Contents:Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
The Three Truths
Introduction
These rules are written for all disciples: Attend you to them.
Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears.
Before the ear can hear it must have lost its sensitiveness.
Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters it must have lost the power to wound.
Before the soul can stand in the presence of the Masters its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart.
1. Kill out ambition.
2. Kill out desire of life.
3. Kill out desire for comfort.
4. Work as those work who are ambitious.
Respect life as those do who desire it.
Be happy as those are who live for happiness.
Seek in the heart the source of evil and expunge it. It lives fruitfully in the heart of the devoted disciple as well as in the heart of the man of desire. Only the strong can kill it out. The weak must wait for its growth, its fruition, its death. And it is a plant that lives and increases throughout the ages.
It flowers when one has accumulated unto oneself innumerable existences. He who will enter upon the path of power must tear this thing out of his heart. And then the heart will bleed, and the whole life of the man seem to be utterly dissolved. This ordeal must be endured: it may come at the first step of the perilous ladder which leads to the path of life: it may not come until the last.
But, O disciple, remember that it has to be endured, and fasten the energies of your soul upon the task. Live neither in the present nor the future, but in the Eternal. This giant weed cannot flower there: this blot upon existence is wiped out by the very atmosphere of eternal thought.
5. Kill out all sense of separateness.
6. Kill out desire for sensation.
7. Kill out hunger for growth.
8. Yet stand alone and isolated, because nothing that is embodied, nothing that is conscious of separation, nothing that is out of the Eternal, can aid you. Learn from sensation and observe it, because only so can you commence the science of self-knowledge, and plant your foot on the first step of the ladder. Grow as the flower grows, unconsciously, yet eagerly anxious to open its soul to the air. So must you press forward to open your soul to the Eternal. But it must be the Eternal that draws forth your strength and beauty, not desire of growth. For in the one case you develop in the luxuriance of purity; in the other you harden by the forcible passion for personal stature.
9. Desire only that which is within you.
10. Desire only that which is beyond you.
11. Desire only that which is unattainable.
12. For within you is the light of the world - the only true light that can be shed upon the Path. If you are unable to perceive it within you, it is useless to look for it elsewhere. It is beyond you, because when you reach it you have lost yourself. It is unattainable for it forever recedes. You will enter the light, but you will never touch the flame.
13. Desire power ardently.
14. Desire peace fervently.
15. Desire possessions above all.
16. But those possessions must belong to the pure soul only, and be possessed therefore by all pure souls equally, and thus be the especial property of the whole only when united. Hunger for such possessions as can be held by the pure soul, that you may accumulate wealth for that united spirit of life which is your only true self. The peace you shall desire is that sacred peace which nothing can disturb, and in which the soul grows as does the holy flower upon the still lagoons. And that power which the disciple shall covet is that which shall make him appear as nothing in the eyes of men.
17. Seek out the way.
18. Seek the way by retreating within.
19. Seek the way by advancing boldly without.
20. Seek it not by any one road. To each temperament there is one road which seems the most desirable. But the way is not found by devotion alone, by religious contemplation, by ardent progress, by self-sacrificing labor, by studious observation of life. None alone can take the disciple more than one step onward. All steps are necessary to make up the ladder. The vices of men become steps in the ladder, one by one, as they are surmounted. The virtues of man are steps indeed, necessary - not by any means to be dispensed with. Yet, though they create a fair atmosphere and a happy future, they are useless if they stand alone. The whole nature of the human being must be used wisely by the one who desires to enter the way.
Each human being is to him/herself absolutely the way, the truth and the life. But we are only so when we grasp our whole individuality firmly, and by the force of our awakened spiritual will recognizes this individuality as not ourself, but that thing which we have with pain created for our own purposes, as our growth slowly develops our intelligence, to reach to the life beyond individuality.
When we know that for this our wonderful complex, separated life exists, then, indeed, and then only, are we upon the way.
Seek it by plunging into the mysterious and glorious depths of your own inmost being.
Seek it by testing all experiences, by utilizing the senses in order to understand the growth and meaning of individuality, and the beauty and obscurity of those other divine fragments which are struggling side by side with you, and form the race to which you belong.
Seek it by study of the laws of being, the laws of nature, the laws of the supernatural; and seek it by making the profound obeisance of the soul to the dim star that burns within. Steadily, as you watch and worship, its light will grow stronger. Then you may know you have found the beginning of the way. And when you have found the end, its light will suddenly become the infinite light.
21. Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows the storm: not until then. It will grow, it will shoot up, it will make branches, and leaves and form buds, while the storm continues, while the battle lasts. But not till the whole personality of the human is dissolved and melted-not until it is held by the divine fragment which has created it, as a mere subject for grave experiment and experience-not until the whole nature has yielded and become subject unto its Higher Self, can the bloom open.
Then will come a calm such as comes in a tropical country after the heavy rain, when Nature works so swiftly that one may see her action. Such a calm will come to the harassed spirit. And in the deep silence the mysterious event will occur which will prove the way has been found. Call it by what name you will, it is a voice that speaks where there is none to speak-it is a messenger that comes, a messenger without form or substance; or it is the flower of the soul that has opened.
It cannot be described by any metaphor. But it can be felt after, looked for, and desired, even amid the raging of the storm. The silence may last a moment of time or it may last a thousand years.
But it will end. Yet you will carry its strength with you. Again and again the battle must be fought and won. It is only for an interval that Nature can be still. Out of the silence that is peace a resonant voice shall arise. This voice will say: It is not well; you have reaped, now you must sow.
Knowing the voice to be the silence itself you will obey. You who are now a disciple, able to stand, able to hear, able to see, able to speak; who has conquered desire and attained to self-knowledge; who has seen thy soul in its bloom and recognized it, and heard the Voice of the Silence-go thou to the Hall of Learning and read what is written there for thee.
Chapter Two
1. Stand aside in the coming battle, and though you fight, be not the warrior.
2. Look for the Warrior, and let him/her fight in you.
3. Take his/her orders for battle, and obey them.
4. Obey him/her, not as though he/she were a general, but as though he/she were youself, and his/her spoken words were the utterance of your secret desires; for he/she is youself, yet infinitely wiser and stronger than yourself. Look for him/her, else in the fever and hurry of the fight you may pass him/her; and he/she will not know you unless you know him/her. If your cry reach his/her listening ear, then will he/she fight in you, and fill the dull void within.
And if this is so, then can't you go through the fight cool and unwearied, standing aside and letting him/her battle for you. Then it will be impossible for you to strike one blow amiss. But if you look not for him/her, if you pass him/her by, then there is no safeguard for you. Your brain will reel, your heart grow uncertain, and in the dust of the battlefield your sight and senses will fail, and you will not know your friends from your enemies.
He/She is yourself. Yet you are but finite and liable to error; he/she is eternal and is sure. He/She is eternal truth. When once he/she has entered you and become your warrior, he/she will never utterly desert you; and at the day of the great peace he/she will become one with you.
5. Listen to the song of life.
6. Store in your memory the melody you hear.
7. Learn 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 save to do his/her bidding, having no longer any care as to the result of the battle; for one thing only is important, that the warrior shall win, and you know he/she is incapable of defeat; standing thus, cool and awakened, use the hearing you have acquired by pain and by the destruction of pain.
Only fragments of the great song come to your ears while yet you are but man/woman. But if you listen to it, remember it faithfully, so that none which has reached you is lost, and endeavor to learn from it the meaning of the mystery which surrounds you.
In time you will need no teacher. For as the individual has voice, so has that in which the individual exists. Life itself has speech and is never silent. And its utterance is not, as you that are death may suppose, a cry: it is a song. Learn from it that you are a part of the harmony; learn from it to obey the laws of the harmony.
9. Regard earnestly all the life that surrounds you.
10. Learn to look intelligently into the hearts of men.
11. Regard most earnestly your own heart.
12. For through your own heart, comes the one light which can illuminate life and make it clear to your eyes. Study the hearts of men that you may know what is that world in which you live and of which you will to be a part. Regard the constantly changing, moving life which surrounds you, for it is formed by the hearts of men; and as you learn to understand their constitution and meaning, you will by degrees be able to read the larger word of life.
13. Speech comes only with knowledge. Attain to knowledge and you will attain to speech.
14. Having obtained the use of the inner senses, having conquered the desires of the outer senses, having conquered the desires of the individual soul, and having obtained knowledge, prepare now, O disciple, to enter upon the way in reality. The path is found: make yourself ready to tread it.
15. Inquire of the earth, the air, and the water, of the secrets they hold for you. The development of your inner senses will enable you to do this.
16. Inquire of the Holy Ones of the earth of the secrets they hold for you. The conquering of the desires of the outer senses will give you the right to do this.
17. Inquire of the inmost, the One, its final secret, which it holds for you through the ages. The great and difficult victory, the conquering of the desires of the individual soul, is a work of ages; therefore expect not to obtain its ewards until ages of experience have been accumulated. When the time of learning this seventeenth rule is reached, man is on the threshold of becoming more than man.
18. The knowledge which is now yours is only yours because your soul has become one with all pure souls and with the inmost. It is a trust vested in you by the Most High. Betray it, misuse your knowledge or neglect it, and it is possible even now for you to fall from the high estate you have attained. Great ones fall back, even from the threshold, unable to sustain the weight of their responsibility, unable to pass on. Therefore look forward always with awe and trembling to this moment, and be prepared for the battle.
19. It is written that for those who are on the threshold of divinity no law can be framed, no guide can exist. Yet to enlighten the disciple, the final struggle may be thus expressed: Hold fast to that which has neither substance nor existence.
20. Listen only to the voice which is soundless.
21. Look only on that which is invisible alike to the inner and the outer sense.
PEACE BE WITH YOU
THE THREE TRUTHS
"The Soul of the human being is immortal, and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendor have no limit.
"The principle which gives life dwells in us, and without us, is undying and eternally beneficent, is not heard or seen, or smelt, but is perceived by the human who desires perception.
"Each human being is their own absolute lawgiver, the dispenser of glory or gloom to themselves; the decreer of their life, their reward, their punishment."
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THE LIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE |