Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master"

by George S. Arundale

Of the National Educational Service (India)

Theosophical Publishing House Adyar Chennai India, 1918

THE fol owing chapters are reprinted from a series of Correspondence Studies on At the Feet of the Master which I have been writing for the last two years on behalf of members of the Order of the

Servants of the Star.

I have left the studies practically as I originally wrote them — permitting myself only a verbal alteration

here and there. There may be a certain amount of repetition, since I began writing the series in Bude,

Cornwall, in 1914, and only finished them in Adyar, Madras, in 1918. And there has been no time to

rewrite or even to submit them to a thorough revision.

But some of my friends think them helpful, and at least they may draw the attention of their readers to the

wonderful book which inspired them. For myself, I can truly say that At the Feet of the Master is my

constant companion, guide, and mentor. Ever by my side is the little copy given me by my young teacher.

That which he heard, I am trying to understand; and I find in the priceless words in which the teaching is

clothed al that, indeed far, far more than, I need for discipline and training. At the Feet of the Master has an appropriate message for every human being who at al strives to lead an unselfish life. [Page VI] I

earnestly commend it to teachers and students of al faiths and of all races. With the companion volume

Education as Service, a teacher or student has a complete guide for daily life. And the truths these two

great volumes enshrine are the truths upon the recognition and fol owing of which all true citizenship

depends. At the Feet of the Master and Education as Service are Heralds of the New Age, Signs of the Coming Times, and should be carefully studied by those who seek to co-operate with the future, and who

are not slaves of prejudice and custom.

Adyar, Madras,1918

GEORGE S. ARUNDALE

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

Page

CONTENTS

1

THE GIVING OF THE TEACHINGS

20

ALCYONE'S FOREWORD

33

THE QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP

48

THERE IS TIME TO ACHIEVE PERFECTION

61

THE LIVING OF THE LIFE

77

TRAINING THE BODY

101

THE ASTRAL AND MENTAL BODIES

114

THE HIDDEN LAWS OF NATURE

122

A SMALL THING

134

SERVICE AS EDUCATION

143

DISCRIMINATION

154

DESIRELESSNESS

166

DESIRELESSNESS (Concluded)

181

THE SIX POINTS OF CONDUCT

192

THE SIX POINTS OF CONDUCT (Continued)

201

THE SIX POINTS OF CONDUCT (Continued)

213

THE SIX POINTS OF CONDUCT (Continued)

225

THE SIX POINTS OF CONDUCT (Concluded)

234

LOVE

244

SINS AGAINST LOVE

254

TESTS OF LOVE

265

THE GROWTH OF LOVE

271

LOVE AND SERVICE

278

CONCLUSION

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

CHAPTER 1

THE GIVING OF THE TEACHINGS

IN many ways the little book we are going to study together is the most important gift the world has

received for hundreds of years, for the words are from the lips of a mighty Teacher, known to the world as

Pythagoras and to some of us as the blessed Master Koot Hoomi, the Master K. H. as He is generally

called in Theosophical literature. I must take for granted that you know who Masters are— if not you will

find plenty of information in such a book as Herbert Whyte's The Great Teachers, or in Mrs. Besant's The Masters and the Way to Them. Let us proceed to see how these instructions apply, so that we may follow them intelligently.

In the Preface, Mrs. Besant writes : " The teachings . . . were given to him by his Master in preparing him

for Initiation." Several questions arise here: How were they given to him ? Where were they given to

him ? What is Initiation ?

HOW THE TEACHINGS WERE GIVEN

Question No. 1. You probably know that some people are able to be quite useful on the astral plane [Page 2]I must leave the explanation of this term to some friend, if you do not understand it — and try to help in all good work as much as they can. Many of you who are reading these lines probably help very much

when the physical body is asleep and the astral body is the vehicle in which for the time you are living

and working. But there is quite as much learning as helping, and many young people, or those who are

not yet very far advanced, gather round some one more advanced and learn much that is not only useful

to them on the astral plane but helpful on the physical plane also. These elders in turn sit at the feet [An

expression which figuratively expresses “learning from”, and in the East is literally true.] of someone who

knows yet more, while a few will be receiving instructions from the Masters Themselves.

Now Alcyone — to give the name used to mark the soul apart from the various bodies he has been

wearing life after life — is one of these elders, " young in body verily, but not in Soul", as Mrs. Besant tel s us in the Preface. Marked out for a special destiny, he is privileged to receive instruction direct from the

Master's lips, and he is told to write down each morning the phrases which sum up and express the

teachings he has received during the night. Alcyone is in a special position because he was already a

pupil of the Master when these particular teachings were begun, and they were, therefore, intended to

help him to reach quickly the next stage of his spiritual journey — Initiation. The language, it will be

noticed, is very simple, for the Master was, in this [Page 3] case, addressing Himself to a physical brain

which was still very young, and so was careful to speak in such terms that the young brain might

remember and understand the next day. Every sentence, indeed, is exceedingly clear, because Alcyone

did not then know much English — the teachings were given in the autumn and winter of 1909—and only

a very little was taught at a time, partly in order that he might remember al that was said and partly in

order that he might practise each suggestion as it came. Out of the body he knew much more, of course;

but each lower body is a limitation of the one next above (of less dense matter, perhaps I should say, as

there is no "above" or "below"), and the teaching had to be adapted to the needs of lower bodies, so that they might be brought under perfect control.

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

I do not know whether the Master's physical body was asleep when He gave the teachings. Probably the

Master retires early, for He can use all His bodies perfectly, and, therefore, functions as easily out of the

physical body as in — perhaps more easily, since the matter of other bodies is less dense. If so, as

Alcyone would not be at the Master's house until, perhaps, nine or even later, the teaching would be

given by the Master in a subtle body and would, of course, be received by Alcyone astral y, i.e. on the

astral plane. On the other hand, there may have been occasions on which the Master was stil using the

physical body, in which case you may imagine Him seated in the big arm chair in the large room where

He often receives visitors, or perhaps in His [Page 4] study adjoining; Alcyone receiving the instructions "at His Feet". To the Master, all planes are equal y accessible, and though awake in His physical body He

would see and talk to astral Alcyone as well as He could see and talk to anyone on the physical plane.

He would probably withdraw His attention from the physical plane to the astral, simultaneously bringing

into play the organs of His subtle body. Physical objects would then be thrown out of focus, just as nearer

objects appear vague when we are looking at objects far off. Perhaps the Master experiences no

dimness with regard to objects at which He is not directly looking; I do not know. At any rate, our astral

Alcyone would be as real to Him as, perhaps more real than, any physical object near Him— the sofas or

the table; and He would talk to His pupil using the astral plane as the medium for His voice.

WHERE THE TEACHINGS WERE GIVEN

Question No. 2 - I have already told you that the teachings were probably given at the Master's house in

Tibet. If you turn to the map of Asia and find Tibet north of the great Himalayan range, you may see the

name of a town called Shigatse. In the vicinity of this town the Master lives in His physical body, and so

Alcyone, living right down in the south of India at Adyar, quite close to Madras, could hardly receive the

teaching in his physical body. Adyar is a village whose main distinction is the headquarters of the

Theosophical Society — situated on a large [Page 5] piece of land facing the sea and bordered by the

Adyar river. In this headquarters is a fine building containing rooms for various workers and, on the first

floor, the abode of the President of the Society together with a few other rooms appropriated to the use of

various members of the headquarters staff. Close to Mrs. Besant's rooms lived Alcyone and his younger

brother, further off being Mr. Leadbeater's big room; and thence, night after night, the physical bodies

were left asleep while their owners sailed away over the snow-topped peaks of the Himalayas to their

Master's home — a long journey, which would occupy many days if the physical body had to do the

travelling, but almost as quick as thought for inhabitants of the astral plane. No doubt our travellers

stopped on their way to look at scenery, or perhaps to help some one in trouble, but it would not do to be

late at the Master's house for He is exceedingly busy and must not be inconvenienced by our

carelessness. Probably the teaching did not take a very long time —about fifteen minutes; so, when the

party was dismissed, the rest of the night would be filled with al kinds of useful experience in the training

of Alcyone's astral and other bodies for future work. At about 5.30 in the morning the physical body would

be awakened by its owner, and, after a bath and some food, and then exercises and study, Alcyone

would go into Mrs. Besant's room to take his seat at a table in the verandah. There he wrote out very

carefully by himself that which had been taught him by the Master, the Master having summed up in a

single [Page 6] sentence or so the gist of the quarter of an hour's teaching. Thus At the Feet of the Master came gradually to be written, the greater part ... a reproduction of the Master's own words; that which is

not such a verbal reproduction is the Master's thought clothed in the pupil's words".

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

WHAT INITIATION IS

Question No. 3. "Preparing him for Initiation". What does this mean ? Wel , we must begin some way

back if we are to understand what Initiation means. I hope you all know that the real "ourselves", behind the bodies we happen to be using in this particular life, are immortal sparks of the flame of God, and that

each little spark which is one of us has been through the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms before

entering the human kingdom to which we now belong. In the early stages, millions of years ago and not

on this earth at al , the little sparks were not so much separated off from one another as they now are in

the human kingdom; they were not, to use a difficult word, "self-conscious" or alive to the world around them. In the mineral kingdom these little sparks were hardly awake at all. In the vegetable kingdom,

however, they were somewhat less sleepy; while in the animal kingdom they real y began to stir about.

So much so that individual sparks began to live separated existences instead of being content, as

heretofore, to share their experiences with brother-sparks and live a common [Page 7] life. You have

perhaps noticed that while most animals of a particular species have many peculiarities in common,

some have very distinct individualities of their own. This is the beginning of the road which is leading

them direct to the human kingdom, and then comes a time in the case of each animal when it begins to

live so definite a life of its own that the spark inhabiting it final y breaks off from fellow-sparks and, to use

a Theosophical phrase, "becomes individualised", i.e. , enters the human kingdom.

THE FIRST STEP

Now this individualisation is the first great step made by the divine spark on its way to the realisation of

what divinity really means. The first definite step on the road to perfection has been taken when the soul,

if I may use the term, traverses the bridge that, leads from the animal to the human kingdom, that,

separates definite individual existence from a more or less conscious existence shared with other souls.

In the lower kingdoms of nature, souls are joined in groups according to their kind, and the stage of

separated existence, when the soul in the animal enters the human kingdom is, as I have said, the first

great step on the path of evolution.

THE SECOND STEP

The second great step is when the human being at last begins to develop a definite sense of right and

[Page 8] wrong and to realise, however faintly, that wrong must not be done, while right must be followed.

This may be called the dawning of conscience, aroused through ages of experience that happiness

fol ows the less selfish action while pain fol ows the more selfish action. At last the individual begins to

realise that he cannot live for himself alone, and the God within him thankful y looks upon a vehicle

gradually tuning itself to the divine harmony. The battle is by no means over. Indeed it is hardly begun;

but the man's face is set towards the goal and the higher nature begins at last to receive conscious

response to the training and moulding of its lower vestures, so that both become better instruments in the

plan of Him Who is our world.

Each of these steps is an expansion of consciousness, the soul — from having been but an unconscious

cell in the body of God — begins to awaken and to take the first definite steps towards becoming a God

itself; and this is God's object in spreading self-consciousness in each part of the organism that is

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

Himself.

THE THIRD STEP — INITIATION

Now Initiation is the third great step — another expansion of consciousness, a further growth of the soul.

The second great step was, as we have seen, the awakening of conscience. But conscience had to

become definitely established as the dominant factor in the man's nature, and he had yet to learn to [Page

9] realise that while self-preservation might be a necessary law at a certain stage, self-sacrifice is the only true guide for the soul eager to know itself divine. Indeed, while conscience had doubtless been aroused,

the individual had yet to realise himself and his powers, had yet to assert himself and, for the time, to

become entirely centred in himself and his individual growth. In other words, he had to practise his

conscience in al kinds of ways. To borrow a phrase from Mr. Leadbeater, he had to become "the centre

of his circle", to learn the powers of the lower vehicles and their limitations, and to apply his conscience

to their use. At last, developing slowly his various faculties, and gradual y coming to the conclusion that

self-sacrifice brings more lasting happiness than self-seeking, he begins to live for the world instead of

expecting the world to live for him. Now and again he doubtless lapses into the more selfish mode of

living, but unselfishness begins to predominate over selfishness; and when the Masters see that nothing

will in the long run affect his determination to serve the world, one of Them, who has been watching the

man for lives, determines to give him special teaching so that he may quickly gain added power to help.

DlSCIPLESHIP

The individual then enters into an apprenticeship in the school of a particular Master and begins a series

of very hard but very helpful lives. [Page 10] Perhaps you know that the government of the world is in the

hands of a graded band of Mighty Brethren whom we cal the Great White Lodge — using the word

"Lodge" in its masonic sense of an organised fraternity. At Their head stands the Great Ruler of the

world, and around Him are grouped His Ministers, some functioning as organisers, rulers, heads of the

races of the world, others as teachers of religions, others guiding the various continents and countries,

others influencing non-human races such as Angels and Devas, yet others acting as assistants to these

Greater Ones and preparing to take Their places when They shall have passed on to stil higher work.

Now most of you young people belong to one or to another of these departments in the world's

government, and some great Master has His eye upon you, watching for the time when you intend from

your heart to give yourself to the world's service, showing unmistakable signs of earnestness. Alcyone,

for example, belongs to the teaching department and will some day become a great teacher of religion.

The Master who teaches him is, therefore, Himself a mighty Teacher destined to precede Alcyone in a

great office in the teaching department. Just as would-be engineers enter an engineering shop to be

trained by a thoroughly qualified engineer, so in the real professions of life still more scientific training is

available, and the Master Koot Hoomi will train Alcyone to fulfil perfectly the destiny to which he is to be

called. This training has definite stages — the first being when the Master determines to take a [Page 11]

possible pupil on trial, this stage being cal ed probationary discipleship. Passing successfully through the

period of probation or trial, long or short according to circumstances, the pupil is definitely enrol ed as a

member of the Master's school and becomes an accepted disciple. Very often many years pass — seven

or even more — before a candidate reaches this second stage, but Alcyone had in previous lives

satisfied the Master as to his fitness for discipleship, so in his case these two stages and the third,

sonship of the Master, a specially intimate relationship, were passed in the course of a few months, his

Initiation following on January l th, 1910. The object of the Master's school is thus to prepare its pupils for

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

the world's service, and exists partly to train them in such self-control and purity as may enable them to

present themselves as candidates for admission to the lowest rank in the Great White Lodge. Such

admission is the third great stage on the pathway of evolution — you remember, I hope, the other two —

and is cal ed Initiation because it not only means the entry of the approved candidate into an organised

fraternity with all that such entry involves, c.f. the masonic initiation ceremony, but because the candidate is for the first time brought into touch, during the ceremony, with certain great truths of life which,

heretofore, he has only dimly sensed. These truths will have been known to him intel ectually long before

and he will for long have striven to practise them; but not until the ceremony of Initiation will he feel them

as laws of his nature, [Page 12] will he experience them as living realities. His consciousness, his touch

with God, expands, and truths which were outside him, however much he may have realised them with

his mind, now become part of his very being, and he can never again think or feel or act as if they were

outside him.

EXPANSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Imagine a circle to include all you are and know. Imagine much knowledge outside yourself and a

constant pressure from within the circle to include the knowledge outside. In many places the circle

expands in the endeavour to touch the truths beyond. After a time some truth outside, which has

persistently been touched, is drawn within the circle, and the circle increases its size by the amount of

the knowledge gained. Initiation is, as it were, the moment at which some special truths notably the law

of unity, pass within the circle. Until this time, the truths were accepted, their existence was admitted.

Henceforth, these truths are realised as part, of consciousness itself.

THE VALUE OF INITIATION

To be accurate, I should observe that the object of Initiation is to confer upon its recipient power for

service, derived partly from the added truths, and partly from the fact that the individual is now a member

of a Great Brotherhood and shares, for use, the power Their unity generates. The word "Initiation" as

[Page 13] used in At the Feet of the Master means admission to membership of the lowest rank in that great Hierarchy which governs the world, the ranks stretching upwards until alone in His degree towers

the Ruler of our world Himself. Each rank is separated from the rank below by deeper knowledge and

more selfless service, and admission from a lower rank to that next higher depends upon proved self-

surrender, in the world of men, to the needs of others. Initiation is the third great expansion of

consciousness, expansion meaning here an increasing realisation by the individual consciousness of the

unity of al life, of the God within us as identical with the God without. At the ceremony itself the Master

presents His pupil for admission, having previously satisfied himself as to the pupil's worthiness, and the

candidate being approved, enters the Brotherhood, formal y dedicating himself thenceforward to lives

lived for the world's helping. You will notice that in the Preface Mrs. Besant cal s Alcyone "brother", and you must remember that this word is deliberately used to mark the special relationship between them as

both Brothers (there is no sex distinction) in one Brotherhood.

THE PURPOSE OF INITIATION

People often wonder why it is necessary to pass through the ceremony of Initiation at all. What can a

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

ceremony do to increase our capacity for service ? As a matter of fact, I imagine that by a very slow

process of growth mankind as a whole may reach the [Page 14] results of Initiation without passing

through any ceremony whatever, drifting almost unconsciously through this third great step. But some

people are eager to do quickly that which otherwise would take a long time, and they submit to what may

be called a kind of forced growth, so as to complete within a few lives that which is usually spread over

many. This involves very hard work in a Master's school, and the student needs much help. As the

eagerness for progress is entirely unselfish, the student is shown, after a certain amount of training, how

to wield powers which normally would come to him much later. Purity of life, and self-discipline, added to

definite teaching from a Master, are the certificates entitling him to a spiritual degree which confers upon

him definite powers, and these powers are explained to him during the ceremony of Initiation by a

delegate from The One in whose Hands our destinies lie. The ceremony of Initiation is an official

examination demonstrating the candidate's fitness so to use the new powers to be conferred on him that

he may become a better helper in the world of men. Such powers are not common to the period in which

the world is now living, and if an individual is to receive them he must prove his fitness before Those who

alone can confer them before the normal time.

" TO THOSE WHO KNOCK"

Notice also, please, how Mrs. Besant writes of the "great Portal" as having swung open to receive the

[Page 15] new brother, and in this connection see the words which precede the preface — "To Those Who

Knock". The Great White Lodge — "white" because white is the symbol of purity and spirituality — is believed to be a Temple of Wisdom, entry to which is through its "great Portal", a door "which opens to those who knock" in the spirit of a great love for the world in which they live, of an eager willingness to

use their powers for the benefit of others, and of a humble gratitude to Those who may deign to guide

them to wider usefulness and to a love more beautiful.

LIVE THE TEACHING

Initiation, then, is the third great step, the step which many of you are now, I hope, approaching. Another

great step is reached when from the human kingdom a Brother passes to the superhuman kingdom, the

region of perfected Men, gains the expansion of consciousness associated with the fifth great Initiation —

the one referred to in At the Feet of the Master being the first — and becomes a Master, Man who has

learned all this world can teach. We need not, however, consider this step. Enough that the teachings

which fitted Alcyone for admission to the great White Brotherhood have been given to us at the command

of the great World-Teacher Himself. Enough that we too are privileged to know how our lives should be

lived if we would become one of the band of servers and helpers. [Page 16] "But” says Mrs. Besant, "the teaching can only be fruitful if it is lived, as he has lived it since it fell from his Master's lips". So we must now try to see what this teaching is, how we are to apply it to our daily lives. Remember, as an

encouragement, that we are not expected to live the teaching perfectly — to do that would need the soul

of a Master Himself. But in the effort will lie the measure of success, and there is nothing in this world

that we cannot try to do. Young people in many parts of the world are trying hard, and some of them have

gained admission to a Master's school. The great World-Teacher needs many helpers for His work in the

world. Wil you not try to become useful to Him by training yourself beforehand, so that when He comes

He may find a disciplined band of workers ready to go anywhere and do anything, a band bringing to Him

not mere willingness to help, but, which is far more important, trained capacity to help as well ?

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THE REAL AND THE UNREAL

The Samskrit verse which precedes Alcyone's own Foreword or Introduction sums up, as it were, the

whole of the teaching that any Master can give His pupil. "From the unreal lead me to the real" is the cry of al who are in earnest. More than anything else we desire to distinguish between the true and the false,

between that which gives pain and that which brings joy; and in every life the lessons we learn from pain

are teaching us to recognise more [Page 17] unerringly, and, therefore, to cast aside, those thoughts,

feelings and actions which belong to the unreal, to that which separates us from the knowledge of God.

The unreal is that which does not last, it is the form which veils the soul, and if only we were better able

to distinguish the self from its sheaths, there would be much less unhappiness in the world. It is not

enough to know with the mind, you must know with the heart. Most of us know with our minds that the

body is merely a temporary form chosen by the soul for a particular life, but so much is the form

associated with the life within, that we feel we have lost the soul when the form breaks up at death. So

you see we are stil very much bound up in the unreal, however much in theory we may be able to

distinguish it from the real. But you must not therefore think that the unreal is useless. It is through the

unreal that we reach the real, which shows up the more vividly by contrast. The stars are shining on us

as much in the daytime as at night, but it is because of the contrast with the darkness of the night that we

are able to gaze awestruck at the splendour of the starlit heavens.

The world of matter corresponds to the blackness of night, and the souls of men may be likened to the

stars. Living in the world of matter we learn to realise — from its ever-changing forms — that there is

something which remains unchanged behind these changing forms. Living in the midst of change, the

unreal, we are forced to seek the changeless, the real, and each one of us is gradually learning to [Page

18] understand that every changing mood and feeling is no more the full expression of ourselves than is

the child-body the complete expression of the soul within. The child-body grows into the youth-body, and

the youth-body becomes the man. Behind each the soul has been pressing to express itself more fully,

and so it is with each mood and feeling. The mood passes, another comes, and yet another. And the soul

may look back upon those that are past and say: "I was not that mood, for it is dead and I remain". So the object of all the teaching is to discover what is this "I" that ever remains, and how best it may be

expressed that the form shall be the perfect mirror of the soul. Even then the form must still be unreal, for

all that veils the soul is as a fleeting shadow, but the purer the form the longer it lasts, and even the

coarse physical body lasts the longer if its particles are pure. We are told, indeed, that those Masters

who use physical bodies may cause one body to last for several hundred years if so They choose, and

this shows us that purity is more real than impurity, for our own bodies could never endure so long.

DARKNESS AND LIGHT

The second line: "From darkness lead me to light", is another form for the same idea, as is also the third :

"From death lead me to immortality". We may look upon the word "darkness" as symbolising ignorance, while "light" is ever the [Page 19] sign of wisdom, as the sun is the source of all life. I write the word

"wisdom" and not " knowledge", for knowledge belongs but to the mind, while wisdom is the science of the spirit. "From death lead me to immortality" — let the lower nature pass away and the higher shine

forth for ever.

Much more might, of course, be written in explanation of this beautiful verse, but I must leave any difficult

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

points for elucidation by some elder friend.

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CHAPTER II

ALCYONE'S FOREWORD

WE now come to the Foreword itself, and from the first Alcyone makes it clear that he is merely passing

on teaching which has enabled him to knock successfully at the portal giving access to the Temple of

Initiation. [I might note here that the actual ceremony of Initiation does take place in a kind of temple, so the simile is true literally as well as symbolical y.] "These are not my words; they are the words of the

Master who taught me". And then comes what is to me one of the most important sentences in the whole

book. "Without Him I could have done nothing; but through His help I have set my feet upon the Path".

Many people continual y wonder how it is that so many earnest and selfless workers seem to be toiling

day after day, year after year, and yet make no apparent progress. Surely X, or Y, or Z, who seem to

practise perfectly the teachings given in At the Feet of the Master, are in special touch with some Elder

Brother, are pupils of some Master, have become members of the great White Lodge. Now we must face

this difficulty frankly. Mere goodness is not enough to win admission to a Master's school, else there were

[Page 21] hundreds of thousands of members. Mere knowledge, however deep, is not enough, else all our

foremost scientists and scholars were pupils. Not even a combination of goodness and knowledge

suffices. What, then, is the standard ? A definite spiritual tone, certainly, and a record, either in this life or in those gone by, of effort devoted to the needs of the world. Also, a certain intellectual level, not

necessarily that of a genius, but that of an ordinary well educated man or woman. But beyond this there

must be elements of true wisdom, of a true understanding of the purpose of life. It is not for me to

presume to suggest a general standard below which a Master would not look for recruits to His school

but, so far as I have been taught, there must not only be a realisation of the general plan of the world's

government but also an acceptance of the Elder-Brethren as Guides and Teachers. How can anyone

enter a school unless he recognises its existence ? How can we expect the Masters to spend Their time

in teaching the elementary lessons of life to those who could learn them from elders less evolved than

the great Teachers Themselves, but at least sufficiently informed to impart the teaching required ? It is

not until we have already learned, during our course of lives, many of the lessons life in the outer world

teaches us, that we are qualified to enter the Masters' world — the world of realities — for which ours is

as a preparatory school.

Alcyone at once proclaims his fitness for membership of the Master's school by declaring that "without

[Page 22] Him I could have done nothing". Many people believe, no doubt, in the Christ, in Sri Krishna, in the Lord Buddha, in the Lord Muhammad; but either they expect some return for their belief, for example,

salvation for themselves, or they regard the object of their devotion as a pillar of strength whose principal

function is to stand between themselves and the mistakes of their weaknesses. In other words, the belief

of most people as regards one or another of these Mighty Brethren is based rather on the longing for

personal salvation than on a recognition that where These great Ones are, there we may one day stand if

we gradually learn to live our lives as They lived Theirs before reaching the present summits of Their

achievements. Some spiritual people are content to live their lives in feeble yet sincere imitation of the

example set them by their Lord, asking nothing for themselves and giving to all who need, irrespective of

creed or race, and these are drawing near to that formal discipleship which comes to those who strive,

without desire for reward, but out of great love, to live as disciples in the outer world. [I think I ought to

point out that in using the term “spiritual” as applied to people who are drawing near to discipleship I do

not wish to suggest that they are paragons of virtue. The higher ranks of discipleship are only to be won

through the constant practice of al the virtues, but the entry to discipleship and the passing through the

portal of Initiation may be gained while the candidate is still very far from adequately displaying the

perfect life. If you know any among the lower ranks of disciples you will realise that all have many

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weaknesses, while some may by no means conform to the world’s conventional standards of behaviour.

Pure-minded the disciple must be, reverent at heart, loving by nature, tolerant in attitude, and eager in his

Master’s service. Having these qualities in a reasonable state of development, there must be some

comparatively outstanding power which lifts him above the normal level as regards usefulness to the

Master. Perhaps he is a great speaker, a great writer, a great inspirer, a great artist, a great healer —

possessing some force which may be employed in drawing people nearer to realities. Then Karma must

be favourable, for he must have exhausted al Karma which might considerably hinder the Master from

employing him. We should not be very useful if we had to spend much time in paying off our own debts.

But the outstanding power may have its own outstanding weakness, and while the disciple is likely to

have himself fairly well in hand, you would gain a very false idea of discipleship if you were to imagine

that it involved a personality negative rather than positive and, in consequence, a somewhat turbulent

disposition. You do not look for perfection in young disciples, but you will certainly see power of one kind

or another. ] But there must inevitably be much ignorant belief as regards the Great Teachers, however

sincere it may be, before Their true place in our lives can become [Page 23] known, and where many

people shut themselves off from much inspiration they might otherwise receive, is in imagining that their

special Teacher is the only source of truth for al . There is a whole age of growth between the statement

that Christ is the only Saviour of the world and the knowledge that there are many Saviours, and until we

learn through experience that there are many roads to God, that each human being is travel ing along a

road as direct as our own, though he may be behind us on his pathway, we shall not have gained the

power to help each person on his own road-—an indispensable qualification for admission to a Master's

school. Out of goodness we may strive to bring others to our own road, but that is a narrow and ignorant

goodness, and a Master's school trains its pupils to serve and honour all faiths, to help each individual to

tread his [Page 24] own way according to the plan marked out for him by the God-to-be within him.

THE UPWARD CLIMB

If you understand what I have written, you will realise that once we begin to gain a glimpse of the real

principles of evolution and know that others are in front of us on life's pathway, just as many are behind

us, we must naturally long for the guidance of those who know more, not that we may know for ourselves

alone, but that our power of helping others may increase. Struggling hard to know the truth, giving up all

that the world prizes if only truth may shine upon us, we break asunder the bonds of convention, we

reject the dogmas in which lies concealed the spirit of the religion to which we happen to belong. Read

Mrs. Besant's Autobiography and see how rocky and steep was her pathway to the Masters. At last,

clinging only to a passionate determination to serve the world as best she might, giving to it her

ignorance if she can find no better offering, she wins her way to her Master's feet. She longs for power

and wisdom only that she may use them for others, and when no personal sorrow or despair prevents

her from giving al encouragement in her power to those who cry for protection, then at last she shows

herself worthy of that true knowledge which may be given only to those who could never use it for

themselves alone. Through such battle, you and I, young friends, must pass. Perhaps the struggle will

not [Page 25] yet be so hard for us as it was for her, for she is at the end of her pilgrimages to a world from which she has learned al it can teach her, and has in this life for the last time re-lived within the short

space of a few years the hardships of man's upward climbing. She has, as it were, recapitulated the

lessons learned during many lives in the world school, so that she may stand before the Masters to prove

she knows those lessons perfectly. We are still in the world school, and the lessons we learn are adapted

to our powers of understanding. But, knowing of Those in front, we are sure that They live but to show us

the way to eternal life, and however little we may be able consciously to feel Their guidance, in some dim

way at least we know that They are with us, and that without Them we could do nothing. For the time, we

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may forget Their presence, and then we must stil struggle on as did Mrs. Besant, but sooner or later we

come to Them, and as a ray of sunlight illumines a dark room, so do we then know that without Them we

could have done nothing, that all we have done is because of Them. Do not think, my young friends, that

this is dependence upon another, for not only in Their service is perfect freedom, but there is the One Life

ensouling us al , and They cannot do without us, reverently be it said, any more than we can do without

Them. We are one in spirit; what They are we shall be; what we are They have been; and to the great

Shepherd we are al sheep of His world-wide fold.

I have written on this subject at length, for I think it very necessary that you should understand these

[Page 26] important facts, since, rightly understood, they will protect you from much doubt and difficulty

when you enter the outside world.

SUCCESS CONSISTS IN REPEATED EFFORT

I should like you to pay special attention to the rest of the Foreword. "It is not enough to say that they [the Master's words] are true and beautiful; a man who wishes to succeed must do exactly what is said".

Again: "You must do what He says, attending to every word, taking every hint. . . . He does not speak

twice". How many of us are ready to sit at the Master's feet under conditions such as these ? How often

we hear Mrs. Besant, or Mr. Leadbeater, or other elders, tell us the same thing over and over again. Do

we not often think that our lecturers are constantly repeating themselves, that they continual y reiterate

the same truths over and over again, until we are almost tired of hearing them ? Such, however, is the

task of the disciple in the outer world — to recapitulate over and over again the same truths until at last

we begin to live within the truths instead of outside them. The Master could not spare the time to do this,

but, because the world must learn, He permits a pupil to take His teachings to the outer world and to win

for them an acceptance, overcoming indifference, hostility, ridicule; gaining for them enquiry and finally

understanding. On very important occasions a Master has been known to repeat directions which have

not been properly carried out, [Page 27] but the circumstances were very exceptional and of vital

importance. If, therefore, you desire to become a pupil of one of the Masters, ask yourselves whether, for

example, you persevere in trying to make your daily life conform to the wisdom of At the Feet of the

Master. This little book ought always to be at hand, so that you may constantly refer to it, and test in the light of its precepts that which for the moment may be occupying you. I may perhaps be allowed to bear

personal testimony to the fact that any progress I may have made or any increased power of usefulness I

may have acquired has been very largely due to my continual reference to At the Feet of the Master

when in difficulty or doubt. The book is a kind of modern commentary on the Ancient Scriptures, and our

gratitude goes to Alcyone for enabling us to refer many times to advice which we are not yet enough in

earnest to hear direct from the Master's lips. One of the privileges of a disciple, as I have said, is to be

able to repeat many times that which his Master will only utter once. But do not forget that you who have

this priceless teaching always at hand, are worse off, not more fortunate, than people who have never

had it at al , if you do not at least try to follow its advice. It is sad to receive no gift at all, but it is positively harmful to receive a gift from such a source and to treat it with indifference, for the result will be that in a

future life you will long in vain for that which you now neglect. You are not asked to accomplish. You are

asked to try not to be downcast at failure. [Page 28] The effort to attend to what the Master says may bring you within the circle of His pupils, for above al He asks for earnestness and perseverance. He does not

count as failures mistakes from which springs a stil stronger determination to succeed.

Remember that the Master's teaching applies everywhere and to al . It applies as much in the Parliament

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as in the home, as much to those whom the world counts greatest as to the humblest toiler living as an

unknown and uncared for unit in our midst. The teaching is indeed a counsel of perfection, but has its

teaching and its value at every stage of the upward climb; and one of the greatest mistakes we make is

to imagine that perfection cannot be reached, Utopia is not unattainable, for some have reached it, and if

you will try your best to fashion every thought, word and deed according to the Master's advice, you will

find yourselves much nearer your goal than you ever imagined in your rosiest dreams. Whatever is of

noble purpose in you — ambition, love, hope, endeavour — will come to you the more certainly for the

attention you pay to the Master's words, and one day you too will say, with the conviction of experience

behind these words, "without Him I could have done nothing; but through His help I have set my feet

upon the Path". [Page 29]

NOTE

IF you are seriously taking up the study of At The Feet of the Master you will find that much of the

Master's advice conflicts with conventional attitudes and opinions, and I have known people doubt the

Master's capacity to understand worldly conditions, "being so far removed from the troubles and turmoils

amidst which we live". Certain students, for example, who have wished to translate At the Feet of the

Master into the language of their country have sometimes desired to omit or modify so-called

"inapplicable" suggestions — imagining that their limited knowledge is of greater practical value than the Master's wisdom. For example, the passage: "If you see anyone breaking the law of the country, you

should inform the authorities", is thought by some to be in direct opposition to conventional ideas as to

loyalty and honour. The Master, it is urged, tells us to betray a comrade if we notice him breaking a law of

the country in which we live !

Now I do not wish at this stage of our study to consider the important duty underlying the advice

contained in the sentence I have quoted. We will consider it when it comes before us in its regular order.

But I think it necessary to point out the great principle underlying the whole of the teaching [Page 30] given us. The Master is emphasising the real, and it is our business to test all that we are, and all that

surrounds us, in the light of the reality as presented to us by a Master of Wisdom — One who has,

through ages of hard struggle, gained the power at once to discriminate between the real and the unreal.

In taking up the study of this book we are sitting at the feet of One who knows, not of one who only thinks

and judges. Take any ordinary ethical book written by the deepest thinker the world has seen, and you

will merely be reading the thoughts of someone in the world like yourself, though perhaps of greater

ability and deeper intuition. His line of thought need not necessarily be yours, and it is your duty to be

respectfully critical though, of course, modestly enquiring. But in At the Feet of the Master, you have the wisdom of One who has learned all the world can teach, who has in the past faced in essence all the

troubles and sorrows through which you have passed, are passing, and have yet to pass. He has

conquered the world, and not one single difficulty the world can produce could perplex Him for an instant.

He has mastered the principles of life, and whether He be living in the world of the 20th century or in that

of the 50th or of the 5th, all that surrounds Him is but an aspect of these great principles, an application

of the laws they enforce.

He states in very simple language certain of these general principles and does not at al limit His teaching

to any particular country or to any special religion. True, he is addressing those who desire [Page 31]

admission to a Master's school, but such candidates are people who know more than most others and

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

who are expected to live in stricter honour than the majority. So all the advice He gives must be of a tone

infinitely finer than that to which conventional morality vibrates.

What you have to do, therefore, is to try to understand what is the matter with your point of view when it

conflicts with the Master's, rather than to think that either the Master is not conversant with the world's

affairs or that His teaching does not apply to you and to your country. The Master does not ask you to

accept His teaching and to follow it blindly, neither would He recommend you to reject it because it does

not fit in with your scheme of life. That which you do not understand, try to understand. That which you

cannot understand, leave to the enlightening power of time and of experience. If you reject the truth it will

only return to you after infinite wooing, while if you merely leave it for future consideration when

opportunity offers, you will find that in the meantime you have been unconsciously growing towards its

understanding.

Use the world's conventions while truer attitudes are hidden from you, for the wisdom of the world is the

standard for the average man and woman. But when a Master condescends to speak — listen. Come to

no hasty conclusions in your eagerness to fol ow His precepts, for while He seeks to shatter outworn

superstitions He will not undermine beliefs still necessary for the world's growth. Think over [Page 32]

carefully what He says and try to understand its application to ordinary, everyday life, remembering that

in far-off Shigatse He knows infinitely more of the world than our greatest statesman, our wisest

philosopher, our most beneficent philanthropist, our cleverest man of business.

When you doubt — reflect; where you would oppose — suspend judgment; but when you realise —

fol ow unflinchingly, however much convention may be against you, provided you are willing to take

courage into your own hands, asking help from none, acting gently and tolerantly towards all. [Page 33]

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CHAPTER III

THE QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP

WE must now consider the qualifications to be practised if we would gain that special power of service

which is conferred upon all who are admitted to the great White Brotherhood — through passing the first

of the great Initiations. I might just remark here that the Mysteries of Greece and Rome, of which you will

find much written in ancient books, as well as modern Freemasonry, are faint imitations of the real

ceremony itself and of the tests which the candidate undergoes. The Ancient Mysteries, especial y in

their purer form, did indeed demand from their votaries very definite qualifications not unlike those with

which we are about to deal. Freemasonry in modern times has so little spiritual life that one can only

honour it for its far-off origin and for its charity; but even Freemasonry admits to membership those alone

who are deemed to be of unblemished reputation. And in the insistence everywhere on qualifications, in

the existence of a ceremonial, and in the conferment of certain powers, you have the endeavour on the

part of men to remember that there are real ceremonies, to which real powers are attached, through

which entry is sought into a Brotherhood which is the nucleus on [Page 34] the spiritual plane of a

brotherhood which some day shall exist in the outer world.

THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF LIFE

The Qualifications as given by the Master are: (1) Discrimination, (2) Desirelessness, (3) Good Conduct,

and (4) Love; and He adopts here the Eastern classification, probably because it would special y appeal

to the understanding of His Indian pupil. Remember that in each religion mention is made of the great

Path on which the successive Initiations are stages, and in each religion may be found enumerated the

qualifications which alone will enable men to tread it. In Esoteric Christianity Mrs. Besant has traced for us the Christian terminology for the various Initiations and for the qualifications leading thereto, and I

recommend you to read what she has to tell us on this subject. Similarly, other religions yield identical

information, but we will adopt the Hindu classification as given by the Master, partly because it is so clear

that we can easily understand it, no matter to what religion we belong, and partly because its' practical

value has been demonstrated by the fact that others have followed Alcyone through the Portal, basing

their endeavours on the counsel they have received from At the Feet of the Master. Do not think,

therefore, that you are studying something of no practical application. The precepts of this little book

have been brought down into practice in everyday life in the present day by comparatively ordinary [Page

35] people, and they have found their way to the Path. Remember, again, that perfection in the practice of

these precepts may only be obtained by one who has passed that great Initiation which confers on Him

the rank of Masterhood.

You are trying but to enter the Courtyard of the Temple itself — the Master's school; so it would be foolish

to expect to accomplish now that which can only come after many lives. Keep on trying, and remember

that an achievement far, far short of perfection will bring you to your Master's feet. When Mrs. Besant

says in the Preface that we must live the teaching, I think she means we must take it seriously and

concentrate ourselves on it. All our living is imperfect, but the more we are in earnest the less imperfect it

becomes. Many people write to Alcyone tel ing him what beautiful teaching He has given to the world, but

all the use most people make of it is to wish that others would pay more attention to it than they do.

Living according to a certain standard, we are not easily shaken out of it, and when valuable advice is put

before us we imagine that we are already doing our best to follow it. More vigorous effort is expected

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

from you, my dear young friends, and you should try to realise that you have been given a higher

standard towards which to strive, and that you have accordingly to revise your ideas, attitudes and

actions in the clear light which has come to you. Be positive in your study of the book, and fol ow

Alcyone's own method of "living" his Master's teaching by taking the [Page 36] various points one by one and practising them for definite periods of time.

DISCRIMINATION

The first two or three pages of the book itself are occupied in laying stress on the importance of the

distinction between people who have real knowledge and those who have not. Some of you may wonder

why the Master should have insisted upon so very obvious a fact. Of course " there are only two kinds of

people, those who know and those who do not know". It is a simple matter of logic. As a matter of fact,

however, this obvious truth is by no means generally applied, even by those who ought to know it, and

unless you begin to apply it in your relations with the outside world you will not make much progress

towards the Path on which you desire to set your feet.

The people who know have the power of discrimination. What is this discrimination ? The knowledge

which enables a man to distinguish between that which is fleeting, impermanent, and that which lasts, is

eternal. "Men who do not know work to gain wealth and power, but these are at most for one life only,

.and therefore unreal", says the Master. And later on He amplifies this definition by stating that

"discrimination must ... be made between the right and the wrong, the important and the unimportant, the

useful and the useless, the true and the false, the selfish and the unselfish". So you see that [Page 37] this quality of discrimination enters into the ordinary life of each one of us.

Do not think that the Master is blaming those who do not know. Ignorance is not a crime, it is an episode

of growth; and you yourself become one of those who do not know when you are impatient with

ignorance. But while you do not blame, nor even pity, you must at least be able to distinguish between

that which is ignorance and that which is knowledge, so that you may yourself abstain from error and

may help those who know less. All knowledge is relative, and you must bear in mind the Master's words:

"However wise you may be already, on this Path you have much to learn". Those who know more than

you do are quite patient with the knowledge you have, but which is ignorance compared with their

wisdom. They know that the blend of knowledge and ignorance which you possess is the blend

appropriate to your stage of evolution, and that you can help efficiently many people who are at a lower

level. But however certain you may be of your own infallibility, people wiser than yourself will never al ow

you to influence them as to their own thoughts and actions, except in special matters on which you have

acquired information more accurate than their own. Similarly, you must be careful not to fall into the

illusion that because any one speaks with conviction, therefore he is right. You must use your

discrimination. Many people are very lazy, and subsist on thoughts which come to them from the outside

without caring to exercise their own [Page 38] powers in determining what to accept and what to reject.

"Orthodoxy" is one name for this laziness; "custom", "conventionality", are other names. I gather these under the heading "laziness", because you would be lazy were you to al ow yourself to fol ow the smooth

and beaten road trodden by the majority of mankind. If the Master speaks of a "Path" it is because it is a

"Path" and not a road; because few there be that tread it. On the other hand, while using your

discrimination, you will remember that the more limited knowledge of those who do not know may be

adequate for the instruction of people less evolved than themselves. For example, the Master tells us

that no ceremonies are necessary. Therefore we may do without them. But to some ceremonies may be

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

necessary, and it would be very undiscriminative to think contemptuously of people who find much value

in ceremonial, or of priests who inculcate it. Let others grow as suits them, only neither imagine that

because "everybody" thinks in one particular way, therefore you must think in that way also, nor be so

lazy in thought that because some people are positive that they are right and express themselves

emphatically, therefore you al ow yourself to be influenced by a nature more positive than your own.

Keen and independent thinking is an essential feature in the character of one who would tread the Path,

for, however much the Master may help him, in the long run his rock of certainty must be based on the

God within himself, and a time comes for students who are treading the Path when all external help

seems to fail, [Page 39] and strength must perforce be drawn from within. Let me finally observe that you

should not rush to the conclusion that you must forswear completely al that to you is no longer

necessary. It may be your duty to take part in ceremonies for the sake of others who stil need them. It

may be your duty to surround yourself with, many customs, conventionalities and orthodoxies, but only

for the sake of others. Your primary duty is service, and you will not be a successful teacher unless you

modify your teaching to suit the intelligence of your class. Neither will you be a successful teacher,

however, unless your knowledge is far in advance of that of your class, and while you may yourself use

crutches to show a lame man how to support himself, you will not therefore use them at other times as

well. If you confine yourself within outgrown forms, except in order to help, you are indeed lazy; but there

is no laziness on the part of those for whom such forms exist. So, while avoiding laziness yourself, you

will remember that others find a temporary salvation in that which to you would be stagnation, and you

will minister to their needs by giving them that which will help them best.

THE REAL KNOWLEDGE

Now what is this knowledge, which should mark you off from those who do not know ? I have already told

you that it partly consists in being able to distinguish between that which is fleeting and that which

endures. Indeed, throughout this little book [Page 40] the Master is continually explaining to us by way of contrast how the real differs from the unreal. For example: "You must discriminate between the selfish

and the unselfish", "feel no anger or impatience”, "never allow yourself to feel sad or depressed". Why ?

Because if you do feel anger or impatience or depression you are for the time living in something which

will pass away, while in the long run serenity and cheerfulness will carry you to your goal. So the answer

to my question is partly to be found in the study of these contrasts. But the Master also points out that the

really " important thing is .... the knowledge of God's plan for men". All the qualities which you have to acquire are, of course, part of God's plan for men. But the qualities are to be acquired for a purpose. "For

God has a plan and that plan is evolution", and the qualities you are slowly building into your nature are

intended so to purify it that it may be "in tune with the Infinite", in harmony with the working of God's own nature. The laws of nature are the rules of evolution, the signs of God becoming self-conscious in every

spark of His Being, and you must understand these laws so as to be "on God's side, standing for good

and resisting evil, working for evolution and not for selfishness". Certain of these laws are already known

to the world. We speak of the laws of science, the laws of art, the laws of literature : we know of the law

of gravitation and of other laws relating to matter. These you must study sooner or later, if not in this life

then in another; for you cannot help [Page 41] perfectly unless you know God's laws for His unfoldment.

But we are not concerned with these particular laws at present, for the Master guides us to begin from

within rather than from without. First learn something about the laws of the spirit, and the laws of matter

are seen to be but their reflection in grosser form. Understand the basis of the spiritual life and you will

the more easily familiarise yourselves with the principles of the arts and sciences as at present known.

Moreover, the world will give you the latter, while, except perhaps in Hindu philosophy, there is as yet

little science of the soul worthy of the name.

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THE LAWS OF THE HIGHER LIFE

We younger souls can know but little of these higher laws — "laws of the higher life", as Mrs. Besant has called them — and I cannot, therefore, hope to enumerate even a very few. But the Master gives us

several hints as to where to look for them, and His suggestions will help us to gain a general idea of the

kind of laws we may expect to find. He says: "Al are one, and . . . only what the One wills can real y be

pleasant for anyone". Here is a law of unity. "All are one". Therefore "only what the One wills can ever be really pleasant for anyone" — the law of a common purpose. We share a common brotherhood and are

moving towards a common goal. If your discrimination has led you to this you are on the right road, for,

says the Master, [Page 42] "this discrimination is the first step". These two laws of our being give the key to the statement that "those who are on His side know why they are here and what they should do". They

are here because the God within them wills to be here, and they know that what they have to do is to

combine with others in the effort to reach the common goal. I do not suggest that our knowledge of these

two laws is clear and definite. We but dimly sense them, and the object of developing qualifications is

that we may gain a clearer understanding. Nevertheless, when we are nearest to our higher natures,

nearest to that part of the One which dwells within us, we are sure of these laws, however much we may

sometimes "act foolishly and try to invent ways" for ourselves which we think will be pleasant for

ourselves.

Now what evidences have we of the working of these two laws ? First, the ever-growing appreciation of

the value of brotherhood as conducive to peace and happiness. I need not give examples from the outer

world, for you can think of many yourselves. The world is taking slow but unmistakable steps on the road

towards the goal of brotherhood, and because life is all the better for these steps we know that the One is

willing us to take them. Then again, we know from the statements of philanthropists, mystics, seers,

founders of movements intended to spread the spirit of brotherhood, that the moments of real and

therefore abiding joy come when they share what they are and have with others. There comes the sense

of a larger life, of a freer spirit, when we share with [Page 43] others and when we live for them. The

selfish man gains no lasting pleasure from acts of selfishness, though he may doubtless experience

temporary thrills at each successful self-seeking. But these thrills are followed by reaction, and the more

the selfish man gains the less he is satisfied, until in despair at the impossibility of satisfying his

increasing cravings he seeks some other road. The joy of sharing is far different from the fleeting

exultation at having gained at another's expense. The joy of sharing has no reaction, is followed by no

unhappiness, brings an ever-increasing peace and an ever-growing power of giving more. Unselfishness

— that is to say, working for the larger self instead of for the smaller — is its own reward, while

selfishness must ever seek outside itself for a reward, which becomes more and more, elusive as time

goes on. Are theses facts not evidence of the truth of the statement "that only what the One wills can

ever be real y pleasant for anyone", since the more we live for an increasing number of others, not only

do we grow the happier, but we are thereby expressing more of the One who is in us al ? The more we

identify the One with ourselves the happier we become.

SERVICE IS THE HEART OF SACRIFICE

Let us try now to see a little more clearly the nature of that Wil which governs the world. We see at once

that the Wil of the One is a perpetual sacrifice, for our own sacrifices lead us nearer to Him. [Page 44]

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Not a sacrifice involving regret, but a joyful sacrifice, though doubtless involving pain, for without the

contrast of pain the beauty of the joy would be the less. It is all sacrifice — willing or unwilling. The

servant who ministers to the needs of the household, the tradesmen who supply us with food, the officers

of government who administer the State, the teacher who teaches and the scholar who learns — all

perform daily acts of sacrifice, and the degree of happiness in the sacrifice determines the nearness of

the doer to the One whose great sacrifice is in training each one of us — parts of Him — to become self-

conscious of His and our divinity. In the East, great stress is laid on sacrifice — and part of the regular

daily duty consists in offering sacrifice to the Ancestors, to the Angels (Devas), to the animals, and so

forth. Of course, we do not go through life thinking of each act as a sacrifice, for we have acquired the

evil habit of imagining that a sacrifice involves denying ourselves some pleasure, and thus many try to

avoid sacrifice for fear lest the joy of life be lost, when in fact the true spirit of sacrifice secures to us

abiding peace. "We must make some sacrifices for our son's education" — "You must sacrifice

something, if you want this or that". A sacrifice only involves the giving up of something lower, never of

something higher, and if our servants, our officials, our teachers, our students, our tradesmen, above al

ourselves, lived lives in which the dominating purpose was sacrifice — the sacrifice of the lower on the

altar of the higher — our work would be far better done, [Page 45] and the world would be a far happier

place to live in. There is no trade, no profession, no calling of any kind, no act, however trivial, which

does not gain beauty if performed in a true spirit of sacrifice — as an offering to the Lord. This is indeed a

difficult task for us al , but we must make a beginning, and the best way is to perform every day a

conscious act of sacrifice — an act deliberately performed in the name of, and in homage to, the Great

Sacrificer through whose own act of sacrifice we live and move and have our being. The Boy Scouts

speak of a "good turn", the Sons and Daughters of the Empire enjoin “a daily act of service" — these are true sacrifices, for service is the heart of sacrifice.

THE HIGHER AND THE LOWER SELF

All sacrifice, if of value, must be ordered sacrifice, and the more we learn of the laws under which it acts

the more effective our sacrifice will be. Many volumes might, indeed, be written by a competent authority

on the principles of sacrifice, and most fascinating volumes they would be. But within the limits of these

talks I must confine myself to one or two special laws of the higher life which it is essential for you to

know.

In the first place, your principal duty is to realize that the individual you call "I" is only a portion of that real

"I" which is a spark in the flame of God. In other words there is the eternal "I" which sends forth a feeler into this outer world to gain al that the outer world can give. The feeler is not the " I," any [Page 46] more than the root is the whole tree. There is more of you than ensouls your waking consciousness in your

physical body, and it is this bigger "you" which guides you to those experiences in which your life is

passed. You may cal this bigger "you" your higher self if you wish, but do not identify it with the lower vehicles in which it has to live. The higher self desires only the purest form of life, has no leanings in the

direction of your weaknesses, is not cast down by your failures, and above al knows on its own plane of

existence al that the lower "you" has to learn down here. Many young people think that the higher self

ought to have been content with its knowledge. But the sacrifice is not complete until knowledge is

everywhere, until divinity is self-conscious in all its parts. God is al -knowing on His own plane, but He

desires that His own self-consciousness shall awaken on all the planes of His being so that we — the

cells of His Body — becoming awake to the divinity in which we share, may by the very act of awakening

become Gods ourselves. First, however, we must master the various grades of matter from the highest,

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which is hardly matter at al but rather spirit, down to the matter of which our physical bodies are

composed, and perhaps lower stil .

THE FLOWERING OF OUR DIVINITY

Having mastered them, we may one by one cast them aside, until we live on the highest plane of spiritual

existence, on the plane of Divinity, only to come forth when the time approaches for an act of sacrifice

like unto that which God Himself is making now. This lies in the infinite future, but it is certain — so

certain that even at this stage of our growth we can notice that the God within us, our higher nature, is

gradually acquiring mastery over the lower vehicles through which He comes into definite contact with

the lower planes. Daily He works, and while self-control takes long to practice, and the instruments do

not always function as they should, nevertheless every day sees some advance for each one of us, and

there is none so low or so degraded that he is not rising according to the measure of his possibility. I

want you, if you will, to remember this overwhelmingly strengthening fact as often as you can — that

within you is perfection undeveloped, a bud to become a flower. But the bud is there, and in your worst

moments, when you feel that you have failed utterly and, perhaps, irretrievably, the perfection-to-be stil

remains within you and is the constant source from which fresh effort to lead the higher life must keep on

coming, no matter what you do. Immersed in matter as we are, surrounded by the objects of the senses,

we become confused, imagine that we are lost within their whirl. But the matter which surrounds us, of

which our lower bodies are constituted, and the objects of the senses — whether mental, astral or

physical — are themselves only waiting to be controlled. Master them, ray upon them your divinity, and

they become powers for use instead of forces to be fought, and of which, perhaps, to be afraid.

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CHAPTER IV

THERE IS TIME TO ACHIEVE PERFECTION

I THINK that the truth I have endeavored to express in the preceding talk is of vital importance, for the

more we meditate on it the more real it becomes, and we begin to realize that however far off we may be

from the successful practice of the qualifications as given in At the Feet of the Master, perfection must some day come, and with it the happiness of perfect service.

Time for accomplishment is, indeed, necessary, but if one law of our being is that there is a divinity within

us gradually unfolding into its perfect flower, another law tells us that the unfoldment takes place slowly

but surely (I) in accordance with the principle of action and reaction, or cause and effect, (ii) through a

continuous series of dippings down into and withdrawal from the matter of the lower planes, in other

words — reincarnation. Let us glance at this law of time which, within itself, involves the opportunity as

well, since time would be valueless without the possibility of making use of it. Expressing the law in other

terms, we might say that the unfoldment of the divinity within us takes place under the coercion of

experience — experience which is ever sifting the real [Page 49] from the unreal, the permanent from the

temporary. In Christian phraseology we are told that as we sow so shall we reap, Hinduism speaks of

Karma, a Theosophist might talk of the law of cause and effect. Put plainly, the law states that, as we

think and act so shall we become, and, as time is needed if we are to think and act perfectly, we are

continually being immersed in the densest matter of our globes in order by degrees to understand its

nature and therefore to become its master. The life you are leading now, the body in which this latest

immersion has taken place, are only incidents in a long series of lives, You have had , many lives before,

and you have used many bodies before. Between each life you have, as it were, made up your debit and;

credit accounts incurred during the lifetime on earth; and then, with an ever-increasing spiritual balance,

using this word in its financial sense, you go into physical plane business again, both to pay off old debts

and to acquire new ones, and thus to amass an increasing spiritual fortune, as by degrees the new debts

become less and less and your wisdom grows more and more. You keep on doing this for hundreds of

thousands of years, for mil ions of years if you take into consideration the sleep-life, the dream-life, and

the dawning wakefulness in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms respectively. God gave you the

capital to start with — your spiritual possibilities; and though from time to time your capital may seem to

have become very much tied up, it can never be utterly unreachable, [Page 50] since He will temporarily

withdraw you from active partnership in the business in which He is engaged if you act so recklessly that

you cannot be trusted to manage your (and His) affairs properly. Indeed, you might conceivably be

required to make a fresh start, not, perhaps, at the beginning, but some little way back from the place at

which you began to grow improvident. This is probably a comparatively rare event, for most of us are

developing our capital by slow but sure degrees.

THE TWO LAWS OF THE HIGHER LIFE

The knowledge of the way in which each one of us ultimately attains perfection is of the utmost value and

importance, since not only can we never be completely overwhelmed by despair or reduce the power of

drawing on our capital almost to the vanishing point through an insensate accumulation of debts, but we

are able to give the most strengthening assistance to those who see nothing before them but debts due

and only the generosity of the great Creditor — however certain — to depend upon, if even that. And as it

is so important to grasp as clearly as we can the essential features of the laws of the higher life, let me

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recapitulate briefly the truths so far stated. First, the unity of al . If I may be allowed to use the simile of a banking establishment, I would say that the Ruler of our world [I distinguish between the terms “God” and

“the Ruler of our world”. By the word “God” I mean the divine principle animating all life everywhere —

God the Father. “ The Ruler of our world, "on the other hand, is the official who is at the head of the Great White Lodge, the highest of its members, alone in His rank. Mightier than all others, not a member of our

own humanity at al , He is God’s Regent upon this earth. In Hindu scriptures He is mentioned under the

name of SANAT KUMARA.] is the [Page 51] supreme Director of a great family spiritual banking concern.

He Himself started with capital He had developed through experience in countless previous ages, capital

which originally came from God, as does all capital. His function is to enable all the members of His

family to develop their capital as He has developed His. He is, as it were, pledged so to arrange His

business that sooner or later every member of His family must, even though failure come time after time,

eventual y develop his capital to its utmost value. Herein lies both the unity and the statement of the

second law — the existence of a common goal. Indeed the first law involves the second, for unity would not be complete unless our destinies were common, unless the future involves the same unity as did the

past to which we trace our common source. I have called this common destiny perfection, and, using

words to express the simile of the banking concern, I might say that the object of the firm is to develop for

each of its partners a substantial spiritual capital, so that each partner may, in course of time, set up in

business on his own account. Then comes the question: How does each partner reach this level ? The

answer is as clear in the spiritual world as it is in the actual business industry on the physical plane.

Through experience; in course of time; by setting up in business in a very [Page 52] smal way to start

with, after going through a certain amount of preliminary training; by accumulating a large number of

debts which are not only hard to pay off but take time to pay off too. What was the first stage which I

mentioned in the very beginning of this series of talks ? Individualisation —- the passing from the animal

to the human kingdom. Before this, the partner was only a sleeping partner. He was learning the

rudiments of subjects whose deeper study would come later on. He was hardly in the business at al — a

shareholder, truly, but with no more conscious share in the business than has a bank manager's baby an

active share in his father's affairs. But the baby grows and become a young boy with a vague idea as to

what his father is. The newly individualised man has a vague idea as to the existence of a purpose in life

around him, but he cares nothing for it as yet, save as it affects his personal and immediate well-being.

But in time comes the second stage — the awakening of conscience. The youth becomes a clerk in his

father's firm, begins at the lowest rank, has very little responsibility. By degrees he is entrusted with small

portions of his capital on which to experiment, he is sent out into the world to see what he can do with the

capital (conscience) of whose existence lie has been hitherto unaware. "I have a conscience, I have the

power to distinguish between right and wrong. Hitherto I have shared unthinkingly in the universal

conscience of which my own is a part, but now I know that I have a conscience of my own, I must use it

and make as much of it as I can, so that [Page 53] it may grow big and strong". So the shareholder, now increasingly conscious of being not only a shareholder to receive dividends but a partner to produce

them, goes out into the world — the lower planes — as an active agent and builder of his own fortunes.

Just as a business man goes home, after office hours are over, to rest from the day's labours, to think

over what good and what bad business he has done during the day, and to enjoy happiness with those

dear to him, so each one of us, after one life is over, rests in other worlds and gathers fresh energy —

born of striving in lives gone by — for the life to come, for the new "day" of business on the physical

plane. We cannot in one day develop all the capital required. We have to learn how to employ it, what

transactions to avoid, what transactions are profitable, and the time taken is the expression of the law of

reincarnation. But not only do we need time, we need also experience. We must suffer from the bad

transactions and reap happiness from the good ones. Unless we see results, we shall not know how to

compare the relative values of various transactions, of whose nature we know for the time being nothing.

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It is the result far more than the cause that tells us the nature of the cause itself. The law of cause and

effect states that as the cause is, so the result will be, but in actual experience we first learn that as the

result is, so the cause must have been also. It is only after experiencing many results that we either avoid

their cause or set it in motion, according as to [Page 54] whether it brings happiness or pain. Even then we are temporarily satisfied with causes which produce results whose pleasure-producing power is but very

limited. We are, in other words, content with the immediate however fleeting, provided it satisfies for the

moment. This is the case with most people, and places them within the ranks of those who do not know.

You will remember, however, that there is a third stage — the stage at which the individual definitely

pledges himself to a certain line of conduct, at which he shows himself as among those who are at least

learning to know, by passing through Initiation into the wider life beyond. He is the partner who, having

shown himself capable of wisely managing his capital within comparatively narrow limits, is not only given

opportunities of developing it much more rapidly and widely than would normally be possible, but is

allowed to share the responsibilities devolving upon the directors of the firm itself, those whose business

it is, under the guidance of the Ruler, to help the junior partners to gain the necessary experience. A

young director, truly, but none the less a director, though there are those above him with still greater

responsibilities upon their shoulders— those who belong to the ranks of the higher Initiates.

THE ROAD OF EVOLUTION

In this way are the various stages passed, and the individual gradual y learns how to develop his spiritual

capital so as one day, in the far-off distant [Page 55] future, to become the head of a firm himself, a Ruler in a universe. We already know that the one class of transactions which is profitable, using this word in

its best sense, is the class involving the service which is the heart of sacrifice, God is the great Sacrificer,

for, instead of living on His capital, He not only shares it among us all, but trains us, through the Ruler of

our world, to develop our capital to the utmost. Without irreverence may I say that even our mighty Ruler

Himself is the greater for the sacrifice He makes in guiding our evolution, and grows at His exalted level

into still further spiritual splendour. When we reach the level at which He made the great and supreme

Sacrifice of remaining to toil when He might have passed on to enjoy, at which the development of our

spiritual capital has been such as to enable us to make this stupendous outlay, we too shal make the

sacrifice and win its reward. To do so, we must pass through all the intervening sacrifices step by step,

the less leading to the greater; and only as we serve and sacrifice in proportion to the capital we have,

can we hope to develop the capital and so increase the service. The art of service — should I not rather

call it the "science" — is not, however, to be learnt in a day, or within the brief space of one lifetime. First comes the service of the smaller self. The whole tendency in modern times, as far as the West is

concerned, and increasingly so in the East, has been to force the individual to emphasise himself. He

has been learning through competition of al kinds, through strife, through the [Page 56] dictates of

personal ambition, to consider his own welfare and that, perhaps, of those immediately dependent upon

him. Personal wealth, personal power, personal influence, personal ability — al have been pursued, and

the futility of all, save as used for wider service is the lesson learned. Often at the close of a life devoted

to such pursuits, a man has at last seen how little true happiness they have given him through life, and

hurriedly he strives to tread the other path by lavishing his gains upon a world from which erstwhile he

took them. If there were no other lives, the act would be too late, for you cannot atone in a year for a

lifetime of selfishness. But the future is before him, and perhaps the lesson has so been learned that in

the period of rest between that life and the next he will have had the leisure (and the clearer vision the

inner planes al ow) to decide upon a life less circumscribed than that which he devoted to the interests of

his own small self. Payment will indeed be exacted for all harm done, the debts on the mistaken

transactions must be paid in full, but not only has he time in which to pay them, but also time and

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opportunity in which to plan fresh schemes to harmonise with the wider vision he has gained. [ Compare

the growth of the soul to a house with a large number of windows and doors, most of which are closed.

Outside, the sun is shining, but into one or two rooms only do the rays at first enter. Gradually, the

occupier of the house — the soul — begins to appreciate the life-giving warmth from the sun, though he

still lives partly in the darkness and imagines it to be all he needs. But when he goes into the rooms

whose windows and doors he has opened to the sunlight, the contrast between the darkness and the

light begins to strike him. Going back into the darkness, he remembers the light and looks for the

windows and doors so that he may open them too. Room after room is brightened, until the house is

hardly a house at all — only a number of walls between the doors and windows — and serves but the

purpose of concentrating the sunlight within its limits. The house is the lower part of man — his mental,

emotional and physical bodies. Each room is a power or faculty, and the owner of the house is the higher

self — the ego, the soul. The darker the house, the greater the unhealthiness, the greater the dirt, the

greater the sordidness. But the Masters’ “houses” are merely passage ways for the sunlight, and Their

bodies are but lenses — to use another simile — from which the rays of life spread outward with

concentrated intensity. Think this over and follow its symbolism if such be your temperament. ] [Page 57]

Much more might be written on these great and dominant truths. Many other laws might have been

mentioned, and innumerable are the ways of their application. But I can only hope that you will think over

these things and fil in for yourselves the gaps I have been forced to leave unfil ed. In At the Feet of the

Master we are taught to discriminate between transactions which are profitable and those which are not.

We are shown, as it were, how to invest our capital so that it may multiply. Invest in a kind thought,

feeling, word or action, and much will come to you in return — above all, an increased power to think,

feel, speak and act kindly. Invest in selfishness, and your capital — your power — diminishes. As your

capital diminishes — perhaps it would be more accurate to say is increasingly neglected" —.your own

happiness, as well as that of others, proportionately diminishes, until you become so barren of happiness

that in despair you seek another road than that of selfishness. [Page 58]

NOTE

The whole question as to the purpose of the world, as to the existence of God, as to the origin of being, is

most intricate, and a fruitful source of mental confusion. A young friend of my acquaintance, hearing that

God made the world, wanted to know who made God, and his question was most reasonable. On the

other hand it would be better policy on the part of parents and elders to realize that they cannot expect to

be able to answer every question put to them by children; it would be more honest, too. Personally I take

the position that as an insignificant unit in this complex world I can only hope to understand a very limited

portion of God's plan for men. Al that I can hope to acquire is a comparatively imperfect working

hypothesis adequate to my temperament and destiny, and though the hypothesis may be il uminative to

others, they must nevertheless think out their own hypotheses for themselves — building in such features

in the hypotheses of others as may harmonise with the general plan of their structure. The keystone of

my hypothesis centres round the fact that there is sorrow and unhappiness in the world, and that while I

may bring a certain amount of physical and emotional consolation and strength to those who are

susceptible to my influence, I must also bring mental consolation and [Page 59] strength — first by trying

to understand the purpose of existence myself and then by applying such understanding as I may have

acquired to the helping of my fellow-creatures, both practically and in striving to assist them, too, to see

more clearly the splendour of their future, however it may be hidden by the intervening clouds of

ignorance and discouragement.

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Let me just restate in other language the ideas that help me in establishing my hypothesis.

A God-Soul — conscious of Himself as Divine — lives only on the plane of pure divinity, is limited by no

matter grosser than that of the plane or level on which He lives. In the infinite past He has been as we

ourselves are now, a spark heating itself into flame through the friction of matter in all its forms and

densities. Now a Flame, He showers out sparks — potential flames — and encloses them in layer after

layer of denser and denser matter — itself the substance of which the flame is made. In course of time

the spark burns through the layers one by one and in the process — we call it experience — gains

increasing brilliance, at last bursting into a glorious Flame. A spark from a fire may, appropriately placed,

become itself a fire similar to the one from which it came. The fanning of the spark is accomplished

through the laws of nature, by means of karma, reincarnation, and all the innumerable actions, and

reactions, connected with the world outside us, which we undergo incessantly. The very matter in which

we are embedded is itself so growing that out of it shall come sparks, similar to those which are

ourselves. The difference between [Page 60] the matter around me, the trees, the sea, the animals, the

minerals, is that within me is concentrated sufficient of God's divine heat to make a spark capable of

expansion into a separate flame, while the divinity ensouling the trees and the animals and the minerals

is spread over a wider area, has not been narrowed down and focused to a point. A number of animals, a

larger number of trees, a still greater mass of metals, share the heat of divinity between them, and ages

must pass before any individual form shall, through the experiences of its class, have concentrated within

itself such heat as may burst into a spark; and metals must enter the vegetable kingdom for further

subdivision and thence pass to the animal kingdom for further subdivision still, until the human kingdom

is reached, in which each unit is in itself a spark.

To reach God, therefore, we must become Gods ourselves, and no greater reverence can be offered

Him, no more convincing testimony to His omniscience and omnipotence, than to ascribe to Him the will

of making each one of us perfections in His own image. For He can do no more than make us as

Himself. I might write much more on this, even that which I have set down itself bristles with difficulties

and doubts and possibilities, but perhaps if my readers think it over they may find themselves started on

a line of thought which may bring order into a world of apparent chaos and purposelessness.

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CHAPTER V

THE LIVING OF THE LIFE

THE Master proceeds to point out " that of the real and the unreal there are many varieties and He has

previously mentioned one variety when He observed that "it does not matter in the least whether [a man]

calls himself a Hindu or a Buddhist, a Christian or a Muhammadan, whether he is an Indian or an

Englishman, a Chinaman or a Russian". For " if he is on God's side he is one of us". Now you must not conclude from this statement that religion does not matter, has very little value; although we are told

further on that ceremonies do not matter for those who are at a certain stage of growth. Religion matters

considerably, but truth matters infinitely more, and those who know — while using some special form of

the truth as displayed in a particular religion — seek the truth within the form, and know that God — who

is Truth Incarnate — manifests Himself in many ways. In reality, a special form of religion is of the utmost

value to those who do not yet know that al religions spring from one source— the great Head of the

world's teaching department, who is even now waiting for the world to be ready to receive Him once

more. Religion makes truth [Page 62] tangible to those who have stil to realize that there are many roads

to the One, on each of which He welcomes His devotee — to quote a Hindu scripture. Most people need

rules of life to be imposed from without before they learn to evolve them from within, and great Teachers

come from time to time either to frame special rules for the special circumstances under which a race is

being trained, or to modify the old rules in the light of progress made. Christianity was given to the

western world as a statement of the special set of ideals towards which it was to work its way. Hinduism

strikes an entirely different note, but one none the less needed for the fulfilment of the universal harmony.

Unfortunately, people tend to imagine not only that their own rules express the whole of the truth for al

the world, but that they are appointed by God to declare the valuelessness of al other rules and to

induce the fol owers of these to come into the true and only fold. Obviously this is a case of pride, self-

righteousness. In the days of the Inquisition violent means were employed to force those who gripped

another form of truth either to recant or to be destroyed. In modern times we have the missionary

movements to the so-called "heathen" — admirable in their purely medical and educational work, and

when directed towards aboriginal tribes, but marred by an intolerable egoism and self-complacency

which imagines that God has made them His elect. If missionaries would continue to do all they are now

doing along secular lines and were to combine this with an enquiring reverence for the [Page 63] religion

in the midst of which their work has placed them, they would be among those who know instead of

among 'the ignorant who say: "What I believe is true, what I do not believe is false".

ALL RELIGIONS HAVE ONE SOURCE

We learn from the Master's statement that the form of religion into which a man is born does not matter.

In other words, we are born into a special religion either because its peculiar influences are needed for

the development of our natures or to learn to break through its binding form without losing reverence for

the ennobling truth. Most Christians, for example, are best advised to follow the general principles of their

own religion, without, however, paying more attention to form than is helpful. Christian rites and

ceremonies will probably be valuable to them, but they should gradually, through the practice of the form,

find their way to the spirit within, so that ultimately the form drops away because its work is done. Look

around you, at people, at animals, at trees, at flowers, at the sea in its various moods, at the towering

rocks. The divine spirit is indeed pervading al , but it is the form which leads you to seek the occupier

within, and small wonder that for the time the form suffices. You know that God is within the form, but

God and the form are so much one to you that you cling to the form you can touch and feel, and you take

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God for granted. So it is with religious ceremonies — they [Page 64] appeal to the senses, and their inner

significance is so much taken for granted that in course of time it becomes ignored altogether, perhaps

even lost to outer view. Sooner or later, however, God can no longer be taken for granted, and it is time

to begin learning the lesson that forms are but temporary sparks thrown out by God to draw attention to

His nature. Play with the sparks and learn to love them —that is inevitable, for even the sparks are part of

God. But sooner or later the sparks will flicker and vanish and new sparks will be showered forth, new

forms will take the place of old; and in the hopelessness of clinging to forms which must inevitably die is

born the desire to find something which endures behind al passing manifestations. Then do we begin to

realize that the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Christian the Muhammadan, are all living within their respective

portions of the truth. They are like people living in different rooms within the same house. Some are

proud of their own rooms and do not know that there are other rooms as beautiful as theirs. Seeing

people in other rooms, they say to them: "Come into my room. It is so much more beautiful than yours.

Your room is bare and ill-furnished. See how much more habitable my room is !" And the answer is: "My

room suits me. I am used to it. It is furnished in the manner most helpful to the work I have to do. It

contains conveniences which yours lacks, just as yours contains conveniences for you which mine

lacks". We all live in the same house. Until we can move from room to room uncritically, [Page 65] and in reverent appreciation of the arrangements of the rooms of others, each had better keep to his own room.

But the time comes when it is no longer pleasant to live in one room only, and the true inhabitant of the

house is he who makes himself equal y at home and appreciative in all the rooms to the delight of their

respective occupants, though no doubt preferring the room which is special y his own.

RACES ARE CLASSES IN GOD'S SCHOOL

Similarly, it does not matter to what race a man or woman belongs— " whether he is an Indian or an

Englishman, a Chinaman or a Russian". Each race has its work to do, as has each religion, and those

who know are not only without race-prejudice, able to appreciate the qualities in all races, but are

thankful to help in any land to which the Master's service cal s them. Respecting the customs and beliefs

of those among whom their work for the time being finds them, they seek to discover the purpose for

which the race exists and strive to forward this to the utmost of their power. Each race has its own note to

sound in the universal harmony, as has each religion, and if we dislike a religion or a race it is probable

that we shall have one day to be born within their ranks to overcome our ignorance as to the part they

play in the growth of us al .

We then come to a variety of general principles on which certain kinds of discrimination are based —

discrimination "between the right and the wrong, [Page 66] the important and the unimportant, the useful and the useless, the true and the false, the selfish and the unselfish".

THE MASTERS AND OURSELVES

"Between right and wrong", says the Master, "it should not be difficult to choose, for those who wish to fol ow the Master have already decided to take the right at all costs". Here is a great truth put in a

somewhat peculiar way. Probably you wonder whether the Master was speaking of Himself. Personal y, I

imagine He was speaking of Those greater even than Himself, Alcyon translating the Master's thought

about His own superiors into terms expressing his own relationship to the Master. The point is

unimportant; but we do learn the very significant fact that the individual who seeks a Master of the

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Wisdom to be his guide has made the great decision which separates him from those who do not know.

Truth is, indeed, our ultimate goal; but sooner or later we must inevitably unite with Those who are nearer

the goal than ourselves. You will find people at various intermediate stages, and it is well to bear in mind

what some of these stages are. Some people, for example, are devoted to abstract ideals, and do not for

the time feel the need of a Master's guidance. Others, engaged in work involving the utmost self-

sacrifice, do not in their lower bodies know of the existence of Masters and even, perhaps, deny Their

existence. Some, again, desire to follow a Master [Page 67] but do not know whom to follow. Remember

that whatever the attitude of anyone may be to the Masters, the Masters Themselves know each and

every one of us and guide us to our destiny along the road we have chosen to tread. How could it be

otherwise ? In what family, worthy of the name, does not the father, the mother, the elder brother or

sister, love, protect and guide the younger members ? The purer the love, the more perfect the guidance;

and in the world-family the Perfect Men — our Elder Brethren — give perfect guidance. People may wish

to reject the help or rebel against an apparent interference; but they can no more avoid the Masters' care

than they can escape from the unity which binds us all in one; while the Masters know full well that no

man can grow into perfection save through perfect freedom. But the very brotherhood of all mankind

makes Them one with us, and the guidance They give us is the outward symbol of the unity we share. If

unity is a restriction on freedom, then indeed we are not free; but unity gives power to freedom and is the

living witness of our divinity.

Each individual is for the time satisfied with his ideals, and people will often tel you that the idea of

discipleship to a Master does not help them, or that their temperament precludes any idea of

dependence or reliance on aught save the God within. If they are content, it is not your task to attempt to

disturb them. They are learning the lessons their stage teaches, and, when they have really found the

God within they will awaken to the fact that they cannot dissociate [Page 68] themselves from other parts

of the one great whole. Then they will know the Masters as Elder Brethren and will realize that just as

they themselves owe guidance to those more ignorant, so must the Masters give to them the help that

greater wisdom ever owes to less. The God within is conscious of the guidance, and it matters not for the

time that the lower self remains unconscious or denies. The babe sleeps safely in its mother's arms; the

youth, growing into self-consciousness, seeks to gauge his power by standing alone; the man, knowing

his power and limitations, begins to appreciate his mother's brooding tenderness and reverences her now

as perhaps he has never done before. Looking back over his life he sees the part she played in guiding

him through the troubles of the world, and he notices how in times of apparently greatest freedom her

watchfulness and care were none the less active, though unrecognised and unnoticed. As with the

mother, imperfectly, so with the Master perfectly, and we have all to pass through the stages from

babyhood to manhood. Like little children we must learn to think we walk alone, but the happiest walks

are in reality those in which we may gaze at loved Elders in front, with our friends at our side, and those

younger in knowledge than ourselves treading in places made smooth by our footsteps.

" THE BODY AND THE MAN ARE TWO"

We now come to the Master's lucid summing up of the conflict through which we al must go. "The [Page

69] body and the man are two, and the man's will is not always what the body wishes". Remember that

"those who wish to follow the Master have already decided to take the right at al costs". At all costs. But this decision is taken by the highest in us, and while the lower bodies are influenced by the decision, they

do not always want to carry it out within their respective spheres. "At all costs" means, therefore, at

whatever cost to the bodies in which the highest in us is gaining control over matter of various densities.

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That which is highest in us cannot help taking the decision, the decision belongs to its very essence, but

ages have had to pass before the lower bodies can be taught to respond to their master's wishes, just as

it takes a long time to train an animal perfectly. So the efficacy of the decision only begins when, after

ages of slow evolution, the God-to-be within us at last begins to receive a conscious response from its

lower nature. The response must for a long time, however, be of a very intermittent nature, for the two

poles have not as yet been adjusted to produce a constant spark. So the Master explains to us various

ways in which these lower bodies refrain from responding as they should. He warns us: "When your body

wishes something, stop and think whether you really wish it. For you are God, and you will only what God wills; but you must dig deep down into yourself to find the God within you, and listen to His voice, which

is your voice". In explanation of this He reminds us that we must not mistake our bodies for our real selves — "neither the physical body, nor [Page 70] the astral, nor the mental". "Each one of them will pretend to be the Self, in order to gain what it wants. But you must know them all, and know yourself as

their master".

The difficulty consists in knowing at the moment. After some time we can look back upon the various

ways in which our lower bodies have pretended to be the Self, and we say: "How stupid I was", or "what a fuss I made over nothing", or "I thought there was nothing else but that at the time." But why should these bodies pretend to be the Self ? Because it is to their interest to make evolution as slow as possible.

In them the life and the form seem bound up together so that if the form perishes the life appears to have

no further value or even existence. Form is their world — the world of the physical, astral, and mental

bodies — and any process which tends to do away with form is an attack upon their world's existence.

Think how many people there are who still believe that with death comes annihilation. Does the God

within think this ? The God within knows Himself eternal, and yet the vehicles down here "pretend" that

the destruction of the vehicle means the destruction of the life. It is not true, but in his lower bodies the

man knows no better. The bodies are anxious, therefore, to preserve themselves for as long a period as

possible, and imagine that their preservation depends upon self-seeking rather than upon self-sacrifice.

Much of the competition in modern life, much of the oppression of the weak by the strong, of the poor by

the rich, of animals by mankind, has its [Page 71] origin in the very successful pretence on the part of our lower bodies to be the Self. Indeed we are all living more or less under the shadow of this pretence, for

much that is luxurious in 20th century civilisation is produced by the inevitable selfishness of our lower

selves. The vivisector maintains, for example, that we are justified in experimenting on animals so as to

increase our own power to resist disease and thus to prolong the life of the lower bodies. I am not one to

condemn the vivisector — he expresses a pretence of the lower self; and we all are victims of its cunning

in one way or another. Again, we consider ourselves entitled to kil animals for food; and most of us would

not hesitate to eat meat, even supposing that we have hitherto been vegetarians, if we were assured by

our doctor that we had to choose between eating meat and dying. But let me for a moment disclose to

you the attitude of one who no longer yields to the snare. Mrs. Besant has often told me that she would

rather die than eat meat, partly as a matter of principle and partly because the introduction of coarse

meat particles would hinder some of her special work. Such a declaration is no heroic outburst, it is

simply the statement that while the body must be properly looked after, it cannot expect to be humoured

at every turn. If it says : "Since you don't give me meat I shall die", the answer must be: "My friend, you are not my only hope. I can get another body, and though it is my duty to keep you alive as long as

possible, I cannot preserve you at the expense of [Page 72] work I have determined to do. Therefore you

must go". Whether any particular individual has the duty of disciplining his bodies as Mrs. Besant does

hers, whether under all circumstances we must never give way to them, is not for me to say. Each person

must judge his own duty for himself. Let the body have its pleasures and amusements as well as its

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discipline and its exercises, but see that it does not try to draw its master away from that which is the link

between him and God — his principles of life. You must know your bodies "and know yourself as their

master".

THE OBJECTS OF THE SENSES

I think I ought to lay stress on the fact, that we are not told to shun the objects of the senses — all that

makes our physical, our emotional, our mental worlds. To possess beautiful objects and to desire them,

to submit to the influence of an uplifting emotion and to seek it, to take pleasure in the things of the

intellect and to strive for knowledge — all this is not only useful but essential to our growth. We have in

these three lower worlds to become familiar with the objects of the senses, but we must not identify

ourselves with them if we wish to qualify for admission to a Master's school. People at a certain stage of

evolution do identify themselves with the world in which they live, are its slaves; were they not they could

not be ready for the further stage of being its masters. Unless they have [Page 73] experienced its clutch

they will be unable to sympathise useful y with those who still remain victims of their bodies pretence. But

you and I must hope we have passed the earlier stage, though the young will doubtless recapitulate it as

they once again grow accustomed in their new bodies to a world ful of objects of the senses new since

last they visited it. We must know what the objects of the senses are, with what thoughts and feelings

and objects the mental, astral and physical worlds are respectively filled. And this is the true basis of the

"pretence" of the various bodies concerned. The Self is indeed in each of these bodies, and so far each

body may rightly claim that it is animated by a portion of the Self. To this extent in each of these bodies

we must seek the objects of the senses, for in such seeking lies our growth. Unfortunately, the bodies

take themselves too seriously, imagine they are indispensable, ignore the law of reincarnation which

dismisses that pretence at once, and then claim that they are the Self. “I am angry", "I am jealous", "I believe this; I disbelieve that", "I am fond of such and such amusements", "I enjoy food, or special kinds of food" — these are a few of the many statements our bodies are making day after day. The real Self is

never angry; the real Self is never jealous; the real Self knows; the real Self tolerates amusements but

could hardly be said to be fond of them; the real Self looks upon food as a means to preserve the

physical body so long as the body is needed, and cares for the purity of the food and not [Page 74] for its power of exciting the astral vehicle. Use these conventional phrases if you will, but see to it that you are

able to distinguish all the time between your Self and its bodies. At least know in theory that the real

"you" is not at the mercy of the objects of the senses, and you will have begun to be their master in

reality. At least know in theory that the real "you" is never angry, arid you have begun to lay the

foundations of a calm that can never be ruffled.

How to begin ? " When your body wishes something,, stop and think whether you real y wish it." A very

hard task to be continually stopping and thinking al day long. But Mrs, Besant told her hearers on the

day when she first began a series of talks on At the Feet of the Master — November 27th, 1910 — that however irksome the task, it had to be faced. It is part of the preparation, she said, and only those

achieve who do not get tired of trying. It means no hasty speech, no hasty action, no hasty thinking even:

all must be under control. Do not feel appalled at the prospect, young friends. To gain the immense

privilege of membership of a Master's school we must expect to work hard, and if you will but try you are

bound to succeed. By stopping even only one hasty word, or thought or action during the week you are

far nearer to your Master than those who are content to say: "I wish I could do al this, but I can't, so it is useless to try". The Master acknowledges effort; He knows us too well to expect success. [Page 75]

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THE WORD " PRETEND"

The word "pretend" as used by the Master in the phrase "each one of them, [the physical, astral and mental bodies] will pretend to be the Self", seems to suggest a deception on the part of the lower bodies, something of an underhand nature, against which we ought to be on our guard. I think the word was

deliberately used to emphasise the fact that the pupil to whom the teachings were being given was

expected to live in his higher self rather than to allow himself to be at the mercy of his lower bodies. The

desires of the physical, astral and mental bodies had to be labelled as unreal with respect to one who

was learning to live from above, and to whom the lower bodies were but as instruments in the service of

an awakened higher consciousness. The Alcyone of the inner worlds would fully know how to distinguish

between their realities and the fleeting circumstances of the worlds without. But in each outgoing into

denser matter — through the mental to the physical — the higher self must needs undergo a limitation,

so that its powers will be correspondingly weakened. In addition, while the soul of Alcyone was old, its

new bodies were young and untrained. These two circumstances, I think, caused the choice of the word

"pretend", so that in the lower worlds Alcyone might remember that however real their objects might

temporarily seem, however much his bodies, stil young, might long for them, yet their reality was but a

pretence compared with the realities of the Masters' world. [Page 76]

From a certain standpoint, there can be no pretence in that which God has created. Nothing is without its

value in evolution, and even the most fleeting of the objects of the senses has its part to play in helping

us to grow. At every stage of our growth objects of the senses surround us, and, according to our stage

we ignore some, reject others, long for these, are repelled by those. We grow by experiencing objects of

the senses, thus learning to reach the realities of which they are the shadows in this world of ours. Until

we know the realities, as I have already said, their shadows must suffice. And the shadow's pretence to

be the reality is not an unreasonable one, for after all it is a shadow of a reality and depends for its

existence on the reality it represents. But you and I ought, at least so far as regards most objects of the

senses in the lower worlds, to have reached the realities of which they are the expressions, and still to

accept the shadow as the reality would be a pretence, an imagination, since the reality is known apart.

We — in our bodies — would be pretending, and to make our position clear the Master dissociates us

from our bodies and explains that only in a lower body could we imagine the part to be the whole. [Page

77]

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CHAPTER VI

TRAINING THE BODY

THE next few pages of At the Feet of the Master contain commentaries on the central fact that "the body is your animal — the horse upon which you ride". It may be the physical body, or the astral body, or the

body in which lives the mind — all are your animals, and a very hard team to drive they are too ! The

Master makes this perfectly clear in the common everyday instances in which the animals refuse to be

ridden and throw their rider. "When there is work that must be done, the physical body wants to rest, to

go out walking, to eat and drink; and the man who does not know says to himself: 'I want to do these

things and I must do them', But the man who knows says: This that wants is not I, and it must wait

awhile'. "You shall not hinder me in doing good work", says the rider to the particular steed he is special y using at the time or to the particular steed which for the moment is inclined to be restive. Now you will

find that many excellent people think it their duty to drive their bodies all they possibly can. Monks and

nuns who inflict self-torture upon themselves, so-cal ed ascetics in India who hope to obtain liberation by

making the body do [Page 78] that for which it is not intended — these are examples of such people. Many

people in our own country think it wrong to do various really harmless actions, so that they may have the

morbid, unnatural satisfaction of mortifying or starving the lower bodies that the higher may shine through

more clearly because of their emaciation and weakness. The higher self asks for beauty and not for

ugliness, asks for joyousness and not for gloom, asks for a well-nourished, contented instrument and not

for a half-starved body beaten into submission instead of evolved into co-operation.

As the Master says: "You must treat it well, and take good care of it; you must not overwork it, you must

feed it properly on pure food and drink only, and keep it strictly clean always, even from the minutest

speck of dirt. For without a perfectly clean and healthy body you cannot do the arduous work of

preparation, you cannot bear its ceaseless strain". We who are learning to fit ourselves for admission to a

Master's school must bear these points in mind al the time. Notice that the Master nowhere condemns

healthy and harmless amusements, provided, of course, that they neither injure you nor cause injury to

those connected with their production. But your lower bodies must not be al owed to indulge in such

pleasures at the expense of doing good work. Periodical amusements, even those which have no

specially beneficent effect — are amusements pure and simple, help, I think, to keep our lower bodies in

fit condition; but we must be [Page 79] careful not to lose sight of the goal before us, lest by indulging our bodies too freely we wake some day to find that we have become their slaves instead of being their

masters. "But it must always be you who control that body, not it that controls you".

AMUSEMENTS

"You must not overwork it", says the Master. For active temperaments this seems a somewhat hard

injunction. There come times of special stress, we think, when the physical body ought not to be spared

in any way. Perhaps in rare instances this may be true, especial y if you have to choose between sparing

your body and standing firm to your principles. But most of us are not confronted by such a situation, and

it may be safely taken for granted that whenever we overwork — whatever the cause — we are doing

injury to ourselves and to others as well. Over-exercise, over-study, over-eating, over-sleeping, denying

the body that which it needs for perfect health — al these are forbidden because they hinder your utility

in the Master's service. Especially while you are young, the body, so glad to be in existence, tends to

conceal from you the mischief you may be doing. You feel quite well, even though your elders tell you

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that the body is being over-strained, and it is not until later that the body is forced into the confession that

having at the time insufficient force to meet your demands it drew upon the future, and now there is

barely enough force left to keep it alive. Nothing is [Page 80] more important than to know our limitations, for, knowing them, we not only realize where the points of strain are, but we learn how to replace with

strength weaknesses which in later years may give us much trouble. Apart from the obvious absurdity of

competitive examinations as indications of real worth, see how much wear and tear they cause to the

body, especially to the brain, and remember that though the few may be able to stand the drain on their

physical resources, most of those who have taken part in competitions have definitely lowered their

vitality, if they have not impaired it altogether. So it is with many features of modern life, and you must

make up your minds whether you are going to fit yourselves for the world's appreciation or for the

Master's.

Note that I write "appreciation", and not "service". The world is always best served by those who make themselves fit instruments for the Master's work, and though the world may ignore them, it is better for

their unrecognised efforts than for the work of most of those who stand high in worldly favour. But I freely

admit that young people are encouraged by the approval of those whose opinions weigh with them, and it

is natural that they should find in the world an infinite number of fleeting satisfactions. Stil , the glamour of

the external must never be al owed to blind us to the fact that the only appreciation worth having comes

from the Master, and that the approval of the world often encourages us along wrong lines. By all means

enjoy life, provided [Page 81] that no one suffers through your enjoyment and that you do not allow the

enjoyments of the lower bodies to interfere with the real enjoyments, if I may use the word in this

connection, of the higher self. The lower needs its enjoyments as well as the higher, but most of us lives

so much in the lower worlds that there is a danger of our being — in our lower selves — cruel to the

higher. You are often impatient with people who say you ought not to have this, that or the other pleasure

on which you have counted, but do not forget that you yourselves often deny your higher selves

pleasures which they too would be glad to enjoy — pleasures of an infinitely more lasting kind than those

which, in your lower selves, you have been pursuing with so much, eagerness. The greatest happiness

you can give your higher self is to adapt your lower vehicles to the Master's needs, but the higher self is

not unreasonable, is quite willing that the lower should enjoy itself, and only suggests that the more the

lower and the higher pleasures can be harmonised and made lasting, the happier for both parties

concerned. In the long run, everything will proceed so much more smoothly if both pull together and in

the same direction.

FOOD FOR THE BODY

The Master continues: "You must feed it properly on pure food and drink only, and keep it strictly clean

always, even from the minutest speck of dirt". The word "properly" means at regular intervals, at [Page 82]

such times as may conduce to the best health, the right quantity, and the right kind — "pure food and

drink only ".

Now I am not going to furnish you with a complete table of al the kinds of food you ought to eat, how you

ought to eat them, and when you ought to eat them. You must find this out for yourselves, since each

body reacts differently to different kinds of foodstuffs. But I must lay the very greatest stress on the

necessity for vegetarianism, not because I happen to be a vegetarian, but because the Master speaks,

towards the end of the book, on the "cruel superstition that man needs flesh for food". Doubtless we are all under the influence of certain kinds of superstition, but at least we must try to avoid cruel superstitions,

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and as meat-eating is a cruel superstition — the Master says so — we must get rid of it. I want you to

look at the matter from the standpoint of reason. We inflict suffering on animals in order to provide

ourselves with unnecessary food. This is the bare statement of the fact as the Master sees it.

Innumerable difficulties in the way of carrying out the Master's hint will, of course, present themselves.

Your body cannot stand vegetarian food. Your parents would disapprove of your becoming a vegetarian.

"Are we to give up the use of al leather articles, including boots, railway trunks, etc. ? Are we to

inconvenience our friends by eating practically nothing when we take meals with them ? "

Don't you think that your animals are becoming somewhat restive when you al ow them thus [Page 83] to

argue ? For all these difficulties should be thought of afterwards, if at all, and not at first. So many people

are eager to see the Masters, to receive instructions from Them, and envy those who have the privilege.

But remember that one of the conditions of receiving direct guidance is to pay prompt attention to what

the Master says. "You must do what He says", observes Alcyone in the Foreword, " attending to every word, taking every hint". The Master tells us to be vegetarians. Are we trying to become vegetarians, or are we suffering our lower bodies to dictate to the higher ? Are we deceived by the "pretendings" of the bodies which ought to be subservient to us ? I do not wish to suggest that it is easy to change from meat-eating to vegetarianism al at once, partly because the physical and astral bodies suddenly lose a food

which has been stimulating them and intensifying their lower aspects, and partly because relatives and

friends, who have not been as fortunate as ourselves, will be unable to see any method in, to them, an

apparent madness. But in the Master's service we need to start at once when a hint is given and do the

best we can with the difficulties as they come along. In other words, we do not think of building bridges

until we actually come to rivers which have to be crossed. Cautious people will exclaim against me here

— "but surely we must see where we are going before we start. Perhaps the difficulties will be

insuperable. Perhaps our relatives and friends, for example, will be unable to tolerate our new departure".

To which I reply: [Page 84] "A hint from a Master involves a practicable course of action. He does not suggest impossibilities, nor is He unaware — though you may find it difficult to believe this — of the

individual circumstances of us all. If At the Feet of the Master has come to us, we may take it that He

knows it has come. So His words become a message to us through His young brother Alcyone."No doubt

you will fail. Many lapses into meat-eating will occur, unless your nature is particularly wiry. But were

serious efforts made before the failures, and will serious efforts be made again after the failures ? This is

what the Master wants. Let me repeat here emphatically that He looks for effort, not expecting success

until many failures and many efforts have taken place. "Rome was not built in a day".

The moment you know that the Master has condemned meat-eating as a cruel superstition and that He

wishes the body to be fed on pure food and drink, you immediately begin to stop eating meat and any

other form of food you think included in the condemnation. Do not quibble as to whether fish or eggs or

cheese or milk are to be considered vegetarian or otherwise. Use your judgment, for the Master as a

perfect Teacher merely lays down the principle and leaves you to apply it in everyday life. Personal y I

have very little patience with people so hypnotised by the letter that they fail to observe the spirit. They

tel me that if we are to be consistent we must avoid this and that and the other article of food we use. I

do not pretend to be perfectly consistent, but I am [Page 85] trying to be as consistent as I can; and if in my effort to be consistent I make the mistake of including in my articles of diet some which ought to be

left out, I do not feel that I have vitally disregarded the spirit of the principles under which I have been

acting, though no doubt I have violated the letter. Some day I shal do al things perfectly, in the meantime

I am not going to sit idle or be unhappy because I cannot now be what I can only be later on. If you

cannot be a vegetarian, be as much of a vegetarian as you can, and ignore those who do nothing

because they cannot do everything.

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PRINCIPLES OF LIFE

You are expected, however, to use tact and discretion — neither obtruding your principles nor concealing

them. Be restrained and quiet in your actions, and above al avoid aggressiveness and feelings of

superiority because you think you possess a truth not yet shared by others. Indeed, you do not possess a

truth until its effect on your nature is to produce a greater understanding and sympathy than you had

without it. Every additional truth you know should make you so much the more tolerant and appreciative,

for you are by that truth the nearer to a knowledge of the unity which makes us one with all. If knowledge

brings pride and shuts you off from your fel ow-creatures you are only in possession of its intel ectual

aspect. You have not yet reached its spiritual essence. So, when you begin to take [Page 86] the Master's

hint as regards vegetarianism, I want you to show that you have a new truth in your possession, first by

manifesting a little more of the spirit of goodwill than you have previously been able to show, second by

holding fast to your new truth gently and unobtrusively. I think you ought not to give way. No parent or

friend with understanding would ask you to give up a matter of principle, if you show by your conduct that

the principle has an ennobling effect upon you. But you cannot expect them to regard as a principle

something which makes you more fussy and troublesome than before. If, on the other hand your principle

is not respected, then the course of action you should take depends upon the amount of strength you

possess. In India young men often write to Mrs. Besant asking her advice as to various courses of action

which would involve conflict with established custom and would consequently place the individual

concerned in great difficulty. So far as I remember her general position is that if advice is asked it often

means that the applicant, not being strong enough to decide for himself and take the responsibility,

wishes to have behind him some one who will share whatever difficulties come. Also, the advice to be

given depends upon the power of the individual to carry it out, and it is useless to recommend heroic

measures to a well-meaning but negative personality. People who give advice must to some extent

become involved in its results, and by far the best plan is, knowing the ideal, to get as near to it as you

can on [Page 87] your own account alone. By al means learn from your elders the principles of right action

— you have them in At the Feet of the Master — but work them out in your own way according to

circumstance and capacity, ever striving to act as truly as you can, combining thoroughness with

deference to the wishes of others in all matters not involving principle.

Reading this, young people will often object that they have hardly any definite principles, and hesitate to

act on those for the moment swaying them lest they make themselves a nuisance, not to say ridiculous,

by upsetting the household with a zeal which may last but a very short time. I grant that this is a difficulty,

but it seems to me that, first, all reasonable parents would be willing to submit to such family

disturbances as might occur in the course of efforts made by young people to find their moral footing;

secondly, it is better to have a temporary principle and to have lost it, than never to have had a principle

at al ! Young people must inevitably feel their way. The higher self must take some time to settle down in

its new surroundings; and it is most natural to expect a forceful ego to throw itself headlong into

innumerable attitudes of mind and feeling, rushing from one to another until sufficient, experiences are

gained to enable the choice to be made of outlooks upon life which, will last for some time. We are

growing incessantly, and even the most cherished principles of the wisest among us undergo much

modification as the years pass, may even in course of time be totally abandoned. So it [Page 88] is after

all a matter of growth, and youth must not be blamed if it grow jerkily and spasmodically. Be as true to the

reigning principle as you can, and though people may laugh at your bubbling enthusiasms, you will never

in after-life regret them, for their influence is all for good. On the other hand train yourselves by degrees

to approach a new principle cautiously and to discard it reluctantly, for it must be a matter of honour with

you to treat it reverently — neither accepting it unless you feel sure that you can profitably follow it, nor

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relinquishing it without a sense of gratitude for the good it has done you. We may at least say with truth

that whatever other effect a principle has had on you its temporary place in your heart will have given you

the power of understanding, and of sympathising with, those who are under an influence which you

yourself may long ago have passed beyond.

BE TRUE TO YOUR OWN SELF

Let me conclude this portion of our subject by warning you against people who argue that because a

leader is or is not a vegetarian, therefore we ought to fol ow his or her example. A common line of

argument is that there can be no particular harm in eating meat or smoking since the great founder of the

Theosophical Society — Madame H. P. Blavatsky herself — both ate meat and smoked cigarettes. Or, to

take the opposite standpoint, if Mrs. Besant and Mr. C. W Leadbeater are both rigid vegetarians and

[Page 89] non-smokers, we should do well to follow them. Which is it to be, then, H. P. Blavatsky or Annie

Besant? Clearly we cannot follow both !

The fact is that we are not at al concerned with the special circumstances under which al great people

necessarily live. To be great, an individual must possess a peculiar temperament, and to be an occultist

requires conditions quite outside the understanding of ordinary human beings. Greatness is always out of

the ordinary, and rules appropriate to mediocrity are often fetters to genius. Then, again there are varying

types of greatness with widely differing functions; and it is il ogical to argue that because some one whom

we recognise as great acts in a particular way, therefore no one is great who does not behave similarly.

Further, it is quite conceivable that a pupil's work in the world is so necessary to his Master's plans that

He has to submit to a special piece of karma, belonging to the pupil, which prevents the pupil's body from

bearing the strain of the service required unless it be coarsened with animal food. In fact, we may

reasonably imagine numberless circumstances in which rules quite suitable for us at our level, and

perhaps of general suitability at al levels, have to be waived for special reasons. Emphatical y this is not

our business. It is a matter between Master and pupil, and, in the case of Madame Blavatsky or of Mrs.

Besant or of Mr. Leadbeater, it is more seemly in us to be grateful for the beauty of their teachings than to

intrude upon the conditions under which the teachings [Page 90] were given. My reply to people who want

to probe into the private lives of those who teach us is that if I find their teaching inspiring I shal have

enough to do in translating the inspiration into action, without wasting precious time in ascertaining

whether the teacher lives perfectly — according, that is, to my own idea of perfection — the words he

utters. I might add that we smaller people commit a great mistake if we venture to judge those greater

than ourselves by standards which, perhaps, they have long outgrown. One of the greatest obstacles in

the way of the average man or woman recognising the great World-Teacher when He comes will be that

of expecting Him to limit Himself to their own conception of spiritual greatness. Each little narrow sect of

Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam or Zoroastrianism will expect Him to be its special

champion as against al other little sects. Every faddist will expect Him to be an ardent disciple of the

special fad from which he derives his spiritual livelihood. He must surely wear such and such clothes, eat

such and such foods, proclaim such and such truths, live in such and such a way. He will live as the

world needs Him to live, not as individuals want Him to live. He comes to help al mankind to live better

lives, not to flatter the spiritual pride of a few. You and I know that He is the Teacher of the world, and

instead of asking Him so to live when He comes that we shal recognise Him without difficulty, we should

rather ask that we may so live now as to become worthy to recognise Him when He is [Page 91] in our midst. How the Greatest shal live and what He shall teach is for the Greatest to decide — -else we

ourselves were greater than He, if our own standard could guide Him. What concerns us is how we shall

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live and what we shall teach so that He may recognise us as His servants. The world has not made so

conspicuous a success of its affairs that it can afford to point out to the great World-Teacher Himself the

lines along which reform and teaching are needed. He comes because we need His help, and what the

world needs just now is to develop sufficient humility to receive guidance which may be diametrical y

opposed to al existing conventional theories of life. Devotion, Steadfastness and Gentleness — al these

the world needs, but pride has in the past been the outstanding barrier between the Teacher and His

generation. May it not be so in the 20th century.

CLEANLINESS

The Master proceeds to lay stress on the fact that "without a perfectly clean and healthy body you cannot

do the arduous work of preparation, yon cannot bear its ceaseless strain". No one who is not undergoing

the discipline of preparation for a more thorough service of the Masters can have the slightest conception

of the strain it involves. Every individual who deliberately places himself at a Master's disposal by that

very act begins to tune his various bodies to respond to the finer vibrations of [Page 92] the Master's

worlds, and to become infinitely more sensitive to the life of the world in which he lives. The disciple must

not only hear the Master's "faintest whisper above earth's loudest song", he must automatically sense the misery and trouble and need of those who people the world in which he lives, and he must send out to

them the Master's force in terms of courage and compassion. This means that the body must be pure, as

free as possible from al coarseness, must gradually substitute particles for its composition purer than

those in use among the majority of mankind. The disciple is in advance of his generation — what he now

is, the world as a whole will become after many years. He must embody in his daily life a new ideal or

principle of living: in other words, he must be a living example to those around him of the stage

immediately in front of them, the stage towards which they now are passing.

THE CEASELESS STRAIN

In At the Feet of the Master we are given a model on which to build our various bodies, and we must expect that people who do not realise the necessity for the efforts we are making, will laugh at us, will

regard us as tiresome disturbers of the soporific policy of drifting with the stream. I am often told that

reformers are so unsociable that it is almost a nuisance to live with them; certainly it is almost impossible

to treat them as ordinary, conventional mortals. I quite agree, and I heartily sympathise with those [Page

93] who, content with life as it is, find themselves forced to have to do with people who clash with

conventional codes, the observance of which makes life so much more negative and, therefore, easy. But

if you mean business, you are bound to set yourself against the majority of accepted modes of living, and

herein lies part of the "ceaseless strain" of which the Master speaks. The force of habit, the pressure of public opinion, a natural tendency to comparative inertia, all combine to keep you within the narrow limits

of conventional life. But then you are not fulfilling your rôle as a leader, as a forerunner, as an active force in the direction of bringing about a better mode of living than that to which for the present we are content

to conform. You must stand outside the pale of "society" to a very considerable extent. You are required to guide your life by principles which do not yet appeal to the majority, and you cannot expect people as a

whole to accept you for what you try to be.

You are continually warring against the lower self in yourself as well as against the lower self in the world

outside. You are continually setting up a standard of living higher than that to which the world for the time

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being conforms, and you have to strain every nerve to live up to it yourself; for only as you yourself

approach the standard will you be able effectively to champion it among your surroundings. The world is

ever pressing against you and your efforts, while on your part you have ever to be striving to carry the

world with you as you tune your lower [Page 94] vehicles to co-operate more harmoniously with the

realities to which they are to be attuned. You are one with the world, and such unity tends to keep you

within the limits of the world's average progress. On the other hand, you are trying to make that unity

more living by yourself becoming an example of what the world may hope to be at no distant date, thus

stimulating the whole to increase its lustre by harmonising with the special brightness of a part.

Indeed is the strain "ceaseless". Vigilance cannot for a moment be relaxed. There is every temptation

from the lower to give up the struggle and to resume the far easier path of being led. Innumerable actions

which the world approves are denied to you. Many pleasures in which the world indulges must be

foresworn by you if you would give the world what it needs rather than what it asks. As I write these

words, I can hear some of my readers exclaim: "What is the use of it al , then ? It seems so lonely a

struggle, so grey a life. Are there no compensations ? When all goes well and there is no trouble, I admit

that the compensations seem as if they were non-existent. When life is easy for the world or for the

individual, it seems almost absurd to go out of one's way to keep up a strain for which there is apparently

no call. But life is never easy for long, nor is life easy for most people; and the value of the disciple who

trains all his bodies as the athlete trains only the physical, is that he is able not only to bear trouble which

overwhelms the ordinary individual, but he has accumulated a reserve of courage from [Page 95] which

those in trouble may draw the strength to meet disasters which otherwise might render them hopeless

and crushed.

Remember that however much you and your friends may be living a life of ease and happiness, there are

others near you who are struggling with care, with want, with sickness, with sorrow. Remember that no

individual happiness lasts long from which the world is excluded. Who are you that you should enjoy

comfort, luxury, the satiety of your desires, while others, in the moments of your supremest joy, are

weighed down by the seeming hopelessness of everything. Joy which is shared endures according to the

number who share it, and the disciple strives to ascertain the conditions of true joy so that, through

leading others to the knowledge, peace and happiness may begin to become permanent instead of being

fleeting because restricted to the few. In reality, therefore, while the strain of discipleship is great, there is an ever-increasing tendency to peace and joy because the would-be disciple is always engaged in trying

to emphasise these aspects in those around him. He is learning to be a peace-bringer and a joy-bringer,

and he must not complain if the process of education sometimes shuts him off from many of the fleeting

joys on which his fellows set such store. A child practising a musical instrument may often long to leave

his lesson and join in the happy laughter of his young companions in the garden outside, but if he can

persevere in the training of his body to reproduce, however feebly, God's message through music, he will

[Page 96] some day bring peace to thousands, and to himself a joy well worth the little sacrifice of the

temporary happiness which at the time seemed so enticing.

It would sometimes be so much simpler to eat meat, to fol ow conventional habits of thought, to accept

the conventional dicta of one's class, but one would be giving up the permanent for the temporary. A bird

in the hand is by no means worth two in the bush, provided you know that if you try hard enough you are

bound in course of time to catch those in the bush. People sometimes think that they can have the bird in

the hand as well as those in the bush, but we have been clearly told we cannot serve both God and

Mammon; and so far as I know the experience of most earnest students is that the search after the

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peace of God is only fruitful in proportion to the exclusion of all pleasures which make for selfishness and

self-indulgence at an expense to others. I admit that to a certain extent it is possible to combine the two,

and, as I said before, there is no reason why one should not enjoy innocent and harmless amusements.

But selfishness must ever be a drag on one's efforts to lead the disciple's life, and the less selfishness

one shows, the quicker the progress. Most of us are more or less selfish, and the result is that we are

only more or less successful in our search for truth. It behoves us, therefore, so to order our lives, that we

are continually planning for the greater welfare of our surroundings, partly by active help and partly by

self-training. All such preparation [Page 97] involves strain, for we are in effect al day long, and all night long too, striving to transmute into finer forces al coarse vibrations that come to us from without. Hate,

dislike, ill-feeling, suspicion, doubt — al come to us, and in return we have to train ourselves to send out

goodwil . At first we cannot always do it, we cannot even often do it; but those who once have been able

to return good for evil know the peace it brings to al one's bodies and the feeling of fire and vigour it

imparts to one's whole being. I feel very strongly that just at present any efforts I may have made in the

past are more than repaid by the strength of which I am conscious in these difficult times, and by the

eagerness I experience to be of service to the many to whom the War has brought misery and trouble.

The War has brought us al nearer to each other. Above all it has brought the Masters nearer to us than

we have ever allowed Them to come before, and it has given some of us the happiness of knowing that

Theosophy is the one great source from which it is possible to draw courage and cheer for the use of the

afflicted. Such times as these are abundant evidence that the "ceaseless strain" is well worth while

bearing for the power it generates to serve mankind. When life is smooth the strain may sometimes seem

an unnecessary torture, but when times are hard it is known to have been the basis for a confidence

which otherwise could not have existed. [Page 98]

THE " I" OUTSIDE THE BODY

The Master then shows us how the training is to proceed. "It must always be you who control that body,

not it that controls you". With regard to this Mrs. Besant gave the following instruction — the words are

not hers: "What you have to do is to judge for your body as you would for an animal in your charge; you

must not overwork it because if you do it has not sufficient physical energy left for efforts in other parts of

your work. You must give it as much sleep and food as it requires to keep it in the highest state of

efficiency — not necessarily al that it wants. Many of you still give the body too much food, and this is

incompatible with the highest point of efficiency, at which we should always be aiming. Young bodies, of

course, need considerably more food than do elderly ones; the body must have enough, but you must

not let it have more than that. Plenty of kind-hearted people make that very mistake with their animals,

with the result that the animals have imperfect health and suffer when they have to walk. You must judge

for your body. You ought to have such complete control over your body that you can make it wait without

trouble, saying: ' This that wants it is not I. I have something more important to do at present, you must

wait till I can attend to you.'

"This is the point that I should advise you to think over and to work upon . . . pul yourselves up constantly and ask: is it I, or my body, that is [Page 99] wanting this or that ? This will gradual y lead you to that state of self-recollectedness which is so essential, and which is a thing that untrained people never have . . .

whenever you wish something, examine if it is really you who wish it. It is one great lesson that has to be learned, this identifying of oneself with the God who is Oneself, instead of with the animal which is one's

instrument".

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Let me lay stress on the word "self-recollectedness". We have to remember ourselves, we have to

remember to distinguish between the machine and the motive power, between the instrument and the

user. In the next couple of pages the Master explains to us how we may recol ect ourselves, by showing

us what the astral and mental bodies respectively desire on their own account. He has already told us

how the physical body tries to bring into submission the self within —" the physical body wants to rest, to

go out walking, to eat and drink; and the man who does not know says to himself: 'I want to do these

things'. "But we must say to al three bodies — physical, astral, mental — "You shall not hinder me in

doing good work". In other words, we must recollect our higher self, however much our lower vehicles —

its instruments — may strive to make themselves heard for their much speaking. People who do not

know are so much occupied with their lower bodies that they identify themselves with them almost

entirely, and it is only under some great moral pressure that they realise too late that the indulgence of

the lower selves has meant the withdrawal of the [Page 100] higher self from the position it might have

taken, from the power with which it might have endowed its instruments. The value of the lower bodies

consists in their capacity to glean the necessary experiences of the plane to which the matter composing

them belongs. If they simply immerse themselves in the activities of their own plane, instead of al owing

the higher plane bodies to select as far as possible such experiences as may help the growth of the

individual; as a whole, the result will be that the bodies will become more and more entangled in

increasingly lower strata of their respective planes and will final y with great suffering be discarded by the

Self whose bidding they have scorned. The law of Karma is very rigid, and a body degraded to base uses

in one life when it might have listened to the God within, becomes unable to serve its owner at some

future time, and in the misery of a longing to help, united to instruments through which no work can be

done, is gradually learned the lesson that true happiness and progress are alone possible when the

lower acts in perfect deference to the will of the higher. How often is not the spirit willing while the flesh is

weak — the result of not having yet learned the relative values of the various bodies through which we

contact the many depths of God's manifested universe ? The flesh is weak when it tries to depend on

itself alone, but it becomes infinitely strong when serving but as the reflection of its spiritual counterpart.

[Page 101]

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CHAPTER VII

THE ASTRAL AND MENTAL BODIES

"THE astral body", says the Master, "has its desires — dozens of them; it wants you to be angry, to say sharp, words, to feel jealous, to be greedy for money, to envy other people their possessions, to yield

yourself to depression . . . not because it wishes to harm you, but because it likes violent vibrations, and

likes to change them constantly. But you want none of these things, and therefore you must discriminate

between your wants and your body's".

Let me quote again from notes taken of Mrs. Besant's instructions on this paragraph: "You must exercise

continual watchfulness, constant care, because it is more difficult to realize that you are not your astral

body, than to realize that you are not your physical body. But if you look at the examples which the

Master gives, you will see how continually you identify yourselves with your astral body. 'I am angry or

irritable,' you will say. Probably you will not say 'I am jealous' if you are conscious of the feeling of

jealousy; for though we may identify ourselves with our feelings, we try to veil the lower ones — so you

might call this feeling, not jealousy, [Page 102] but love. ‘I am hurt because so and so whom I love 'loves some one better than me ! ' Love is such a far reaching, all-embracing virtue, that we like to shelter under

it and attribute to it all sorts of things with which it has nothing whatever to do. Far better is it to examine

honestly our feelings and not to play with ourselves and deceive ourselves with pretty words. In the case

under consideration, you are not hurt because you love your friend, but because you desire to

appropriate that friend to yourself. Wherever there is this feeling of being hurt, it springs from selfishness,

which is at the opposite pole to love. You — the Self — cannot feel jealous, but your astral body can;

neither are You angry or irritable: these are al moods of the astral body".

I wish to lay stress on this fact that when we feel hurt or offended we are as a matter of fact giving way to

selfishness. People will tel you that it is only natural sometimes to feel hurt or offended, and I entirely

agree if by the word "natural" they mean "inevitable at a certain stage of growth". We could not feel sympathy with people who feel hurt or offended had we not experienced the feeling ourselves. On the

other hand we cannot show them the way to overcome the feeling unless we ourselves have more or

less overcome it; and the Master emphasises the fact that the real "I" in each one of us, the "I" we express so loosely in words in daily life — continually identifying it with bodies which only last a short

time — can never feel these fleeting moods. From my own experience, although I have only just begun

real [Page 103] work, I can bear emphatic testimony to the fact that the more I pay attention to the "I"

within, the more clearly do I realise that my moods and feelings of the lower kind are obnoxious to it. I

often give way to temptations of various kinds, to moods and feelings, but I am growing increasingly

conscious of a sense of strong discomfort whenever the lower has its way unchecked. Not being yet

sufficiently master of my lower bodies, they often carry al before them, but I am not happy in their victory,

and even while they are temporarily triumphant I know full well that I am not well — that the real "I" is, as it were, ailing. We know much about physical ill-health, but as soon as we begin to place our feet upon

the path we learn the meaning of spiritual il -health, the remedies for which are to be found within the

covers of At the Feet of he Master. Spiritual ill-health is as painful as physical il -health — I think more so; for with the eagerness to serve comes the lack of power, a lack due to giving way to the fleeting moods of

vehicles which ought to have been servants and not masters. And there is nothing more racking than an

inability to make the bodies obey the behests of the spirit.

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I wish to lay stress on the Master's statement that the astral body wants things, "not because it wishes to

harm you but because it likes violent vibrations and likes to change them constantly".

You must remember that our various bodies are made up of matter which is still on the downward arc of

evolution, and the result is that this matter [Page 104] evolves by violent and constantly changing

vibrations. Mrs. Besant remarks : "Students have sometimes put to me a curious question: ' Ought we

not to give it the opportunity of evolving?“ No ! You can, without any fear of being selfish, refuse to give

these vibrations. It can find them in savages, in animals; they need them as experiences to bring out

moods of consciousness, and you must not sacrifice your higher evolution for this. The constant desire of

the astral body for violent changes is a thing which should help you to realise that it is not you. Moods

come over you for no apparent cause, and not approved by your reason; they have nothing to do with

you, but are the independent activities of the astral body. You must realise this, and not al ow yourself to

be made the playground of al these changing moods".

The Master emphasises the fact that you want none of these things, and, therefore, you must

discriminate between your wants and your body's. I think it is well to remember that the more we make

progress the greater the force which pours through our various bodies. The result is that while our higher

emotions are infinitely more powerful than they were before, our lower emotions also gain in strength.

Each one of us, who has set himself deliberately to tread the path of Service, experiences the difficulty

that, while he can do much better work than before, he seems to have many more obstacles than he has

hitherto known of; in fact all his bodies become more highly vitalised, and the force flowing through them

affects the lower as well as the [Page 105] higher. So it is only safe to make special effort when one

feels sure that, however much the lower may gain in vitality, the higher will always be able to dominate.

Every one who deliberately places himself on the side of evolution, on the side of self-sacrifice rather

than on that of self-seeking, must be prepared to pay the price of the deeper sympathies he will inevitably

experience, by laying himself open to greater temptations than those which have hitherto come his way.

If he is real y in earnest, success is bound to come sooner or later, and when he feels that troubles are

overwhelming him he may well say to himself: "These added difficulties are the price I am paying for the

greater power of service which I have gained". Whatever happens, it is at least unwise to brood over your

failures, or to imagine that a past mistake can never be rectified. It is one of the most ancient of maxims

that we should not look behind. If we do look behind we feel despair, repentance, remorse. All of these

moods, as Mrs. Besant tells us, are a waste of strength. The energy you put into repentance would be

better spent on cultivating the emotion opposite to that which causes the repentance. "Do not look back; .

. . pick out al the opposite moods and practise them all day long. If your astral body wants you to be

impatient, set your mind on patience; think of patience in your morning meditation and practise it

throughout the whole day. If your astral body wants you to feel jealous, do not think any more about

jealousy, think [Page 106] of unselfishness and practise it hard, there will be no room for jealousy then.

Your mind cannot be filled with two opposing things at the same time". In other words we must strive to

be as positive as we can, as long as we can. We must strive to emphasise our better natures rather than

to feel grieved at the mistakes we have made.

Personally, I believe most strongly that the past can be modified, both by the present and by the future. I

think that our attitude in the present can so modify the past that we may transmute a mistake into a force

for good. Similarly, by being careful in the present, the future will be made secure, and will, in its turn,

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react upon the past. From a certain standpoint of consciousness everything is in the "ETERNAL NOW".

And all that we have done, all that we are doing, al that we shall do, is summed up in the "Now". The

mischief I may have done to my friend last year, I may considerably repair by striving to be of special

service to him today. The jealous thought I may have had some time ago, I may render comparatively

impotent by surrounding my friend with strong thoughts of unselfish goodwill at every possible

opportunity. I do not wish to suggest that every action is not followed by its appropriate karma. But who

shall say where an action begins and where it ends ? Down here we see things separated off into

compartments: the Master is able to see much more of the unity than we can in this world of separated

existences. [Page 107]

THE MENTAL BODY

The Master proceeds to point out in what ways the mental body strives through lower thought-forms to

minister to the needs of the matter of which it is composed. Pride seems to be one of the most common

conditions of our mental bodies. "Your mental body wishes to think itself proudly separate, to think much

of itself and little of others. Even when you have turned it away from worldly things, it still tries to

calculate for self, to make you think of your own progress, instead of thinking of the Master's work and of

helping others". Mrs. Besant remarks that probably the mind-body is the most difficult of all to control. In

my own experience, the mind-body seems able to deceive us more successfully than the other bodies,

for the mind associates itself with each individual's personal progress, and makes him think how he is

getting on. "How near am I to the next definite stage on life's pathway?" is a thought which often comes to those who are striving to lead the spiritual life, and it is undoubtedly a very natural thought. On the

other hand, spiritual progress depends on service to others and not upon individual growth, except in so

far as it is undoubtedly true that the more you grow the greater becomes your capacity to be of use.

We must not forget the essential unity of al , and this means that no individual growth is possible save as

others grow too, while the growth of those around us inevitably stimulates our own. In other words, it

[Page 108] is no use thinking in terms of ourselves alone or of the few, we have to think in terms of the

many, so as gradual y to reach the Master's position of thinking in terms of al .

Undoubtedly the mind-body depends for the completeness of its lower aspect upon the development of

its special capacities and powers, and such development begins by making these capacities and powers

grow under the forcing impulse of competition and individualism. But all who read these pages should

have passed this stage of growth, and should have come to the point of realising that there is no value in

any power save as it is used to help the one whole. And so when the mental body wishes to think it is

proudly separate, we must look upon this condition as a survival of the past, as something we have, in

reality, outgrown and to which we should no longer pay attention. In my own experience, the quickest

way of developing the mental faculties at our stage of growth is to use them in the service of others. A

boy who is weak in any special subject of study can best stimulate what he lacks by trying to find

someone even weaker than himself, so that he may find it possible usefully to employ even the little

power he possesses.

Each one of us has the germ of perfection in him, and we are only weak in any special direction by

comparison with others who are strong. Compared with those who are weaker, we ourselves are strong.

Remember, always, that behind the apparent imperfections are the germs of perfection, enshrined within

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Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

[Page 109] the God within us. We are Gods in the making, and however negligible our capacities may

seem when compared with those of our elder Brethren, they have a very appreciable value towards

those who know less than we do ourselves. And by helping those to whom our weakness is as strength

we gradually emphasise that strength and so develop faculties hitherto apparently of little force.

So you see that, in the long run, the great fact of unity is the assurance to each one of us that we have it

in our power, in course of time, to become even as the Masters are. We all depend upon each other, we

all grow through failures, and every weakness is but an undeveloped strength.

TEMPTATIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Mrs. Besant has often told us that the true server and occultist sees in al surrounding life opportunities

rather than temptations. To the ordinary individual temptations must be avoided or at least guarded

against. A temptation is something we may succumb to, on account of which we may stumble. But to an

earnest worker who is beginning to understand the true value of life, a temptation is an occasion for the

fortifying of a weak place, for the building up of a virtue, of a strength in place of a weakness. He does

not try to avoid temptations, but rather to stand firm in their midst and to put forth that very strength

whose absence made the temptation possible at all. I quite admit that certain people would do well to run

away

[Page 110] from temptations, but anyone who means business must endeavour to gain strength to

surmount them from the reserve force of earnestness which will carry him through most troubles if he will

only let it. Let me emphasise once more in this connection the need for self-recollectedness. Remember

who you are and for what you are striving, and remember this especial y when a difficulty or temptation

threatens to distract an all too willing mind from its Self. The mere endeavour to remember, still more the

act of memory, brings its own strength and makes you master of the difficulty or temptation instead of its

slave. "You must watch unceasingly", says the Master, "or you will fail", Habit is everything in these matters, and you will either fall into the habit of succumbing to temptations or you will fall into the habit of

transmuting them into added capacity. Set up a good habit and it will carry you through troubles you

would never have thought it possible to endure. Set up a bad habit and it will take you a long time to

unravel the knot into which you have twisted yourself — it cannot be cut! Self-recol ectedness means

"thinking of the Master's work and of helping others", and when you think in this way you are learning to become the alchemist of your temptations.

RIGHT AND WRONG.

We now come to a most important statement by the Master: "Between Right and Wrong Occultism knows

no compromise. At whatever apparent cost that [Page 111] which is right you must do, that which is wrong

you must not do, no matter what the ignorant may think or say". Who is an occultist ? To this question we

have an answer in an earlier portion of At the Feet of the Master : "What religion a man holds, to what race he belongs — these things are not important; the really important thing is . . . the knowledge of God's plan for men". I have italicised the last sentence because I believe the occultist to be one who is at least beginning to know God's plan in part; no one can know it in its entirety. An occultist has begun to

use his discrimination to distinguish between the real and the unreal, between darkness and light, and

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knows that death, is but the instrument of immortality. You who are servants of the Star, perhaps

members of the Theosophical Society, are occultists in the becoming, because you know some of the

truths at present hidden from the majority of mankind. So it is you whom the Master addresses when He

declares that at whatever apparent cost the right must be chosen. Note the word "apparent". There is no real cost to yourself or to others when you choose the right and turn away from the wrong. Great indeed

is the truth and it shal prevail, however much error may seem for the time to triumph. Pain comes

because of wrong-doing, and though it is true that a right action often causes considerable pain to us in

the doing, it is because we are breaking through habits of wrong-doing, and the lower nature is stil

striving to keep us within its grasp. The pain of the lower is but the inevitable prelude to the joy of the

[Page 112] higher self beginning to feel free and unfettered. Soon the lower no longer binds, and then pain ceases — "the Master is always serene and joyous", not because He is indifferent to suffering but

because He knows al that suffering can teach, because He lives in the Self liberated from a bondage the

meaning of which it has grown to understand. There is only an "apparent" cost when we look at the

conditions from the point of view of those more ignorant than ourselves, of those who do not understand

the motive for our action. In other words, the "cost" is the effort to purify the lower nature, and this effort can only be looked on as "cost" when we identify ourselves with a lower which is losing its dominance.

People are very apt to judge others and to judge them much more harshly than they judge themselves.

We depend far too much upon the opinion of others with regard to ourselves; and the result is that we

often act against the dictates of our consciences in the hope of shielding ourselves from the judgment of

our fellows. This is what, I think, is meant by the word "compromise". Listen to Mrs. Besant's words: "You will find, if you look honestly at it, that ordinary life is a series of compromises in the outer world; people

are always doing a little less than that which they know to be right, in order to make things smoother for

themselves, in order to meet that deadliest of questions: ' What will people say ? ' That fear of other

people's opinions is partly due to a weakness which is amiable at its root —the desire to please. . . .

Plenty of people see [Page 113] what is wanted in religious and social questions, but how many will lead in reform. ... I know you cannot carry out your highest ideals immediately, any more than you can get from

the bottom of a mountain to the top by taking one leap. But if you mean to scale your mountain, every

step must be taken with the view of reaching the summit, every step must bring you nearer to it. Never

lower your ideal. That is fatal. ' One thing is right, while the pleasant is another says a Hindu scripture,

'right unto pleasant the wise man preferreth’ "

I grant you that the path thus shown to us is hard, because we have hitherto been living in a world of

compromises. But the less we compromise the more real joy life brings to us and the more definite

consciousness we gain of the Master's world to which we al belong. Later I shall take up the latter

portion of the whole question as to right and wrong in the light of the Master's direction as to how we

reach the right, and how we may distinguish our whims, prejudices and fancies from that which is really

right. [Page 114]

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CHAPTER VIII

THE HIDDEN LAWS OF NATURE

I DO not want to trouble you much about the hidden laws of nature, because as you grow you will begin

to find out for yourselves what these hidden laws are. Briefly, you must try to understand that the world's

laws, those which we cal "conventions" and "customs", are by no means necessarily binding upon you.

People are far too apt to accept the world as it is, and to allow themselves to drift with it rather than to

take the trouble of trying to guide. Each one of us must try to find his own footing, and take his stand on

principles he has tested for himself before accepting. To do this you must not rest satisfied with things as

they are, nor with the ordinary interpretation of life as accepted by the average individual. Your

conscience and your reason are the God within you, and you must ever seek to give these two forces al

possible opportunities to guide you to right thought, right speech and right action. If you do this, you will

find that they will tell you much about nature that the ordinary person does not know simply because he

regulates his conduct in life more according to that which is outside him than to the God within. You will

thus come into contact with laws of [Page 115 ] nature, hidden from the gaze of most people, which will

powerfully aid you in establishing yourself upon right lines of growth. For example, most people have

thought that the greatest good of the greatest number should be the aim and object of all legislation and

statecraft, but the law of nature is that only that which is pleasant for all can really be pleasant for any

single individual, to quote the Master's statement. Under modern conditions we tend to ignore minorities,

because we do not yet know how to deal with them; but to the One, minorities are of equal importance

with majorities. And you and I have to learn how. to bring this as yet hidden law into operation, so as to

do only those things which God wills — these being the only things really useful for all. Our hidden law,

is, then, that we are concerned neither with majorities nor with minorities, but with the will of God, and if

we can only understand His will we shall see how al the various modes of life — however opposed on

the surface — are but aspects of Him seen from a certain angle. This will give us tolerance, while at the

same time we may feel it our duty strongly to press any particular aspect of His will, seen from some

special standpoint, which our conscience and our reason tell us to be of dominant value for the moment.

When we come later on to deal with tolerance, I shal have much to say on the need for virility in

tolerance. I content myself here with asking you to remember that however tolerant you may be of others'

views and attitudes, never forget that you, too, have your message to give to [Page 116] the world —

you, too, have your angle of vision to emphasise, and you need be no less tolerant of other angles of

vision because you pour your whole soul through your own.

Then again, to take up other as yet hidden laws of nature, there is the knowledge as to the various

bodies which each one of us possesses, knowledge as to portions of God's plan for men which the world

has yet to discover, knowledge as to the existence of Elder Brethren, knowledge as to laws of health and

magnetism. Much of such knowledge is at present veiled from the gaze of most of us. But you will

gradually learn, as some of us have learned, and then you will be much more careful, more deliberate,

more thoughtful, because you will know that, though nothing matters much and most things do not matter

at al , yet the motive behind the "things", the attitude of mind and feeling towards them — these matter considerably. And you can only serve the Master truly when you think before you speak or act, or, as the

phrase goes, when you "look before you leap". Hastiness and impulsiveness, however common, must

not be looked upon as natural, and so excused. Hastiness is carelessness, carelessness is slovenliness,

and slovenliness, from this standpoint, is spiritual dirtiness. We need spiritual cleanliness, and to obtain it

we must take care to reflect beforehand on the result of the proposed feeling or action or thought. So you

see how a knowledge of some of these hidden laws strikes at the root of your very being, and carries you

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along lines often far removed [Page 117] from the road on which the world at present travels.

THE IMPORTANT AND THE UNIMPORTANT

The Master now teaches us as to the relative importance of various courses of action, from His

standpoint and not from that of the world. "Firm as a rock where right and wrong are concerned, yield

always to others in things which do not matter". Or, as He has put it in another way: "Between right and wrong, Occultism knows no compromise".

The sentence I quoted just before this one acts as a commentary on it, and shows how firmness must

always be preceded by discrimination — a quality which, as Mrs. Besant has pointed out, is translated in

the outer world as "tact". The difficulty for most people is to decide as to what is really right and as to what is real y wrong. They say: "If only we knew that, there would be no difficulty at all, and we could quite easily let all else go". Now the Master has been telling us in an earlier part of the book that we must try to realise that our bodies are not ourselves. "You must dig deep down into yourself to find the God within you, and listen to His voice, which is your voice. Do not mistake your bodies for yourself, neither the physical body, nor the astral, nor the mental. Each one of them will pretend to be the Self, in order to

gain what it wants". What you have to do then is to try to be as sure as you can that any idea you may for

the moment have as to right and [Page 118] wrong is not one of your bodies pretending to be the God

within you so as to get something it wants for itself. If you avoid acting hastily, if you will give yourself time to do a little of that digging deep down of which the Master speaks, you will be almost certain to know

whether what is wanted is really right or not. It is all a matter of practice, for, the more you practise, the

bigger the channel leading to the real "you," the more quickly you can at any time travel into yourself and know the will of the God within you. Then, again, the more you reach the God within you, the more you

become the master of your various bodies, instead of al owing them in turn to dominate you. Their

various desires, therefore, will grow feebler and feebler, until you will at once be able to distinguish

between that which they want and that which you — the real you — want. Do not expect to be able at

once unerringly to discriminate between right and wrong, between the fictitious "right" of your bodies and the real "right" of yourself. At first, just try to stop, when you are about to do something apparently "right", and dig a little, that is to say, make a little appeal to the best in you. If you allow yourself to be carried

away at once, the chances are that you are al owing one of your bodies to put its own interpretation on

"right" and "wrong", and you begin to juggle with conscience by saying: " Wel , at any rate there is no harm in doing this". Remember that nothing matters much, most things not at all; so that ninety-nine out

of the hundred occasions on which you [Page 119] think you are following a principle, you are, as a matter

of actual fact, simply being led by bodies which ought to be your servants and not your masters. No man

can serve two masters, stil less the three — astral, physical and mental. We can only serve one master

— the God within us.

Mrs. Besant puts the same idea in another way when she tells us: " Give way in everything, save in

matters of principle". And the fact is that while you must be as firm as a rock as far as regards the general line or principle of conduct on which your life is based, in almost every act of daily life, in almost all your

relations with other people, you will be able to give way. "You must be always gentle, and kindly,

reasonable and accommodating, leaving to others the same ful liberty which you need for yourself". To

do this is to exercise true discrimination, or, to employ the worldly phrase, "tact". But remember that tact in this sense does not mean what it is so often supposed to mean — making things pleasant at the

expense of truth. It means sympathy and sweet reasonableness, "leaving to others the same ful liberty

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which you need for yourself". You could have no truer definition of tact than that.

Listen to Mrs. Besant's words on this important point:

"You see what is important in a certain thing that has to be done, and look after that; in all the rest you let the people do exactly what they like, and you point your will to the one thing in the middle that matters.

They will think what a delightfully [Page 120] yielding person you are and follow you quite happily on the

important point, hardly conscious that they are following at all. You have used discrimination; you have

thrown with both hands to people al the other things — the things which they think matter, and have

gone steadily on to the one thing you wanted. This is the thing which the fanatic forgets, and therefore he

does not succeed, while the occultist always succeeds. Yoga, you remember, is ‘skil in action'. The

fanatic will not yield on things which do not matter; he does not discriminate between the important and

the unimportant, so he rubs people's fur al up the wrong way, and then they will not fol ow him, however

right he may be, and however important his main object. If, instead, you smooth the fur down, they purr

and come along after you. This fact is based on an important fact in nature. In both men and animals it is

an instinct to pull in opposition to anyone who is trying to pul them. Do not pull and do not push people,

then they will come with you willingly. I saw a little instance of this fact here the other day. A man was

trying to pull a calf along and, of course, the calf had planted its four feet into the ground, stuck its tail out, and was pulling against the man for al it was worth. If the man had been sensible he would have stopped

pulling, and then the animal would have stopped pulling against him, and with a little patting he would

have got it to follow him willingly. Take a lesson from that. If people will not do what you want, look for the

fault in yourself. You will [Page 121] general y find that it is something in your way of acting that

indisposes them. I follow this plan myself. When there is friction and trouble in a place, I sit down and

think what it is I am doing that produces these, and find another way. It is no use trying to force people.

You can force them to a certain extent, no doubt, but you only create opposition and trouble by doing so.

But put a considerable attraction before them, and they will al come round it of their own accord. This

implies a faculty of leadership, and it is a faculty which the Masters will want of you in the future, so try to

develop it. The Masters will want you to know how to lead, so that you may help people along, instead of

hammering them along." [Page 122]

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CHAPTER IX

A SMALL THING

THE Master proceeds to draw a very important distinction between that which is worth doing and that

which is not. He says: "Try to see what is worth doing: and remember that you must not judge by the size

of thing. A smal thing which is directly useful in the Master's work is far better worth doing than a large

thing which the world would call good".

In the course of a varied experience I have come across many people who wish to take part in some kind

of activity, many of whom come and offer themselves for service. I have always been in a difficulty with

regard to these people, for I never can tel whether they are in earnest or not. One does not want to put

them off in any way, nor, on the other-hand, does one desire to have round one a number of people for

whom special kinds of work have to be found. If a person really wishes to serve the Master he does not

mind in the least what he does. But most people are not content to do whatever comes to hand. Either

there is some special kind of work which they want to do, and they do not care about doing any other

kind, or they expect that some activity shall be created for them. Again, many [Page 123] people are quite

unwilling to begin at the beginning. They want to do work which shall draw to them the favourable notice

of their fel ows, and they desire, therefore, to begin in the middle rather than plod through the early

stages through which al good work must inevitably be built up.

THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE

Now I want you who read these lines to look to see in what spirit you offer yourself for service. The

Master makes the matter quite clear. "A small thing which is directly useful in the Master's work is far

better worth doing than a large thing which the world would call good". Try to see, therefore, whether

there is a piece of work being done which may be called the Master's work: it is for you, individually, to

judge what the Master's work is. The Theosophical Society, the Order of the Star in the East, and all

activities subsidiary to these are obviously the Master's work, and if you can find a little place which

enables you definitely to be occupied in the service of such organisations, you are doing something

which is far better worth doing than some other piece of work — perhaps more showy, but less

connected directly with the Master's service. If I might be allowed to indulge in a little personal

reminiscence, I began my own service to the Masters by putting postage stamps on envelopes, and

writing out addresses for the Theosophical Society when its Headquarters were at 28, Albemarle Street.

[Page 124] I remember being thoroughly determined to get a footing in the Office, and while of course my

occupation was not very inspiring, I felt that I had put in the thin edge of the wedge, and that it rested with

me to hammer that wedge firmly home. I knew that I could do that work, and that probably I should not be

turned away, provided I did not show any discontent or desire for other work which might not, at the

moment, be available for me. On the other hand, I was on the spot, and if any work should turn up I

would be there ready to take it if no one better could be found.

One must, of course, be willing to go on with a special piece of work for an indefinite period. We ought to

believe that the Master directly guides the affairs of our Theosophical Society and of the Order of the Star

in the East, just as He guides many other movements in the world, and we should be able to realise that

He knows who are working for Him, in however humble a capacity, and that when the opportunity offers

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He will give them more suitable work. As a Master-Organiser you can trust Him to make the best use of

such capacities as you possess. Let me lay stress on the desirability of being on the spot. To me, in the

early days, it proved invaluable, for when Mr. Keightley had to leave for India the Theosophical Society

authorities had to look round for someone temporarily to take his place, and there I was at hand. I did not

ask to take his place, but they knew — at least I hope they did — that I meant business, and I was not

going to be turned away from the Master's service by the fact that there was not [Page 125] much for me to

do. The result was that while there may have been many other better candidates for the temporary post, I

was selected because they had not far to go to look for me.

Try to think how glad you are to render even the slightest little service to those whom you love. You do

not want necessarily to do big things for them. It is not always possible to render big acts of service, but

those whom you love are as happy with the small, kindly deeds as they would be with the big ones.

Indeed I cannot help thinking it is the little things that make life go smoothly, and though big pieces of

work have to be done, they general y affect people in the mass rather than individuals. So if you can

bring yourself to realise that the Master is one of those whom you love with al reverence, you will then

find out more clearly the meaning of the phrase, "a small thing directly useful in the Master's work is far

better worth doing than a large thing which the world would call good".

BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING

It is all a question of quiet determination. If you wish to become an engineer you must begin at the

beginning. Many people are able to drive motorcars, but most of those who can drive are helpless on the

occasion of a breakdown. They then have to engage the services of some one who has been for years

learning al about engines, and how to construct and repair them. The same applies equal y to the [Page

126] Master's service. When everything goes quite smoothly we all of us can do quite well, but every now

and then something goes wrong. It may be in the Office; it may be in the attitude of people either towards

the work or towards ourselves; it may be there is some friction between our fellow-workers. To put things

straight, you must have had experience of the way in which things work, whether they be office things, or

human temperaments. Ella Wheeler Wilcox said once in one of her poems: "Laugh and the world laughs

with you, weep and you weep alone". We can al laugh together, but Theosophists and members of the

Order of the Star in the East have to train themselves to stand helpful y beside those who weep. To do

this, you must try to learn wisdom through the small things before you can hope to achieve wisdom in the

larger issues of the outside world.

I repeat once more, the great thing is willingness to do anything that comes to hand. During this present

War many people who never used to put their hands to anything, feel they scrub floors, wash utensils, do

all kinds of so-called dirty jobs, because they now must help, and because they know help is needed. It is

sad that we should have needed a war to teach us this very obvious lesson. As a matter of fact, help is

always being needed, and we want people who will do all kinds of simple things, which, however trivial

they may appear in the eyes of the world, are little bright sparks of light illuminating the nobility of the soul

who is doing them. Such actions [Page 127] immediately attract the Master's attention, and thenceforth His

blessing plays upon that individual, and so from the doing simple things will come the power to be of

greater service.

Remember that when we are reading At the Feet of the Master we have come out of our world into the

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Master's world, and in His world things seem so very different from what they appear down here in the

ordinary world by which we are normal y surrounded. Never think of the world's judgment about what you

do or about what you want to do. Try to remember that the Master looks into your heart to see the spirit in which you are doing the work, and pays much less attention than does the outside world to the actual

work in which you are engaged. Your circle of influence may be at first very much restricted, but if you do

your duty within that limited sphere, the Master will take upon Himself to enlarge the circle and will give

you an opportunity of doing His work in a wider field. To sum it all up: begin at the beginning, and go on

at the beginning as long as you may be needed.

DISCRIMINATION IN SERVICE

The Master then tel s us to try and distinguish between the more useful and the less useful. "To feed the

poor" He says, "is a good and noble and useful work; yet to feed their souls is nobler and more useful

than to feed their bodies. Any rich man can feed the body, but only those who know can feed the soul. If

you know, it is your duty to help others to know". [Page 128]

These words contain a very important truth. We, who are members of the Order of the Star in the East

and of the Theosophical Society, are supposed to be in possession of truths which will help the world to

grow stronger, more useful, and more able to cope with its difficulties. There are not many of us who

possess these truths consciously, and the greatest blessing we can offer the world is to spread abroad

that which means so much to us. As the Master says, any rich man can feed the body. We expect a man

who has wealth to give his first attention to the right distribution of his wealth — that is his business.

Those of us who may have riches belonging to the spiritual world have, as our first care, the duty of

distributing these spiritual riches as wisely as we can. We are so apt to become slaves to the world's

attitude toward things, and to forget that, though the world may not recognise the value of our riches, we,

at least, have for ourselves and for many of our friends, proved their worth. Few Theosophists may have

worldly wealth, but al Theosophists have a little spiritual knowledge. If they cannot spread their spiritual knowledge far and wide, they probably would not, were they wealthy people, give of their riches

generously.

SPREAD YOUR TRUTH

People sometimes say to me: "I can do so little. You see I have no influence. Money seems to be

everything". My reply to them is: "What do [Page 129] you know that has helped you in life's difficulties?"

The knowledge that has helped you is certain to help others. Many people may not he ready for that

knowledge. For such, the voice of the Theosophist will fal on unheeding ears. But there are always

some, somewhere, who need the truths we possess, and it behoves us so to spread these truths that

they may reach the ears of those to whom they are necessary.

I quite grant that we can do but little without a certain amount of material prosperity. Money certainly

does help, and without it life is indeed more difficult. On the other hand, we must give what we can. If we do this, then will the Master add to our work the power that money gives. Money is always ready to the

hand of those who will use it in the Master's service. And while we all of us have, from time to time, to

know what it is to struggle without the help of money, while we have often to see many of our schemes

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fail for want of money, in the long run perseverance with the little we have will bring to us al kinds of help,

including financial. The run may be a long one; the length of it depends, to a very large extent, upon the

training which the individual has to receive. It may be necessary that he shall go through a long course of

poverty to see how far the truths he knows sustain him in trouble. But, as I have said before, he wins

through his experience, and no great truth for which some part of the world is ready can ever fail to reach

its object because of lack of money. It may fail to [Page 130] reach its object from lack of capacity, from lack of enthusiasm, from lack of perseverance, of the messenger. But once these qualities are present,

all other things shall be added.

So take care of that which you already possess, and invest it according to your best knowledge. No

possession is of greater value than the spiritual knowledge which gives us stability, peace, confidence,

strength. All these things come to us by building into our characters the truths for which the Theosophical

Society and the Order of the Star in the East stand. Let us, therefore, make use of these truths in our

own daily life, and employ them in service among al who surround us. Life is always more or less hard

and difficult. It should be less hard and less difficult to those of us who know. And we should be able to give of that which helps us to courage, to al who have a less sure source from which to draw.

At the present time, when the whole world is in the throes of war, we must be careful to see that the

knowledge we possess is spread far and wide, we must be careful to see that we live it more truly than

we have ever lived it before, and we must be careful to see that through our example the preaching of

this knowledge may be made more insistent and attention-compelling. Personally, speaking as a General

Secretary of the Theosophical Society in England and Wales, I feel it to be a special duty to do all I can to

make Theosophy widely known, so that those whom the War has caused to seek help and peace, may

be able to [Page 131] find something which shal give them courage to endure. I might have joined the

army, had my physical health been equal to the strain. But the truths of Theosophy are everything to me,

and have pulled me through many hard times. I could have given my body to my country, but I feel — I

do not think I shall be accused of cowardice in saying so — that I would far rather give my soul. That

which has given me strength I must give to those around me who are in need of strength. The world may

call this conceit, but it is the principle of my life, and I should feel untrue to my higher self were I not, in

such a crisis as this, to spread in the most helpful manner possible, truths for which the world is looking,

and without which the world can make but little progress. I quite agree that the majority of the youth of

the country owe their bodies to the nation, for the war is being partly fought with bodies, but I am equally

convinced of the truth underlying the letter of Lord Derby to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he

agreed as to the need of the service to the country of the ministers of religion. If a man shirk the gift of his

body, how shall he offer the gift of his soul. For the soul is a far greater gift than ever the body could be.

Yet, if a man feels himself to be a channel for the Master's force, and every minister of the Church should

feel this, then he can ordinarily do his best work by leading a life of special purity so as to become an

ever-deepening channel through which the Master's strength and blessing may pass untainted. [Page 132]

HOW SHALL WE SERVE ?

The question as to what we ought to do depends, therefore, upon the position which we occupy. It is,

indeed, the duty of most to set an example to those around them, and this often involves the putting

aside of occupations we like for the sake of duties we owe. I have often and often thought over this

question with regard to my own special circumstances, and I have come to the very definite conclusion

that so long as I can give the best of myself to my fellow-countrymen, and so long as I can maintain the

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highest standard of living within my power, for so long is it my duty to make as many useful channels as I

can through which our Theosophical movement may spread its message. The world may not agree with

me, but when I am making big decisions I strive for the time to live in the Master's world, and to make my

decisions from that standpoint. With the pressure of public opinion around one, and with the strong

thought-forms which press upon one from al sides, it is not always easy to keep clear the memory of that

temporary life in the Master's world. But I strongly feel the truth of those words of Shakespeare’s: " To

thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man".

Men may think you false; but that is a far different matter from actually being so. I quite admit that people often suffer their own inclinations, their own weaknesses, to enter into their judgments. They try to

reconcile desire with duty, and then seek [Page 133] to persuade themselves that it is duty which is moving them and not desire. The question is one between a man and his conscience, and when once one's

conscience is clear, one is bound to have adequate strength to meet any difficulties which such a

judgment may entail. [Page 134]

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CHAPTER X

SERVICE AS EDUCATION

THE Master remarks that: "However wise you may be already, on this Path you have much to learn; so

much that here also there must be discrimination, and you must think carefully what is worth learning".

He answers the thought by telling us that we must study, because "God is Wisdom as well as Love", and

that we must study especially that which will most help us to help others.

This statement of the Master seems to me to be at the basis of al true education, for I hold strongly that

no education can be regarded as satisfactory which does not include within it the service of other people.

It is sometimes said that the great object of education is first to make a child happy in his child-life, and

then to give him useful knowledge. As a matter of fact, happiness, knowledge and service are, in reality,

so far as the Master's world is concerned, interchangeable terms. No boy or girl is truly happy unless he

begins, even while young, to transmute his knowledge into service. In many of the more advanced

schools this truth is well understood, but, on the whole, educational authorities are far too much occupied

with conventional [Page 135] method and subject-matter, and pay far too little attention to the choice of

method and subject from the point of view of the way in which the child may easily make use of the

knowledge he daily gains in school for the helping of those less advanced than himself. In the Central

Hindu Col ege at Benares it was always our habit to encourage every single student not only to study but

to serve, and, indeed, we found it to be true that any boy who lacked capacity along any special line

could very considerably decrease his ignorance by trying to help along that line some one who knew

even less than he did. There is no better way of growing oneself than endeavouring to make oneself

useful to one's surroundings; and in helping other people we increase our own capacity to learn.

Unfortunately under modern conditions we are very often face to face with the statement that young

people must not be distracted from their studies; that their time for service is not yet; that they have

enough to do in learning without going into the outside world. With such statements I entirely disagree. I

do not think that children are nearly as happy as they ought to be, nor is the world nearly as joyous a

place to live in as it should be. There may be many reasons for this, but at least one of the reasons is

that the child does not bring into the outer world the joyous childish nature that the world needs, and I

long for the time when part of a child's school life shall consist in moving among his surroundings,

bringing to them the song that children alone can [Page 136] sing. I do not, for a moment, suggest that

children should take an active part in politics, or in the discussion of social questions. But I do say, most

emphatically, that there are very definite acts of service which children alone can perform, and which are

very much needed both by the elder generation, and by the young themselves.

TWO KINDS OF STUDY

The child, therefore, has two kinds of study to undertake: (1) that which vitalises and makes sensitive his

mind, and (2) that which enables him to be immediately of use in his own way. There are many subjects

to study; much he needs to know; partly because these things will be definitely useful to him in after life,

partly because they give the mind a certain tone, partly because they give the mind a certain discipline,

and partly because they bring him, through the mind, into touch with the world, past, present and future.

And, on the same lines, training must be given both to the physical and emotional bodies. With these, for

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the moment, we are not concerned. He must also be taught to study his actual place in the world in which

he lives — that which the world brings to him, and that which he exists, even as a child, to offer to the

world. He has his definite note to strike in the world's harmony, as much when a child as when he as

grown up. The child, therefore, who is not encouraged to turn his study into service cannot be [Page 137]

truly happy. For one of the conditions of growth is that we gradually find that the less our selfishness is

narrow, the more our happiness grows permanent. Children soon get tired of most of their toys, and

many parents are distracted at the thought of how they are going to occupy their young people from day

to day when studies are over. It is part of a child's nature that he should, from time to time, get into

"mischief "— this is but the result of that groping which leads us al to covet experience of one kind or another. The child would get into mischief much less, however, if he could be made to realise that he has

a power in himself which he can make use of if he likes — the power to join himself to others, and so to

gain a more satisfying kind of happiness than if he were to live for himself alone. I consider, therefore,

that every boy and girl who goes to school, or who goes to a University, should combine study with

service of one kind or, another. I consider all education one-sided which does not provide for each

student an appropriate service.

THE PRIMARY PRINCIPLE

The Master lays down the primary principle upon which all study and service must be based. He says:

"You must learn to be true al through, in thought and word, and deed". He thus emphasises that the

world is built upon a foundation of truth, and He shows us that this is the first lesson every one of us has

to learn, [Page 138] whether in school or out of it. Truth, indeed, is the basis of all growth, and the rate at which we grow depends upon the extent to which we allow truth to permeate our thoughts, our words,

our actions. Al in the world that is bad, impure, wrong, unhappy, is in reality, untrue. That is to say, it is all a distortion of the true — the force of truth has been misapplied. Absence of knowledge is the cause of all

the trouble in the world, and the world needs, above all things, that truth — which is the same as

knowledge — should be spread far and wide, in forms suited to the varying understandings of the

different stages of evolution to which the peoples of the world belong. The Master tel s us how we are to

arrive at the truth, and He says that we must not believe that a thing is true because many other people

hold it to be true, nor because it has been believed for centuries, nor because it is written in some book

which man thinks sacred. He tells us that we must think things out for ourselves, and judge for ourselves.

"He who would walk upon the Path must learn to think for himself, for superstition is one of the greatest

evils in the world, one of the fetters from which you must utterly free yourself".

FORM IS NOT REALITY

That is why it is so important to have as teachers people who have a certain amount of real knowledge,

and who are as free from prejudice as possible. I do not for a moment suggest that forms are not

valuable, [Page 139] and during childhood there are many forms with which children are to be associated.

But the teacher should never lose sight of the fact that forms are but forms, no matter how beautiful the

forms may be, and that the existence of the form depends upon the reality within. Young people are so

much brought up to believe that the forms which surround them are the only forms of any real value that,

either they rebel against them, or become dwarfed by them. In either case mischief has been done, and

suffering inevitably fol ows any belief that form is reality. We must try, therefore, to consider al forms as signposts pointing to the reality which they enclose. In the early stages of child-life, the form attracts

most, and we cannot expect any considerable effort to look through the form into the reality beyond. But,

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as education proceeds, forms become increasingly insignificant, and should serve but to emphasise the

beauty of an underlying unity which can find expression in so much apparent diversity. All of us,

therefore, have to see how much we are at the mercy of conventional habits of thought. It is, of course,

the reverse of sensible to disbelieve simply because a large number of people believe, though that is the

attitude of many otherwise independent thinkers. But we must be continually on the alert to see that we

do not unconsciously drift, either with our surroundings or with the general current of thought along which

our nation, or the world as a whole, is drifting. Those who would serve the Master must learn to think for

[Page 140] themselves, and this involves a very searching analysis of the motives which precede our

thoughts, our words, our deeds.

