Pablo Sender: The Occult Path

As James said we are going to explore the subject of the occult path which is a very interesting subject and not very common in many traditions in the Theosophical view there is the idea that there are two paths one that is a regular path of spiritual growth by which the person little by little develops virtues and this growth spiritually and that's the normal pace of evolution in the in within the process in which the divine spark in each one of us discovers its true nature but in the Theosophical view there is another path which is a faster path and it is called the occult path a cult in the sense of hidden is unknown for most people and the purpose of the this path is not just to accelerate the evolution of a person so that the person may merely accomplish the goal earlier but is rather to to offer the opportunity to some people to some souls to grow so that they can help the rest of humanity in their path of spiritual evolution in this view not every soul can is ready or even willing to take this occult path because it is really strenuous you know it requires a lot of effort and after all you can take it slower and the goal will be attained sooner or later so why would you strain yourself over strain yourself and as I said the answer is that the same in the same way as a child needs some adults to guide him or her humanity needs some enlightened people to guide you know the spiritual growth these enlightened people are people who are further in in the in the spiritual growth and many of them have gotten to that point by trade in this occult path so let me read some quotes from Soubirous he was a disciple an early member of the Theosophical society a disciple of the Masters there in the law in the last session or talk we explored the idea of masters of the wisdom and he says that the steady and natural path of progress through moral effort and the practice of virtues it's a natural and coherent unsure growth of the soul so it is the normal method followed by the vast mass of humanity and this is the course that is usually prescribed by the different religious teachers he mentions Shankar Acharya who is one of them founders all developers of the Vltava danta as well as the Buddha and Jesus all their religious teachings are about the normal steady path of evolution this steady path of evolution can be trade fast slower if a person is earnest and tries to work on him or herself to develop vir tools and to discover the truth can tread this path much faster than a person that is just attached to their bodies or or worldly pleasures or interest and are not interested in in trying to discover what the truth of the University so even we didn't this regular path come this can beat read faster or slower but still is a path of natural evolution where the person grows little by little in in a in a more natural way I keep using the word natural because it is what usually happens now he says that there is an another path the other Road and he says is the precipice precipitous path of occultism through a series of initiations only a few especially organized and peculiar nature's are fit for this path occult progress growth along this path and is affected by the Adept a master of wisdom directing through the disciple various occult forces which enabled the disciple to obtain prematurely so to speak a knowledge of his spiritual nature and to obtain powers to which he is not normally entitled by the degree of his progress under these circumstances it may happen that the disciple losses his moral balance and falls into the dopa path the word dopamine's his idea of the people who developed certain powers and they get caught in the selfish or in the sense of selfishness and begin to use them for selfish purposes so the idea is that we have the natural normal growth and we have this other path in which a person is specially trained and is given certain abilities which he is not naturally entitled for it's like you know if you want to to give responsibilities to a teenager responsibilities that belong to an adult well this teenager may be mature and may be able to fulfill those responsibilities but nevertheless he is still a teenager so he may imagine if a teenager would be in charge of leading a country being the president of a country and then there is you know he has a lot of power and if he reacts as a teenager that he is he may start a war with another country just out of pride well even adults to that presence you know but the idea that a person that is naturally not as mature as he or she should be 200 this power is given this power in the hope that he can help let's suppose that the world is in a state where there are very few leaders that can help humanity so you have to recur to very young people as I said you know they are teenagers and you say well is either this person or nobody and then you may take the chances but then that person may fulfill his role very well or may fall into the natural tendencies of his state of maturity and just produced more problems than than solutions so in a certain way a disciple through this process of initiation that we are going to explore it's given before beforehand or before the time the natural time comes a series of responsibilities and powers that he may or may not be able to handle so of course this does it happen in a random way because of because this is a situation the Masters have a system where they test the person to see if that person is likely to use these responsibilities in the right way but we will explore this presently now let us go on with what Soubirous was saying about these two paths so he says that the occult path is eminently dangerous to those who do not hold the talisman which ensures safety and he describes this talisman he says it's a perfectly unselfish self-forgetting self annihilating devotion to the religious good of mankind a self-abnegation which is not temporal