To Netnews Homepage Previous Next Index Table of Contents
A Treatise on White Magic - Rule Fourteen - The Treading of the Way
Certain considerations should be brought to the notice of the disciple which - for the sake of clarity - we will tabulate. To become an adept it will be necessary for the disciple to: Enquire the Way. Obey the inward impulses of the soul. Pay no attention to any worldly consideration. Live a life which is an example to others. These four requirements may sound at the first superficial reading as easy of accomplishment, but if carefully studied it will become apparent why an adept is a "rare efflorescence of a generation of enquirers." Let us take up each of these four points: 1. Enquire the Way. We are told by one of the Masters that a whole generation of enquirers may only produce one adept. Why should this be so? For two reasons: First, the true enquirer is one who avails himself of the wisdom of his generation, who is the best product of his own period and yet who remains unsatisfied and with the [584] inner longing for wisdom unappeased. To him there appears to be something of more importance than knowledge and something of greater moment than the accumulated experience of his own period and time. He recognizes a step further on and seeks to take it in order to gain something to add to the quota already gained by his compeers. Nothing satisfies him until he finds the Way, and nothing appeases the desire at the center of his being except that which is found in the house of his Father. He is what he is because he has tried all lesser ways and found them wanting, and has submitted to many guides only to find them "blind leaders of the blind". Nothing is left to him but to become his own guide and find his own way home alone. In the loneliness which is the lot of every true disciple are born that self-knowledge and self-reliance which will fit him in his turn to be a Master. This loneliness is not due to any separative spirit but to the conditions of the Way itself. Aspirants must carefully bear this distinction in mind. Secondly, the true enquirer is one whose courage is of that rare kind which enables its possessor to stand upright and to sound his own clear note in the very midst of the turmoil of the world. He is one who has the eye trained to see beyond the fogs and miasmas of the earth to that center of peace which presides over all earth's happenings, and that trained attentive ear which (having caught a whisper of the Voice of the Silence) is kept tuned to that high vibration and is thus deaf to all lesser alluring voices. This again brings loneliness and produces that aloofness which all less evolved souls feel when in the presence of those who are forging ahead. A paradoxical situation is brought about from the fact that the disciple is told to enquire the Way and yet there is none to tell him. Those who know the Way may not speak, knowing that the Path is constructed by the aspirant as the spider spins its web out of the center [585] of his own being. Thus only those souls flower forth into adepts in any specific generation who have "trodden the winepress of the wrath of God alone" or who (in other words) have worked out their karma alone and who have intelligently taken up the task of treading the Path.
To Netnews Homepage Previous Next Index Table of Contents
Last updated Monday, March 30, 1998 © 1998 Netnews Association. All rights reserved.