Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his
echo.
The condition which high friendship demands is, ability to do without
it. To be capable of that high office requires great and
sublime
parts. There must be very two, before there can be very one.
348: "Leave the past behind; leave the future
behind; leave
the present behind. Thou art then ready to do to the other
shore. Never more shalt thou return to a life that ends in
death."
Hurt a man by doing him bodily harm; you may think that his
pain and
suffering cannot spread by any means to his neighbors, least of all to
men of other nations. We affirm that it will, in good time. Therefore,
we say, that unless every man is brought to understand and accept as an
axiomatic truth that
by wronging one man we wrong not only ourselves but the whole of
humanity
in the long run, no brotherly feelings such as preached by all the
great
Reformers, pre-eminently by Buddha and Jesus, are possible on earth.
The student of Occultism abhors dogma, but he cannot ignore facts, and this is a distinction many students overlook.
The stupendous fact that we stand in the midst of reality will always be something far more wonderful than anything we do.
A Master wrote to Mr. A.P. Sinnett (page 341, Mahatma Letters)
- "Once separated from the common influences of Society, nothing draws us to any outsider save his evolving spirituality. He may be a Bacon or an Aristotle in knowledge, and still not make his current felt a feather's weight by us, if his power is confined to the Manas (intellectual mind) . . . . Manas, pure and simple, is of a lower degree, and of the earth earthly: and so your greatest men count but as nonentities in the area where greatness is measured by the standard of spiritual development."
We may add to this the testimony of Subba Row, in a letter just reprinted by The Point Loma Theosophical Forum, that he knew of "many chelas, high chelas too, very near initiation, who are ignorant of the art of reading and writing."
"You must be up and doing if you want to secure your immortality," he adds, and "This is impressed in the mind of every Occult student by his Guru. Mere goody-goodness, and irreproachable life will not help us. We must swim against the current and by dint of perseverance mount higher. If not, we will be left where we are to vegetate and rot in the scale to which we may have come. The Kingdom of Heaven ought to be taken by force. Will, irresistible, indomitable will alone carry upward an Occult student. If he has not got that, he has no chance whatever. Only one who toils hard can ascend a mountain peak." (*)
Which is only another way of saying, "Many are called, but few are chosen," and "Strait is the gate and few there be that enter in thereat."
Evangelical Christianity seeks to convince people that it is all as easy as getting entered on a voting list, but the difficulties have never been minimized by the real Teachers.
(*) The first sentence as quoted here is slightly different from the one as found in the T. Subba Row Collected Writings which says: "Your observation that you must be up and doing if you want to secure your immortality is perfectly true". (TSR Col. Wr. Vol. I, p. 177 - Point Loma Publications) Because of the interest of this subject the editor of Lucifer7 thinks it pertinent to also quote T.Subba Row elaborating on the subject of immortality (idem p. 77):Theosophists have never stated, so far as I know, that adepts alone attain immortality. The condition ultimately reached by ordinary man after going through all the planetary rounds during countless number of ages in the gradual ascending order of material objective existence is reached by the adept within a comparitively shorter time; but every human being, unless he is utterly 'wicked and depraved', may hope to reach that state sooner or later according to his merits and karma.
"We call `immortal' but the one LIFE in its universal collectivity and entire or Absolute Abstraction; that which has neither beginning nor end, nor any break in its continuity." - M.L. 129.
But K.H. - the Mahatma just quoted - also points out that there is the possibility of achieving a qualified immortality and in other letters where the word is used in reference to human immortality, it carries this qualified meaning.
"Therefore the earliest Chaldeans had several prefixes to the word immortality, one of which is the Greek, rarely-used term - pan-aeonic immortality, i.e. beginning with the manvantara and ending with the pralaya of our Solar Universe. It lasts the aeon or the `period' of our Pan, or 'all nature'. Immortal then is he in the pan-aeonic immortality, whose distinct consciousness and perception of Self under whatever form - undergoes no disjunction at any time. Not for one second during the period of his Egoship ....Suffice for you, for the present to know, that a man, an Ego like yours or mine, may be immortal from one to the other round. Let us say I begin my immortality at the present fourth round, i.e. having become a full adept (which unhappily I am not,) I arrest the hands of Death at will, and am finally obliged to submit to it, my knowledge of the secrets of nature put me in a position to retain my consciousness and distinct perception of Self as an object to my own reflective consciousness and cognition; and thus avoid all such dismemberments of principles, that as a rule take place after the physical death of average humanity, I remain as Koot Hoomi in my Ego throughout the whole series of births and lives across the seven worlds and Arupa-lokas until finally I land again on this earth among the fifth race men of the full fifth Round beings. I would have been, in such a case, 'immortal' for an inconceivable (to you) long period, embracing many milliards of years. And yet am 'I' truly immortal, for all that? Unless I make the same, efforts as I now do, to secure for myself another such furlough from Nature's law, Koot Hoomi will vanish and may become a Mr. Smith or an innocent Babu, when his leave expires." - M.L. 129 and 130.
And again on page 276. "When the Seeress" (Mrs. A.B. Kingsford) is made to reveal that 'Immortality is by no means a matter of course for all' that `souls shrink away and expire' . . . . she is delivering herself of actual incontrovertible facts".
The Spirit in man, the Atma, is Immortal, is one with the Eternal Life, the Absolute which has no beginning nor end, but the continuing consciousness of the Ego, its `qualified immortality' must be achieved and retained through the power of immortability - for which word we thank Dr. McConnell.
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