CAUSES OF MISUNDERSTANDING

The Master then remarks that we must not think of other people that which we do not know. This is, of

course, one of the most difficult lessons to learn, and one of the most valuable acts of service which both

young and old can offer in helpfulness to others. We are al of us far too prone to imagine, and then to

treat the imagination as if it were knowledge. Much of the ill-feeling which exists among people is simply

because they often think that which they do not know, and which frequently turns out to be untrue, A

personal talk with someone, whom one imagines to be in opposition to one, frequently removes the

misunderstanding. Indeed, most people are much more antagonistic away from their objects of

disapproval than when they come face to face. As a general rule, when two people come together, a very

slight effort is always made by the underlying Unity to assert itself, and with goodwill this little effort often

overcomes the misunderstanding which has been largely born of distance and ignorance.

Then, again, there is in most people a very definite tendency to exaggeration, and this also causes much

misunderstanding and difficulty. As the Master observes, we often imagine that people are thinking ill of

[Page 141] us: "If a man does something which you think will harm you, or says something which you think applies to you, do not think at once, 'he meant to injure me'. "Nothing is more true than the fact that each

soul has its own troubles, and that its thoughts turn chiefly around itself. Our attitude towards others very

largely depends on the way we ourselves are getting on in the world at the moment — on the state of our

physical health, on the hopes we have for the future, on our memories of the past. Generally speaking, it

is not so much what someone else does that matters, as the relation of that action to the little world in

which we live. A little matter which I thought nothing of yesterday, I may to-day regard as of essential

importance because toothache has entered my little world, and has upset my nerves. All kinds of

apparently trivial conditions may combine to make us take a very uncharitable view of the actions of other

people. Mrs. Besant has often told us that to feel hurt is a condition of selfishness, because our business is what we ourselves do, and not the attitude of others towards us.

This is a hard lesson to learn, because in the past we have so much depended upon the world outside

us. If we would become pupils of a Master we must become far more positive in character, and make our

condition depend upon what we give out rather than upon what we take in, I often think that the lives of

clerks in the City depend far more upon what happens .to their employers in the domesticity of home

than upon the carelessness or cleverness with [Page 142] which they attend to their employers' business.

An employer finds that his morning egg is bad, has a few words with his wife, is disturbed by the

boisterousness of his children, could not find his collar stud while dressing, lost his favorite train, found

his favorite seat occupied by some one else, and the result is that the office becomes unbearable, and

everything his subordinates do is wrong. The subordinates may imagine that their employer dislikes

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them, or has some grudge against them, whereas the fact of the matter is that the whole mischief began

with the loss of that col ar stud ! I do not, for a moment, wish to suggest that this is always the case, but it

very often is. As the Master observes: "Probably some one or something else has made him angry, and

because he happens to meet you he turns his anger upon you. He is acting foolishly, for all anger is

foolish, but you must not therefore think untruly of him". [Page 143]

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CHAPTER XI

DISCRIMINATION

THE Master proceeds to explain that when you become a pupil of one of the great Masters "you may

always try the truth of your thought by laying it beside His". He explains that the pupil is one with the

Master, and only needs to put back his thought into the Master's to see at once whether it agrees. This

remark obviously does not apply to pupils yet on probation, but only to those whose consciousness is in

some wonderful way blended with that of their Master. Many people have said to me that they cannot

understand how this laying of the thought beside that of the Master can be accomplished. The only

explanation I can think of is that the pupil who is accepted by the Master may always listen, if he will, to

the great harmony which the Master sends forth into the world. Any thought the pupil has either

harmonises with the Master's harmony, or is a discord, and in this way the pupil somehow feels whether

his thought is true or not. If it is true it gives him a sense of fuller life, and causes him, as it were, to glow throughout his being. If the thought is not true, it gives him a sense of discomfort and of being il at ease.

He feels, in some way, out of tune with things, and [Page 144] intuitively knows that he is not as genuine

as he ought to be. Probably most people have this feeling in greater or lesser degree. At a certain stage

when conscience becomes active, we know in a general way what thoughts are constructive and what

thoughts are destructive in our nature. We have certain ideals, and we know, at least, whether we are, on

the whole, living up to these ideals or not. Indeed such people may always ask the question: " What

would the Master think about this ? What would the Master say or do under these circumstances ?" But

the pupil of the Masters has these feelings with very much greater intensity, and the only way in which I

can describe the difference between the thought which harmonises and the thought which does not, is by

tel ing you that the former gives a sense of freshness and clearness, while the latter causes a clouded

and uncomfortable sensation. It is of course possible to be so immersed in one's thoughts and actions as

to shut oneself off from the Master's consciousness, and very often thoughtlessly think or do or feel

things which do not make us feel nearly as uncomfortable as they ought to, because we do not take the

trouble to test them in the light of the Master's consciousness. We identify ourselves so entirely with the

lower planes of Nature that we cannot listen to the voice of the spirit, and it very often happens that we

go through a whole series of wrong thoughts or feelings or actions before awakening to the fact that we

have made a mistake. Especially in times like the present, when the great [Page 145] world-crisis

concentrates our energy so very much in purely worldly activities, there is a danger of forgetting that it is

the Great Teachers who order the destinies of Nations and who guide Their peoples to right action.

LIVE IN YOUR IDEALS

We cannot expect, therefore, that the ordinary individual will be able continually to think that which the

Master would think, or say, or do under such and such circumstances. But anyone who has a definite link

with his Teacher ought to be able constantly to hear the harmony of his Master's life, and so almost

automatical y to accept this, and to reject that, thought or action which may come to him in the course of

his daily life. As a piece of general advice I would urge students to live, just at present especially, as

much in their ideals as possible, so as to allow these ideals to become as dominant as may be. The ideal

may be a great Teacher or a great principle, but now is the time to keep it strongly in mind, and to prevent

all attacks upon it from becoming successful. At the present time we are at the stage of a conflict

between ideals and worn-out forms, between the New Age and the Old, and our ideals are therefore

specially susceptible of attack because the Old wishes to remain in possession, and strives to kill that

which would take its place. In some ways at the present time it is easier to have ideals because the dawn

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of the New Age stimulates them almost [Page 146] prematurely. On the other hand it is easier also to

abandon ideals and to accept worn-out conventionalities and general world conditions.

TOWARDS LEADERSHIP

There is always a temptation to move slowly with the majority rather than to lead with the few. Leadership

is hard work and involves not only much sacrifice, but also much sorrow and disappointment. It involves

also the ridicule, contempt and disapproval of your ordinary surroundings. Do not imagine for a moment

that any leader the world has ever produced has gone through life to the plaudits of his fel ow men. We

may not, at present, be ready for leadership, but now is the time to make a beginning, and the making of

a beginning consists in trying to understand what our ideals are, and to adhere firmly to them. That is the

first stage towards leadership, for the Master does not need among His pupils any who are not ready for

leadership or who are not ready at least for that training which leads to leadership. The preliminary stage

is to learn to stand on your own feet; to give such help as you can to others, and to ask as little as you

can from them. It is good that others should help you, but it is your business to do without such help as

much as you can. I do not suggest that the help, if offered, should be rejected. It is as blessed to receive

as it is to give, and the blessing comes both to the receiver as well as to the one who gives. But what I

wish to lay [Page 147] stress on is that we must not depend on the help of others, because our task in life is to help others who still need to depend upon the strength they may be able to get from the outside.

The way in which this works out in practice is more a subject for psychology than for these elementary

papers on At the Feet of the Master. Nothing is more complicated than progress on the Path. I only wish to indicate here a few general principles, so that these may be known and studied. Each of them will

work out differently in different people according to their respective temperaments, but the principle

remains the same in all cases.

DANGERS OF EXAGGERATION

I do not suppose it is possible for any of us to practise perfectly the Master's statement: "You must never

do or say or think what you cannot imagine the Master as doing or saying or thinking". He places that as

an ideal and asks you to work towards it as earnestly as you can. It takes a long time to get, one's

various bodies in order, and no one should be despondent either because he cannot bring order out of

chaos al at once, or because he often fails. I have never yet heard that the Master condemns failure, but

I do know that He expects us to go on trying, however often we fail.

We are then told of various ways in which we must try to harmonise our own lives with those of the great

[Page 148] Teachers. We are told to be true in speech — accurate and without exaggeration. Exaggeration

is a most common fault among us all, specially among those of a highly imaginative temperament. We do

not exaggerate because we are wilfully desirous of perverting the truth, but because our astral bodies like

violent vibrations, and because we like to create a definite effect upon our surrounding's. Facts as they

are might not have the effect either of stimulating the astral body, or of arresting the attention of our

surroundings. When they do not have this effect we intensify them so as to get the result we want. The

effect is to acquire a loose habit of thinking, of feeling, and speaking, and sooner or later people will

cease to trust us, and so our power of usefulness in the world will be considerably diminished and we

shall be further from, not nearer to, the Master's service. In the pain produced by having great eagerness

to help, and at the same time being powerless to help, we shall learn how to help without exaggerating,

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or in any other way causing things to appear that which, in reality, they are not. Many people complain

that their circumstances interfere so seriously with their eagerness to be of service. One of the causes of

this may be that in the past they;have not used truthfully the powers they then had. So they have to learn

in the present life what it is to have eagerness, and yet to be shut off from its application.

We are told not to attribute motives to another, which, again, is one of the commonest of our [Page 149]

faults. We see the act or the thought or the feeling, and we immediately interpret the cause. My own

experience has been that most people act from reasons that never enter one's mind when one is

criticizing them. In my own case I know to how smal an extent people real y know the motives which

underlie my actions, and I must assume that this is true of other people as well. People have their own

troubles and sorrows and griefs, and very often they act under the influence of these troubles and

sorrows or griefs, although the action itself, from the standpoint of the outsider, cannot have any possible

connection with them. The greater the leader, the more he interprets kindly the attitude of other people to

him. I have often wondered why Mrs. Besant al owed herself so often to be deceived, as it seemed to

me, when she must surely have known that those who were deceiving her were doing so from evil

motives; but I believe that at a certain stage you can only think in a kindly way about people, and while it

is true that you may in some ways be more easily deceived, yet because your thoughts are thoughts of

goodwil the deceit recoils upon the deceiver and earns for him a terrible lesson. Moreover, by thus

generating a continuous stream of goodwill you acquire a power that somehow or other prevents people

acting towards you as they might were you less pure of heart, and it is clear that your capacity for serving

the Master is immensely increased by a purity of thought which no adverse external circumstances can

besmirch. [Page 150]

One of the most valuable pieces of advice given in At the Feet of the Master is: "If you hear a story against anyone, do not repeat it, it may not be true, and even if it is, it is kinder to say nothing". The

human race seems to have a special penchant for repeating stories about other people, and I imagine

that half, at least, of the world's sorrows and troubles are caused by this pernicious habit of exaggeration,

which is due to lack of power of controlling our various bodies, which are always craving for excitement of

some kind.

We are told also "to think well before speaking, lest you fall into inaccuracy", We are far too impetuous and impulsive both in speech and action, and if we could be a little calmer, more contemplative, more

self-control ed, we should speak more deliberately and with a greater sense of responsibility. But many of

us, I am sorry to say, are like butterflies, flying hither and thither, and caring little about the result of

speech or feeling or action, provided we enjoy them at the time. We are too prone to imagine that the

future can take care of itself, but when the future comes we often wish that we had paid a little more

attention beforehand to its construction.

IMAGINATION VERSUS PRETENCE

Then, again, we must avoid pretending to be that which we are not. This is a most difficult matter for

many people. We are often in the habit of pretending [Page 151] in order to create an effect, in order to

induce other people to give us more attention and respect than that to which we are, from our condition,

entitled. If only people would realise that the more natural they are the more effective and useful they

must necessarily be. Sooner or later people cannot help seeing through pretence, and then the castle

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which you have been at such pains to build up dissolves into thin air. You are left in your nakedness, and

the world turns away from you. Many people try to induce others to believe that they have powers which

they do not possess, and then, of course, begins a series of deceptions which some day overwhelm

them. On the other hand I do not think it is a mistake for people sometimes to imagine themselves as

they hope to be in the future, provided they do not allow this imagination to deceive others. If you can

imagine yourself to be more kindly than you are, and if you try to make that imagination a fact in the outer

world, then the imagination may be valuable. If you imagine yourself to be truthful when, as a matter of

fact, you are untruthful, then your imagination, if carried into practice so far as you are able, will help to

stimulate in you the growth of truth. If you imagine yourself to be purer than you normal y are, and if you

make this imagination a kind of embodied reminder to you of the need for purity, then you are likely to

grow in this respect. Imagination of this kind is far different from the pretence of which the Master speaks,

for it is a clearing away of the obstruction [Page 152] between the outer world and the light of your soul, while pretence is an effort to deceive the world into believing that your nature is better than you are

actually trying to make it. It is good that your friends should think well of you, that they should think better

of you than you deserve, but you must not yourself try to deceive them. If they think that you are real y

better than you are, it may not be necessarily wise for you to disillusion them, but at least you must try to

live up to the standard which they have created for you. A leader is very often much greater in the eyes of

his followers than he is in reality, and may feel, therefore, almost as if he were deceiving his followers,

and that he ought to make them understand that he is far more ordinary than they think. I do not think he

is at al bound to take this course, partly because it would not help his followers at all, and partly because

if he is a true leader he is striving day by day to rise to the needs of his followers, and to the ideal which

he is to them. Apart from this, remember the Master's words: "All pretence is a hindrance to the pure light

of truth, which should shine through you as sunlight shines through clear glass".

THE GOOD IN ALL

Two more points are emphasised. One, that we must learn to distinguish between the selfish and the

unselfish, and the second that we must learn gradual y to realise that good is in everyone and everything,

"no matter how evil he or it may appear on the [Page 153] surface". "Selfishness", says the Master, "has many forms, and when you think you have final y killed it in one of them, it arises in another as strongly

as ever". The only way to get rid of selfishness is to concentrate your thoughts or feelings, or your

actions, on the service of other people, then you will have no room for selfishness. Selfishness only

arises when we think too much of our smal selves, and too little of those larger selves to which others

too belong.

Finally, let me quote that beautiful passage which concludes the Master's observations on discrimination:

"You can help your brother through that which you have in common with him, and that is the Divine Life;

learn how to arouse that in him, learn how to appeal to that in him; so shal you save your brother from

wrong". It is essential we should realise that we are not apart from the sinner any more than we are apart

from the saint. Mrs. Besant has often laid stress on the fact that while we are very eager to claim unity

with the saint, we are far less eager to acknowledge unity with the sinner. Sinners and saints share a

common life, and are striving towards a common goal, and the condition of our gaining strength and help

from the saint is that of giving strength and help to the so-cal ed sinner. After al the sinner is merely

ignorant, and we ought to know by this time how ignorant we ourselves are. We are all sinners in some

degree, and we are al thankful for whatever help we can get. Let us earn the help from others above us

by cheerfully and thankful y giving help and strength to others less evolved than ourselves. [Page 154]

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CHAPTER XII

DESIRELESSNESS

WE have now come to the second of the great qualifications given by the Master — that of

Desirelessness, and at the outset of His remarks He points out that people feel that they are their

desires. I suppose that this feeling of unity is part of growth, for unless we have it we do not fully

understand the desire with which we identify ourselves. We are all made up of our likings and dislikings,

and so much are these part of our daily lives that we feel that if these were taken away "there will be no

self left". As we pass through the portal of death into the intermediate stages which precede rebirth we

are taught that these desires and likings and dislikings are not real y part of ourselves, for we learn that

only by withdrawing from them can we reach the higher regions of the heaven world. But we need not

wait until death for the lesson as to the need for desirelessness. Alcyone remarks — for it is he who

speaks in this sentence, not the Master — that those who think there will be no self left if their desires are

taken away "are only they who have not seen the Master; in the light of [Page 155] His holy Presence all desire dies, but the desire to be like Him".

Alcyone makes this remark with the memory of the great unifying fact of standing in the presence of the

Master. I myself remember on one occasion standing in the presence of one of the greatest of earth's

Teachers and experiencing the most complete sense of unity I have ever known. In the first moment I felt

acutely my own unworthiness, but in a flash that was past. He lifted me into Himself, as it were, and I was

one with Him — seeing with Him, being with Him. So I can of my own experience testify to the truth of the

statement that "in the light of the Master's presence all desire dies, save the desire to be like Him". And the desire to be like Him is immediately accomplished by the Master's power of drawing us away from the

smaller self. The Master feels so strongly His unity with us that it temporarily compels the feeling on our

part of unity with Him. But we must remember that this feeling is a temporary one, and that when out of

His presence, away from His compelling influence, we tend to fall back into the il usion that if our likings

and dislikings are taken away from us there will be no self left. Fortunately, as we are told,

desirelessness does not depend upon being in the presence of the Master. His great value to us consists

in His continual y emphasising the true desirelessness in His own nature, and sending out strong

impulses which gradually tend to awaken wise desirelessness in us. We, on our side, must be alive to

these great [Page 156] impulses, and must gradually train ourselves to make use of them. Now they are

always playing about us, but they cannot affect the God within, save infinitesimally, unless and until the

God within, of Its own volition, wills Its upward climb. In connection with desirelessness the Master points

out that "discrimination has already shown you that the things which most men desire, such as wealth

and power, are not worth having; when this is real y felt, not merely said, al desire for them ceases".

Hence we must begin by finding out what things are worth having and what things are not worth having,

and gradual y we eliminate those we realise to be no longer worth having until at last we find, so far as

our own evolution is concerned, the only thing remaining worth having.

RELATIVITY OF RIGHT DESIRES

At our varying stages of evolution various things are right to be desired. Most men, we are told, desire

wealth and power, and it may be that these desires are a necessary stage for them. For we only reach

the higher desires by climbing upon the down-trodden forms to those which are higher. So unless men

desire wealth and power, and through such desire proceed to realise that wealth and power confer

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merely temporary benefits, they will not be ready for the next stage, which may be "to gain heaven, or to

attain personal liberation from rebirth". So you must not imagine that because an individual [Page 157] has a desire which you have outgrown, therefore he ought to have outgrown it too. In the matter of desire

always learn "to mind your own business", and do not expect other people to conform to your standards,

any more than you can imagine the Master as limited by ideals which, to you, are the highest

conceivable. It is not for you or for me to say at what stage an individual ought to have realised that any

particular desire ceases to be worth having. If he wants an experience, if he desires an experience, it is

probably because he has not yet passed the stage appropriate to the experience. Of course, if we are in

charge of young people it becomes our duty to try and make their desires as noble and unselfish as

possible, but we must, at the same time, remember that they may wish in their young lives to run rapidly

through a series of desires which we, in this particular life, have managed for the time being to outgrow. I

often hear of young people saying that while they feel that in the long run Theosophy is the only thing

worth working for, for a little time they would like to experience the ordinary worldly life. You and I

perhaps, having experienced the ordinary worldly life, know its valuelessness and desire it no longer.

Possibly we may have substituted that which, to us, is a higher desire. Our young friends will doubtless

come to this stage, but there is no reason to suppose that they may not have to pass through a series of

experiences similar to those which have led you and me to our present position. The young physical

body desires above all [Page 158] things contact with an outer world which it has not had so great an

opportunity of knowing as have had older people. We sometimes jump to the conclusion, therefore, that

young people are not as earnest as we are ourselves. This may have been a conclusion to which elder

people may have come when we were young, and when we ourselves turned from those ideals which the

elder people of our generation had already reached. A desire is a desire, and does not cease to be desire

because it ought not to be desired. The only way to cause cessation of desire is to experience its object,

and while I do not by this wish to suggest that we should rush headlong into the satisfaction of all

possible desires that come haphazard into our consciousness. I nevertheless feel that it is not in the least

degree helpful to baulk desires which are insistent. I should, in the case of young people, proceed along

the lines of strengthening the powers of discrimination, so that they themselves may be able to decide

between the various types of desire, so as to select the more noble as against the less noble, the less

selfish as against the more selfish,

DISCRIMINATION IN DESIRE

That is why in At the Feet of the Master the qualification of Discrimination comes first. First get a

standard based upon past experience, and upon the realisation that certain desires afford less

permanent satisfaction than others. This standard will be the main factor in helping people to turn away

[Page 159] from desires which tend to make them identify themselves with their lower bodies. I do not say

to young people that they ought to have this desire, and ought not to have that; I say to them that they

should pay attention to their experience, and make their experience their guide. Those who feel to a very

considerable extent at the mercy of their desires, may very well make a point of carefully reading all that

the Master says with regard to discrimination. Remember how He asks us to distinguish between our

various bodies and ourselves; between right and wrong; between the important and the unimportant;

between the more useful and the less useful. Remember how He advises us "that the small thing which

is directly useful in the Master's work is far better worth doing than a large thing which the world would

call good". Then again, remember how He tells us that "God is Wisdom as well as Love", and that the more wisdom we have the more we can manifest God. Then He emphasises the need for truth, for

unselfishness, and for realising the God in everyone and everything. In these various ways our

discrimination becomes reliable and helpful, and so we are led to a realisation of that which

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desirelessness really means.

We must not forget, when we are reading what the Master tel s us about desirelessness, that He is

addressing a pupil about to pass through the portal of Initiation, and His remarks do not necessarily

therefore apply to those who have not yet reached that stage. They do, however, represent an ideal, and

[Page 160] as those who read these pages should be within reasonable distance of discipleship, it is well

that they should standardise their ideals as far as possible in conformity with those required by men and

women already accepted as the Master's apprentices. The spiritual condition of the pupil addressed in

these pages becomes clear when we read that he must not fall into the error of desiring heaven, or

personal liberation from rebirth. "If you have forgotten self altogether, you cannot be thinking when that

self shall be set free, or what kind of heaven it shall have. I think the Master in this passage is probably

referring to the fact that the candidate for Initiation dedicates himself to the service of the world, and so

no longer desires heaven for himself, or his own personal liberation from the round of births and deaths.

This does not mean that for many people such desires may not be entirely proper. They are only not

appropriate for those of us who wish to prepare ourselves for the Master's service, since the Master's

service means the service of the world, and forgetfulness of the individual self.

How difficult that service is, is made clear when the Master tel s us "that all selfish desire binds, however high may be its object, and until you have got rid of it you are not wholly free to devote yourself to the

work of the Master". There are very few pupils ready to devote themselves to the work of the Master!

Speaking as one of the humblest, I notice how considerably my own selfish desires bind, and interfere

with the duties I owe to my Teachers. [Page 161] But my own condition may perhaps give comfort to

others, in that they may realise that we are not expected to get rid of all selfish desire before we can

hope to become pupils of one or other of the great Teachers. But we are expected, at least, to make

Their work the dominant activity of our lives, and to be willing at all times to subordinate our individual

concerns to the needs of the world for which we strive to live. However this may be, selfish desire does

bind, and so there are but few who can consider themselves as true servants of the Master. Indeed,

desire is a most subtle form of il usion, and the Master shows us how many subtle desires there are

which, perhaps, we are inclined to call quite natural.

DESIRE FOR THE FRUITS OF ACTION

"Surely there is no harm in wanting to see the result of work, or to see how much we help other people?"

I quite agree that for most of us such desires are natural, inevitable, and perhaps helpful, inasmuch as

they may make us work and help other people. On the other hand, the Master tells us that such desires

imply want of trust. "When you pour out your strength to help, there must be a result whether you can see

it or not; if you know the Law you know this must be so". So far as I am concerned, it may be well to

confess at once that I often desire to see the result of my work, and to see how much I have helped

people. I think I may go so far as to disclaim any desire for people's gratitude, [Page 162] though gratitude is certainly a most pleasant experience. But I realise quite clearly how necessary it is to have

desirelessness as regards the result of work, and as regards the amount of helpfulness an individual

receives in relation to the amount given. So I am trying gradually to work towards this, and to do right for

the sake of right and not in the hope of reward — not in the hope of seeing the result. The Master points

out it is a question of love. The intensity and purity of the love determines the amount of desirelessness.

If we love an individual we give him of our best, whatever the result may be; if we love our work we pour

our whole hearts into it and have no time to think of the result accomplished. We leave results to take

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care of themselves, as indeed we are justified in doing. Love is the great purifier of desire, and while it is

true that many people are inclined to mistake passion for love, true love is utterly self-sacrificing and

derives the completest joy from the mere process of giving. As the Master says: "You must give yourself

to the service of the world because you love it, and cannot help giving yourself to it".

SERVICE ONE STANDARD

The Master proceeds to explain to us that it is very unwise to desire further powers until we have

adequate control over those we already possess. As He says, they will come when He knows that it is

[Page 163] best for us to have them. Most of us who are really in earnest soon find out that we have as

much as we can do, indeed more than we can do, to use wisely and moderately the powers we already

possess — the powers that ordinary people possess. We find, too, that we are very far from having

learned how to use the force already at our command, and that it will take us a very long time indeed to

be sure of ourselves. I always wonder at the conceit of people who want to acquire psychic powers, in

other words, powers beyond those which we normally possess. Psychic powers belong to a world

different from the physical, and it seems to me to be very undesirable to want to add the experiences of

another world until we are fairly sure of our attitude in connection with the experiences the physical world

affords us. Some people have certain psychic faculties. Perhaps they see nature spirits, or auras, or they

can read the thoughts and feelings of other people. But the fact that they can see these things does not

mean that, therefore, they are able to draw correct judgments from such sight. We know how difficult it is with the waking consciousness in the physical brain to draw just conclusions from all we see around us.

This is none the less difficult when our waking consciousness is transferred to the astral plane, and is in

contact with the experiences appropriate to that plane. To understand the world in which we live for many

hours of the day is difficult enough, and for my part I think it is just as well to confine our attention to that

world until those [Page 164] wiser than ourselves deem it desirable to impose a greater burden on our

judgment than has hitherto existed. If I see a certain colour in a person's aura, how can I be real y sure

what that colour means in connection with that special individual ? And even if I am certain, what means

has that individual, who perhaps is not a clairvoyant as I am myself, of judging the extent of my infal ibility

? In the Theosophical Society we have many people who profess to see this, to experience that, to hear

messages, and so forth. Personal y, if ever I judge at al , I judge of people by their actions as I see them,

and by the extent to which self-sacrifice seems to dominate their lives. Unfortunately, however, we have

in our ranks people who long to be continually in contact with the mysterious, and who are willing to

believe, to almost any extent, that which is out of the ordinary. The Master teaches us that we belong to

Him according as we make service of our fellow creatures an ever increasing part of our lives. That is the

standard, and those who live lives of continual self-surrender are alone entitled to receive respect for

statements made in connection with conditions which the ordinary individual has no means of judging.

The fact of the matter is that the more an individual really has these psychic powers the less he talks

about them, the less he imposes them upon other people. He uses them for helping, but realises at the

same time that it is not wise to ask other people to attach credence to that of which they have so far had

no experience. As the Master observes; "In any case the time [Page 165] and strength that it takes to gain them might be spent in work for others". In the course of development these powers will undoubtedly

come, and those who truly rely upon the Master will not trouble about them until He gives directions as to

their unfoldment, or unless they have come naturally and without effort. If only people would remember

that it ought to take us all our time to use the powers we already have in the service of our surroundings !

[Page 166]

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CHAPTER XIII

DESIRELESSNESS (Concluded)

THE Master then lays stress upon a few very common desires which the candidate for Initiation or

discipleship must strive to avoid. It is a great pleasure to many of us to appear clever, to shine in

conversation. But in the Master's world nothing is said save that which is true, kind, and helpful. I say

deliberately, "in the Master's world", because I am afraid that this direction can only be successfully

carried out by those who either are Adepts, or are approaching the Adept level. Nevertheless, we must

gradually strive towards this ideal, and perhaps take one of the conditions at a time. We might, for,

example, determine for a certain period of time to be utterly truthful, and then by degrees qualify truth

with kindness and helpfulness. It is a matter for experiment and gradual development. The useful maxim:

"Think twice before you speak", might, for you and me, be extended to: "Think seven times before you speak". I am often told by people to whom I give this advice that anyone fol owing these directions would

hardly ever be able to say anything at all, or that by the time he had thought seven times the necessity

[Page 167] for the remark would have passed ! This is quite probable, and it might be worth while to

remember that most of our conversation is both useless and unprofitable, and there are many remarks

which after reflection we wish we had not made. The teaching comes to this: that we should be deliberate

and not impulsive; that we should realise that truth is far more helpful than outward splendour; and that,

as the Master points out, we must get used to thinking carefully before speaking, for as we grow truths

are given to us which it would not necessarily be helpful to utter to the outside world. Above all we want

t» be helpful, not to appear learned.

THE DUTY OF NON-INTERFERENCE

"Another common desire which you must sternly repress", says the Master, "is the wish to meddle in

other men's business". Note that the Master uses; the word "sternly", indicating this to be a desire to which we are al uncommonly susceptible. I suppose that more harm is done by yielding to this desire

than people at all realise, not only because we interfere with another person's responsibilities, but also

because we imagine that everyone else must look upon things from the same point of view from which

we ourselves regard them. We are all at different levels of evolution: all have different duties, different

conceptions of life, different lines of activity, and have different parts of the plan to help in working out. So

we must never forget that each individual is [Page 168] working out his destiny in his own way, and while

there is no reason we should not help him if he asks for help, or if we feel we can useful y be of

assistance to him, we must never forget that we cannot possibly see things from his standpoint, nor can

we imagine what his "dharma" under certain circumstances would be. There are circumstances, of

course, in which certain steps have to be taken, in which a certain course of action has to be adopted,

and such steps, or such course of action, may possibly be in opposition to the views and principles of

some members of the body which has to take the decision. For example, in the present War there are

people who believe that the War ought never to have been begun at al , and yet it is quite possible to

imagine that the War is inevitable, and that people who believe that it ought never to have been begun

must, to a certain extent, be ignored. Sometimes the will of the majority must prevail; sometimes the will

of the minority; at all events, it does not follow that everybody must have his, or her, way at al times.

But this is a far different matter from judging other people, or from trying to interfere with what, after all, is their business. "Everyone", says the Master, "has full right to free thought and speech and action". But, of Page 67

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course, he must not interfere with the freedom of other people, except under very abnormal

circumstances. We constantly hear, at the present time, of such freedom being interfered with, and of

various kinds of oppression being directed towards those who do not think with the [Page 169] majority.

The point is a very difficult one because, in such difficult times as these, I can conceive it necessary, on

occasion, for much individual freedom to be surrendered for the sake of the freedom of the whole. I do

not wish to lay stress on this aspect of the situation, because it would involve me in a long line of

argument outside the particular object with which At the Feet of the Master was written. Suffice it to say that much turns upon the way in which we define the word "freedom", and before you al ow yourself to

suppose that the Master has laid a ban on al restriction, just think over the question as to what freedom

really means, and try to fit in your definition with the fact that perfect freedom means perfect service. The

point on which I imagine the Master is laying stress in this particular paragraph is that we must not

imagine that that which is true for us is necessarily true for everybody else — or ought to be ! In other

words we must grow increasingly tolerant. You claim freedom to do what you think proper. Other people

must have the same freedom, and are entitled to the same respect and appreciation for their sincerity of

purpose as you would unhesitatingly claim for your own. These remarks special y apply, of course, to the

outer differences which people so often think to be of supreme importance. The colour of a man's skin;

his religion; his customs ! All these largely affect the judgments of many people. Some of us believe that

our religion alone is the true one, that our customs alone are sensible customs, that the colour of our skin

is typical of the [Page 170] highest stage of evolution at present reached. We instinctively depreciate those who do not conform to standards to which we imagine that we ourselves conform, "He is not in our set.

He belongs to the lower classes, he does not eat as we eat, his habits are not ours" — all these may, no

doubt, be statements of fact, but they should not be implications of inferiority. It is for this reason that the

Theosophical Society couples with its declaration as to Universal Brotherhood an insistence on the unity

of al great religions, and a declaration that distinctions of sex and colour do not affect the essential unity

of mankind.

MAN, THE MASTER OF HIS DESTINY

People who are keen about other people's business are generally uncertain about their own, and are

eager that other people should conform to their own standards in order that these standards may have

behind them the strength of many. On the other hand, behind your own standards of life should be the

strength of your own purity of conviction. Strength does not lie in numbers but in sincerity of belief.

People sometimes believe that law ultimately rests upon force, but as a matter of fact law rests upon

consent, for it is impossible to force a law upon an individual who does not choose to obey it. You may kill

the body but you cannot kil the spirit, and this is what many governments have found out to their cost.

The Romans kil ed the bodies of the Christian martyrs, but the spirit of the Christian [Page 171] martyrs

built the Church which has endured long after Imperial Rome ceased to exist.

You will notice that the Master takes care to observe that there is no harm in suggesting to an individual

that he is doing wrong if you feel it would be helpful to tell him so. Parents, for example, often have the

duty of telling their children that they think they are wrong, and sometimes they have to restrain them

from doing that which they think to be wrong or unwise. There is never any harm in placing your

knowledge at the disposal of other people, but you must not imagine that you can force them to believe

that which you happen to know and believe. Experience must always come from within, and while people

may sometimes act according to your advice, even though they do not necessarily understand it, the only

good karma they will get will lie in the action and not in the motive, for the motive is yours. Theirs is the

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good karma of obedience, but yours is the karma of knowledge, and the karma of knowledge is even

better than that of obedience.

People are often very anxious to live near one of the great Teachers so as, probably, to be relieved of the

responsibility and anxiety of using their own judgment, thus learning through mistakes. They do not

understand that they would, under these circumstances, only be using the Master's judgment instead of

striving to develop their own. From time to time the Master can stimulate, but man is indeed the master of

his destiny and must work it out for himself. Those people are most helpful in the [Page 172] world who

have themselves gone through many experiences, who have had to suffer the "slings and arrows of

outrageous fortune", and who have gained from the buffeting a strength which they can use, not only for

themselves, but in the service of others also. When, through experience, our judgment and discrimination

have become keen and strong, then is it that the actual presence of the Master might be of very great

advantage. In the meantime, while He exercises a paternal watchfulness over us, He leaves us to mind

our own business, and to learn what is the nature of true freedom.

GOSSIP

I should like to lay great stress upon the Master's warning that we should not go and gossip with some

third person about another person, unless, of course, there is some special, and helpful, reason for so

doing. But many people spend their time in taking other people, to pieces, enjoying the gossip because it

has a stimulating effect upon the astral or Mental bodies. But such action is, as the Master says,

"extremely wicked". It is wicked because it creates thought forms which tend to fasten upon the

individual's weakness, and make it more difficult for the victim to over come his deficiencies. We irritate

the sore places and the result, of course, is that they take infinitely longer to heal. It is very difficult to

bear this advice in mind, because gossip is so extraordinarily common a failing, and many people would

[Page 173] have nothing to say at al were they to cease gossiping. Nevertheless, we are continually being

told that our speech should be helpful, and gossip is very distinctly harmful.

RECOGNITION OF THE EGO

I can quite imagine people saying that they would not like anyone to tell them if they were doing wrong,

not so much because they dislike to be told but, probably, because they fear the manner of the telling. It

is perfectly true that some people take a delight in pointing out to others their mistakes and weaknesses,

and in pointing them out in a comparatively cruel manner. They point them out harshly and

unsympathetically, without making the person feel they are with him in the effort to correct his fault.

Everything depends the way in which you do things. There are some people who have the faculty of

never giving offence, no matter what they say. Others can hardly open their lips without causing trouble.

It all depends on what is behind the action, behind the speech, behind the thought, behind the feeling.

Anyone who is genuinely desirous of helping, and who has a strong feeling of sympathy for others, can

always safely point out to his friends any faults he may think they have, because his manner of pointing

out would be to show these individuals that he had a real brotherly sympathy for them, and that he

assumes no superior attitude, being conscious of his own defects. On the whole, however, we should

[Page 174] realise that we have as much as we can do in strengthening our own weak places, and the

more we can do to emphasise other people's good qualities, the more we shall help them to grow. In this

connection I should like to point out the value of a book written by Jerome K. Jerome, entitled The

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Pacing of the Third Floor Back. In this book one of the characters — a stranger — is continual y laying stress on people's potential qualities. He goes to a boarding house in which are a number of quite

ordinary people, and by identifying himself with their higher natures he causes them automatical y to drop

the foolishnesses which had been making their lives so ineffective. Hitherto they had al been looking

contemptuously at each other and had been criticising each other, and the result was that each became

confirmed in his own vulgarities and found himself estranged from his fel ows. The coming of the stranger

altered al this, and when he came into the room everybody's lower nature retreated into the background

and the higher stood forth triumphant. You may say, if you like, that he idealised people. Indeed, Mrs.

Besant is often accused of being deceived by people because she trusts them or because she idealises

them, "because she does not know them as they real y are", people would say. As a matter of fact it is

because she does know them as they real y are that she idealises them. What we see in them is merely

a temporary phase; what she sees in them is the eternal reality, and it is the reality that she is trusting.

The reality is thankful for the trust, however [Page 175] much the temporary lower nature may seem to be

unworthy of it, and the result is that the individual whom Mrs. Besant trusts, or whom she idealises, is

infinitely the better for the trust and the idealisation. People's lower natures may sometimes take

advantage of her, but the ego has been respected and recognised, the result being that it acquires

increased strength to dominate its lower vehicles. I believe that this attitude is the attitude we should all

strive increasingly to adopt. The test of spirituality in an individual is his capacity to pierce through the

outer form into the inner reality, to dismiss as fleeting that which many of us might regard as of the

essence, and to associate himself with the reality which most of us may be unable to see. Each one of us

has his defects, and many of our friends stop short at these defects, but the leader draws out from the

individual his higher self, and cal s upon that to dominate the ignorances, and gradually to diminish their

obstructive power. The leader is one who induces a sense of capacity, of life, of energy, of power to

surmount obstacles, to overcome difficulties. He is able to do this by evoking the God within, and his

power to evoke the God within is determined by the extent to which his own inner nature has become

strong through experience.

THE DUTY OF INTERFERENCE

The Master points out that it is our duty to interfere in cases of cruelty. In such cases it is not a question

[Page 176] of "minding your own business" but of protecting the weak against the ignorance of the strong.

And there are, of course, certain ignorances which cannot be tolerated. If we see a case of cruelty to an

animal or child it is our duty to interfere, but not with brutality or passion. We sometimes become furious

at the wrongs done to other people, and such fury is a necessary stage, but the power and force of the

fury could better be employed in other ways. Anger never real y helps in the long run; people are much

more dominated by calm than they are by storm.

We are told also that if we see anyone breaking the law of the country we must inform the authorities.

This is one of the phrases least understood by readers of this little book. They do not see that our

primary duty is to be on the alert against laws which we conceive to be wrong, and to fight bad laws as

actively as we can. So long as we acquiesce in the law we must accept it as part of the machinery for

establishing peace throughout the land. Those who break the law are, under the circumstances,

therefore, disturbers of the peace, and our business as good citizens is to see that the peace is as little

disturbed as possible. People so often declaim against a law without taking the slightest trouble, either to

agitate for its repeal, or deliberately to submit themselves to its provisions in order to show its injustice.

Our first duty is to help to make the laws of the land as righteous as we can make them. If we are so

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doing, then we must help to see that they are not broken. The difficulty is that [Page 177] people pay little attention to the laws of the land, and only take an interest in them when they are strongly brought into

conflict with them. You will notice in Mrs. Besant's Autobiography how she always gave notice when she

was going to do anything wrong, in order that the law might be applied, because she knew that the

existence of law in the country was the only safeguard for individual freedom, and while she thought it

her duty sometimes to fight the law, she fought it openly, and with a willingness to come under its

authority. Indeed, she always went out of her way to assist the authorities to take cognisance of her

actions, so that while she might be breaking the law she would not actually be breaking the peace.

People sometimes tell me that they would not be traitors to individuals fleeing from justice and who trust

in them. I do not believe that such an attitude is necessarily true loyalty, either to the individual or to the

State. If an individual has offended against the laws of the country, it is necessary that his offence should

be brought home to him for the sake of experience. If the laws of the country are unjust, we should

already have been busy in striving to have them replaced by better edicts. It means that people do not

take their citizenship sufficiently earnestly, do not take sufficient trouble about their civic duties, do not

realise their individual responsibility for the laws of the land. Those who have no responsibility for the law

of the land, and who cannot affect it in any way, are, indeed, in a difficult position, but most of us have

such a responsibility, and, having it, must stand [Page 178] by the law while it is law, and seek, if we think proper, to modify such portions as may seem to us unjust. It means, of course, that not only must we be

watchful about the laws, but also about the authorities. It often happens that the authorities are men or

women who have no business to be authorities at all, who do not know how to use their power wisely; in

which case, by informing the authorities, we might be placing the individual in the hands of those whose

sense of power overwhelms their sense of justice. So we must be careful to see that we place in

positions of authority only those who are worthy of the trust. I quite agree that this takes time, but we

must be ceaseless in our efforts to improve the conditions of society, and it is because we do not take

these duties seriously enough that we find ourselves in the difficulty of having to choose between our

duty to the country in which we live, and our sense of justice in regard to the individual who asks for our

protection. The country ought to be able to protect as justly as ourselves, and if it cannot we must help it

so to do. Remember also that the welfare of the many is of greater importance than the needs of the one,

and we must not allow our personal sympathy for the individual entirely to override the conditions which

make for the peace of the country as a whole.

THE ETHICS OF A LIE

In this connection there often arises the question as to whether it is right to tell a lie to protect another.

[Page 179] I have been sometimes asked in meetings whether, if I wanted to protect a refugee from

justice, I should be willing to indicate to his pursuers that he had gone in a direction different from that

actually taken; My answer is that it all depends upon the circumstances; upon the nature of the wrong

done; upon the various points to which I have just alluded. On the other hand, if I choose to tell a lie and

to accept the karma for so doing, it is my own business and no one else's. It is quite clear, of course, that

people should not lie, but I can conceive, personally, that circumstances might arise in which, rather than

tel the truth, I would tel a lie and accept the karma of the evil action. The question is, of course, a very

thorny one, and the motive for lying would have to be an extreme one. Under very few circumstances are

we justified in telling lies, but I am not, myself, prepared to say that I would never tel one. In asking the

question people seem to me to be laying too great a stress on their own personal progress. They do not

want to lie, not so much because it is wrong as because it would interfere with their personal progress,

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and because it would increase their burden of karma. I consider this to be a selfish reason.

CONCLUSION

The Master concludes by tel ing us that it is sometimes our duty gently to tell people of their faults,

especially if we are placed in charge of them, and I would venture to emphasise that word "gently". [Page 180]Harshness is far too general an attitude of those who desire to correct. I close this with the priceless words: "Mind your own business, and learn the virtue of silence!" [Page 181]

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CHAPTER XIV

THE SIX POINTS OF CONDUCT

WE now come to the six points of conduct to which attention must be paid by all who are seeking to

serve the Master. These six points are, of course, well known to Hindus, since they are specifically dealt

with in Hindu religious literature. I do not want to trouble you with the Samskrit names for the various

lines of development indicated by the Master. He has used certain English words by way of translation,

and we need not trouble about the original terminology.

You will probably have noticed that the Master gave us at the outset Discrimination, because by

discrimination we are taught how to distinguish between right and wrong. This capacity is, of course, the

foundation of our evolution in the human kingdom. We possess a conscience, that is to say we possess

in ourselves the result of past experience whereby we are. able to test experiences as they come along

and to accept or reject them according to our knowledge of their uplifting or degrading effect.

Stress is then laid on the qualification of Desirelessness, using the word desirelessness in the true [Page

182] sense of not allowing yourself to be dominated by your desires. As the Master says: "The

qualification of Desirelessness shows that the astral body must be control ed", and we are told that the

first of the six points of conduct, namely self-control as to the mind, shows that the mental body must be

controlled. You may perhaps wonder why this particular qualification is not given a chapter all to itself, as

was the qualification of desirelessness with reference to the astral body. As a matter of fact, with most of

us, the astral body is more fully developed than the mental body. Our mental body comes to as when we

pass from the animal to the human kingdom, and is therefore of comparatively recent growth. The astral

body, on the other hand, has been with us during our life in the animal kingdom, and has to a very large

extent been the medium through which our growth so far has taken place — the animal, for example,

depends for its growth largely on the vibrations of its astral body. The result is that, coming over into the

human kingdom with an astral body trained to vibrate in many directions, the new lesson we have to

learn is to control it, largely through the help of the new mental body which is, up to a certain point, in the

human kingdom the special medium for growth. The Master, therefore, lays great stress on the need for

controlling the astral or emotion body, and places this particular qualification in its natural position after

the supreme quality of discrimination. [Page 183]

CONTROL OF MIND

At once the Master takes us to the most important aspect of control of mind — control of temper and of

nerves. Calmness of mind is one of the most important qualifications, for unless we possess it there is

very little chance of our being able to control our emotions. An agitated thought inevitably reacts on the

astral body, and, since the mental body is a more powerful vehicle than the astral, the effect of a

disturbed mental body is largely to increase the disturbance of the astral. Then again as regards the

nerves which are the means of conveying impressions to and from the brain, it is very necessary to have

them under control so that both their receptive and their expressive power may be even. The difficulty

always is, especial y to those who really mean business and are trying to acquire sympathy and love, that

in order to do this they must inevitably make their bodies much more sensitive to outside impressions so

that they may respond to them more readily than hitherto. This means that every outside impression

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affects them much more easily than it would the ordinary individual, and the result is that the nerves

become tired of communicating so many responses and impressions, and so tend to get out of hand.

Hence irritability and depression — in other words nerve exhaustion. At the higher levels individuals are

able to control the response of the nerves to the outside stimuli, and may refuse to part with more nerve

power than they can afford to spare, so, while [Page 184] being as sensitive as their younger brethren,

they husband their resources more carefully and respond to the best advantage instead of in a

haphazard manner. Those of you who have been trying to put into practice the principles given us in At

the Feet of the Master may very likely have noticed an increased tendency towards irritability, towards an absence of calmness, even towards a passage through the mind, or through the emotions, of undesirable

thoughts and feelings. If you really mean business you may take comfort in the fact that probably much of

this is an inevitable concomitant of your efforts towards progress, and much of it belongs rather to the

outside than to you — comes from outside sources, but is regarded by you as yours because of your

power of imagination. Remember that sympathy and goodwill are largely dependent on imagination, and

if you train yourself to imagine along one line you cannot help tending to imagine along another line as

well, and you can control your imagination only after you have already exercised it to a considerable

extent. I should like to lay great stress on this matter of the imagination, for many people who are doing

their best become almost martyrs to imagination — imagine al kinds of difficulties and troubles

unnecessarily, imagine al kinds of evil things unnecessarily. On the other hand, just in so far as they are

able accurately to imagine the sorrows and troubles of those around them, so far will they be able

usefully to help them. At present the world is a very difficult place to live in. There is so much disturbance

both on the mental and [Page 185] on the emotional planes that those who are highly sensitive find life in a big town, where masses of people are sending violent forces through these planes, a very difficult

business. In the first place, there is much anxiety, much trouble and sorrow, much, hopelessness and

despair, much doubt and confusion. All these are like so many blows to the sensitive person, and he

often becomes confused as to whether the blow comes from within or without. The world is in a whirl of

excitement, and unless one has sufficient power to steady oneself against the whirling forces, one hardly

knows whether the excitement is from within or from without.

THE DIFFICULTY OF THE TRAINING

It is for this reason that religious training generally takes place away from the world, in the sense of away

from its outer activities. In older days the teacher and his pupil retired to the forest and lived under the

soothing and unifying influences of nature. I am told that the experiment is now being tried of allowing

some part of this training to take place in the outer world. If the experiment is successful, progress can

obviously become much more rapid, because a larger number of experiences can be crowded within a

comparatively short time. On the other hand the strain is infinitely greater, however much more rapid the

progress may be, and we have to pay in terms of strain for the quickness with which we may be able to

grow. Speaking from my own [Page 186] experience, I would never recommend anyone to offer himself

without very careful consideration for such special training as At the Feet of the Master is intended to

give. It is all infinitely worth while if you can do it, but it is no use pretending that it is easy or that it has not its moments of extreme sorrow and unhappiness. Such sorrow and unhappiness are undoubtedly

due to the lower bodies, and need have no place in the training at al . The fact of the matter is, however,

that they are there, and I do not know anyone now on the Path who would not say that, while the goal is

worth any effort, nevertheless it does indeed demand an effort of no inconsiderable magnitude.

Fortunately there is the normal and ordinary rate of growth, and I myself sometimes wonder why I was

not contented with that. Remember, no one can be forced against his will to move more rapidly than the

normal rate. No one could have said to me: "You must move more quickly than you want to". What they

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might say would be : "If you want to move more quickly the opportunity is open to you — it is for you to

decide". I can imagine my readers saying it is difficult to know what to decide if you do not know in fact

what is before you; you can only decide on the basis of past experience, not on the result of the

experiences of other people. This is true, but I think that the ego probably knows what is likely to be

before him, that he makes the choice with that knowledge, and that the whole difficulty consists in

training the lower bodies to do that which their master wants [Page 187] them to do. Down here, on the

physical and on the emotional planes, we are more ignorant than is the ego, for the ego is the direct

reflection of the Monad — a spark in the flame of God. Further, our physical and emotional bodies have

had things a good deal their own way in the past; we have used them for purposes of growth, and they

want to go on being used, even though we no longer need them for this purpose. What we need them for

now is that they may become vehicles for the expression of the ego's will. We want them more as

messengers than as independent individualities. They have already grown, in the case of those who are

candidates for the Path, as ful y as is necessary. Their respective functions are established. Force has

been generated, and it is now the ego's business to direct it into the proper channels. I do not say that

this is the case with everyone. Doubtless there are many people who need much more expression for

their physical and emotional bodies than they have hitherto been able to obtain. But that does not apply

to us, for our special business is to acquire the qualification of desirelessness.

Remember that our great objective is to vibrate as much as possible in harmony with the vibrations of our

Master, so that His force may be able to flow through us uninterruptedly. While we vibrate at one rate,

and He at another, the passage of the force through us is very much more difficult, and in many cases

almost impossible. What He is telling us, therefore, in At the Feet of the Master is how to harmonise our

vibrations with His, so that, al being more or less [Page 188] at the same rate, He may be able with

comparatively little effort to send through us His messages to the outer world. Calmness of mind is

needed, not only that we may not think hastily, and not only that we may have a peaceful atmosphere

into which, and through which, the Master's force may flow, but also that we may be able to meet

fearlessly al the troubles and difficulties that come to us when we are being tested as to our strength.

The Master wants us, as He says, to make light of the troubles which come into our lives, and to avoid

worrying about little things. I think one of the most wonderful passages in the book is where the Master

tel s us that al that happens to us from the outside — sorrows, troubles, sicknesses, losses — belong to

the past and are therefore of no importance. I must candidly confess that I find myself a long way from

being able to reach the standard set by our Teacher in this respect. I know it in theory, which, I hope, is

some progress in the right direction, but I cannot at present put it into practice. Then I cannot always

remember that troublesome things are as transitory as happy ones, although the Master tells us that they

are. The fact of the matter is that the Master wants us to remember al the time that we should be the

masters of our destinies and not be enslaved by them. What comes to us in the present is what is due to

us from the past, and the more cheerful y and happily we bear it, the quicker it will be over. That is of

course obvious, but when one is in the midst of trouble one does not know how long it will be before it is

over, for [Page 189] it would not be trouble if one could detach oneself from it.

WORRY AND DEPRESSION

We are told that we cannot alter our sorrows and troubles, so it is useless to worry about them; and

indeed I have heard some young friends of mine express these sentiments with the most cordial

approval. But I cannot help thinking these young friends of mine refuse to worry because, as a matter of

fact, they have nothing to worry about. It is not very wonderful to avoid worrying when you have no

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worries, but it is a very definite spiritual advance when, having worries, you refuse to al ow them to worry

you. If I may be allowed to hazard a guess, I imagine that only those of the rank of Master are likely to

remain at all times completely joyous and serene. I do not say this in order to give people an opportunity

of thinking that they cannot be expected to be joyous and serene. We are all expected to be joyous and

serene, but the lesson takes time to learn, and it does not very much matter if there are a certain number

of backslidings on the way. People pay far too much attention to their lapses from successful striving in

the direction of the Qualifications, not realising that these are inevitable. As little attention as possible

should be paid to them. . If we did not often fall by the wayside we should not learn how to sympathise

with those who fal perhaps more frequently than we do ourselves — [Page 190] if possible ! Out of failure

comes success, and unless we ourselves have had the experience of failure, we cannot help others at

times when they most need help, namely when they themselves fail.

Then, again, we are told never to allow ourselves to feel sad or depressed, because it makes other

people's lives more difficult. Here again we have a long way to go before we can hope to accomplish the

duty thus laid upon us by the Master. At such a time as this its accomplishment is doubly hard, for there

are many people who natural y feel depressed because they have no knowledge, as we have, of the laws

of Karma and Reincarnation to help them. They have no knowledge of the fact that much that they

cannot do in this life they can do in another; of the fact that things they have longed for, but have been

unable to accomplish in this life, some day they will be able to achieve, nor do they know that there is no

such thing as separation from those they love. With ignorance on al these points it is not astonishing

they should be depressed, especially since we, with all this knowledge, cannot help being depressed

ourselves. But we must recognise that depression is a manifestation of ignorance, of inability to apply in

the right way the knowledge we possess. We must try to throw it off as soon as possible, but this is of

course al the more difficult in the midst of a great war which sends its sorrows into the hearts and homes

of every one. Above all things we need knowledge if we would dispel depression, and it is for this reason

[Page 191] that every effort must be made for movements like the Theosophical Society and the Order of

the Star in the East to spread the knowledge they have, especially through books such as At the Feet of

the Master, for in this way people may acquire the strength to bear the pressure of evolving life.

One of the ways of avoiding depression is, as we are told in the next paragraph, not to allow our thoughts

to wander. If we have had troubles, these troubles have made grooves along which thought and feeling

flow easily, and if we allow our thoughts and feelings to wander, they natural y take the easiest channel,

and that channel may be the channel fashioned by trouble or by pain. If we let our thoughts wander they

may flow along the channel of pain and trouble, and so resuscitate difficulties which perhaps in reality

have passed away. Also, if we let our thoughts wander, al kinds of evil thoughts from outside can come

into a mind of which we have not full control, and so our brains may become receptacles for undesirable

thoughts which we very likely think to be our own and which cause us great trouble to reject. The Master

points out that we ought always to try to keep good thoughts in the background of the mind, so that when

it has nothing special to think of, these may come into the foreground and keep us not only steady but

conscious of that relation which subsists between ourselves and our Elder Brethren. In this way the

channel is always kept open, and at any time the Master can send through us His helpfulness to the

world. [Page 192]

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CHAPTER XV

THE SIX POINTS OF CONDUCT (Continued)

WE now come to a very important observation with reference to the practical ways in which we should

strive to control the mind,

PRACTICAL WAYS OF MIND CONTROL

The Master suggests that we should think each day of some one who is in trouble, surrounding him with

loving thought, so that from the loving thought he may draw courage and power of endurance. In most

Occult Schools there are definite systems of training whereby the members are shown how to control the

kinds of thought that enter the brain, how to get rid of those they do not wish to receive, and how at any

time to draw the mind from any special line in which it is engaged and to focus it elsewhere. When I was

Principal of the Central Hindu College, Benares, I was in the habit of helping large numbers of students in

this direction, and I suggested to them that they should set aside three special times during the day

during which they would allow only a special kind of thought to pass through the mind. The first of these

times was in the morning [Page 193] before rising, the second was about midday, and the third was just

before retiring to rest. In the morning I advised them first to think of what they were going to do during the

day and to try to make up their minds to do everything deliberately, at the proper time, and without haste.

In this way they were to fil their day as useful y as possible, allowing, of course, ample time for recreation

and rest. Having made a mental plan of the day, they were then to turn their thoughts in the direction of

those who needed their help. There would be fellow students or friends, or there might be people in

distress and sorrow to whom they could send, as the Master directs, a loving thought. They were then to

turn their attention to their families, to send thoughts of goodwill to the brothers and sisters and other

relatives. After this they would pass to the elders — father and mother, teachers and professors. Final y

their thoughts were to be turned to their highest conception, whatever it might be. I generally

recommended the Hindu students to think of their Gurudeva and mentally to bow in reverence before

Him. Some might turn with thoughts of love to a revered teacher, others possibly might think of Mrs.

Besant, others might think of one of the great Masters of the Wisdom. It would not matter to whom they

turned, provided they lifted themselves up at this moment to the highest they knew. In this way they

would become permeated at the beginning of the day with the greatest thoughts they could reach, and a

note would be struck which, in [Page 194] course of time, by frequent repetition, would continual y be

sending its sound vibrating through the day. As a result, a definite force would be created, tending to

minimise the chances of mistake, and the individuals concerned would be centres through which the

Divine force could more easily flow. The whole process need not take longer than five minutes — or at

the outside ten — and ought to give a dignity to the day's proceedings which these do not possess when

we hurry unprepared from the night's rest into the ordinary activities of what is called the waking world.

Then at noon, no matter what they were doing, I asked these young people to turn their thoughts to their

ideal, whatever it might be, so as to show themselves capable in the midst of worldly occupations of

withdrawing the mind from that in which it might, for the time being, appear to be absorbed. The thought

of the ideal should never be absent from us, no matter what we are doing, no matter how strenuously we

are working, and in order that the ideal may not lose its position, I would recommend people in the middle

day to switch themselves off, as it were, from that in which they are engaged and to turn to the highest

reality they know. This would mean but a second's distraction, and far from injuring the work in hand

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would produce increased energy and power of concentration.

In the evening I asked my students mentally to look through the day's proceedings in order to see what

was well done and what il done, not in order [Page 195] that they should worry over the mistakes, but that they should take note of them so as to strive to prevent them recurring. Having done this, I asked them to

offer themselves in thought for such service as they might be capable of performing during the night, and

they were to end by striving to lose themselves in the thought of their ideal, so that it might carry them

through safely on to the astral plane. Of course there are many other ways of bringing about the same

result, but this is not a difficult method, and from the experience I have had I know it can be

extraordinarily successful.

After a time the thought of the ideal becomes a habit, and during the course of the day the individual

tends automatical y to refer to this thought the various actions which he has in contemplation. He sets

them by the side of his ideal and accepts or rejects them accordingly. This is a most desirable condition

of mind, and although it certainly takes time to establish, it is worth any amount of effort because, through

it, we gradual y learn the value and possibility of laying our thought beside that of the Master, a statement

which many people find difficult to understand. As a matter of fact, unless one has already had practice in

trying to compare one's ordinary thoughts with one's highest thought, it is difficult to imagine how the

Master's thought may similarly be used for purposes of comparison. The process is easier in the East

than in the West, because in the West there is so much competition and hurry [Page 196] and rush that

people seem to have hardly any time in which to be deliberate and, above all, in which to draw down their

highest spiritual consciousness. But sooner or later all who mean business must make up their minds to

fol ow some such scheme as I have outlined above, and they must be willing to carry it on whether

results show themselves or not. People are far too inclined to feel that the system is wrong if results do

not come when they expect them, or that they are incapable of achieving success and so need not try

further. We have to learn to be far more careless as to results than we actually are — the motive is all-

important, and there is nothing we cannot accomplish if we have both the will and an infinite power of

perseverance.

THE IGNORANCE OF PRIDE

We are then told to hold back the mind from pride — for, as the Master says, "pride comes only from

ignorance". I do not know what opportunity my readers have had for observing those who are truly great,

but for my own part I have specially noticed that the greater the spiritual stature the greater the true

sense of humility. You will find, for example, that Mrs. Besant refers back to the Master all her successes,

and recognises that it is such ignorance as she has that accounts for such mistakes as she may make. In

other words, she is as the “wise man" who "knows that only God is great, and that al good work is done

by God alone", and [Page 197] by "God" we can, if we like, mean either the Master, or our higher self, or whatever our ideal may be. People who are proud are generally those who, knowing very little, wish to

make the most of the little they know, for the more, people know the more they realise that they have yet

to learn many things, and those who know most have the keenest sense of their weaknesses. I can truly

say, from my own experience, that since I have begun to learn from my leaders I have increasingly

realised, not only how little I know, but also how many more imperfections I have than I had before

thought possible. The fact of the matter is that if we offer ourselves for the Master's service we have to be

tested before we can be trusted, and the testing partly consists in making us aware of our weaknesses

so that we may as far as possible not only get rid of them, but try to prevent them from hindering such

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good work as we may be capable of accomplishing. So you must not be surprised when you start on your

life's true career — either by joining the Order of the Star in the East, or the Servants of the Star, or the

Theosophical Society — if difficulties seem to multiply and if, somehow or other, life not only becomes

more troublesome, but even the worst sides of your nature seem to spring into activity. They were there

before you associated yourself with one of these great spiritual movements, but they were slumbering.

Now that you spring forward to vitalise your higher nature you must not be surprised if the vitality flows

through to the lower nature as well and makes it emerge in its true [Page 198] colours. People sometimes

become depressed when this happens. They say they did not know how wicked they were, or that they

did not know this to be the effect of joining a spiritual movement. Sometimes they blame themselves and

say that they are unworthy to join, but sometimes, if they are special y selfish, they blame the movement,

thinking that the movement is really not as spiritual as they had imagined, for otherwise how is it that they

seem so much worse after joining it ? They have not learned that force is force, and that it depends on us as to how we use it. What we gain from joining some great forward movement is added force, an added

force which is capable of being turned with comparative ease in the right direction. On the other hand, it

is also capable of being turned in the wrong direction, and we have, therefore, to be careful not to al ow

the lower nature to gain any control of the added force which has been given to us through membership

of one of these movements.

A great Teacher can give a person power. It depends upon the person as to how he uses that power.

Indeed, it does not at al follow that he may not sometimes use the power unwisely, but this does not

mean that the Master has made a mistake in entrusting it to him. If the Master sees that on the whole the

power will be used wisely, He may feel able to take the risk of such unwisdom as may from time to time

appear. An individual who joins the Order of the Star in the [Page 199] East, or the Theosophical Society, is in reality given a little added power, and the force rushes through the whole of his nature, and it is only if

his nature rests mainly on the higher and not on the lower that he will be able to make good use of his

membership. I have always thought that people would not probably be allowed, save for some very

special reason, to join one of these movements, because of the added responsibility involved, unless

there seemed to be a fair certainty of the force being used for good purposes on the whole and only

rarely in the wrong way. Mistakes we are sure to make, and when we join one of these movements we

shall probably make more mistakes than before, but on the other hand we may hope to do more good

than before, and gradual y we shal learn through the mistakes to direct the force more and more wisely.

But pride is a fatal barrier to the useful exercise of spiritual capacity. Those who are proud, even of their

spiritual knowledge, are of comparatively little use. I have been told that, it is impossible entirely to get rid

of pride until very far up in the evolutionary scale, but we must make a beginning now and do all we can

to realise, not only how little we ourselves individually know, but how little we real y know even of those

around us. So our advice must always be very tentative. As has been said in At the Feet of the Master,

only the Master knows about His people. Only the Master knows a man's motives, and it is motives which

count more than anything else in the spiritual world. I do not wish to suggest by this that actions [Page

200] do not matter. Actions matter on their own plane, but motives matter even more than actions. There

is karma from both, but the karma of motive is more powerful than the karma of action. [Page 201]

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CHAPTER XV

THE SIX POINTS OF CONDUCT (Continued)

WE now turn to the consideration of Self-Control in Action. The Master remarks that thought alone will

not suffice; there must be no laziness in action; but He points out that we must not therefore try to do

other people's work as well as our own, unless we are asked to help. As He says: "For many people the

most difficult thing in the world to learn is to mind their own business". People seem to find it very difficult to understand that if they try to do other people's work they are preventing those people from evolving as

rapidly as they might. People grow through the work they do, and if you try to do so much that you

prevent other people from exerting themselves to the utmost, not only will you do your own work badly

but you will be stultifying the growth of those around you. It should be clearly understood that the true

leader is he who helps other people to work along their own lines more successful y. It is not so much a

question as to what the leader himself does as the extent to which he inspires other people to do things.

If he helps them to take a more active part in life, to feel more vital, [Page 202] to feel more interested in their work — then is he truly leading and guiding. But if when he takes up a piece of work he centres it all

in himself, and makes other people feel that they are entirely dependent on him for all originative effort,

he is one of those who do not know how to mind their own business. We are often told that none of us

are indispensable, and the reason we are not indispensable is that there are always people to do the

work if the work has to be done. We need to have among us people who will try to understand what it is

that those around them have to do, and, while doubtless being in general charge of a special piece of

work, they will take care to be behind the scenes as much as possible, and to give everyone about them

the opportunity of growing through independent, and yet harmonious, action. This is what I think is at the

root of the Master's statement that we should leave every man to do his own work in his own way. Of

course we should be ready to give help when asked or when needed, but, as a general rule, it is far

better for people to learn through the making of mistakes, and to feel themselves free agents within

reasonable limits. It is true that in times of emergency the leader may have to take ful control, and

demand from his followers obedience rather than initiative. But such times are rare, and in most cases

what we have to stimulate is initiative and the sense of independent, yet co-operative, capacity. [Page 203]

THE DAILY ROUND, THIS COMMON TASK

Then the Master observes that however much we may be interested in what is cal ed "higher work" we

must not neglect the ordinary duties of life. Indeed, upon the fulfil ing of these ordinary duties depends

our progress and our usefulness. If we cannot do the ordinary things well we are not likely to do well what

are called the "higher things". Just for the time being, under the influence of their glamour, we may put our energies into them, and so appear to do them better than the ordinary things. But the glamour will not

last, and if we have been in the habit of doing ordinary things badly, we shal find ourselves in course of

time doing the higher things badly too. And it is much more serious to do the higher things badly even

than to do the ordinary things in a slipshod manner. The fact of the matter is, of course, that there is very

little distinction to be drawn between the higher and the lower. We learn to grow as rapidly through the

performance of the humblest duty as through the accomplishment of higher tasks. The Master tel s us

that until the ordinary duties of life are done we are not free for other service. Notice that He uses the

word "other" and not "higher". We have been told, in fact, that until an individual gets rid of the more obstructive portions of his karma he is not free to undertake the burdens of discipleship. And the only way

to get rid of obstructive karma — indeed of any karma — is to try to do the little things as well as

possible. [Page 204] Of course little things seem rather humdrum and uninteresting, but while they seem

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so to us, we must remember that we should soon lose our interest in the "higher things" if we had the

opportunity. It is only while they seem new and out of the ordinary that our attention is turned more

directly towards them, and so in fact we prove that our attention turns more to that which excites us than

to that which needs doing. Until the attention is so trained that it turns automatically to that which needs

doing, we have not gone very far. Hence we must try to remember that the little things are the stepping-

stones to bigger things. I have no doubt that what I am writing here does not sound particularly

interesting, or helpful, or inspiring. I can hear my readers exclaim that there is so much more drudgery in

making progress than they had thought. Perfectly true ! There is a great deal of drudgery until we begin

to realise in fact that nothing is drudgery. We have none of us yet reached that stage, but the great

principle of life is that nothing which is needed to be done has in it the essence of drudgery. Such

drudgery as there seems to be is due to our ignorance, and to the fact that for many of us nothing seems

worth while save that which causes an unusual excitation of the astral or mental bodies.

CONCENTRATION OF ENERGY

We are then told that we should undertake no new worldly duties. I do not suppose this means [Page 205]

that we are never to attempt anything fresh, but, rather, that it is very unwise to keep on trying to take up

new work, to extend our attention to new interests, when we are not really fulfilling our duty to the work

and to the interests we already have in hand. Many people always wish, for example, to belong to

everything new, to join every new movement, to take part in every possible new activity, The result often

is that they fritter their energies away, and neither give to these activities, nor receive from them, that

which should be the result — an increase of vital power, both to the movement and to the individual. On

the other hand, if one feels that one can help some new activity by taking part in it, there is no reason

why one should not join it after careful consideration as to the amount of time one can place at its

disposal, and as to whether such amount of time could produce adequate fulfilment of any obligation

involved. In other words, one must proceed deliberately, and not take on new worldly duties simply in

order to be "in" with everybody else, and to get as much as we can from them. We must not forget that

there is the karma of non-fulfilment of obligations, whether the obligations be undertaken deliberately or lightly. The link is made, and we must not imagine that we can avoid our karmic responsibility if we drop

the activity when we no longer feel interested. In a word, we must do as much as we can but not more

than we ought. The fact of the matter is that those of us who mean business, and who are striving to get

into touch with [Page 206] one or other of the great Teachers, have to remember that the Master tells us

that we have to do ordinary work better than other people do it. If we perform our duties no better than

other people perform theirs we should not be worthy of the special tie we hope to make between

ourselves and the Elder Brethren. Indeed, every human being already has his tie with an Elder Brother,

but if we want to make our respective ties stronger and brighter, we must show our worthiness, and in

order to show our worthiness we must live more intensely and more vigorously, with more attention to

detail. Any who have had the privilege of watching the Masters at work will know how extraordinarily

careful They are with regard to the slightest and, apparently, most trivial details. Not a moment is wasted

and every moment is used to its fullest extent, and with it all there is no appearance of rush or hurry. On

the contrary, there is every indication of calm, strength, and power, because there is no waste. Waste

inevitably means weakness and looseness of purpose, and a dulling of faculty. So it is not so much a

question of the kind of work that is done as the way in which it is done, and the man who manages affairs

of State lazily and carelessly has much to learn from the crossing-sweeper who is careful to keep in

utmost cleanliness the crossing upon whose cleanliness his attention is concentrated. As the Master

says: "If you are to be His, you must do ordinary work better than others, not worse; because you must

do that also for His sake". [Page 207]

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TRUE INDEPENDENCE

I should like to lay special stress upon the Master's statement that the work we must do must be work

that we recognise as part of our duty and not the imaginary duties which others think we ought to

perform. There are many people in the world today who are trying to make other people do that which

they conceive to be the duty of these other people. They seem to know so much better what is good for

others than they know what is good for themselves. The position is obviously absurd, but we have

become so much dependent upon outside opinion that we are much more likely to pay attention to

another's views with regard to our duties than we should be likely to hearken to any independent

personal intuition. Obviously, when people are quite young it is the duty of parents and teachers to help

them to discover what are their individual duties, and sometimes it may even be necessary to impose

duties upon them. But teachers and parents should be extremely careful not to make their charges think

that parents and teachers inevitably know better what is good for them than the children themselves can

know. In the long run each individual must be a law unto himself, and the duty of the parent or teacher is

to help the boy or girl to find out what their particular law is. In other words it is their duty to stimulate the discriminative power of those placed in their charge, and not to impose their own discriminative faculties

[Page 208] upon them. Children who have not been trained to think and act for themselves are of very little use in the world, and are much at the mercy of the opinions and influences of their surroundings,

depending for their actions upon the advice and opinion of their friends. We have to learn not to believe

things simply because other people believe them, or to perform actions in a particular way just because

other people perform them in that way. We have to become independent, and to learn that true

independence by no means involves antagonism. So many people are inclined to believe that you cannot

be truly independent unless you are rude and disagreeable, unless you deliberately try to do things in

ways entirely different from the ways in which other people do them. It is sometimes thought that you

must strike out a fresh note for yourself. I do not object to the phrase, provided the note is a harmonious

one, but if it be discord, then, unless there be some special y strong motive for its existence, it had better

not appear. With regard to the question, for example, of religious observance, I think it highly desirable

that every boy and girl should be trained in the beliefs and ceremonies of the faith into which they have

been born, but I also think it most important that parents and teachers should explain to children that they

are given these ceremonies and beliefs, which have been very helpful to large numbers of people, only

until they find out something which may perhaps be more appropriate to their particular temperaments.

[Page 209] I should never think it my duty to try and make a child believe that any special form, or any

special truth, is the only form or truth he ought to accept. Since karma has brought him within the

teaching of certain definite forms of truth, he may as well grow up in them, but a loophole should always

be left for his individual judgment, so that he may feel that he can act freely without becoming a traitor

either to his elders or to his traditions. There is no reason why a child who begins as a Hindu should not

become a Christian later if he feels irresistibly impel ed, but if he is born a Hindu he had better remain

one until he has arrived at maturity of judgment sufficient to enable him to decide whether he wishes to

make a change. There is never any harm in training a child to understand the forms and truths which

have been helpful to a large number of people, for such training will bring into being a sympathy which

will enable him later on to help, even though later on he, himself, finds other forms and other truths more

appropriate to his own special line of evolution.

TOLERANCE

All this brings us to the consideration of the third point of Conduct, namely Tolerance. Above all the

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Master lays stress on the need for our feeling a hearty interest in the beliefs of those of another religion.

Religious differences have done an infinite amount of harm in the world, and now we have to [Page 210]

begin to work so that religious differences may no longer imperil the real unity beneath. As the Master

remarks: " Their religion is a path to the highest just as yours is"' and then He says what is probably at the back of His mind through the whole of these teachings: "To help al , you must understand al ". This is

indeed the key-note of the teaching. Every word written in At the Feet of the Master is intended to give the reader power to be of more service to those around him. If you wish to belong to the Master you must

be able to go anywhere and do anything. You must be able to help all kinds of people, you must be able

to adapt yourself to all kinds of circumstances, and to sympathise practically with troubles which perhaps

you have never yourself experienced. In order to be free to serve in this way you must take care that you

yourself are not bound by the very fetters from which you seek to free others. If you yourself think that

your religion is the only true religion, if you yourself think that your customs are the only useful customs, if you think that your nation is the only truly great nation, if you think that your modes of life are the only really useful modes of life — then you are blind, however much you may be trying to help others as blind

as yourself. As the Master tel s us, we must "be free from bigotry and superstition". This does not mean that everyone must be free from bigotry and superstition, but rather that those who wish to be servants of

the Master must themselves be free from conditions which would hamper their activity, [Page 211] however

much these conditions may help other people. At certain stages, no doubt, bigotry and superstition are

inevitable. They are the scaffolding by means of which the building is erected. But when the building is

completed there is no further need for the scaffolding, and our own spiritual building should be in such a

forward state that these two pieces of scaffolding can usefully be dispensed with. For you and me most

ordinary ceremonies are no longer necessary, that is to say such ceremonies are no longer necessary for

those who may expect to be taken within a comparatively short time as apprentices in a Master's school.

We may take part in them if we like; we may enjoy them; but they must cease to be necessary parts of

our existence; otherwise, as the Master points out, we shall think ourselves in some way better than

people who do not perform the special kind of ceremony which interests us.

Here again the Master's statement is not meant to convey to us that no one should perform any

ceremonies. Remember He is addressing one already a pupil in His school and therefore subject to very

special teaching. Ceremonies may possibly be necessary for some of us, and, indeed, for most, but it is

laid down that they are no longer necessary for those who are being specially trained. You will obviously

be wrong to feel contempt for those who stil need them. The Masters feel no contempt for our colossal

ignorance in many very essential matters. They desire to help us where we stand, and [Page 212] this

should be our attitude towards those less evolved than ourselves. We must try to help people where they

are and through their own special lines of growth. This is why it is so very necessary to "understand all".

In other words, before anyone can become a pupil of the Master he must in previous lives have passed

through a wide series of experiences so as to enable him intuitively to grasp the varied conditions and

stages of belief, even though he, himself, may not actually have passed through these conditions. He

must have acquired the spirit of the experience, though he may not, necessarily, have passed through

the individual form. But we must take care that people do not try to force upon us things which they know

to be essential to themselves and which they think, therefore, to be equally essential to us. People often

strive to do this. They feel so greatly the need of a certain experience themselves that they cannot

imagine for a moment how it is that other people do not need it equally, and in this way have arisen the

Inquisition and other forms of narrow cruelty. People must not be allowed to interfere with us in the

performance of what we conceive to be our duty, however much that duty may differ from the duties of

those around us. But while we must insist upon our rights, nevertheless we must " make allowance for

everything; be kindly towards everything". [Page 213]

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CHAPTER XVII

THE SIX POINTS OF CONDUCT (Continued)

ONE of the most informing similes in At the Feet of the Master is where the Master tells us that many

customs, ceremonies, and beliefs, which individually we may have outgrown, may stil be needed by

large numbers of people, just as children need double lines to help them to write straightly and evenly

until they have learnt to write better without them. The position is, as the Master explains, that we must

remain in sympathetic touch with those who possibly may not have yet reached our level of evolution.

"He who has forgotten his childhood and lost sympathy with the children is not the man who can teach

them or help them". There is a very general tendency on the part of people as they grow older to become

impatient with children and to find no interest in the ways in which children live. Children's interests cease

to interest them, and gradual y they drift into what I may call a crabbed old age, out of touch with the

aspirations and impulses of the younger generation, and convinced that everything is gradually going

wrong. Many middle-aged people are convinced that in their young days everything [Page 214] was very much better than it is now. They feel quite certain that children were brought up in a better way, that the

government of the country was less vacillating and weak, that there was less license and more true

liberty. They feel that people no longer know their place. The fact is that these middle-aged and old

people do not know their place. In other words, they have lost their place and cannot find it, and the

result is that they feel out of harmony with the world which has really left them far behind.

