Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
Starts and Stones On The Path
By C.A. Bartzokas
Loyalty And Devotion To Truth Make Up The Right Attitude
The aspirant must unlearn all that he knows, prepare himself for martyrdom, and begin to learn a new alphabet on the lap of Mother Nature, every letter of which will afford a new insight to him, every syllable and word, an unexpected revelation. . . . my own principle has ever been to make the Light of Truth, the beacon of my life. The words uttered by Christ eighteen centuries ago: “Believe and you will understand,” can be applied in the present case, and repeating them with but a slight modification, I may well say: “Study and you will believe.”
If a man would follow in the steps of Hermetic Philosophers, he must prepare himself beforehand for martyrdom. He must give up personal pride and all selfish purposes, and be ready for everlasting encounters with friends and foes. He must be part, once for all, with every remembrance of his earlier ideas, on all and on everything. Existing religions, knowledge, science must rebecome a blank book for him, as in the days of his babyhood, for if he wants to succeed he must learn a new alphabet on the lap of Mother Nature, every letter of which will afford a new insight to him, every syllable and word an unexpected revelation.1
Nature gives up her secrets and imparts true wisdom only to Philaletheians because they love Truth for her own sake. No “wisdom from above” descends on any one save on the sine qua non condition of leaving at the threshold of the Occult every atom of selfishness, or desire for personal ends and benefit . . . Nature gives up her innermost secrets and imparts true wisdom only to him, who seeks truth for its own sake, and who craves for knowledge in order to confer benefits on others, not on his own unimportant personality. And, as it is precisely to this personal benefit that nearly every candidate for adeptship and magic looks, and that few are they, who consent to learn at such a heavy price and so small benefit for themselves in prospect — the really wise Occultists become with every century fewer and rarer. How many are there, indeed, who would not prefer the will-o’- the-wisp of even passing fame to the steady and ever-growing light of eternal, divine knowledge, if the latter has to remain, for all but oneself — a light under the bushel? 2
Financial Growth. Personal Growth. Inner Growth? Christianity has always put down and martyred those who have the audacity, in this time of social abasement and corruption, to live up to its ideals. Though centuries lapse and decades of ages drop out of the lap of time, great reforms take place, empires rise and fall and rise again, and even whole races disappear before the triumphant march of civilization, in his terrific selfishness the “man” that was is the “man” that is — judged by its representative element the public, and especially society. But have we the right to judge man by the utterly artificial standard of the latter? A century ago we would have answered in the negative. Today, owing to the rapid strides of mankind toward civilization generating selfishness and making it keep pace with it, we answer decidedly, yes. Today everyone, especially in England and America, is that public and that society, and exceptions but prove and reinforce the rule. The progress of mankind cannot be summed up by counting units especially on the basis of internal and not external growth. Therefore, we have the right to judge of that progress by the public standard of morality in the majority; leaving the minority to bewail the fall of its ideals. And what do we find? First of all Society — Church, State and Law — in conventional conspiracy, leagued against the public exposure of the results of the application of such a test. They wish the said minority to take Society and the rest en bloc, in its fine clothes, and not pry into the social rottenness beneath. By common consent, they pretend to worship an IDEAL, one at any rate, the Founder of their State Christianity; but they also combine to put down and martyrize any unit belonging to the minority who has the audacity, in this time of social abasement and corruption, to live up to it.1
The only scientific basis of morality is to be sought for in the doctrines of Lord Buddha and Sri Shankaracharya. . . . The starting point of the “pantheistic” (we use the word for want of a better one) system of morality is a clear perception of the unity of the one energy operating in the manifested Cosmos, the grand ultimate result which it is incessantly striving to produce, and the affinity of the immortal human spirit and its latent powers with that energy, and its capacity to co-operate with the one life in achieving its mighty object.2
Occultism requires unflinching loyalty and devotion to Truth. Otherwise, the faint-hearted will be ridiculed and chaffed by the masses, and partake in the terrible fate of Oedipus. Unless one is prepared to devote to it his whole life, the superficial knowledge of Occult Sciences will lead him surely to become the target for millions of ignorant scoffers to aim their blunderbusses, loaded with ridicule and chaff, against. Besides this, it is in more than one way dangerous to select this science as a mere pastime. One must bear forever in mind the impressive fable of Oedipus, and beware of the same consequences. Oedipus unriddled but one-half of the enigma offered him by the Sphinx, and caused its death; the other half of the mystery avenged the death of the symbolic monster, and forced the King of Thebes to prefer blindness and exile in his despair, rather than face what he did not feel himself pure enough to encounter. He unriddled the man, the form, and had forgotten God — the idea.1
But Truth should not be sought for intellectual acquisitiveness, pleasure, contempt of others, profit, fame, honour, promotion, and for other inferior ends. In sum, I would advise all in general, that they would take into serious consideration the true and genuine ends of knowledge; that they seek it not either for pleasure, or contention, or contempt of others, or for profit, or fame, or for honour and promotion, or such like adulterate or inferior ends; but for the merit and emolument of life; and that they regulate and perfect the same in charity.2
A clean life is the first step towards the Temple of Truth. “Observe,” writes the Master, “that the first of the steps of gold which mount towards the Temple of Truth is — A CLEAN LIFE. This means a purity of body, and a still greater purity of mind, heart, and spirit.”
And the latter are found more in the poor countryclasses than among the cultured and the rich. That the Master’s eye is upon you, Theosophists, is evidenced by the following lines from the same pen:
“How many of them [you] violate one or more of these conditions (of the right Path), and yet expect to be freely taught the highest Wisdom and Sciences, the Wisdom of the gods. As pure water poured into the scavenger’s bucket is befouled and unfit for use, so is divine Truth when poured into the consciousness of a sensualist, of one of selfish heart and a mind indifferent and inaccessible to justice and compassion.” 3
We should pray for a sound mind in a sound body. . . . “There is a very, VERY ancient maxim, far older than the time of the Romans or the Greeks, more ancient that the Egyptians or Chaldeans. It is a maxim all of them (Theosophists) ought to remember and live accordingly. And it is that a sound and pure mind requires a sound and pure body. 1 Bodily purity every adept takes precautions to keep. . . . Most of you (Theosophists) know this.” 2
An outward looking mindset, trapped in the gloom and doom of separateness, invariably gives rise to pessimism. But the abyss of despair has its advantages:
1. It encourages a mental Uturn from exterior preoccupations to interior realms of being and spirituality. It is like a chink in the dark prison walls of earth-life, through which breaks in a ray of light from the eternal home and, which, illuminating the inner senses, whispers to the prisoner in his shell of clay the origin and the dual mystery of our being.
2. It is a tacit proof of the presence in man of that which knows, without being told, i.e., that there is another and a better life, once that the curse of earth-lives is lived through.
Amid the early joys of existence, when we are still full of the vital energies of youth, we are yet apt, each of us, at the first pang of sorrow, after a failure, or at the sudden appearance of a black cloud, to accuse life of it; to feel life a burden, and often to curse our being. This shows pessimism in our blood, but at the same time the presence of the fruits of ignorance. As mankind multiplies, and with it suffering — which is the natural result of an increasing number of units that generate it — sorrow and pain are intensified. We live in an atmosphere of gloom and despair, but this is because our eyes are downcast and riveted to the earth, with all its physical and grossly material manifestations. If, instead of that, man proceeding on his life-journey looked — not heavenward, which is but a figure of speech — but within himself and centred his point of observation on the inner man, he would soon escape from the coils of the great serpent of illusion. From the cradle to the grave, his life would then become supportable and worth living, even in its worst phases.3
Pessimism — that chronic suspicion of lurking evil everywhere — is thus of a two-fold nature, and brings fruits of two kinds. It is a natural characteristic in physical man, and becomes a curse only to the ignorant. It is a boon to the spiritual; inasmuch as it makes the latter turn into the right path, and brings him to the discovery of another as fundamental a truth; namely, that all in this world is only preparatory because transitory. It is like a chink in the dark prison walls of earth-life, through which breaks in a ray of light from the eternal home, which, illuminat- ing the inner senses, whispers to the prisoner in his shell of clay of the origin and the dual mystery of our being. At the same time, it is a tacit proof of the presence in man of that which knows, without being told, viz.: — that there is another and a better life, once that the curse of earth-lives is lived through.1
