---

Starts and Stones On The Path

By C.A. Bartzokas

---

When You See The Light That Light Is From You And It Is You

Hast thou attuned thy being to Humanity’s great pain, O candidate for light? 
— The Voice of the Silence 1

For the charm which runs above all realities, and above the truths which we participate, immediately flies away from him who wishes to speak of and energize discursively about The One; since it is necessary that the dianoetic power, in order that it may speak of anything, should assume another and another thing. For thus there will be a discursive energy. In that, however, which is perfectly simple, there is nothing discursive; but it is sufficient to come into contact with it intellectually. That, however, which comes into contact with it, when it is in contact, is neither able to say anything, nor has leisure to speak; but afterwards [when it falls off from this contact] reasons about it. Then also it is requisite to believe that we have seen it, when the soul receives a sudden light. For this light is from him, and is him. And then it is proper to think that he is present, when like another God entering into the house of someone who invokes him, he fills it with splendour.2 For unless he entered, he would not illuminate it. And thus the soul would be without light, and without the possession of this God. But when illuminated, it has that which it sought for. This likewise is the true end to the soul, to come into contact with his light, and to behold him through it; not by the light of another thing; but to perceive that very thing itself through which it sees. For that through which it is illuminated, is the very thing which it is necessary to behold. For neither do we see the sun through any other than the solar light. How, therefore, can this be accomplished? By an ablation of all things.3

A comparison of two sets of prerequisites for chelas

From Blavatsky Collected Writings, (CHELAS AND LAY CHELAS) IV, pp. 607-8

From the Book IV of Kiu-te, chapter on “the LAWS of Upasana,” we learn that the qualifications expected in a Chela were:

1. Perfect physical health; 
2. Absolute mental and physical purity; 
3. Unselfishness of purpose; universal charity; pity for all animate beings; 
4. Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the law of Karma, independent of any power in nature that could interfere: a law whose course is not to be obstructed by any agency, not to be caused to deviate by prayer or propitiatory exoteric ceremonies; 
5. A courage undaunted in every emergency, even by peril to life; 
6. An intuitional perception of one’s being the vehicle of the manifested Avalokitesvara or Divine Atman (Spirit); 
7. Clam indifference for, but a just appreciation of everything that constitutes the objective and transitory world, in its relation with, and to, the invisible regions. 
Such, at the least, must have been the recommendations of one aspiring to perfect Chelaship. With the sole exception of the first, which in rare and exceptional cases might have been modified, each one of these points has been invariably insisted upon, and all must have been more or less developed in the inner nature by the Chela’s UNHELPED EXERTIONS, before he could be actually put to the test.

From Blavatsky Collected Writings, (ANSWERS TO QUERIES) VIII, p. 294
In Book IV of Kiu-te, in the chapter on “the Laws of Upasans” (disciples), the qualifications expected in a “regular chela” are 
(1) Perfect physical health.1 
(2) Absolute mental and physical purity. 
(3) Unselfishness of purpose; universal charity; pity for all animate beings. 
(4) Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the laws of Karma.
(5) A courage undaunted in the support of truth, even in the face of peril to life. 
(6) An intuitive perception of one’s being the vehicle of the manifested divine Atman (spirit). 
(7) Calm indifference for, but a just appreciation of, everything that constitutes the objective and transitory world.
(8) Blessings of both parents 2 and their permission to become an Upasana (chela); and 
(9) Celibacy, and freedom from any obligatory duty.”

The two last rules are most strictly enforced. No man convicted of disrespect to his father or mother, or unjust abandonment of his wife, can ever be accepted even as a lay chela.

• Blavatsky Collected Writings, (OCCULTISM VERSUS THE OCCULT ARTS) IX pp. 249- 61 
• ibid., (PRACTICAL OCCULTISM: IMPORTANT TO STUDENTS) IX pp. 155-62 
• Correspondence of main facts of human life and organisation in: Science of the Emotions, p. 477 fn. 
• Examples of conflicts between “head” and “heart,” and between the “conscious” wish and “unconscious wish” in: Science of the Emotions, p. 278 fn. 
• Practicalities and hard-headed advice on personal development in: C.A. Bartzokas (Comp. & Ed.). Compassion: the Spirit of Truth (2009); Chapter 8, “Tips for Pilgrim Souls,” pp. 239-313 
• Manu on family life and economics in: Science of Social Organisation, pp. 226- 27 
• Mimamsa rules, the science of exegesis, in all matters of duty in: Science of Social Organisation, p. 115