THE NEED FOR ADAPTABILITY

Now this attitude will not do. The older we grow, the more we must make every effort to keep in touch

with the young, to be young with them and, above al , to realise that the ideals which have sufficed for

our generation need not necessarily be the ideals appropriate to the new. The fact of the matter is that a

true server must do al he can to adapt himself to the ever-changing conditions necessitated by the

world's growth. I consider that one of Mrs. Besant's most remarkable characteristics is that she

understands young people and is able to voice their aspirations. She unites the wisdom of age with the

enthusiasm of youth, and so you will find her always in the forefront of all new movements — restraining

impetuous and inexperienced ardour, but not hindering good work. The same may be said of Mr.

Leadbeater: indeed, all true helpers of the world [Page 215] have this special characteristic of being able to live in the spirit of the time and of responding to the changing needs of the world. This means, of course

an intuitive and adaptable temperament; we must ever be on the alert to discover the signs of the times

and to understand in the aspirations of youth the dawning of the New Age. The older a person grows the

more valuable becomes his experience, and the more therefore he should be revered and honoured,

provided he places his experience at the disposal of those who have not yet had time to acquire it. You

should remember always that the world in its future condition belongs to the coming generation, and al

we have to do is to help the transition from the old to the new to be as easy and simple as possible. The

French Revolution was largely due to the fact that the older generation had no understanding of the new.

They came into terrific conflict, and the result was a transition period of terrible suffering. Just at present

we are in a similar transition stage, and much depends upon the wisdom and co-operation of the elders.

We must unceasingly study the lines of thought of young people. We must ever be on the alert to watch

for the signs of the new conditions which may manifest themselves in the lives of the younger generation.

We must keep ourselves up to date, and must give not a sneer but a welcome to the new order which is

taking the place of the old. It is al a question of sympathy and realisation that other people's ways may

be just as helpful as, possibly more helpful than, our own. Above all, [Page 216] if we are in the position of Page 84

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having outgrown certain customs and beliefs appropriate to the world as a whole, we must not therefore

imagine that everybody else has also outgrown such customs and beliefs. Our business is to help people

where they are, and not to force them along a line for which they are not yet ready. It must of course be

conceded that, for the sake of example, one might occasionally feel an obligation to associate oneself

with some special custom or belief. For example, if I were living in the country, I might find it helpful to go

regularly to church, not so much for my own sake as for the sake of those for whom church ought to

mean much spiritual guidance. But I must not be bound by customs or beliefs which I have outgrown,

although I may, if it is desirable, occasionally clothe myself in them.

CHEERFULNESS

The Master then lays stress upon Cheerfulness, and He tells us many important truths. In the first place

we have to try to understand that it is an honour that suffering comes to us. I presume He means here

that it is an honour if suffering comes to us in larger doses than would normally be the case, for all

suffering is of course the result of past actions, so from this standpoint it is hardly a matter of "honour" or dishonour, but a matter of law. On the other hand, if we offer ourselves to the Master, such suffering as

we need for the purposes of [Page 217] purification becomes concentrated within a comparatively short

time so that we may get rid as quickly as possible of our evil karma. As the Master says, in this way we

work through in one or two lives that which otherwise might have been spread over a hundred. Until we

have got rid of the most obstructive portion of our karma we are not free to share with our Teacher the

burden of the world. Our shoulders must be comparatively free from past karma if we are to go into the

outer world and stand side by side with those who need our help. This does not mean, of course, that

before we can become pupils we must exhaust practically al obstructive karma. Not only is this not the

case, but, on the contrary, our debts come tumbling down upon us when we offer ourselves for service.

But they are not debts which stand hopelessly in the way of continued service. Debts which bar us from

practical y any strenuous service must first be got rid of, for, if we would offer ourselves to the Master

there must be something worth offering. So we must be comparatively free from burdens. as I have said.

But it would be very foolish to expect lives of ease: on the contrary there will be lives of exceeding

difficulty, but it would be unwise to complain. We have offered to pay our debts as quickly as possible,

and if this offer works out in pain we must not be surprised. We shall the sooner be free, although the

process may, for the time being, be agonising. [Page 218]

The Master tel s us that, however hard our karma is, we should be thankful that it is not worse. I must

confess that very often one cannot see how it possibly could be worse ! But I have no doubt that it may

be to a certain extent a comfort to think this. I try to imagine that it might be worse, so that I may realise that, however far down I may be, I am not actually at the bottom ! All I would say, however, is that it would

seem in some ways almost more satisfactory if one could feel that one were at the bottom, so as to know

that things could not be worse than they are. If you are thankful that things are not worse, you may

possibly be wondering whether in a short time they may not become so. What of course the Master

wishes us to understand is that we must keep cheerful and always look on the bright side of things. Part

of the payment of our karmic debts consists in paying them cheerfully: our karmic enemies soon cease to

trouble us if we take their hostility — our own creation — cheerfully and good-humouredly. Perhaps we

can do this more satisfactorily if we continually try to realise that all that comes to us is part of the

inevitable training that we have to go through as we proceed from unconsciousness to self-

consciousness.

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The Master then goes on to observe that we must give up al feeling of possession, because

"possession" is an aspect of the lower nature. The higher self expresses itself through the sense of Unity; the lower through a sense of possession. Hence the Master urges us to get rid of this feeling, because by

so doing we get [Page 219] rid of that which obstructs. He points out that karma may take from us even the

people whom we love most. That is to say, karma may appear to take them from us; we can never lose

that which we have drawn into the universal Unity. Loss is entirely of the lower planes, it is an illusion, although I know full well it is an illusion which causes an infinite amount of suffering. There can be no

doubt that the physical plane exerts its inevitable plane influence, and a physical plane loss cannot but

be felt while we are for the time being immersed in physical plane matter. But however hard the parting

may be, it does not therefore fol ow that it is a real parting. Personal y, the more I learn, the more I find

that physical plane partings are less depressing as I establish myself more firmly in the larger life. A

physical plane parting undoubtedly has its disturbing features, but the more we live in the Masters' world,

the more we definitely find that those whom we love are in reality always with us, and every parting is

intended to bring this lesson home to us.

The Master concludes His observations on cheerfulness by reasserting the truth that depression is

wicked. He observes that He often needs to use His servants in order to pour force through them for the

helping of others, and He remarks that He cannot do this if we yield to depression, because depression

builds a black wall round us through which little comfort may come from outside, and through which little

of the Master's light can pierce into the outer world. It is worth while to remember that depression [Page

220] is as often caused either by an unhealthy body or by outside circumstances as it is caused by some

disturbance of our own centres of life. We must not therefore conclude that because we are depressed,

therefore the depression comes from within. To help to guard against depression it is necessary to have

as healthy a body as possible and to take care that it keeps healthy. When our nervous system becomes

devitalised through over-strain or through some other form of il -health, then cheerfulness is more difficult

to maintain, because the channels of communication with the Master's world are, for the time being, out

of repair. Similarly, we must guard against disturbances from the outside. Many thoughts and feelings

which appear to be ours are, as a matter of fact, visitors, and we ought to try to imagine as far as we can

that al undesirable thoughts and feelings are visitors, and that we can turn them out if we like. Never let

us suppose that any thought or feeling is an inalienable part of our nature.

ONE-POINTEDNESS

We now so on to One-Pointedness, which means doing the Master's work. Everything, as a matter of

fact, which is helpful and unselfish is the Master's work. We must not imagine that only work connected

with the Order of the Star in the East, or with the Theosophical Society is the Master's work. Living

helpfully at home is just as much the Master's work. Playing our games well, [Page 221] studying well, are

just as much the Master's work. People sometimes wish they could do more in the Master's service than

for the moment seems possible. They say their karma is against them ! Karma, as a matter of fact, is

never against anybody, for it is nothing more than a stepping-stone to the higher life — we spring to a

higher position from the springing-board which our karma has fashioned for us. However lonely you may

be, however isolated from Theosophical surroundings, you can none the less do the Master's work, and

the Master's work consists in the way in which you do that which comes to you to do, day by day.

Everything that comes to us, of however trivial a nature, is a little piece of training specially given to us to

bring us nearer to the Master's world. You and I may not be able to realise this. We may wonder how an

apparently trivial piece of business can possibly have any relation to the Master. A clerk in an office, for

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example, may wonder how writing an unimportant letter on behalf of his firm can possibly be of service to

the Master. As a matter of fact if he can write that unimportant letter well, he will be able to write a less

unimportant letter well, till the time will come when he can write important letters well, and some day he

will perhaps have the opportunity of writing the Master's letters well. Every . act of life is a step on the

ladder of evolution, and leads to the step next above. No matter what the act may be, it is a step nearer

than the act before it, and definitely leads to the step beyond. The fact is that every [Page 222] action

becomes part of the Master's work if we remember Him while doing it. Try to understand, therefore, that

the nature of the action is of no importance; what matters is your recognition of the fact that the Master

watches everything you do and in this way makes everything you do a possible link between Him and

yourself.

The rest of the remarks on one-pointedness merely emphasise the need for realising that every day of

life can so be used that it shall draw us appreciably nearer to our Master. As the Master says, we "must

become one with the Path", and the Path is everywhere. People sometimes think that the Path is

nowhere save at the headquarters of the Lodge to which they belong, and that they are only treading the

Path when they are attending meetings. The whole world and every part of it, and every condition of it, is

the Path leading humanity to its goal, and while certain conditions undoubtedly assist to an increasing

consciousness of the Master's world, that is because there are people living in those conditions who have

vitalised them. You can as much become conscious of the Master's world in your home life, in your

school life, in the playground, as you can anywhere else. But do not let temptations, or even worldly

affections, draw you away. There is always a tendency that these shall become difficulties in your way

because there is a natural tendency for al grades of matter to emphasise inertia. Matter always wishes to

stay as it is, to avoid disintegration and change. For this reason many people fear death, but you must try

as far as you can to avoid that [Page 223] which tends to hinder your growth. People sometimes say that it

is only natural to be at the mercy of worldly affections or at the mercy of worldly temptations. But the

word "natural" is here used in the wrong sense. It is not according to nature to be at the mercy of these things, but it is undoubtedly customary and habitual. In other words, people certainly tend to be at the

mercy of al kinds of conditions which hinder progress, but you and I should remember that we must no

longer be fettered by habit and custom, and we are never truer to nature than when we strive to grow by

breaking the customs and barriers through the help of which in the past we have been able to evolve.

As regards the question of worldly affections, I do not want my readers to imagine that we should try to

stifle the love we bear towards our friends and relatives. On the contrary, the more love we can manifest

through our nature the more quickly shall we grow. But we must not allow our affections to become

selfish and make us weak, for this would neither be helpful to ourselves nor to those whom we love. The

most loving service we can render to our friend is to become a rock and support whenever that friend

needs such help, but we cannot be this if we allow our affections to blind us to the way in which we can

become truly helpful. A child often thinks its mother does not love it because the mother does not give it

everything it wants. The truest love is to help the soul to grow; selfish love panders too often to the body.

[Page 224]

THE DECISION OF THE MONAD

The Master finally observes that the Monad, which is the God within us, decided to grow, and the sooner

the lower bodies harmonise themselves with the inflexible will of the Monad, the sooner shall the will of

God become accomplished. The Monad creates veils of illusion in order that it may gain experiences in

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all the kingdoms of God's nature, and the veils so created strive to maintain their existence even when

their value has disappeared. By a process of imagination they strive to believe themselves to be the

reality instead of being only the perishable forms. It is from time to time necessary to retire within oneself

so as to break off that association with the lower bodies which so frequently causes as to believe that

these are the only realities. It is for this reason that meditation is so valuable, and I would recommend

readers to adopt some such scheme as that I outlined in an earlier chapter. But remember that the

reason for such meditation is that we may increasingly learn to distinguish between the God within and

the vehicles through which that God within works, and thus learn to give to every part of ourselves its true

proportion and value. [Page 225]

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CHAPTER XVIII

THE SIX POINTS OF CONDUCT (Concluded)

THE last of the Six Points of Conduct is CONFIDENCE. We are told that we must trust the Master. "If you

have seen the Master, you will trust Him to the uttermost, through many lives and deaths". This, I believe

to be a phrase of Alcyone's own — feeling the magnificent inspiration of the Master's presence, the

words burst forth from him in gratitude. For the Master, once known, is as a rock against which all

ignorance and all doubt are shattered. But though many of you may have been privileged to have seen

one or other of our great Masters, perhaps you cannot remember Them so far as physical plane memory

goes, and it would, therefore, be more difficult for you to bring down into this world the knowledge of what

They are. But, as we are told, we must try to realise Them. We must try to remember that They are in fact

our Elder Brethren, and that They watch over us with far more loving tenderness and care than we can

possibly realise. If we cannot feel Their physical presence, or if They do not seem to be watching over us,

it is that we may learn to rely on the God within us and to trust to ourselves. We are [Page 226] continual y in the presence of the Masters; we should continually be relying on Them; and we should never forget

that that which They are, we, too, may become. The Divine spark is in each one of us, and we have the

duty of relying as much on the God within as on the God without. Therefore is it that the Masters

sometimes seem to be far away from us, although, in reality, They are nearer to us than our nearest

friend or most loved relative. If we, in the physical brain, are ignorant of Their individual existence, we

must nevertheless think of Them and try to remember that in Their perfection is the promise of ours.

Thinking reverently of Them, we, in fact, pay reverence to ourselves — to the God within us. We must be

continually thinking of Them, trying to do that which we think They would wish us to do. In this way we

create a link between Them and ourselves, and through the channel thus made They are able to help us.

This is what is meant when it is said that if you do not trust the Master "even He cannot help you".

Remember that the Masters never intrude Their help upon people who do not want it. Free-will belongs

to us al , and if we do not want any help it is not obtruded upon us. In other words, if we do not make our

share of the channel, They will not make it for us. So if we want Their guidance and direction, we must

show that we want it by making a channel towards Them through our endeavour to become like Them.

[Page 227]

TRUST IN THE MASTER

We are also told that we must trust the Master. You may perhaps wonder how it is possible to trust Those

whom you do not remember to have seen. As a matter of fact, the Masters are, in reality, the embodied

examples of what we ourselves shall one day become. Once They were as we are now. And by Their

strength and unwavering determination to help the world, They developed the God within Them until He

shone out undimmed by selfishness and separateness. Having ful y awakened Their Higher Selves, They

are now ready to help us to awaken ours, so that in trusting Them, we are, as a matter of fact, trusting

ourselves. All that is best in us They are, and much more, and in reality there is no separation between

the God within and the God outside us. Every kindly action we perform, every effort we make in the

direction of unselfishness, every means we employ to develop our mental, emotional, and physical

bodies for service, are so many signs of our trust in the Master. If we trust our Higher Selves, we trust the

Master. "Unless there is perfect trust, there cannot be the perfect flow of love and power". This means

that unless we are determined to give up all selfishness for the sake of helping the world, we shal not be

as younger brothers to the Elder Brothers of humanity. We must strive to become one in nature with

Them, if there is to be the uninterrupted flow of love and power from Them to us. Every selfish thought,

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every indulgence of the lower nature, [Page 228] is as a little barrier which intercepts the stream. To trust the Master means to know Him to be that which in our heart of hearts we hope some day to become. We,

therefore, think of Him as living the ideals towards which we can only aspire, and we must try to use our

imagination in discovering what They might say, or do, or think, under the various circumstances in which

we find ourselves in the lower world. To trust Them, therefore, means to know Them as living examples

of the Higher Self in man, in whose form and nature we must strive to fashion ourselves.

THE GOD WITHIN US

We are also told to trust ourselves. To many this will seem a strange piece of advice. "You say you know

yourself too well ? If you feel so, you do not know yourself; you know only the weak outer husk which has

fal en often into the mire. But you — the real you — you are a spark of God's own fire, and God, who is

Almighty, is in you, and because of that there is nothing which you cannot do if you will". I know how

difficult it is to believe this, because we identify ourselves so much with our lower bodies that we

continually think that we are the lower bodies. When we say, "I think", or "I feel", or "I do this or that", we identify ourselves with the feeling, with the thought, with the act, although we are continual y being told

that the lower bodies must be servants and not masters. We have continually to realise [Page 229] that the

God within us is trying to work through these lower bodies, and it is in the difficulty of getting control over

them that the confusion arises. The real you, as the Master says, is "a spark of God's own fire", and

"God, who is Almighty, is within you". When you say, "I cannot", it means that the lower self is, for the moment, getting the upper hand again. Feelings, thoughts, actions, pass away; only you remain. That,

indeed, is the test. All that grows stronger day by day, and becomes more and more permanent, is likely

to be the sign of the God within you beginning to dominate the bodies which He has put forth in order to

come into contact with the various experiences these lower worlds afford. All that gives you an increasing

power of love, an increasing power of unselfishness, an increasing power of service, is the God within

you; the rest which, from time to time, seems to dominate you so entirely, not only will not last, but cannot

satisfy you long. The more you help others, the more you want to help. The bigger your love grows, the

more you want to love. But there are many desires which cease to exist the moment they are satisfied. In

fact, most of the desires you have are but the toys with which God trains you to distinguish between the

real and the unreal. He shows you, by letting you have the things you want, that the real you does, not

really want them, for after a time they cease to satisfy. Thus, by gradually turning away from one thing

after another, by a process of exclusion, you find out what it is that alone can give permanent peace

[Page 230] and happiness. It is for this that you live in the world, and alternating joys and sorrows lead you gradually to concentrate your efforts on that which endures. If you did not have these, you would not

make any effort. They are signs of the God within you struggling to know Itself, to know Its powers, to

know Its divinity. It is continually saying: "No, this is not what I want, for there is no lasting happiness in this". The God within you must grow, but from time to time it may think that this, that, or the other, is permanent happiness, and therefore part of its very nature. It experiences that which seems to be

permanent, grows tired, finds that the apparently permanent ceases to have power to satisfy, and so

learns that that, too, is not the goal. Little by little, it draws near to the realities of life, and finally reaches the comparative perfection of the Master who has learned the nature of at least many of the certainties

which make Divinity.

We are told to say to ourselves: "What man has done, man can do. I am a man, yet also God in man; I

can do this thing, and I will". In other words, what the Master has done, I can do, for I am God in man. If

there be Masters of the Wisdom, I can become a Master of the Wisdom, for there is but the One Life in

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us all, though it may be at varying stages of unfoldment. That which is the One Life in the Master, is also

the One Life in me. Life in Him may be more perfectly unfolded, but only because He has gone further

along the path which[ Page 231] I myself am treading. It is most important that we should all feel our

identity with those in front of us, just as we must feel our identity with those behind us. But the difficulties

are innumerable, and this is not to be wondered at when we think of the immeasurable glory of the goal.

Little efforts may bring forth little successes: greater efforts may bring forth greater successes. But the

difficulties of the Path lead man to perfection, and only by the measure of the difficulty can we at all

gauge the magnificence of the goal towards which we are striving. We can therefore, in a sense, be glad

that the difficulties are as great as they are, for if the obstacles be many and difficult to surmount, there

must be a result at the end well worth all the efforts we may have had to make. Let us, therefore, not

think so much of the intervening difficulties as of the result at the end; let us remember that in us lies the

power to overcome all obstacles, however great. Difficulties are insurmountable when we do not want to

surmount them. It may be that in any particular life there may be difficulties which we cannot overcome,

and we may have to reconcile ourselves to this. A man may, for example, have certain bodily defects

which prevent him from playing games, or he may have certain mental deficiencies which prevent him

from being clever in certain directions. But that is al from the past. In the future he can become whatever

he desires to be if he uses the Divine Wil that is in him. [Page 232]

THE NATURE OF DIFFICULTY

I do not wish for a moment to suggest that the task is easy. It is not. And the reason is that there are two

conflicting forces — one, the creative, and the other, the preservative. There is the force of growth, and

the force of inertia. Now we desire to be active, now we desire to rest. Now we are full of energy, now we

are tired. If we did not know what it is to be tired, we should not understand to the full the joy of energy,

and if we did not know what it is to be ful of activity, we should not appreciate the contrast of rest. But

there is always the tendency to overdo things; sometimes to be over-energetic, sometimes to be too lazy.

And we are continual y playing between the two — sometimes over-emphasising the one, and

sometimes over-emphasising the other. Best we need; energy we need; but we must rest when we need

to rest, and we must be active when we ought to work. We must not be at the mercy of either. It

sometimes happens that when the difficulties seem too much for us, we become inclined to let everything

go, and rest. This is, of course, exceedingly natural, but we forget that, in reality, no difficulties can be too

much for us, for, indeed, there are no difficulties which we have not made for ourselves. Every difficulty

you and I have is a lesson from which we have to learn something we do not at present know. The

moment we will to surmount it, we can overcome it, and then, ceasing to be in the form of a difficulty, it becomes [Page 233] a force for action. That which seems so difficult to climb becomes, when we have

climbed it, a place from which we can see far more clearly than we could see before. Those who are on

the summit of the mountain see far more clearly than those who are in the val ey. It is, no doubt, tiring to

climb the mountain, but the view from the top is generally worthy of the trouble of the climb. The Masters

are at the top of the mountain, and we must trust to Their assurance that the view at the top is worth

seeing. We see the joy on Their faces, and we must try to realise that the difficulties before us are as

nothing compared with the joy at the end. [Page 234]

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CHAPTER XIX

LOVE

WE now come to the most important of the Qualifications, although it is placed last in the book, that of

LOVE. I have heard our leaders say that each world or system has its own distinguishing note, just as an

individual has his own distinguishing characteristic. I have understood them to say that so far as this

world is concerned, its dominant note is love. However this may be, it remains true that, provided an

individual has in his character a strong touch of love, it does not very much matter if he has a large

number of weaknesses which are continual y obstructing him. As the Master tells us, if the quality of love

is strong enough in a man, "it forces him to acquire all the rest, and all the rest without it would never be sufficient". This means, that if you have the love nature well developed in you, it will gradual y become

purer and purer until it cleanses you entirely from selfishness. From the love of the one we gradual y

proceed to the love of the many. Prom the love of our own work, our own occupations, we grow into a

love of work for the world and for its service. People sometimes think that those who [Page 235] desire to

serve the world must get rid of all personal affection. I often hear people say, that they are trying to rid

themselves of all affection for their families, for their friends, so that they may learn to serve the world

and follow the Master. They forget that it is only through love of friend and love of family that we learn how to love the world as the Master loves it, and we do not sufficiently realise that personal affection

need not disappear — indeed should not disappear — even when our love is so strong that it embraces

the world. The Masters Themselves have Their personal affections. They have, we are told, Their

favourite pupils, and Their little circle of special friends. And why should They not ? True, They would not

allow Their personal affections to interfere with Their duty to the world, nor would They permit Their

personal ties weakly to countenance wrong lines of action. Their love, whether for the individual or for the

world, is a strengthening love — a love which gives, not a love which demands. This is the true basis of

all love, and is its purifying factor.

SELFLESS LOVE

So many of us, in loving our friends, demand that they shall love us in return, and perhaps we expect

from them all kinds of attitudes and services in return for the love we give them. This may be natural in

the early stages, but the grasping nature of love is love in its selfish aspect. Love should be as a great

[Page 236] river of force, ever flowing outwards, and indifferent as to its effect so far as any return is

concerned. Love in its lower aspect is desire, in its higher aspect it is will, as the Master points out. Many

people in the world demand return for their love, and are hurt if no return is given. This is like demanding

payment for a present, and shows that the person has not yet begun to purify his love. People who really

know how to love say that there is so great a satisfaction merely in pouring out streams of love, that there

is no inclination to consider the nature of the return. The lesson of love must certainly be begun with the

individual. If there is anyone whom you love intensely, make a practice of deliberately brushing on one

side any tendency to think of the result, so far as regards yourself. Try to avoid the least expectation of

return, or even the slightest hope. Do not spend an atom of your energy in thinking about what he or she

feels about you, devote al to the process of outpouring. You have no idea, probably, unless you have

tried this, how complete a satisfaction there is in the mere giving. Every now and then one lapses into the

desire for some kind of return, but by contrast this desire seems sordid and poor, and one is thankful to

be rid of it. On the other hand, there is continual interest in discovering new ways of loving, and the fact

that you gradual y grow more impersonal as to the return, is the starting-point for the spreading of your

love among the many instead of confining it to the one or to the few. If you are deeply interested in work

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of any kind, you will find yourself [Page 237] beginning to love people for the contribution they make to the work in which you and they are engaged. You feel that they are comrades in a common cause, and that

feeling of comradeship soon develops into feelings of pure affection. You feel that they are working for

the same cause in which you yourself are engaged, you feel that they are with you in the difficulties and

in the dangers, and the unity thus manifesting soon shows itself in its aspect of love. There will always

be, of course, those who are specially near to you, and there may be truth in the assertion that each soul

has a special affinity. I do not know about this, but I do know that on the basis of the affection for the few

is gradually built up the power to love the many. And the secret of it all is in expecting no return.

If you are always looking for a return it must be from the one or from the few. You cannot expect a return

from the many, and so there is a barrier between you and the possible affection for them. They cannot

give to you the return which the few can give you for the love you pour upon them, therefore it is useless

to love them ! This is the inevitable conclusion to which those come who want payment, in some form or

other, for their affections. I know it sounds brutal to put it in this way. People will reply that they do not

want payment, they only want recognition. But true love demands no recognition; it is satisfied with its

own being, and with the joy of its outpouring. The river is happy in its flow towards the sea. So you will

understand [Page 238] that by making your love for anyone independent of that individual's attitude

towards you, you will lay the foundation the Master wishes you to acquire as regards the whole world.

And when you reach the level He has reached, you will probably find that the love you have for the world

has not made you forget your affection for the individual; on the contrary, individual affection has been

the basis of it al , and will be cherished by you with the deepest of happiness.

THE DESIRE FOR LIBERATION

You will notice that this fourth Qualification is stated by the Master to be often translated "as an intense

desire for liberation from the round of births and deaths, and for union with God". That is to say the idea

of love has been given a personal aspect, as if through love in its more restricted aspects freedom were

to be gained by the individual from the round of births and deaths. But, as the Master points out, this is

the selfish way of looking at love. "It is not so much desire as will, resolve, determination. To produce its result, this resolve must fill your whole nature, so as to leave no room for any other feeling. It is indeed

the will to be one with God, not in order that you may escape from weariness and suffering, but in order

that because of your deep love for Him, you may act with Him and as He does. Because He is Love, you,

if you would become one with Him, must be fil ed with perfect unselfishness [Page 239] and love

also."Truly, we are often quite eager to escape from weariness and suffering, but while in the earlier

stages we desire to escape from these in order that we may enjoy peace and rest, later on we wish to get

rid of these feelings of personal weariness and personal suffering, so that we may be free to help others

to get rid of them too. This is the peace of the Master. He is able so wonderful y to help in bearing the

burden of the world, because He no longer needs to bear that burden Himself. It may be that, if He

wished, He could cut Himself off entirely from the world, having gained liberation. But we are told that if a

Master were to do this, He could only be free for a certain time, that, sooner or later, He must return to

share the world's burden. For there is the one great Unity which binds us al together, and we must grow

together through pain into joy. As a matter of fact, of course, while those who have reached the level of

the Master are at liberty, if They so choose, to take a long period of rest, They deliberately renounce that

rest because of Their love for the world. And you must not forget — I do not hesitate to repeat this over

and over again — that this beautiful love for the world has grown out of Their unselfish love in the past for

an individual or for a few.

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THE EVIL OF GOSSIP

The Master makes a suggestion to us with regard to the way in which we may gradual y translate our

[Page 240] love for the one into a love for the many. It is obvious that, with regard to anyone we love, we should be always trying to help them in every way, as well as taking care never to do them any harm.

And these two aspects of love must not be confined to the individual, but must dominate our attitude with

regard to the outside world. So far as the duty of doing no harm is concerned, the Master gives three

examples of doing harm which are very common. First, gossip. "See what gossip does. It begins with evil

thought, and that in itself is a crime. For in every one and in everything there is good; in every one and in

everything there is evil. Either of these we can strengthen by thinking of it, and in this way we can help or

hinder evolution; we can do the will of the Logos or we can resist Him. "Obviously, we cannot have evil

thoughts with regard to anyone we love, but we often have evil thoughts with regard to other people, and

we must try to think of the way in which we truly love the one, so that we may reproduce the features of

that love in our attitude towards the many. "In every one and in everything", as the Master says, "there is good", and if we think of the good in an individual we strengthen the good in him, while if we think of the

weakness, we strengthen that weakness. Try to imagine that good and weakness are continual y

struggling within a man's nature, each trying to elbow the other out of the way. What we have to do is to

try to make good so strong that it gradually edges the weakness right out of the individual's [Page 241]

nature altogether. The good in a man thus becomes so big that there is no room left for weakness, and

we make the good part of a man's nature bigger and bigger as we think about it. I have noticed this,

particularly in the case of Mrs. Besant. People sometimes say that she is very easily deceived because

she always idealises people. I believe it to be true that she sometimes is deceived, although I have a

shrewd suspicion that she is quite aware of the extent to which she is being deceived. But I am quite

clear that the fact that she does idealise people helps those people enormously, for in the process of

idealising them she is strengthening al that is best in them. It is as if she were pouring her force into the

better nature of those with whom she comes into contact so that it gradually pushes the weaknesses out

of the way. No doubt the weaknesses come back, because the man's own nature is not yet strong

enough to give them their permanent congé. But their power has been broken, and, if only the individual

would take advantage of this fact, it will not be so difficult for him to complete the ascendancy of his

higher nature. The fact that Mrs. Besant idealises people forces them to show the better side of their

natures, at least while they are with her. This tendency begets a habit, and if an individual real y means

business this little beginning of a habit is of enormous importance to him.

That which Mrs. Besant does on a very big scale, we can do on a smal er scale. If an individual is to be

trustworthy, we must begin by trusting him. [Page 242] Trust needs two people, one to trust, the other to be trusted. We must do our share with regard to others and trust them to the very greatest possible extent,

because in so doing we strengthen in them their power to be trustworthy. The Master points out that if we

think of the evil in another, we not only intensify evil in our neighbourhood, but we strengthen the evil in

the individual about whom we are thinking, and create within ourselves a greater capacity for evil

thought. It very often happens, of course, that the evil we think does not in reality exist, and then our

imagination is a temptation in the way of the individual about whom we have thought wrongly. As the

Master says: "Your wicked thought tempts your brother to do wrong, for if he is not yet perfect you may

make him that which you have thought him". Thus, if we gossip about people it is evident that we are

filling our neighbourhood with evil thought and so, as the Master points out: "you are adding to the sorrow

of the world".

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The Master explains that, in addition to thinking evil things, whether in reality they exist or not, " the

gossip tries with all his might to make other men partners in his crime". It is curious how people enjoy

meeting together to talk over the defects of others, entirely oblivious, it would seem, of the fact that there

are other people elsewhere meeting together and talking over their defects also ! You must not imagine

that others spare you if you do not spare them. So, if you have been gossiping unkindly about, other

people, the next time you walk through [Page 243] the streets and meet your friends, just remember that

they may have been saying al kinds of cruel things about you, as you have been saying all kinds of cruel

things about them. I have not much time myself for gossip, but I have gossiped a good deal in the past,

and when I began to consider the evil of it, I used, deliberately, after having fal en into a little period of

gossip, to imagine the various friends whom I met to have been also indulging in the same failing. No

doubt I ought not to have imagined this about them, but there was one advantage about it, namely, that it

made me very uncomfortable, for I began to wonder what kind of things they said about me, and then

whether, perhaps, after all, those things might not be true ! Then I determined that in my own nature I

would try to avoid giving any foundation for such gossip, and so, by degrees, I found a disinclination

within me to gossip about other people. The best way to avoid gossip is to have no time for it. It is only

lazy people who gossip, and if you occupy yourself with healthy work and with healthy amusements, you

will not care for gossip. "Never speak il of anyone; refuse to listen when anyone else speaks ill of

another, but gently say: 'Perhaps this is not true, and even if it is, it is kinder not to speak of it.' " [Page 244]

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CHAPTER XX

SINS AGAINST LOVE

THE second sin to which the Master refers is the sin of cruelty, and he divides cruelty into intentional and

unintentional cruelty. As regards the former, one can hardly imagine, as the Master says, that anyone

could be deliberately cruel to any living thing, but you will remember, nevertheless, that in olden times

there was the Spanish Inquisition, under which people were tortured because their consciences did not

agree with those of their torturers. You must also know that there are people in the world who deliberately

give pain both to human beings and to animals in order that they may try to find out the source and cure

of various diseases. And, as the Master says, many schoolmasters deliberately give pain to their pupils. I

wonder to myself whether it is possible to say of these people that, behind the deliberate cruelty, there is

a good intention. In some obscure sort of way there may possibly be a good motive behind the cruelty,

but it is so ignorant and so distorted a motive that there can be only an infinitesimal amount of good

connected with it. I should not like to say that inquisitors and vivisectors and schoolmasters are wholly

bad when they commit [Page 245] acts of deliberate cruelty. Rather are they at so low a stage of moral

evolution that they are only to a limited extent responsible for their actions. But the actions being so vile,

the reaction of them is, as we know, a terrible one, and if they know in their hearts that they ought not to

do such things, then their karma is indeed heavy. As the Master points out, it is useless to say that such

and such a practice is the custom: "A crime does not cease to be a crime because many commit it". I

know that because there is the halo of custom surrounding these brutalities we are apt to try to excuse

them. After all, we say, with regard to the vivisector, at least he is trying to benefit mankind. But it is a

selfish mankind that is willing to benefit from the suffering of others. Mankind has no right to inflict

suffering on others in the vain hope that health and happiness may come to itself.

VIVISECTION

You may be told that certain discoveries in vivisection have resulted in securing definite immunity from a

particular disease. To that I always reply that however much you may stop up one avenue there must

always be another avenue for the working out of karma if karma remains. The dirt that you prevent

coming out from one pore of the skin must find its way out through another. What the vivisector cannot

prove is that, though one form of disease may be less frequent, disease as a whole is also less [Page 246]

frequent. We have our scourges in one form or another as much as people had them in bygone

centuries. And even though some diseases have disappeared there are new diseases which have taken

their place; perhaps, indeed, they may be the old diseases with new names. Be that as it may be, the

question is a question of morality and duty. Even if the torture of an animal could give mankind release

from suffering, mankind can have no right to excuse such torture. If the animal voluntarily chooses to

inflict upon itself the torture, that may be another matter; but so far as I am aware, animals are not

consulted before they are vivisected. I do not want to put the matter in the shape of a question as to

whether we really gain the benefit we are supposed to gain. We do not want to gain so-called benefits in

that way. We would rather have our diseases than ruthlessly compel animals vicariously to suffer on our

behalf. The giving of pain is one of the great sources of karma: the more pain we give to animals, the

more our karma binds us to this world of sorrow and whatever conditions of health we may think we

derive from the infliction of torture, these are overwhelmingly outbalanced by the diseases and sorrows

which will surround us from that very infliction of torture.

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CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

As regards schoolmasters, there again the argument is that it is the custom. "Spare the rod and spoil

[Page 247] the child", is the hackneyed phrase. If you and I are to try to follow the Master we must free ourselves from those dark glasses of superstition with which the average individual veils realities from his

eyes. Many people will tell you how much better they are for the fact that when they were children

corporal punishment was administered to them. I always reply to such people that we do not know how

much better they might be than they are, had their teachers and parents refrained from administering

corporal punishment to them. The argument is, of course, silly. The infliction of pain merely has the result

of evoking fear. We are told that sensible discipline, of which corporal punishment forms a part, hardens

the nature. It is from that very hardening of the nature that the world is suffering at the present time. We

do not want to harden the nature; we want to soften it and make it sensitive; we want to make it capable

of far deeper sympathy than it is capable of expressing at present. Blows may possibly steel a man's

heart to indifference as to the results and effects of competition with his fellow-man, but we ought to-day

to have passed the stage of callousness; we ought at least to be beginning our entry into the stage of

cooperation. We do not beat flowers in order to make them grow more beautiful: on the contrary, the

more we surround them with tenderness the more beautiful they become. A child is also a flower, a more

beautiful flower even than those forms of life which we cal flowers. Corporal punishment can very rarely

be administered without anger. It may be so [Page 248] administered in exceedingly rare cases, but we

cannot allow teachers as a whole to inflict corporal punishment simply because a few people may be

able to administer it without suffering from excess of emotion. I say deliberately that the average teacher

cannot avoid a trace of anger while he is caning his pupil, and such trace tends to infuse into the

punishment the vulgarity of a personal quarrel. In many countries corporal punishment is seen to be

unwise and it has accordingly been abolished. In England and in India, unfortunately, the old procedure

still remains; but we are doing our best to get rid of it and to give the young child an opportunity to grow

as the flower itself grows.

SOME FORMS OF TORTURE

As for the Inquisition, we do not now, as a rule, inflict personal torture on those whose consciences are at

variance with our own. I say, "as a rule", because, during the present war, a certain number of people

have had truly conscientious objections to military service and have been subjected to iniquities which

remind us of those which stained the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. Perhaps this is to be expected when

the whole world is angry and the brutality of fighting has gained undisputed sway over the minds of men,

and these conscientious objectors are such martyrs as were the early Christians in Rome, or those who

endured suffering at the hands of the Inquisitors for the sake of their faith. [Page 249]

We have added to the list of tortures many forms which were unknown in the earlier days. For instance,

there is the torture which the orthodox inflict on the unorthodox — a torture which often takes the form of

cruel ostracism. There is the torture of contemptuous superiority which many rich people inflict upon the

poor. There is the torture which men inflict upon women when they proudly think that only those of the

male sex can understand how to govern a country. There is the torture which the people of one faith

inflict upon the people of another faith, as, for example, the attitude of the Christian missionary to faiths

other than his own. Then, as the Master tells us, there are those who go out intentionally to kil animals

and "call it 'sport“ In some cases, no doubt, the intention may be good, but intentions do not always alter

facts, and it is no excuse for cruelty to say that it was committed with a good motive. You and I must

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continually judge for ourselves, and must not be content with the customary judgment which the average

individual accepts. Many people take their opinions ready-made. Most people hardly bother to think for

themselves at all. They are surrounded by certain definite thought-forms; they live in those thought-

forms, and very often imagine that they themselves are thinking them. All too often when some one says

"I think" he ought to be saying, "I have fallen into the clutches of a thought-form and the opinion I am expressing is the result ". [Page 250]

KARMA DISREGARDS CUSTOM

You will recol ect that in an earlier part of At the Feet of the Master we are told to realise very clearly that ourselves and our bodies are separate. We must also understand that because a thought comes into our

minds it does not follow that we have thought it. It does not follow that because we live in a house,

therefore we have built it with our own hands. We may speak of "our house" ; it may be "our house"

because we have made it our house, but it is not our house in the sense that we have created it unless,

possibly, we have designed it for ourselves. The Master warns us that "Karma takes no account of

custom"; also karma takes no account of the fact that, in reality, we are mainly occupied with soaking in

other people's thought-forms, and in giving them out as our own. We have to learn to think for ourselves

and, above al , not to accept an idea, or a belief, or an opinion, because it makes life easier for us if we

accept it. Of course, it is always easier to travel at the same rate at which the stream is flowing. But you

and I are people who intend to get on a little faster, and who must be willing, therefore, bravely to endure

the curious phenomenon of a stream which, though actually moving in the same direction as ourselves,

seems as if it were opposing our progress. However fast the stream may be moving, if you are moving

faster than the rate at which it is moving, it appears as if the water were flowing in a direction opposite to

that in which you are [Page 251] going. In many cases people oppose you, not because they themselves

are not evolving, but simply because you are evolving more rapidly than they; their rate is slower than

your rate and therefore seems to be opposed to your own movements. We must think for ourselves, and

accept nothing which our own judgment, made as independent as we can make it, fully and

unhesitatingly accepts. Persecution is, of course, the inevitable result; but, as we know, the blood of the

martyrs — whether physical, emotional or mental blood — is the foundation of the church that is to be.

The Master reminds us that when opportunity offers we must have the courage to speak against these

cruelties, however much other people may believe in them. The time has now come when certain of

these cruelties should cease to exist, and the only way they can be destroyed is for those of us who

realise their valuelessness to proclaim the truth of which they are the distortions, the truth which is to take

the place of the evil. Those of us who are trying to follow the Master must remember that we have the

duty of proclaiming the truths we know, at whatever personal risk, or, at least, of proclaiming such truths

as, in our judgment, the world is ripe for. So much for intentional cruelty.

UNINTENTIONAL CRUELTY

We are also told, however, to be on our guard against unintentional cruelty. As the Master tells [Page 252]

us, people are often so full of thoughts about themselves that they do not think sometimes of the pain

which, no doubt thoughtlessly, they inflict upon others. The Master gives various examples of this, which

you would do well to study and think about. Remember that long after you have forgotten your

unintentional act of cruelty, its result may still be lingering in the individual upon whom you have inflicted

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the pain. A careless word, a look of indifference, apparently studied neglect, without any deliberateness

behind any of them, may often be the cause of many hours, and possibly days, of suffering to those

whom you have so treated. No doubt it is true, as the Master tel s us in an earlier part of the book, that

these people should remember that we may not have been thinking about them at all. But that is these

people's business; our business is to be careful and not careless. This means that we must always be

deliberate in what we do, in what we say, in what we think. We are all of us more or less careless, and in

our ignorance we often cause unintentional cruelty.

When we realise the importance of giving as little pain as possible, we shall try to gain control over our

various bodies — physical, emotional, mental. We may forget, but, as the Master says: "Karma never

forgets, and it takes no account of the fact that men forget". To those of us who want favours for nothing,

karma may seem very cruel; but a dirty wall does not become clean simply because a coat of whitewash

is spread over it; sooner or later the dirt begins to show [Page 253] through, and if we then give another

coat of whitewash, it is only a question of time for the dirt to show through again. If karma were to forget,

we should go on forgetting too; we should go on forgetting our unintentional cruelties, and out of the

forgetfulness would come the idea that we had never committed the cruelties. Were karma to forget, we

should never learn. So, indeed, the memory of karma is the greatest of its blessings, for it obliges us to

remember too, and so at last to learn the lesson and to profit from its strength-giving power.

"If you wish to enter the Path, you must think of the consequences of what you do, lest you should be

guilty of thoughtless cruelty", says the Master, and while I know how difficult it is to think of the

consequences of what we do, nevertheless that is the lesson we have to be continual y learning. It is a

hard lesson, but a very necessary lesson. After a time, when we have truly learned to think of the

consequences of what we do, we shall see that only kind and helpful actions are worth doing. In other

words, we shall see that the service of others means the greatest happiness for ourselves, and that is the

lesson the Path is continual y impressing upon us. [Page 254]

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CHAPTER XXI

TESTS OF LOVE

THE remarks of the Master with regard to superstition are of extreme importance at the present time. We

must always remember that in looking forward to the coming of the great World Teacher we are looking

forward to the advent of One who will usher in a New Age to replace the Old Age outworn. Even in the

midst of this great War, indeed, because we are in the midst of this great War, we are taking stock of the

kind of life we habitual y lead. We are learning the lesson the Master indicated in an earlier part of the

book, when He said that "karma takes no account of custom". We are finding that there is a far deeper

truth in the legal maxim that ignorance of the law is no excuse for its breach, than we have hitherto been

willing to recognise. Ignorance and indifference are seen to be fatal defects. The War has taught us this

lesson. The War has taught us that the life of every citizen, however humble, is valuable to the State, and

that we may neither be ignorant of, nor indifferent to, the kind of life he leads, lest we imperil the welfare

of the community. We have discovered that innumerable customs which, hitherto, have seemed to have

little harm in them, [Page 255] are, in fact, seen to be injurious when brought against the background of a great emergency. We are beginning to realise that it will no longer do to allow riches and poverty to dwell

side by side, with the poor hating the luxury of the rich, with the rich contemptuous of the struggles of the

poor. It may take us long to work out the nature of the true relation between the two but at last we are up

against the problem, for in the agony of the nation the poor have proved to be no less its comforters than

the rich. We are beginning to see that the reign of brute force must cease, and with it the superstition that

women are inferior to men. In the nation's agony we have seen its women to be indispensable, and we

are forced to the conclusion that there must be equality of citizenship since the State demands from each

an appropriate service. The destinies of the State are in the hands of its men, women and children, and

the elders must together determine the conditions under which the nation's youth shall grow to their

maturity. Further, we are beginning to realise that difference of religious belief does not deny an identity

of goal, that difference of colour does not mean difference of quality. In a word, we are, by degrees,

shaking off certain superstitions which now stand between us and a realisation of the common

brotherhood of mankind. The very word "superstition" suggests both that we are still dominated by, and

that we should be standing above, these lower stages of the ladder of evolution which we are so slowly

climbing. [Page 256]

SUPERSTITION INVOLVING CRUELTY

For you and me, however, as would-be apprentices in the Master's training school for world-servers,

there must be an even keener discrimination between the essential and the non-essential. If we desire to

learn to lead, we must not al ow ourselves to be lost in the crowd: we must make our way through, so

that the crowd may see us. The Master specially draws attention, as you will notice, to the superstitions

which involve cruelty. All superstitions involve more or less cruelty, but there are certain superstitions

which we ought to be able to get rid of at once. The superstition that woman is not the equal of man

involves very definite cruelty to the State, and we must work against it, even though we cannot abolish it

all at once. Further, the cruelty of sacrificing animals in the course of religious ceremonies, and "the still more cruel superstition that man needs flesh for food", are superstitions that we can deal with

individually. No doubt it is customary in certain parts of India for animals to be sacrificed during the

course of religious ceremonies. It is customary in many parts of the world for people to eat meat. But

those who are trying to avoid being blinded by custom will endeavour to look each habit in the face in

order to judge for themselves whether or not the habit is right for them. You will remember how the

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Master said that "though a thousand men agree upon a subject, if they know nothing about that subject

their opinion is of no value". [Page 257] Millions of men agree that meat eating is reasonable, and possibly necessary. But you and I must ask ourselves the question: " Is it?" Never mind whether it is necessary or reasonable for other people; our business for the moment is to decide whether it is necessary or

reasonable for us. From the Master's instructions on the subject, we know that it is not.

ATTENTION TO PRINCIPLES

As I write these words I am thinking of the hundred and one arguments people will use to excuse their

inattention to the Master's directions. Most people wish to become apprentices in the Master's school,

and at the same time to avoid all training. They want to become athletes without undergoing even any

physical discipline, and they are silly enough to imagine that because they can find excuses for not going

through the discipline, the results will be the same as if they had trained themselves and had observed

the discipline. They will tell you that vegetarianism is all very well for people whose circumstances permit

them to be vegetarians, but there are occasions under which it is wiser, and perhaps better for the sake

of the work, to fol ow the ordinary custom. Now I do not for a moment deny that there are critical periods

during which it may be necessary to fol ow custom. I have heard Mrs. Besant say that however averse an

individual may be to vaccination, [Page 258] he should not al ow a very wise aversion to prevent him from

doing his duty to his country in her time of urgent need. If the authorities insist on vaccination, he had

better al ow them to vaccinate him. There are, in other words, supreme moments when one has to

sacrifice one's own individual preparation, and even certain lesser principles, which the world is stil too

young to understand, for the sake of the common good, and for the preservation of greater principles;

and one must gladly face the possible disadvantages accruing from the neglect of certain principles of life

in order that one may be free to fit in with the plan the country has made for her protection. The lower

kingdoms themselves may have to submit to temporary trouble and unhappiness for the sake of the

maintenance of essential principles which can, at the time, be preserved only in ways the world

understands and trusts.

But general y times are comparatively normal. It is, as a general rule, best that the individual should live

as pure an individual life as possible. It is only during supreme happenings that he has to merge his

individuality and his individual principles into the common whole. Certainly when the War is over, each

one of us who aspires to be an apprentice must endeavour to show to the world how an individual life

should be lived. Those who still take part in religious ceremonies, either because they need them or

because their example is necessary for the weaker brethren, should set themselves resolutely in al

possible ways against participation in, or encouragement of, sacrificial [Page 259] rites. Also, they should be vegetarians. No doubt it is very inconvenient to be a vegetarian. People often say that it shuts them

off from the amenities of life, that it makes them a nuisance to their hosts. That is possible. But, surely,

we have no right to inflict suffering on some of our friends in order to avoid inconvenience to others. It

would, no doubt, be very annoying to cannibal hosts if we were regretfully to express our inability to eat

human flesh, especial y if no other dish were provided. But a man must have certain principles of

conduct, and if we would be apprentices of the Master we must have principles of conduct just a stage in

advance of those by which the world guides itself. We know that within a comparatively short time the

whole world will be vegetarian (see Man : Whence, How and Whither), and it would be well for us to have

the privilege of leading the way, realising that leadership invariably involves sacrifice. There are a number

of foolish people who will tell you that vegetarians should not eat vegetables because they are lining

things. It is curious how people, who have no special principle in the matter at all, want to push others to

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extremes in matters of principle. Having no principles themselves, they insist upon our carrying our

principles to impossible conclusions. With regard to this, the sensible attitude is to support your life with

the help of that life which is the least sentient. It might be better if we could eat rocks since these are less sentient than vegetables, but rocks have not hitherto proved [Page 260] sufficiently sustaining, and we are compel ed, therefore, to go one step higher. I know that plants are sentient things, but their sentience is

of a far different kind from the sentience of animals.

THE DEPRESSED CLASSES

The Master then refers to India, and animadverts on “the treatment which superstition has meted out to

the depressed classes in our beloved India". He observes: "See in that how this evil quality can breed

heartless cruelty even among those who know the duty of brotherhood". Those of you who know little

about India cannot be aware that, from the occult standpoint, much of India's suffering is directly

attributable to her own treatment of those of her own people who are outside the pale of caste. She has

treated them as "untouchables", and yet has not scrupled to take the lowest of services from them. In

other words, while scorning them she has used them. Such an attitude is one of the greatest crimes

against the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. But remember that every country has its

depressed classes — those who are oppressed by power in all its forms. Everywhere the poor are

depressed. All this is due to the fact that in our present-day civilisation there survives the spirit of brute

force. The man rules because he is physically the stronger, and for no other reason whatever. The result

has been the depressed classes. Were woman associated with man, the problem of the depressed

classes would soon [Page 261] disappear. Only, while woman herself forms a depressed class, nothing

can be done. Personal y, I feel that if we would tackle the question of the depressed classes, we must

first recognise that we cannot do without the equal counsel of woman. One of two courses is open. Either

men will have the sense to recognise that brute force is played out, and that true government is

impossible without the cooperation of women; or efforts will be made to keep women out of their duty to

society. If the later course is persisted in, the world is in for another period of terrible suffering, because

woman suffrage does not rest on the basis of justice to women but on the basis of justice to the State. It

is not merely that women have a right to the vote; they have a duty to vote. We must face these things

clearly, freeing ourselves from superstition.

The Master says: "Many crimes have men committed in the name of the God of Love, moved by this

nightmare of superstition; be very careful therefore that no slightest trace of it remains in you". When you

read that sentence, think of the Inquisition; think of the evils in your locality thriving under the supposed

sanction of habit, of custom, of necessity. Think of the various cruel things that people do on the plea that

it is impossible to avoid! them. You will remember what the Master has said about vivisectors and about

schoolmasters who cane their pupils. Then say to yourself that you will avoid al the cruelty that it is

possible for you to avoid, and you will see that there is very much to be [Page 262] got rid of. The position is summed up very beautifully by the Master when he tells us to avoid sinning against love. That really is

the whole point. We are often tempted to think that cruelty to the larger self is inevitable for the

preservation of the smal er. We think that we must live at other people's expense — I mean, at the cost of

other people's suffering. Such an attitude is the result of the elevation of the individual as the supreme

object of worship. We must remember, however, that the family is the unit of our life, and not the

individual; and that our task is, living as far as we can a life of love in the smal er surroundings, gradually

to learn to expand it through the nation as a whole.

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INTENSE DESIRE OF SERVICE

"You must be active in doing good", says the Master. "You must be so filled with the intense desire of service that you are ever on the watch to render it to all around you — not to man alone, but even to

animals and plants. You must render it in small things every day, that the habit may be formed, so that

you may not miss the rare opportunity when the great thing offers itself to be done. For if you yearn to be

one with God, it is not for your own sake; it is that you may be a channel through which His love may flow

to reach your fellow-men". I think you would al do well to copy out this passage and to hang it in front of

your bed, so that you may be able to see it [Page 263] when you get up in the morning. In the words

"intense desire of service", is to be found the most powerful qualification for admission to the Master's training school. The keener the intensity, the surer the admission, and one who, as it were, palpitates with

an intensity of desire of service and who is, on that account, ready to go anywhere and do anything, is on

the threshold of admission. That very eagerness is the force the Master will be able to use in helping the

world, and it will also be the means of helping his pupil to turn away from al the weaknesses which

hinder both his own progress and his usefulness in the world. You know how it is often said that to get rid

of a weakness it is necessary to have some object strong enough to attract away the attention from the

weakness. Attention is the food on which thrive both qualities and weaknesses. If you would get rid of a

weakness strive to starve it by depriving it of attention. If you would strengthen a quality, feed it with

attention. I believe that, from the Master's standpoint, it is not so much a question as to whether an

individual is free from defects, as to whether he has some dominant note strong enough, in the long run,

at least, to concentrate attention on itself at the expense of his weaknesses. If I may be allowed a

personal illustration, I would say that such self-control as I may possess is, in great measure, due to an

overwhelming interest in the science of education. I have an intense desire in some future life to become

a great teacher and a great authority on the principles and [Page 264] methods of education. I know that

certain weaknesses I possess stand in the way of the consummation of my hopes. I play with my

weaknesses less than I otherwise might do, because my desire to become a true teacher demands so

much attention-food that there is not so much to spare for the weaknesses, and they have, therefore, to

go more or less without; thus they will starve and finally die. If you have a great and uplifting desire, it will

demand attention-food. The stronger it is, the more food it will demand, and since you have only a certain

amount of food at your disposal in the shape of attention, you must necessarily starve something, and

you will starve your weaknesses because self-preservation — using the word "self" in the sense of

"Higher Self" — demands that the weaknesses shall go to the wall. [Page 265]

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CHAPTER XXII

THE GROWTH OF LOVE

THE Master wants us to be positive and not negative. He wishes us ever to be filled with that outrushing

force of love which expresses itself in "the intense desire to serve". I wonder whether you have seen the beautiful motto Mrs. Besant gave to the Theosophical Society's Order of Service. She said that the Order

should be "a union of all who love in the service of all who suffer"; and if you were to go into her room in the Headquarters at Adyar, you would see this motto in front of her desk. Only the other day she told me

she thought it was one of the most useful mottoes to have about, for it sums up the spirit in which we

should live. You must, however, remember that in the words "all who suffer" are included all living things, not merely human beings. As the Master says, you must be "ever on the watch to render it [service] to all

around you — not to man alone, but even to animals and plants". There is far too deep a cleavage in the

modern world between the human and the lower kingdoms. We are over eager to unite ourselves with

the higher, and often imagine that it is possible to reach the higher by standing upon the lower. [Page 266]

We think of our own progress, of our own personal evolution, as if these could be accomplished

independently of the rest of the world. We think that if we avoid offending, according to the worldly

standpoint, certain moral laws, that each inevitable wrong-doing will be forgiven, and that if we are

respectful to God. He will be generous to us, I am not for the moment saying that this attitude is not a

necessary stage of evolution. The idea of personal salvation has its place in our upward growth, for it

helps us to realise ourselves, and we cannot realise the larger unity outside us until, to a very

considerable extent, we have realised ourselves as individuals. This is the value of competition and of

many other forms of individualised growth and activity which, from certain points of view, seem so

revolting. But the world is growing out of competition. The great War of 1914 sounded the death-knel of

competition and heralded the advent of brotherhood. We who belong to the new age must live the

teachings of the new age. We must try to understand that the process of evolution is the gradual

expansion of our capacity to love. There are some who love but themselves, and although the world has

reached the stage when it can cal such love selfish, it must be remembered that love of humanity must

begin in the little home of the individual self. Some love their families. This is a more expanded form of

love. Others may love the community to which they belong. Others may love their nation. All these are

stages, and the greater includes the less. [Page 267] Finally, there are the great lovers of humanity, who

love the whole world because all is an expression of God. But the lovers of humanity are the better

patriots for the wider love they possess. The patriot is a better lover of his community than the individual

whose affection does not go beyond the particular class to which he belongs. And so downwards. The

Master, who loves the whole world, loves the individual all the more; He does not ignore the individual as

being lost in the wider love. I lay stress on this lest people should think, as it is inevitable they should

think, that a love for the whole world is something cold and unattractive. They imagine that such an

individual has done with his family, pays no more attention to it, ceases to be a loving member of it, that

he has been through the earlier stages of the growth of his love. It is true that those in whom the love of

humanity consciously begins for the first time tend to forget the smal er in the enthusiasm they feel for the

larger. It is quite natural. A child will throw away an old toy for one newer and more beautiful. As he grows

older, especially when he grows quite old, even the earliest toys of childhood will once again become

dear to him. And so it is that while we see in the world the curious anomaly of people who love the whole

world often neglecting their immediate families, this does not mean that love for the world inevitably

involves the abandonment of all lesser affections. The temporary abandonment is merely due to

temporary lack of power of adjusting. Take, for example, the case of Jean Jacques Rousseau. [Page 268]

History tells us that he utterly neglected his own children. Yet he wrote Amiel, in many ways a wonderful

exposition of the way in which children should be trained. The more shal ow-minded would say that Amiel

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is valueless, because he contradicted in his own life the theories which he expounded in his writings. The

fact is that Rousseau was at an earlier stage of a larger love. In trying to grasp the bigger principles, he

temporarily let go of the lesser ones. In the course of a few lives, Rousseau will realise that the love of

the whole is based on the love of its component parts and that all his theories will not be really true until

he applies them in everyday life.

THE NEED FOE UNDERSTANDING

We thus see how complicated evolution is, and above al do we realise how little cause or reason we

have to judge others. The conduct of other people very often strikes us as unwise or wrong, and we rush

into criticism. The criticism would not much matter if we did it as a warning to ourselves, but we generally

make criticism a stick with which to beat those whom we criticise. Yet we are not true psychologists. As

the Master says: "Never attribute motives to another; only his Master knows his faults, and he may be

acting from reasons which have never entered your mind". Every individual is a mass of enormously

complicated machinery. We find it difficult enough to understand [Page 269] ourselves. It is impossible to

understand other people; all we can do is to try to sympathise with them and to help them. The Master

brought this out very clearly when He said: "Each soul has its own troubles and its thoughts turn chiefly

around itself". It is true, I think, to say that, even when we feel most condemnatory of another, there are

sure to be extenuating and explanatory circumstances of which we know nothing at all. A little,

insignificant attitude at any particular moment may, looked at by itself, give rise in our minds to criticism,

but it is probable that this little attitude has causes, possibly in the remote past, of which we can have no

conception. I have no space to give illustrations of this, but you will probably be able to work them out for

yourselves. At al events, it would be well for you to remember quite clearly that every time you criticise or

think unkindly, you are almost certain to be unjust.

And if we are unjust to those who belong to the same kingdom as ourselves, how much more unjust shal

we not be to those members of God's family whom it is still more difficult to understand. The apparent

helplessness of animals and plants has led us to take advantage of them and to imagine that because

they are helpless, therefore we have the right to do what we like with them. This attitude is a reflection of

the individualistic spirit which has for so many years been so dominant in many parts of the world. "The

weakest to the wall" has been the principle of conduct of large numbers of people, and animals and

plants have correspondingly suffered. [Page 270] We who aspire to be servants of the Masters must

remember that God loves equally every kingdom in His divine empire. The time will come when the

animal and the plant will once more be friendly to the human being. As it is, the animals generally know

who, among those of the human kingdom, appreciate and love them. But the general il -treatment of the

animal kingdom has created the gulf between human beings and animals, and the habitual attitude of the

animal must necessarily be one of distrust towards his undutiful elder brother. But as the spirit of

brotherhood begins to permeate the human kingdom, we may hope that it will bridge this gulf and draw

the warring kingdoms into an alliance similar to that which exists between the superhuman and the

human kingdoms.

It is the same with plants. Many of you must have remarked that flowers and trees are attracted towards

certain individuals. Plants grow the better under the hands of those who love them, and I have often

noticed how long plants live, and how happy they seem when in the immediate vicinity of Mrs Besant.

People sometimes give Mrs Besant flowers, and when she wears them on her dress they often last for a

very long time. In other words, they have found a home and are happy in the home. Some day the world

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will indeed be beautiful, for some day there shall be a loving co-operation between al the various

kingdoms of Nature, in which the elder shal do its duty to the younger and in which the younger shall act

in loving co-operation with the elder. [Page 271]

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CHAPTER XXIII

LOVE AND SERVICE

As the Master points out, love and service are really identical and interchangeable terms. If we love God,

we yearn to be one with Him, but, as the Master says: "If you yearn to be one with God, it is not for your

own sake; it is that you may be a channel through which His love may flow to reach your fellow-men".

That is why the Master tells us that we must love, and therefore serve, al that is in the world — men,

animals and plants. Indeed, we must serve minerals too, though the idea seems somewhat far-fetched.

But al who truly love Nature are well aware of the wonderful lesson the mineral kingdom teaches us.

That minerals are living things we are now well aware, through the researches of that great Indian

scientist, Sir J. C. Bose, but al who have an eye for Nature know the effect a beautiful landscape has

upon human beings. The grandeur of mountain scenery impresses itself upon the individual soul and

makes the lover of nature feel the unity to a very marked degree. The Power of God becomes deeply

manifest in the rugged results of great upheavals, and the relentless sea speaks of His inexorable Law.

To use a phrase of Professor James, [Page 272] the voice of life's eternal meaning "speaks through every kingdom of Nature", and our business is to develop through love and service the power to hear God's

message in the various stages of development of His all-pervading Love.

THE LIVING UNITY

Those who have been privileged to pass through the first of the great Initiations are to a certain extent

aware of the living unity. They are able to merge themselves, at least for the time, in the external, and in

so losing themselves they gain a feeble glimpse of the image of God. One who has passed through this

experience says:

I cannot quite explain to you the nature of the experience I went through on the buddhic plane,

but I can tel you of its after effects when I returned to what we call the waking consciousness.

When I woke, I was ful of a feeling of being self-merged in the external, as if I had been

distributed in nature around me and that, therefore, my consciousness lived in al around.

Getting out of bed and going to my window, I looked down upon a beautiful lemon grove, the

trees of which were ripe with lemons. As I looked, the centre of my consciousness seemed to

spread, to expand, so that I was not only "I" but also the lemon grove, and the gardener who

was at that moment engaged in plucking lemons. I seemed to have spread and to alternate

between the external and myself. Now I felt myself to be the lemon grove, now I contracted

into my ordinary self, and I realised that my task was so to live and love and serve that some

day my consciousness should be spread in all around me with myself as but a centre.

Curiously enough, so complete for the time being was the identification of myself with the

lemon grove, [Page 273] that in the person of the tree I seemed to experience the slightest of

twinges when my lemons were plucked from my branches. Somehow, it seemed a pity; it

seemed as if I were being deprived of that which I had won the right to enjoy. I had brought the

lemons into existence and they made me beautiful. They completed me, and there was the

slightest of pain in being deprived of the fruit of my labour. Going back to myself, I knew that

the tree need not be sorry, for its lemons were its love and its service. But I knew, too, that the

tree could not be expected altogether to realise this. The question then arose in my mind as to

whether it was fair to give the tree its pain. It came to me, however, that only thus could the

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tree learn its dharma, for trees have their dharma as have human beings, and the little minute

of pain the tree suffered was well repaid by the gratitude of those who have learned to be

thoughtful. This brought me to the point that we should help the lower kingdoms of Nature far

more than we do, were we to be more deliberately thoughtful of them than we are. An act of

homage to the lemon tree on eating a lemon may sound in these modern days absurd, but,

from the point of view of the tree, there is no absurdity at all. Who knows whether trees will not

produce far better fruit than they do, and will be glad for the fruit to go, if they feel that the pain

of separation is but a payment in advance for a more vigorous life fed by the gratitude of

man ?

The writer pursues this theme into many bypaths, in the course of which he shows how, while sympathy

begins with the reproduction of the feeling; sympathised with, true sympathy means the imparting of

strength to endure. This, indeed, is what both love and service mean. It is not usually our business or our

duty to bear other people's burdens, but it is our duty in the name of a common unity to share with them

the strength which shall help them to bear their troubles bravely. [Page 274]

THE ESSENCE OF THE EXPERIENCE

The Master says: "He who is on the Path, exists not for himself, but for others; he has forgotten himself,

in order that he may serve them". Note the phrase — "he has forgotten himself". I take this to mean that he has learned to merge himself in others. Only by merging himself in others will he know how to

understand them. And this shows to us the value of experience, both bitter and sweet. It is not necessary

to pass through all conceivable experiences, nor to sympathise individually with all the world; but it is

necessary to have become acquainted with the essence of experience. We must have experienced the

essential quality of experience, though by no means necessarily in all the various forms experience

assumes. Experience teaches its lessons in various ways, according to the varying temperaments and

conditions of human beings, as well as of other forms in which God has expressed Himself. When we

have learned the lesson we have understood the process, and it will not be difficult for us to recognise

the process through forms of experience through which we may not ourselves actually have passed. The

actual experiences through which we have gone give us our individuality, while the essence of those

experiences gives us our universality. A great sorrow may teach us what sorrow real y is, no matter what

the various forms of its expression. If we can take ourselves from "our sorrows" to "sorrow" the lesson has been learned, for, if through our sorrows we learn of sorrow, then we shall [Page 275] understand

sorrow in all its forms, for it is the life that makes the form. So we must always try to reason from the

individual to the general. When trouble comes to us, we would do well to communalize our feelings, and

to say to ourselves that other kinds of trouble bring such feelings to other people. We would do well, too,

to realise that all the little difficulties that we have to encounter, and all the excuses we make for

ourselves, have their counterparts in the lives of other people. If I do some hurt to somebody, I am

generally able to find an excuse or a reason. Similarly, if somebody hurts me, he, too, can find his excuse and his reason. Each of us can explain, and in the explanation we find either justification or, at least,

mitigation. Indeed, the mitigating circumstances we always claim to exist in our own case exist equally in

the case of other people. And we would do well to remember that the understanding we ask from others

is an understanding we should in turn give to them. But misunderstanding others is as inevitable as to be

misunderstood oneself, so, in other words, if we do not contribute to the total world's happiness such

share as may be expected from us, we shal have great difficulty in receiving, in return, the share we

ourselves need. Do you see what I mean ? If you want to be happy, you must first put happiness into the

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common stock and then draw it out. You cannot be happy independently. It is for this reason that At the

Feet of the Master may be called a "gospel of happiness", for it is a gospel of love and service, and [Page 276] only as we love and serve do we become abidingly happy. You will have noticed that the Master says

that those who are on the Path exist not for themselves, but for others. The indication of that fact will

have been apparent in the words which I have quoted from one who himself is treading that Path. He

exists for others because he has experienced the unity, and once that unity is experienced it cannot only

never be forgotten, but in course of time must increasingly dominate the daily life. We are told that at a

later stage the process is reversed; so that the individual draws everything into himself instead of feeling

himself merged in the external. I need not, however, deal with this, as it is probable that the majority of

my readers have yet to experience that first stage the nature of which I have already described.

"He is as a pen in the hand of God, through which His thought may flow, and find for itself an expression

down here, which without a pen it could not have. Yet at the same time he is also a living plume of fire,

raying out upon the world the Divine Love which fills his heart". In these magnificent phrases the Master

shows how, while each one of us is a channel for the expression of the Master's force, we become at the

same time an individual fountain for the water of life. Out of our expression of the unity come to the world

the eternal principles of the Divine Life, while out of our individuality these Divine principles assume

certain definite forms whereby they may be the more easily recognised by such individuals as natural y

respond to the special [Page 277] forms through which we express the One Life. So we are useful in a

twofold way. We can send out to the world both the formless and the form. Each one of us has his

individual contribution to make to the world's happiness, as well as being able, to a certain extent at least,

to send out an expression of general principles. Each one of us can be at least something to all the

world, but, as individuals with a special line of activity, we can be very much to the few. [Page 278]

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CHAPTER XXIV

CONCLUSION

IN teaching her pupils, Mrs. Besant lays stress on the different kinds of training which we need for al -

round development. If we are to tread the Path successful y, we must not merely utilise and develop our

capacities, but we must also replace our weaknesses by strength. Under ordinary circumstances, an

individual's duty is to pay special attention to the less developed aspects of his character, so that he may

gradually attain that all-round perfection, so characteristic of Those who have reached the Adept level.

He who is strong in will but weak in wisdom must, for example, strive to acquire wisdom. He who

possesses knowledge but remains weak of character must so strengthen his will as to make good use of

the knowledge he possesses. Similarly, with all other characteristics and qualities, the growing must

strive in every possible way to acquire a balanced nature in which al qualities are at a certain definite

level of expression, while definite weaknesses have entirely been replaced by strength. This is more or

less what is meant by general development. It is of essential importance for young people, and might be

expressed in ordinary terms by stating [Page 279] that there must be a good foundation of general

knowledge before specialisation begins.

On the other hand, each individual has his own special contribution to make to the progress of the world.

We are told that the great Hierarchy which rules us is divided into distinct branches of activity. There are

roughly three main divisions — the ruling, the teaching, and the organising. In each of these divisions

there are Master-Experts, specially trained for work in the divisions to which They belong. Each Master, if

one may reverently say so, has not only acquired an all-round perfection, but has also developed His

nature in accordance with the special dictates of His individual being. The music of the world is a

harmony, not a single note. The very beauty of the harmony depends upon the many differences which

constitute it, provided each separate note be in tone with the spirit of the co-ordinating harmony.

Therefore, while each one of us needs to acquire an all-round development, special y strengthening the

weaker parts of our nature, we must at the same time remember that, as individuals, we have, each one

of us, a special message to give to our surroundings. Within the three great divisions — ruling, teaching,

organising — there are many varieties of work, and no one should feel that he has no message to give. It

may be that he has not yet given his message, that he is not yet ready to specialise, just as the child is

not ready for specialisation. But some day he will know his work, and if he realises that he has special

duties to perform, he will [Page 280] be on the watch for them, and so grow the more quickly. Many who

read these pages may feel that they really do not know to which line they belong, nor to which special

sub-division they belong. Let them keep in mind the fact that they truly have their own special place and

special function in the world's service, and that in due course they will discover themselves. Each one of

us will become a specialist, either in the near or in the distant future, and the more quickly we learn to

modify our exaggerations, to replace our weaknesses by strength, and to bring the various constituents

of our nature into harmonious relationship, the sooner shall we discover the special place God sends us

into the world to occupy. I have no space to pursue this subject further, or I would suggest in detail how it

seems to me the great divisions of activity express themselves in various ways. But I believe that if we

look around us intel igently, we can begin to see into what divisions the people we know well are

gradually sorting themselves. At first we shall be more often wrong than right, but with experience will

come increasing accuracy of judgment. I would add as a final word on this subject that, if I have learned

aright, the specialisation I have spoken of extends into the highest regions. I have heard that the

dominant note of our own world, for example, is love, expressed in a certain specific way. I can imagine

that the dominant note of some other world might be wisdom, while with yet another it might be will, and

so on. Whether I am right or wrong, this field of study is [Page 281] exceedingly fascinating, and invaluable Page 110

Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

to those who have to deal with humanity either as statesmen or as teachers.

LOVE THE INSPIRER

In the last paragraph of At the Feet of the Master, the Master lays down the nature of the fundamental

qualifications each one of us must develop. He tel s us that we must gain wisdom, but not for ourselves,

rather that we may be able to help. Then we must gain will, so as to direct our wise helpfulness through

suitable channels of service. But there must also be love, for without love there can be no true will; while

without the will to help there could be no force stimulating us in the pursuit of true wisdom. You notice

how the Master makes love the inspiring element. Perhaps this is because the dominant note of this

world is love. Having love, the will to serve must inevitably come. And with the will to serve must come a

longing to serve helpfully, wisely. I might be asked how it is possible to acquire the quality of love for

others. I am inclined to answer that one learns to love others by growing tired of loving oneself. One

becomes weary of the smal er self, and turns with relief to the greater freedom of the larger self. Love for

others comes from within, not from without. It cannot be imposed upon us. It is impossible to force a child

to love other people. But the wise teacher stimulates in his pupils that fatigue which sooner or later arises

from [Page 282] loving themselves alone. For some time, it is inevitable that we should care most for our

own individual, smal selves. It is not only inevitable, it is right; for we can only proceed to the wider from

the narrower and we must begin with ourselves. Later on we begin to realise that real happiness

depends far more upon our relations with our surroundings than upon the endeavour to get what we want

for ourselves, indifferent that the satisfaction of our own desires may be bought at the expense of pain to

others. But to realise this means gradual growth. We cannot achieve it al in a moment, and I would,

therefore, repeat that the only way to stimulate the love for others is to encourage in al legitimate ways

the weariness of loving oneself alone.

THE RESULT OF THE TEACHINGS

I have now come to the end of these studies, and I think that if I were asked to sum up what the results of

the teachings should be for any individual, I should quote the two verses given at the end. I reproduce

them here:

Waiting the word of the Master,

Watching the Hidden Light ;

Listening to catch His orders

In the very midst of the fight;

Seeing His slightest signal

Across the heads of the throng;

Hearing His faintest whisper

Above earth's loudest song.

[Page 283] The result of al true teaching is far more to produce right attitude than to fil the brain with Page 111

Thoughts on "At the Feet of the Master" by George S. Arundale

details of knowledge. The best teaching is that which establishes on a firm basis a mind trained to know

where to look for the needed knowledge, how to gain such an attitude as shal enable the individual not

only to direct his knowledge wisely but, also, sympathetical y to understand the thousand and one

motives and circumstances which lie at the root of every individual existence. The teachings of the

Master should help us to acquire an attitude of kindliness and of eagerness to help, while both of these

must be sufficiently genuine to make us willing to undertake the necessary training and the necessary

sacrifices. It is an attitude which is expressed in the two verses I have quoted, the attitude of listening for

the slightest indication as to conduct from Those who may be called the Perfect Servers.

The first verse indicates to us the need for humility, for realising how little in reality we know— however

much the world may cal us wise. If we would be truly helpful, therefore, we must be ever on the watch for

hints from Those who possess the true knowledge. The last two lines of the first verse teach us the most

important lesson that we must never lose sight of God's plan for men, however much we may be

absorbed in our own individual lives. Our own lives are parts of God's Life, and we can only live our own

lives truly when we strive to shape them, adapt them, mould them, to His. Mrs. Besant has often told us

how in the background of her mind [Page 284] is always the thought of her Master, with the result that

everything she does is influenced and coloured by that dominant thought. We, too, must similarly learn to

keep our Master ever in our thoughts, because the Master represents in embodied form our highest

selves, is the Messenger of God to our hearts. If we cannot yet think of any special Master, at least we

can have the image of one of the earth's Great Helpers ever before us. There are a few living in our midst

even now whom we might do well to enshrine in the sacred places of our being. Every one of us should

be a hero-worshipper, whether of a hero of by-gone ages or of one living in the world to-day.

The second verse amplifies the first, and it would be well to learn these verses by heart, so that they may

as frequently as possible come into our thoughts to remind us of the true motive that should be behind

our thoughts, our feelings, our activity. The lines

Hearing His faintest whisper

Above earth's loudest song.

teach us that the lightest suggestion of the Master is of infinitely greater importance than the considered

opinion of the world in which we live. Those who would be pupils of a Master must learn to judge for

themselves, to think the thoughts the Master would wish them to think, to feel as He would wish them

feel, to speak as He would have them speak, to act as He would have them act. Public opinion has its

value, but the opinion of the Master is the purest truth for those who know, and above al for the occultist.

On the other hand, we must take care not to be too lazy [Page 285] to think for ourselves. Laziness keeps

large numbers of people from the feet of the Master, for either they want to be spoon-fed by their elders,

and to receive and act on distinct orders as to every little detail of their lives, or they grovel before public

opinion rather than take the trouble to stand up for themselves and, if necessary, to brave public opinion

and suffer the consequences. No one can become the pupil of the Master who is not fully willing, indeed

eager, to suffer in the cause of that which he believes to be the truth, however much he may thereby

bring down upon himself the execration of his friends and surroundings.

I would specially warn you against the very common weakness of many good, but not spiritual, people,

who go about telling others how they were told to do this and that, how they dreamed this dream, heard

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the voice of So and So, how Mrs. Besant or Mr. Leadbeater has specially advised this, approved that,

recommended this course, endorsed such and such an interpretation of an astral or other experience.

There are many such well-meaning persons in our circles, revolving placidly in theirs. Let them say what

they will, but for yourselves remember Mr. Leadbeater's advice not to become the centre of your circle.

People who act as I have described are real y striving to persuade others that they are very important

people. They seek praise by trying to strut about in garments al eged to have been made for them by

personages greater than they. Apart from the fact that in nine cases out of ten their [Page 286] remarks are generally gross exaggerations of the little amount of truth which may possibly be in them, our business

as apprentices in a Master's school is to prove ourselves by action, not by speech.

I hope that the Master's teachings are as precious to my readers as they are to me. We may read At the

Feet of the Master many times, but we are only beginning to understand it if we find each time we read it

afresh that we are learning something new. He who, having read At the Feet of the Master, does not long

to read it again and again, has not yet understood its message.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV