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A Treatise on White Magic - Rule Three - Principles and Personalities
c. Still higher principles are those comprehended by the Spirit and are only readily comprehended by the monadic consciousness. Only as the man transcends his active personal life and substitutes the life of love or wisdom as led by the ego can he begin to understand the scope of that life of love and know it as demonstrated power. Just as the personality deals with the principles governing the life of activity of the lower self, and the ego works with the law of love as demonstrated in group work, or love showing itself in the synthesis of the many into the few, so the Monad deals with the active life of love shown in power through the synthesis of the few into the one. One deals with the life of the man on the physical plane, or in the three worlds, the second with his life on causal levels, and the last with his life after the attainment of the goal of present human endeavor. One deals with units, another with groups and the last with unity. One deals with differentiation at its most diverse point, the second with the many resolved into the egoic groups, whilst the third sees the differentiation resolved back into the seven, which marks unity for the human hierarchy. All these factors and many others produce differences among human beings, and in sizing himself up a man must needs bring them into his consideration. It should therefore be borne in mind that a disciple of any of the Masters will have his peculiar equipment, and his individual assets and deficiencies. He can nevertheless [120] rest assured that, until the path of Knowledge has been added to the path of Love, he can never take the major initiations, for these are undergone on the higher levels of the mental plane. Until the path of light is united to the path of life the great transition from the fourth into the fifth kingdom cannot be taken. Certain expansions of consciousness are possible; initiations on the astral and lower mental planes can be taken; some of the vision can be seen, the sense of the Presence can be felt; the Beloved can be reached by love, and the bliss and the joy of this contact can carry with it its abiding joy, but that clear perception which comes from the experience undergone on the Mount of Illumination is a different thing to the joy experienced on the Mount of Blessing. The Heart leads in the one, the Head leads in the other. To answer categorically: The path of knowledge is that of the occultist and the sage; that of love is that of the mystic and the saint. The head or the heart approach is not dependent upon the ray, for both ways must be known; the mystic must become the occultist; the white occultist has been the saintly mystic. True knowledge is intelligent love, for it is the blending of the intellect and the devotion. Unity is sensed in the heart; its intelligent application to life has to be worked out through knowledge. It is of prime value to recognize the tendency of the life purpose, and to know whether the head or the heart method is the objective of any specific life. A fine spiritual discrimination is needed here however, lest the glamor of illusion tempt to the path of inertia. Ponder these words with care, and see that the question is based on a true foundation and does not grow out of an inferiority complex, the consideration of a brother's enterprise and a consequent jealous tendency, or upon a placid complacency which negates activity. [121] As a general rule for the average aspirant to discipleship, it may be safely assumed that the past has seen much application of the heart way, and that in this incarnation the mental unfoldment is of prime importance. An ancient Scripture says: "Seek not, Oh twice-blessed One, to attain the spiritual essence before the mind absorbs. Not thus is wisdom sought. Only he who hath the mind in leash, and seeth the world as in a mirror can be safely trusted with the inner senses. Only he who knoweth the five senses to be illusion, and that naught remaineth save the two ahead, can be admitted into the secret of the Cruciform transposed. "The path that is trodden by the Server is the path of fire that passeth through his heart and leadeth to the head. It is not on the path of pleasure, nor on the path of pain that liberation may be taken nor that wisdom cometh. It is by the transcendence of the two, by the blending of pain with pleasure, that the goal is reached, that goal that lieth ahead, like a point of light seen in the darkness of a winter's night. That point of light may call to mind the tiny candle in some attic drear, but - as the path that leadeth to that light is trodden through the blending of the pairs of opposites - that pin-point, cold and flickering, groweth with steady radiance till the warm light of some blazing lamp cometh to the mind of the wanderer by the way. "Pass on, O Pilgrim, with steady perseverance. No candle is there nor earth lamp fed with oil. Ever the radiance growth till the path ends within a blaze of glory, and the wanderer through the night becometh the child of the sun, and entereth within the portals of that radiant orb."
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