but but must have no end forever and the object of which is a religious enlightenment of the human race without this talisman though the progress of the cella the disciple may be very rapid for a time a point will come when his advance will be arrested when the real moral worth will tell and then the person who progressed along the slow and steady path may be first to merge himself in the light of the logos so unless this person is completely unselfish all these powers will be a danger for the person and we can see this in the world there are many people who are nice people until they are given power you know some sometimes some people say money corrupts but some other people say no money allows the person to show what that person really is when we don't have opportunities when we don't have power we don't have then if there are seeds in ourselves to do something wrong we don't have the opportunity to do something wrong and that's the way lie protects people when a person is very ambitious and through many lifetimes pursues power and money and this and that and if he doesn't have the qualities the necessary qualities to use them in the right way karma will eventually grant him or her that is the the you know the desire and that person will be in a position of power only to produce a lot of suffering to himself or and to the people around because unless that person is really mature to have that power once the person has a power will use it in the wrong way for selfish reasons to exploit others so nature tries to protect people by not giving more power than the person can handle we can force nature to give us more than we are entitled to have either material power as I was saying or spiritual power if we push in that direction but then we may if we are not ready for that that's something that you know in the end will bring much more bad results than good results for ourselves so unless a person is completely unselfish it is very dangerous for that person to have more power than that normal people do and this is very easy to to understand even at the level of the power of thought we are going to see this in the last talk but most of us have all kinds of thoughts going through our head and somebody does something that I don't like and naturally there is a reaction to I am upset and then I think II love that person and I I just am angry at that person insane angry thoughts to the person when a person has just a regular power those thoughts are not particularly you know powerful but if a pre disciple begins to generate a very strong power of thought and with his power may really affect a person some people do it consciously and this is you know people who do some black magic or sorcery and they try to use this power of thought to damage a person but even if you if you don't want to do that unless you have control on your thoughts on your thinking if suddenly somebody gives you or strengthened the power of your thinking then you will be damaging people unconsciously and if you don't have the power to restrain your thoughts you will damage these people and generate accordingly karmic results that will will be obstacles in your path so one less you begin you first have a control over your thoughts and you are able to drop your ill thinking even when you are upset you cannot be given that power you cannot be trained in in developing more thought or a strong thought power now if you are and you develop this strength then you can help you can help a lot sending good thoughts to people in suffering who may need help to uplift others so like this many other abilities of our powers can be used to help humanity and that's the idea why Anna Deb would train a disciple but that disciple has to have these qualities first a complete and selfishness the ability to to let go of personal reactions and then to develop certain qualities that will allow him to have control over his own nature as we are going to see the disciple becomes an impersonal force for good in humanity so we are in a situation and we may not have affinity with a person or a person may have done things to harm us but if that person is doing something that is helping humanity we should be able to help that person doing whatever he or she is doing to help humanity and not say well this person did this to me or that therefore I why would I help this person and why would I cooperate for example I'm giving some simple examples of how that person a disciple loses the right the personal rights but not because you know they are stripped from him if this process is genuine the disciple realizes that or he begins to develop an a an attraction for the good and not for the personal desires or the personal reactions the attraction for whatever is good is stronger than the attachment to the personal reactions so let us go on with a tsuba Ross description and he says that because of the danger of this path many schools religious schools recommend as the best path for all the one of devotion to virtue the gradual withdrawal from the grosser material concerns towards a spiritual and he says it is therefore wiser not to seek the path of chela sheep the occult path if a person is fed for it then his karma will lead him to to the cold path imperceptibly and infallibly for the path of ocultism seeks the cella and will not fail to find him when the feed person presents himself so the idea is that although this path exists no person should try to force himself into this path if a person is ready then the opportunity will come to him or her naturally and we are going to explore how so basically what every person should try to do every person's interested in in spirituality is just to try to do the best that that person can be and the best way he can act be honest and earnest and let the the higher wisdom that that is beyond our brain consciousness decide whether your feet or not for a particular path actually if if you if your concern really is to try to grow spiritually in order to help the others you are not much concerned whether you are on the on the occult path or not you know that's something that will happen and it's something of secondary importance to you whether you are in the path or not or you know all that belongs more to the personality and the the ambition the person may imagine that Oh among the occult path that's something special or this or that well that has to disappear for the person to be able to tread the occult path safely so there is a point where the person doesn't think much about it now it may be that the idea of the Masters are helping the Masters especially in the Theosophical tradition where this is an important element maybe a source of inspiration the idea of the Masters and that's perfectly fine for a person to you know if that inspires that person to do good and that person may may think of the Masters and trying to help the Masters just as a Christian would think of Jesus you know whatever helps you on whatever spiritual ideally inspires you is perfectly fine if you some other people have more abstract ideals that's also fine so it's not that you should never think of the Masters or or something like that but trying to force yourself into into the occult path it's not it's something different you know it is said that karma eventually will always respond to your desires if you desire something consistently whether that is good or not for you you will produce the karmic result so that's why as I mentioned I think in previous talks sometimes you see people who are absolutely unfit to be in the position they are and yet they are there because they desire that you know for enough lifetimes or with enough intensity and they are given that which for that person may seem like a blessing at the moment but it may be a curse if the person is using that in the wrong way so what Subaru says here is yes these two paths exist one the ideal in the in this occult path is to make a person fit to help humanity faster than what it would take during the normal path but you shouldn't seek for it if you are fit for it it will come to you now I made it just to have a to give you a as a as a metaphor I made a calculation about how long it is supposed to take for our humanity to reach you know liberation in the normal course and in how long a person going through the occult path would get to the same goal and of course these numbers are just you know we don't even know these numbers but it's I think it's it's interesting to see but it's like if a person had to do you know an adult let's say 20 years old had to go through all the experience that a normal person would go through until he or she dies when he is 90 years old let's say in five months so in five months that person has to go through all the experiences all the suffering all the effort that a person goes normally in 70 more years so the point is that these are called path concentrates a lot of effort in very few years which are a few thousands of years in the whole picture of evolution but these few thousands of years are nothing compared to what it takes a normal evolution of humanity so you will have you know in five months a person that is absolutely fit to to help others that would take 90 or 70 more years for a person don't take these numbers more than as a figure you know I was just curious to see the proportions and they may be pretty different but it's more or less the idea so let us explore the different stages of this called path the idea that when a person or much before a person is ready to to begin this path the Masters of wisdom are aware of this person the in several places different people have said that it's like the master is like they have this view as if they were on a mountain they have the view of a dark valley and whenever there is a person that is getting ready to be approached it's like if you in in the dark night one house turns the light on there is no way you can miss that that light so they say there is no way a master can miss a person that would be fit for this path so when they see that there is a person that is approaching that they may put in his way some a little taste or a little task to see if they're you know an opportunity to help it may be very very small to the person side but is trying to give the poor the person the opportunity to nourish this this inspiration or aspiration to help because the only reason as as I said why a person would be why a master would take care of a training a person would be if that person will become a helper of the Masters as we are going to see next in our next meeting the Masters use all their time and energy helping at the level on the inner planes at the level of the soul and if a master is going to waste time to train a person and all that time he cannot do the work the more Universal work that he is doing it is only because he held he hopes that the time that he is spending in one particular individual will bring better results you know that if he would spend that time helping on the the universal universal levels that they help so they would also take care of training a person if that person has the the or is promising in becoming a helper of the Masters and then they can do some work for Humanity in the in in the name of the Masters so as this person grows more into this aspiration to help and begins to develop more spiritual maturity then he is approached by a master and we are going to see in our next talk what the qualities of a person should be to to be ready for a master to approach you know that that particular person of course this is not like a recipe ok you have this and this and this and then a master will come that everything is much more complex but there is the you know as we said if you are selfish you are not going to be fit to tread the so-called path if you don't have self-control you are not fit for it because it would damage you and you would done each other people you know they nobody will give you a sword to defend people if you don't know how to handle the sword because then you you will hurt yourself and hurt your friends in trying to defend them so there are certain qualities that you must fulfill and we are going to see that in our next talk but once a person is fit to be approached the first thing that happens is that this person is put in what is called probation so the idea that as I said the masters work mainly on the inner planes when we go to sleep as we saw in previous talks our consciousness leaves the physical body and then it's on what sometimes is called the astral plane or it's it's aware on the inner planes this is the plane of the dreams some dreams are just things that happen in our own mind but some other dreams are actually recollections of a life that we have on the astral plane so when the person is ready and it goes to sleep a master would approach that person on the astral plane and offer that person to become a disciple in probation there is no much you know ceremony or anything it is said that the master Ori or even an advanced disciple would approach this person and explain the situation and offer the opportunity to enter in in this stage of probation if the person knows all this you know when we go to sleep we have all the knowledge that we acquired on the physical plane and even more that we acquired on the inner planes if the person knows of these when he's approached he knows exactly what you know this person is talking about if that person belongs to a tradition that doesn't have this knowledge then it takes you know some more explanation to explain ok this is what is going on this is the question with these two paths I think one example of that as I mentioned last time and I may be completely wrong but I have the feeling when I read the autobiography of taller or taller he said I was taking in a dream too I think he says a higher college where there were you know sayings that told me and they explained to me certain things so he had to be taught on the inner plains all these and because the Christianity doesn't have this tradition in particular but anyway the idea that this person will be approached on the physic on the astral plane on the inner planes and if the person accept to be put on probation it is said that the master creates an image of the astral body and the mental body of the person and that image is connected to to the realist aural body a mental body of the person I'm sorry I'm talking about all these things that presuppose that you have a basic knowledge of what the astral body the mental body is we already saw all DC or explored all these in previous talks if you don't know about it then you can either watch previous talks or read about it but the ideas that the master would create an image of the astral body the mental body of the disciple in privation and everything that happens emotionally or mentally to the person would be reflected on this image so the master could see how the disciple is going on during this probation usually there is no much interaction between the master and the disciple during this period the probation is only implies that the master will keep an eye on the disciple but there is a very important effect on the karmic level at the karmic the karmic motion of the disciple and let me let me read some quotes one of the masters say Mohammed eh said to be accepted as a disciple on probation is an easy thing is he relatively speaking to become an accepted chela is to court the miseries of probation life in the ordinary run is not entirely made up of heavy trials and mental misery but the life of a chela who offers himself is a one of long sacrifice he who would control here after the events of his life here and Beyond has first of all to submit himself to be controlled by faith this is who I am adding by faith yet triumph over every temptation every whoo-whoo wall of flesh and mind and he also on to say the mass of human sin and frailty is distributed throughout the life of a person who is content to remain an average model but it is gathered and centered so to say within one period of the life of a disciple the period of probation that which is generally accumulating to find a legitimate issue only in the next rebirth of an ordinary person is quickened and fanned into the existence into existence in the cella so the idea that there is a concentration of karma especially that the what we could call the negative Karma for several reasons one because the negative karma is an abstraction we are not free to help the Masters until we paid off all the obstacles we have generating generated for many years in the past you know as we we say when we explore the idea of karma at the beginning of evolution because of the spiritual ignorance that we all have most of the things we do are wrong from a spiritual point of view so that generates a lot of negative karma but that karma is is held off by the law until the person becomes more mature because if all the negative karma would fall immediately on the person it would simply crush the personality you know just say a savage person may kill a lot of people so if that karma has to come immediately then that person would be killed for ten lives in a row so to say you know and what could that soul grow or learn so for the first part of evolution a lot of this negative karma is accumulated until the soul acquires the ability to learn the idea of karma is not that it is a punishment it is to be an educational process so that karma is not going to come to the person until the person can profit from it can learn something from it so when that person begins to be mature there is quite a bit of previous karma that is accumulated that now begins to come to the person and that's why we many times see you know bad people who seem to to do bad things and never get there with the consequences and then perfectly good people that they have one thing after the other because that you know from our point of view it may seem unfair but from the point of view of karma that doesn't try to punish people as I said but to teach well karma is forgiving at the beginning as we may be forgiven forgiving with a child until that person has the ability to learn so when the disciple is put in probation there is negative karma that that is an obstacle for that person to be free to help humanity so that karma has to be paid off or worked out but also in that process that disciple has to learn to or has to be purified by the process let's say so pain of the the the obstructive karma being purified by the process and learning you know through the difficulties and also being tested are the three aims of the period of probation a person needs to be tested to know how he or she will react in difficult situations and this is explained by the master saying and the pupil is tested tempted and examined by all and every means so as to have his real nature drawn out that is the rule with us and his inexorable we have to know of what he may be become capable and their different and every kind of opportunities as I said this person is going to be given power and the Masters have to be sure that this person will use it in the right way so we all may be very nice people when the situation's are nice and easy but how do we react when we are in a difficult situation are we able to to control ourselves not to indulge in producing harm to others as a personal reaction because as with as I said when we have a greater power if we are not able to hold that we will produce more danger hurt or damage so the period of probation will work out the old karma will produce a purification and education and also will be a test to see if the person or to explore all the dark corners of the person and blob ascii says that this is this is necessary also because the master assumes chemically speaking the responsibility for the disciple so she says that very few are aware of the the enormous almost limitless responsibility assumed by the teacher for the sake of the pupil from the moment they begin to really teach from the instant they convert any power whether psychic mental or physical on their pupils they take upon themselves all the sins of that pupil in connection with the occult Sciences until the moment when initiation make the makes the pupil a master and responsible in its turn thus it is clear why the teachers are so reticent and why chalice are required to serve seven years of probation to prove their fitness and develop the qualities necessary to the security of both master and pupil it is usually said that the period of probation lasts seven years of you know this concentrated Karma it may last longer it may last the whole life or email lasts less according to how the person responds to it but as you can see they disobey the master takes responsibility karmic responsibility for what the the disciple does and some people say why you know that's kind of unfair but Lubezki explained the spiritual guru taking the student the student by the hand leads him into an introduced introduces him to a world entirely unknown to the pupil so long then as the pupil add upon this principle but is too ignorant to be sure of his and powers of discrimination this is not natural that it is the guide who should be responsible for the sins of him who he has led into those dangerous regions so all these power that the disciple has were given but by the master given in the sense of he he was taught how to develop all this nothing is comfort you know upon us so everything is developed but they are the ones that led the disciple to these regions so they are responsible for that and they have to be sure that the disciple is earnest honest that is unselfish so that he may fail but there are two different kinds of failings one failing is the natural failing that happens when we are learning you know if we are learning to ride a bicycle then we will fall and we will fall again and that's not a failing I mean it's a mistake if you want to see it but it's inevitable it's part of the process of learning but there is a different failing which is when the disciple begins to use these powers in a selfish way and that's something that cuts the relationship with the Masters and the master really suffers for it suffers concept karmic consequences so Gavaskar we said you you don't know what sacrifice the master is making in taking disciples and and only for the reason of the hope that this person maybe can fit to help him annually so once the person passes these years of probation it is accepted as a regular disciple so at the moments of acceptance again this happens on the inner planes and the master blends the disciples aura that is the emotional and mental body with that of the master in this blending there is like a connection between the master and the disciple so that the the influence of the master can flow through the disciple unconsciously it's not that it so that the master doesn't have to do something consciously through the disciple there is a connection and the the influence of the master goes through the disciple now this influence only goes through the disciple when the disciple is vibrating in in a way that is in tune with the master if the disciple is feeling you know anger or jealousy or whatever is selfish that blocks the influence of the master but the problem is that because of this connection whatever the disciple is feeling is also reflected in in the Masters aura so many times these feelings bother the the work of the master now the master has the ability to put like a veil that that isolates the disciple so that he is not interrupted in in the world in the work that he's doing but then that cuts off the connection with the disciple and the disciple is left by himself until you know he or she gets again in tune with the with the master and then the veil can be removed so a disciple and an accepted disciple is a person that will warranty that for the most part his feelings and thoughts will be more or less in tune with those of the master not perfect he's not a master he's not you know enlightened but the general tone of his activity should be in tune with that of the master and now all this happens on the inner planes and the person may not know that he is a disciple that he's on probation or is a disciple knowing is tricky in several ways because it is said that always when a person when a person if the Masters do something in favor of a person because of this balance between the good and evil in the universal what we call good and evil it all is open for the forces of darkness to do the same on the disciple so for example if a master appears to you in your room you know visibly that allows what they call the Duke pass to appear and in personally must a master also so whenever they they have a conscious relationship with a person they have to teach that person how to differentiate a real master from one that is not because they will you know they will try to to come and impersonate a master and make you do wrong things many times in a subtle way so and until the person doesn't have the the perception to really differentiate this many times is safer that that the master doesn't expose that person to this problem so the personality is many times protected by not knowing that he or she is a disciple either in probation or in probation or at safety now it depends on the person sometimes a him will give a will be given through dreams which are not actually dreams if they are real they are just memories on the astral plane so that person may have a recollection of he being told that he's a disciple or something like that but you know dreams are really tricky you never know if it is true if it is your mind that created them or if it is another entity putting that in in your head and impersonating a master in the Theosophical view it is see it is important to learn about the astral plane because most people assume that whatever entity communicates with you has to be a god or an angel or well no the astral plane is really tricky and you have good entities neutral you have and by the entities you have people who know people who know nothing so it's very complex it is a whole universe so you cannot assume because you had a dream or because an entity came to communicate to you and tells you you are a disciple or it you cannot assume that that is true so although sometimes through dreams this knowledge is conveyed still tricky you never know if it is true or not and as I said it is not that important for you to know that you that you may be a disciple or not it is only important if that helps you go through the hardships because that is the problem you know in all religious traditions there is or in most of them there is a certain emphasis on the role of suffering in the spiritual life you know in Christianity you have this idea that you have to carry the cross as Jesus did for us and mystics they have always this idea that the spiritual path needs has a period of what they call probation which and takes a lot of suffering so they don't know very well why or some of them don't and but there is the idea that you that you have go through this period of probation so that when it happens to you as a mystic for example as a spiritual person you you have the courage to go through it otherwise you naturally think what is wrong with me why is all this happening to me we assume that if bad things happen to us is because we are doing something wrong and that is not necessarily the case so in many traditions that is this idea that at a certain point a period of you know the dark night of the soul will come on you in the Theosophical view this idea of probation is very very well explained so that if a person is going through it that may help that person to you know we trained the courage to to keep trying to do the right thing it helps a personality when the personality doesn't know that it is really going through that and even if we are not going through probation it's always help for the person to go through the suffering you know in the best possible way all these stages repeat in low in lower levels so even if we are not really going through a real probation we may be going through a period in our life that it is a kind of probation even though after that we are not going to have a personal relationship with the Masters but after that there may be an opening in our consciousness so you know these things always help even if you don't know what in what stage you are at and knowing exactly the stage as I said is not necessarily the best thing because of all these dis other difficulties that I was talking about so eventually when the disciple is accepted it will be it becomes to be an if a channel for the influence of the Masters and with the word channel I'm not I'm not meaning this idea the modern idea of channel II you know where there are entities talking through you as I said there are many entities that can talk through a person and those entities may be very low entities or may be spiritual entities you many times the accepted disciple as as we said is absolutely unconscious that through him or her the influence of the master is being spread but that doesn't matter the influence of the master is still spread and when the person developed certain qualities that person is ready to be initiated as we are going to see in our next talk there is a path of initiation that where the consciousness of the disciple is artificially expanded so that that person has a glimpse of a state of consciousness which then he or she we have to work to be established in that state of consciousness so the initiation versus a state of consciousness that then the person has to work hard to cement in himself to to really conquer if you want to put it in that way but we are going to see the path of initiation in our next talk so the idea is that before we finish the person goes through this probation then there is this he may become an accepted disciple and there is one more step which may come before or after the first initiation that is sometimes called the sonship or the stage of the state of sonship in the sense of being the son of the master spiritually speaking where the the connection between the master and the disciple is much closer it entails a connection at the level of the the higher mental which is the the human soul at the level of the soul not the personality so far we had said that the person that the the emotional body and the mental body of the person was connected with the master that belongs to the personality but in this other stage even the soul of the disciple is connected to the soul of the master and at that point the master cannot draw a veil to separate himself from the disciple if the disciple is doing something wrong so this step happens only when the master is completely sure of the disciple of the disciples you know maturity and as I said that may come before or after the first initiation it depends on the disciples development but that's more or less idea of this occult path we are going to as I said to explore in our next talk the different initiations and the qualifications for this but today I wanted to present generally speaking the entrance on the occult path the real entrance happens when the person is initiated on the inner plate so if there is any question or comment we can discuss it as usual we have one question from our mind what do you suggest to read after this lecture was the question there are some articles that Madame de Basque you wrote about it well you know you could go to the TS wiki this is like an encyclopedia we are creating online with the software that Wikipedia uses and the address is T s wiki that net and then you can search for chela CH ela which is a Sanskrit word for disciple or master or chalice shape or probation all these words and you can read you will see quotes from all this and also you will find that the bottom articles links to articles about it there are a few articles by HPB one is called chalice and masters another one is called lai lai chalice and accepted chalice or something like that then there is an article by Soubirous the occultism in the southern india then there is the this Lebowski never taught really much about the initiations she didn't describe the different initiations but Annie Besant and Ledbetter did if you if you like their writings Annie Besant wrote a book on initiation Ledbetter wrote this book on the Masters on the path so there is quite a few quite a few literature about it but I think if you go to the wiki the TS wiki you will find a lot of material they are online even the Joe how many people do you know that's on the occult path I don't know any but it's hard to tell I mean you know these questions many many times they are many times disciples of know each other many times disciples don't know they are disciples and at the beginning of the TS this was like more public for several reasons first because Lebowski and the Masters wanted to to bring the idea of the Masters they are called path the discipleship and therefore they had to talk about it because they want this idea to be a to be available for all of us students so all this was more public but of course this brought a lot of problems because then many people were ambitious if you know that you know the she is a disciple say oh she's a disciple I can be a disciple I am NOT a disciple and she's a disciple she doesn't seem after all to be you know much better than I am because what we see through the personality is the shadow of what we really are so the master sees what we really are so that brought a lot of problems and then that brought people that say hey I am a disciple I had a dream where they I was told or I have an entity telling me I am a disciple and I brought a lot of problems so little by little people started saying okay you know stop talking about this and most disciples won't say that they are disciples some of them in the past may have told that to some friends in more intimate circles when you know it was pretty obvious that they could be disciples and I mean for example people like Geoffrey Hudson or even the raccoons or Clara Cod but the tendency is not to say anything about it so to say to tell earlier you mentioned kind of a trial period called the dark night of the soul can you elaborate on that a little bit and about what that is and how it relates well there are different interpretations of of that and that dark night of the soul appears in different stages of the growth of the soul in the way I'm using it right now it would be the period of probation you know Blavatsky used to say oh you Europeans are like to see see to be to go through that period of probation in the East they are tougher in the sense that you know this is what Levesque used to say that they are not so hung up on their personality and pride and comfort and they they don't complain if they the bed is too hard but if you go to a place on the bird the bed is hard you complain you know by that very small thing so she would say privation is during a period of time is one thing after the other you know without being able to catch a breath and you have to profit from it not just to go through it and resent it you have to be able of course we always resent suffering you know at a certain level but then you have to be willing to revisit that once and again and try to see from a different point of view and and it's something that is you know it's hard so the person really feels that there is going through the dark night of the soul where that person lost for the most part you know moments of happiness or that person used to feel joy in even just been in nature now you know mainly what is there he say it's a process of conflict inner or outer many times it has nothing to do with the outer you know and it's all psychological or very little to do with the outer it doesn't need to to be a catastrophe outside because what is really being pushed these are inner buttons you know their reactions or sometimes if the Karma of the person is such there may be something outside but regardless you know it's a period of of sustained mmm strain and actually one of the requisites as we are going to see in the in the next talk is a good physical health so that the body can sustain the strain not only mentally and emotionally but even the body the body is affected by by the constant stress so as I said if this happens or smaller probations may happen in our life without necessarily having to be the the probation that we are talking about or we may be in the midst of it but whatever the case we have to develop a certain capacity the ability to know how to suffer to me one keen the spiritual path is to learn how to suffer how to suffer without being too resentful without being becoming too angry all these things happen you know but at the beginning we are like caught off guard and then we react more then with time first we become accustom to it and then we we little by little learn to be weaker you know not to react to it and and that's a something that is important to learn how to suffer without reacting once we get there then we are safe because the reactions are always the reaction to the suffering so when we develop the ability to suffer without reacting too much then we are safe I always say that when I was a teenager and I studied karate one of the first things of our senpai our teacher D was to tie our belt to another person and with boxing gloves to start hitting each other and you couldn't retreat because you were tied and the purpose was so that we become accustomed to their punches and until the point that we say well after all is a punch you know sometimes I will go home with my I couldn't open my mouth because it really heard a few times but that happens but then there is a point where you say this is nothing I mean it's not too bad at the beginning you are afraid of the punches but only when you become accustomed to it and you are not afraid of it you can be calm in the middle of the battle because you are not afraid when you are afraid you freak out and then you lose control so this is what happens in the in the probation at the beginning is harder and little by little you become accustomed and then a certain point you know the process is over and not that suffering will never come again as we are going to see you know that is part of the spiritual growth but the process of probation is over I was thinking over and over what you said that it's kind of a relief to know it it's not from one a lifetime it's for many lifetimes and it isn't at all about dying or whoever the name is I'm just an envelope kind of gives more meaning to yeah I know so you know usually although we never like to suffer usually these things unless we pushed for it which few people do you know pushing for it would be to become ambitious and trying to be a disciple and going from here to there trying to develop powers or to this or that but for most people when this comes is because we have the distress to to go through and also a person is different some people may be either stronger or their life circumstances may allow it to go in a more concentrated way in less period of time some others you know it may be spread long for longer time and there is a higher wisdom that knows how to handle this so we shouldn't worry too much about it and if if you know we are not ready that will happen or it will it will happen only up to the point where we are ready one final question from online doesn't the disciple have to have a desire and intention to be taught by the master before the master notices them no not really what the person needs to have is an aspiration to help people from any tradition may be contacted by masters and then they interpret who is contacted them in terms of their own tradition you know a misty Christian mystic will say Jesus came and you know took me here or they all taught me this and the Buddhist would talk about some body Salva or so but in any any tradition any sincere person that really wants to help humanity and that is faithful it may may be contacted by a master on the inner planes so we don't need to have the ESP relation but as I said the aspiration to help the master may be an inspiration for us to do the right thing so we can have it as long as it doesn't become a personal ambition so you know many people are inspired to help somebody if if you love the master or Jesus or whoever it is that love may may inspire you to help or do something that is not comfortable for you out of help for the man out of love for the master you know when you love your children your wife whoever it is you will sacrifice yourself out of love for them if you love the master Jesus or whatever your ideal is you may do things out of this love so in that sense it is fine to have the aspiration to work for the master or you know similar things but you don't need that to be contacted by the master all you need is to have the aspiration to help humanity and to be fed as we are going to see in our next talk to have a certain qualifications at the spiritual level you

Channel: Theosophical Society

Views: 37,765

Keywords: Theosophy, Theosophical Society, Spirituality, Spiritual Path, Occult, Occultism, Evolution, Spiritual Evolution, Spiritual Progess, Study, Meditation, Service, Liberation, Enlightenment, H. P. Blavatsky (Author), Secret Doctrine (Book), Pablo Sender

Id: D9fZNZU62f8

Length: 67min 34sec (4054 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2019