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A Treatise on White Magic - Rule Twelve - The Prisoners of the Planet
A word about pain might be in place here, though I have naught of an abstruse nature to communicate anent the evolution of the human hierarchy through the medium of pain. The devas do not suffer pain as does mankind. Their rate of rhythm is steadier although in line with the Law. They learn through application to the work of building and through incorporation into the form of that which is built. They grow through appreciation [533] of and joy in the forms built and the work accomplished. The devas build and humanity breaks and through the shattering of the forms man learns through discontent. Thus is acquiescence in the work of the greater Builders achieved. Pain is that upward struggle through matter which lands a man at the Feet of the Logos; pain is the following of the line of the greatest resistance and thereby reaching the summit of the mountain; pain is the smashing of the form and the reaching of the inner fire; pain is the cold of isolation which leads to the warmth of the central sun; pain is the burning in the furnace in order finally to know the coolness of the water of life; pain is the journeying into the far country, resulting in the welcome to the Father's Home; pain is the illusion of the Father's disowning, which drives the prodigal straight to the Father's heart; pain is the cross of utter loss, that renders back the riches of the eternal bounty; pain is the whip that drives the struggling builder to carry to utter perfection the building of the Temple. The uses of pain are many, and they lead the human soul out of darkness into light, out of bondage into liberation, out of agony into peace. That peace, that light and that liberation, with the ordered harmony of the cosmos are for all the sons of men. With the problem of limitation is closely linked that of liberation. Into the prison house of form enter all that live; some enter consciously and some unconsciously, and this we call birth, appearance, incarnation, manifestation. Immediately there sweeps into activity another law or the working out of an active principle which we call the Law of Cycles. This is the principle of periodic appearance - a beneficent operation of the love-wisdom of innate divinity, for it produces that sequence of the states of consciousness which we term Time. This produces therefore in the world field of awareness a [534] gradual and slow growth towards self-expression, self-appreciation, and self-realization. To these principles of Limitation and of Cycles is added another principle, that of Expansion. This brings about the development of consciousness so that the latent germ of sentiency or of sensitive response to environment may be fostered in the living unit. We have therefore three Principles: The Principle of Limitation. The Principle of Periodic Manifestation. The Principle of Expansion. These three Principles together constitute the factors underlying the Law of Evolution as men call it. They bring about the imprisonment of the Life in its various appearances or aspects; they produce the environing forms, and they lead the imprisoned lives on into ever more educational prison houses. Finally the time arrives when the Principle of Liberation becomes active and a transition is effected out of a prison house which cramps and distorts into one which provides adequate conditions for the next development of consciousness.
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