters".

KH wrote:Unfortunately, however great your purely human intellect, your spiritual intuitions are dim and hazy, having been never developed. [...] You have not the faith required to allow your Will to arouse itself in defiance and contempt against your purely worldly intellect, and give you a better understanding of things hidden and laws unknown. You are unable I see, to force your better aspirations — fed at the stream of a real devotion to the maya you have made yourself of me — (a feeling in you, that has always profoundly touched me) — to lift up the head against cold, spiritually blind reason; to allow your heart to pronounce loudly and proclaim that, which it has hitherto only been allowed to whisper: "Patience, patience. A great design has never been snatched at once. You were told, however, that the path to Occult Sciences has to be trodden laboriously and crossed at the danger of life; that every new step in it leading to the final goal, is surrounded by pit-falls and cruel thorns; that the pilgrim who ventures upon it is made first to confront and conquer the thousand and one furies who keep watch over its adamantine gates and entrance — furies called Doubt, Skepticism, Scorn, Ridicule, Envy and finally Temptation"


What follows is something that must seem utterly alien to almost all of our contemporary occult circles:

KH wrote:he, who would see beyond had to first destroy this living wall; that he must be possessed of a heart and soul clad in steel, and of an iron, never failing determination and yet be meek and gentle, humble and have shut out from his heart every human passion, that leads to evil. [...] Are you all this? Have you ever begun a course of training which would lead to it? No; you know it as I do. [...] Then why should you complain that powers are not given you [?]


And that is not all; KH continues with dire words about Sinnett's (envious?) speaking against the masters' chosen pupils, Blavatsky & Olcott, the latter of whom he sees as intellectually & socially unfit for such trust. Also, while it is noted that Sinnett has not intentionally done anything wrong, bad things have come for the lodge because of his carelessness, and that too brings about its fruit.

KH wrote:You are yourself ruining that which you have so laboriously erected —; but then, the strange idea that we are quite unable to see for ourselves; that our only data is that, which we find in our chelas minds; hence — that we are not the "powerful beings" you have represented us, seems to haunt you with every day more. Hume has begun in the same way.


Poor Sinnett! And alas for all of us, for the road is steep indeed, so steep that most see there only a vertical rock wall.

There are also a couple of mentions of karma, and one of them is of special importance to us:

KH wrote:Have you ever given a thought, or ever suspected the real reason of my failure? No; for you know nothing of the ins and outs of the work of karma — of the "side-blows" of this terrible Law. But you do know that there was a time when you felt the profoundest contempt for us all, of the dark races; and had regarded the Hindus as an inferior race. I will say no more.


The racist bigotries are not the only possible ones however, but sadly we have a fair selection to choose our basically aesthetical group antipathies. These bad judgments, based on outer things, mix extremely poorly with the hope of occult ascension. Sinnett showed exceptional promise, and yet it seems that he failed in the end. Partly this seems to be because of some unwise choices for occult practises, and thus the door of opportunity is about to close.

KH wrote:It is again your own fault, my good friend. You have proudly claimed the privilege of exercising your own, uncontrolled judgment in occult matters you could know nothing about — and the occult laws — you believe you can defy and play with, with impunity — have turned round upon you and have badly hurt you.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (Reading Group)

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Nefastos wrote:What follows is something that must seem utterly alien to almost all of our contemporary occult circles:
KH wrote:he, who would see beyond had to first destroy this living wall; that he must be possessed of a heart and soul clad in steel, and of an iron, never failing determination and yet be meek and gentle, humble and have shut out from his heart every human passion, that leads to evil. [...] Are you all this? Have you ever begun a course of training which would lead to it? No; you know it as I do. [...] Then why should you complain that powers are not given you [?]


And that is not all; KH continues with dire words about Sinnett's (envious?) speaking against the masters' chosen pupils, Blavatsky & Olcott, the latter of whom he sees as intellectually & socially unfit for such trust. Also, while it is noted that Sinnett has not intentionally done anything wrong, bad things have come for the lodge because of his carelessness, and that too brings about its fruit.

KH wrote:You are yourself ruining that which you have so laboriously erected —; but then, the strange idea that we are quite unable to see for ourselves; that our only data is that, which we find in our chelas minds; hence — that we are not the "powerful beings" you have represented us, seems to haunt you with every day more. Hume has begun in the same way.


Poor Sinnett! And alas for all of us, for the road is steep indeed, so steep that most see there only a vertical rock wall.
The road going that far almost demands for intimate and devotional group of people and maybe even the good old right hand path hierarchy with a system of initiation for needed focus and all the warning signs to be addressed properly. Atleast for me it seems to be so, but maybe there are capable enough dwellers out there to do this all alone. It's propably partly natural patience that so few aspirants in the contemporary occult circles are willing to enter that narrow/steep path. Just like KH had thought of Sinnets approach.
KH wrote:True you have offered several times to give up meat and drink, and I have refused. Since you cannot become a regular chela why should you? I thought you had understood all this long ago; that you had resigned yourself, satisfied to wait patiently for future developments and for my personal freedom.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (Reading Group)

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Smaragd wrote:The road going that far almost demands for intimate and devotional group of people and maybe even the good old right hand path hierarchy with a system of initiation for needed focus and all the warning signs to be addressed properly.


Maybe so, or these ropes or rails are at the least the most beneficent things that can come up in such situations, in case they are skilfully created & managed.

It can also be deceptively easy for us to think those historical figures who did not manage to go through their challenges of faith as being in very different situations as we ourselves are. Such challenges are of eternal nature.

KH wrote:True you have offered several times to give up meat and drink, and I have refused. Since you cannot become a regular chela why should you? I thought you had understood all this long ago; that you had resigned yourself, satisfied to wait patiently for future developments and for my personal freedom.


I added some emphases. Firstly, KH does not say that Sinnett wouldn't have had the possibility for being a lay-chela of sorts. That is, that even though the full pledge could not have been asked of him, Sinnett could have had become a certain special link between the standard initiatory system and the Western world of his. I think a person reading the Mahatma letters thoroughly can see this Koot Hoomi's fundamental idea or hope as the undercurrent of the whole correspondence.

Also, KH speaks once again of "patience" and also of his freedom: basically promising to take Sinnett under his personal tutelage at the first opportunity. This is actually a huge promise from an adeptual teacher, which Sinnett – it seems – failed to notice.

Smaragd wrote:patience


Patience, what a terrible demand! Don't I know, don't we all? But to this it so often comes, and to this it so often ends too.

For what is the secret of this great thing, patience? Very well said Pekka Ervast, that "an initiate is a man who is able to give promises to God. If God says to him, "Go and develop this or this ability or characteristic", he will go and do that, even if it would take 10,000 years. His ability is in it that he is able to make such a promise." (I quote from memory, but since this particular line has been flashing like a lightning in my mind for over twenty years, I am pretty sure the quote is quite precise.)

There are so many things that must fall into place that one can go through the gates of initiation, or begin the technical process of that going through, that the time simply cannot be hastened. In case it is tried, only disaster will occur. It is like one would try to start a car whose engine is still in making, some part missing or waiting to be installed. The best that would happen is that the driver loses his belief that such an engine could take him anywhere (for he doesn't see himself that it isn't complete, or he wouldn't make such a forced try), and the worst is that the whole thing blows up, doing great damage to everyone nearby. And it is rare ideal that such occult explosion would lead someone to instant ruin and death; usually it instead cripples us in a manner that we barely notice that something has gone terribly, permanently wrong in our inner constitution.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (Reading Group)

Post by Smaragd »

This time we got two letters from Koot Hoomi. Much of the content is quite hard for me to grasp as Sinnet's writing is unavailable, but I'll try to dig in to the teachings behind the meat. If you got more light to shed on the letters or an interesting point about a paragraph I dismissed, please feel free to elaborate. Especially the letter No. 64 included so much that I had to leave juicy bits out of my already too long presentation.

Letter No. 63
Mahatma Letters wrote:It is Fern, Moorad Ali, Bishen Lal and other wrecks, over again. Why shall "would-be" chelas with such intense self personalities force themselves within the enchanted and dangerous circle of probation!
I guess self personalities refer to what now days are meant with the large ego with a lower case 'e'. If my interpretation isn't tilted too much, I'd say these two letters also contain alot of the problematics of one-eyed focus in certain aspects. Three examples of fallen would-be chelas are given; Fern, Moorad Ali and Bishen Lal whose names we come by again in the next letter.

Letter No. 64
Mahatma Letters wrote:Good friend — this is not an answer to your last. The letter to my address sent by you through Mohini was never written by yourself. Verily it was penned by one, at that time, entirely under the influence of a creature of Attavada —
"The sin of Self, who in the Universe
As in a mirror sees her fond face shown"
— and only hers; whose every word he then implicitly trusted; perhaps, (this is to a certain extent a justification) because there came no half-expected interference, no word of warning from our quarters. Thus — no response to it, for we rather turn a new page.
I again use maybe not the best of sources, the various wiki sites though most of the quote is from another of these letters: ”Attavada [Sk. Atma-vada] ‘the doctrine of Self,’ both of which (in the case of the fifth principle, the soul) lead to the maya of heresy and belief in the efficacy of vain rites and ceremonies, in prayers and intercession”.

It seems KH is suggesting a pantheist approach towards ourselves and the ”creatures” or deities that make us. Not meaning those creatures have flashed their magic wands long ago to make us, but their active being is making what we are. To understand our construction will free us from the constructions our misconceptions have created. In this example it seems Sinnet has swam in visions of Maya and is unable to place trust in the Masters, and rather placing it to doubt. Apparently the problem has been the separatist thought of individuality, as if our construction would be a separate thing.

What are the ”real” parts of our construction then? One might think of monad, but isn't it rather the blueprint or nucleus of the construction and not the construction itself. Everything is real but the construction carries the burden of karma and Satan in his Saturnal aspect. The misconceptions that make us are like moonlights on the sea surface anxious to tell their mysteries, tales of their origin.
Mahatma Letters wrote:Ah, how long shall the mysteries of chelaship overpower and lead astray from the path of truth the wise and perspicacious as much as the foolish and the credulous! How few of the many pilgrims who have to start without chart or compass on that shoreless Ocean of Occultism reach the wished for land. Believe me, faithful friend, that nothing short of full confidence in us, in our good motives if not in our wisdom, in our foresight, if not omniscience — which is not to be found on this earth — can help one to cross over from one's land of dream and fiction to our Truthland, the region of stern reality and fact. Otherwise the ocean will prove shoreless indeed; its waves will carry one no longer on waters of hope but will turn every ripple into doubt, and suspicion; and bitter shall they prove to him who starts on that dismal, tossing Sea of the Unknown, with a prejudiced mind!
This section of the letters concern largely chelaship and here we are at the core of the subject. Striving for such heights naturally asks everything that the height itself is of. Chelaship feels a bit like an artificial 'program' as it seems to be made according to the surrounding cultures, but with those cultures in relationship with the laws of nature. Then again the whole concept of artificiality might be misunderstanding the totality of the world.
Mahatma Letters wrote:Nevertheless, feel not too much perplexed. The hour of trial is half over; try rather to understand the "why's and whatfor's" of the situation, to study more seriously the laws that govern our "Occult World." I grant you, those laws do seem very often unjust, even, at times cruel. But this is due to that fact that they were never meant either for the immediate redress of wrongs, or the direct help of those who offer at random their allegiance to the legislators. Still, the seemingly real, the evanescent and quick passing evils they bring about are as necessary to the growth, progress and final establishment of your small Th. Society as those certain cataclysms in nature, which often decimate whole populations, are necessary to mankind.
Adding anything to this feels banal, but this felt important to share.
Mahatma Letters wrote:It was absolutely necessary that within the personal experience of those few staunch members (yourself included) the secret working of Karma should take place; that its deeper meaning should be practically illustrated (as also its effects) — on those self-opinionated volunteers and candidates for chelaship who will rush under the dark shadow of her wheels.
When one starts to think of cause, effect, ethics and karma from the viewpoint of occult striving it often feels like deliberate practical tests are presented for oneself. If not so at the moment, then atleast following a failure that is faced with honesty.
Mahatma Letters wrote:——a chela whether selected or not, must perish, as a chela in the long run. Self personality, vanity and conceit harboured in the higher principles are enormously more dangerous than the same defects inherent only in the lower physical nature of man. They are the breakers against which the cause of chelaship, in its probationary stage, is sure to be dashed to pieces unless the would-be disciple carries with him the white shield of perfect confidence and trust in those he would seek out through mount and vale to guide him safely toward the light of Knowledge. The world moves and lives under the shadow of the deadly upas-tree of Evil; yet its dripping is dangerous to, and can reach only those whose higher and middle natures are as much susceptible of infection as their lower one. Its venomous seed can germinate but in a willing, well prepared soil. Bring to your memory the cases of Fern, Moorad Ali and Bishen Lal, good friend, and remember what you have learnt.
It feels a bit bizarre that something unclean could be harboured in the higher principles as I think it automaticly is of the lower principles. But creating a ”Self personality” and falling for vanity might be seen as obstacles going towards the higher principles. Elitism comes to mind and how one can puncture through it and let it bleed the real power which it was covered with.
Mahatma Letters wrote:"One who dug so many and deep pitfalls for her friends and brothers fell into them herself" — said M\ to H.P.B. on the night of the mutual revelations. I tried to, but could not save her. She had entered, or rather I should say — forced herself into the dangerous path, with a double purpose in view: (1) to upset the whole structure in which she had no part, and thus obstruct the path to all others, if she did not find the system and Society at the level of her expectations; and (2) to remain true and work out her chelaship and natural gifts, that are considerable indeed, only if those expectations were all answered. It is the intensity of that resolution that first attracted my attention. Led on gradually and gently into the right direction the acquisition of such an individuality would have been invaluable. But there are persons, who, without ever showing any external sign of selfishness, are intensely selfish in their inner spiritual aspirations.
Working in an occult society one propably finds multiple layers different people are focusing on and it might not always feel like the focus is meeting ones own expectations. I'm not sure if this talk of ”her” is about Blavatsky or Laura Carter Holloway-Langford (I guess the former), but it seems that she saw the work of TS or the anglo-indian shoot of it inadequate and looking to get it's structure reformed. The selfishness in this is not seeing the importance of the work others still need to go through. I'm sure this might look similar from ”down” to ”up” in that it's hard to see all the aspects of the Work that require someone to work in a certain way. What is important in the Star of Azazel's work is the ability to see the importance of both the detail and the whole and the ability to conjoin the seemingly opposite focuses fruitfully in individual and shared work.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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