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Esoteric Psychology II - Chapter I - The Egoic Ray - The Growth of Soul Influence
Then the Old Commentary runs through what would constitute many pages of writing, shewing that the Blessed Ones are naught and yet are all there is; that They possess nothing and yet are in Themselves the expression of all reality; that They dwell nowhere and yet are found everywhere; that They have faded out and yet are shining in full radiance and can be seen. Negation after negation is piled up, only promptly to be contradicted in an effort to shew how divorced from, and yet inclusive of, form is the life of the Blessed Ones. It ends with the wonderful injunction: "Therefore be full of joy, 0 pilgrim on the Way towards [34] enlightened Being, for gain and loss are one; darkness and light eternally reveal the True; love and desire eternally invoke the Life. Naught disappears but pain. Nothing remains but Bliss, - the bliss of knowledge true, of contact real, of light divine, the Way to God." Such is the true goal, as yet unrealizable by us. What is it that we are endeavoring to do? We are treading the Way of Release, and on that way, all drops from our hands; everything is taken away, and detachment from the world of phenomenal life and of individuality is inevitably forced upon us. We are treading the Way of Loneliness, and must learn eventually that we are essentially neither ego nor non-ego. Complete detachment and discrimination must finally lead us to a condition of such complete aloneness that the horror of the great blackness will settle down upon us. But when that pall of blackness is lifted and the light again pours in, the disciple sees that all that was grasped and treasured, and then lost and removed, has been restored, but with this difference - that it no longer holds the life imprisoned by desire. We are treading the Way that leads to the Mountain Top of Isolation, and will find it full of terror. Upon that mountain top we must fight the final battle with the Dweller on the Threshold, only to find that that too is an illusion. That high point of isolation and the battle itself are only illusions and figments of unreality; they are the last stronghold of the ancient glamor, and of the great heresy of separateness. Then we, the Beatific Ones, will eventually find ourselves merged with all that is, in love and understanding. The isolation, a necessary stage, is itself but an illusion. We are treading the Way of Purification and step by step all that we cherish is removed, - lust for form life, desire for love, and the great glamor of hatred. These disappear and we stand purified and [35] empty. The distress of emptiness is the immediate result; it grips us and we feel that the price of holiness is too high. But, standing on the Way, suddenly the whole being is flooded with light and love, and the emptiness is seen as constituting that through which light and love may flow to a needy world. The purified One can dwell then in that place where dwell the Blessed Lords, and from that place go forth to "illumine the world of men and of the deities". There are four ways which stretch before the disciples of the Lord of the World. They must all be trodden before the inner Being is released, and the liberated Son of God can enter, at will, what are symbolically called "the four gates into the City of Shamballa", - that city of the Most High God, which is ever swept by the Life of Those who have achieved liberation through loneliness, detachment, isolated unity, and purification. A realization. of the goal and the way to that goal is of service at this time, and it is to this realization that the teachers of humanity seek to stimulate the Sons of God. According to the ray type or quality, so will be the reaction of the life to the great stages of Individualization, Initiation, and Identification. This is a major occult platitude, but it is one that is much in need of consideration and reflection. Let us bear in mind always that we are considering qualities which govern appearances and express the life. What is called in the Eastern literature "the Blessed One" refers to One who is perfectly expressing some ray quality through some chosen phenomenal appearance, which is assumed at will for purpose of service, but which in no way constitutes a limitation and in no way holds the Blessed One a prisoner, because His consciousness is in no way identified with the phenomenal appearance, nor with the quality it expresses. [36]
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