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THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
The Path
OF DISCIPLESHIP
Four Lectures delivered at the Twentieth Anniversary
of the theosophical society, at al)yar, aladras,
December 27, 28, 29 and 30, 1895
BY
ANNIE BESANT
Third Impression
THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY, BENARES AND LONDON
THE THEOSOFHIST OFFICE, Adyar, Madras, S.
1910
PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT, AT THE VASANTA PRESS, ADYAR.
£<*'
r^7
CONTENTS
1. First Steps . . .
2. Qualifications fob Discipleship .
3. The Life of the Disciple
4. The Future Progress of Humanity
5. Index .....
Page
1
40
75
115
157
829260
THE
PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
FIRST STEPS
Karma- Yoga. — Purification.
Brothers : When first I spoke in this Hall two
years ago, I led your attention to the building
of the Kosmos as a whole, to the steps through
which that evolution took place, the methods, as
it were, of the vast succession of phenomena. Last
year I dealt with the evolution of the Self, the
Self in man rather than the Self in the Kosmos,
and tried to show you how from sheath after
sheath the Self gained experience and obtained
sovereignty over its lower vehicles — still with the
man as with the universe, still with the indivi-
dual as with the Kosmos, seeking ever re-union
with the Self, seeking ever That whence it had
come. But sometimes men have said to me when
discussing these lofty topics : " What bearing
2 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
have these on the life of men in the world,
surrounded as we are with the necessities of
life, surrounded as Ave are with the activities
of the phenomenal world, continually drawn away
from the thought of the one Self, continually
forced by our karma to take part in these multi-
farious activities ? What bearing, then, has the
higher teaching on the lives of men, and how
may men in the world rise upward until the
higher life becomes possible also for them ? " It
is that question that I am going to try to
answer this year. I am going to try to show
you how a man in the world, surrounded with
family obligations, with social duties, with all the
many activities of worldly life, may yet prepare
himself for union and take the first steps on
the path that leads him to the One. I am going
to try to trace for you the steps of that path,
so that beginning in the life that any man may
be leading, starting from the standpoint where
most of you may be standing at the moment,
you may recognise a goal to be reached, you
may recognise a path to be trodden — the path
which begins here in the life of the family, of
the community, of the state, but which ends in
that which is beyond all thinking and lands the
traveller ultimately in the home which is his
for evermore. Such is the object then of these
four lectures, such the steps along which I trust
FIRST STEPS
you will accompany me; and in order that we
may understand our subject let us glance for a
moment at the course of evolution, at its mean-
ing, at its object, so that from what must be
but a bird's eye view of the whole, we may be
able, appreciating the whole, to understand the
congruity of the steps which one by one we are
to take. We realise that the One has become
the many. Glancing backward into the primal
darkness that shroudeth all, we can hear out of
that darkness but a whisper — a whisper: u I will
multiply". That multiplication is the building of
the universe, and of the individuals who live
within it. In that will to multiply of the " One
which is without a second," we see the source
of manifestation, we recognise the primal germ,
as it were, of the Kosmos. And as we realise
that beginning of the universe and as we see
the complexity, the multiplicity, that result from
the primal simplicity, from the primal unity,
we realise also that in each of these phenomenal
manifestations there must be imperfection, and
that the very limitation which makes a pheno-
menon possible is also the inevitable mark that
it is less than the One, and therefore by itself
imperfect. So we understand why there should
be variety, why there should be this vast multi-
plicity of separate and living things. And we
begin to understand that the perfection of the
4 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
manifested universe must needs lie in this very
variety ; that if there be more than the One
then there must be well nigh infinite multipli-
city, in order that the One, which is as a mighty
sun sending forth beams of light in all directions,
may send beams everywhere, and in the totality
of the beams will be the perfection of the light-
ing1 of the world. The more numerous, the more
wonderful, the more various the objects, the
more nearly, though still imperfectly, will the
universe image forth That whence it comes.
The first effort in the evolving life must be
to make many, to make separated existences —
apparently separate — so that looked at from with-
out there shall seem many, although looked at
in their essence we see that the Self of all is
One. Realising that, we understand that in the
process of multiple individualising, the One as
individual comes into manifestation as a faint and
limited reflexion of the Self. And we begin to
understand also what is to be the outcome of
this universe, why it is that these many indivi-
duals should be evolved, why it is that this
separateness should be a necessary part in the
evolution of the whole. For we begin to see
that the result of the universe is to be the
evolution of the Logos of another universe, of
the mighty Devas who are to be the guides of
all the kosmic forces of that universe in the
FIRST STEPS
future, and of the divine Teachers whose duty
it will be to train the infant humanity of
another Kosmos. What is going on to-day in all
these worlds of individual existences is a steady
process of evolution, by which one universe gives
to a future universe its Logos, its Devas, the
earliest of its Manus, and all those great Ones
that will be necessary for the building, for the
training, for the governing, for the teaching of
the universe which is yet unborn. Thus are the
universes linked together, thus does Manvantara
succeed Manvantara, thus are the fruits of one
universe the seeds of the universe that succeeds
it. In the midst of all this multiplicity there
is being evolved a yet vaster unity which shall
be the framework of the unborn Kosmos, which
shall be the Power which in the future Kosmos
shall guide and rule.
And then the question arises — as I know it
arises in many minds, for it has been put to me
both in the East and in the West over and
over again — why so much difficulty in the evolu-
tion, why so much apparent failure in the work-
ing, why should men go wrong so much before
they go right, why should they run after the
evil that degrades them instead of following the
good that would ennoble them ? Was it not possi-
ble for the Logos of our universe, for the Devas
who are His Agents, for the great Manus who
O THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
came to guide our infant humanity — was it not
possible for Them to plan so that there might
be no such apparent failure in the working out ?
Was it not possible for Them to guide, so that
the road might have been a straight and direct
one instead of so devious, so circuitous ?
Here comes the point that makes the evolution
of humanity so difficult, having in view the ob-
ject which is to be gained. Easy in truth would
it have been to have made a humanity that
might have been perfect, easy to have so guided
its dawning powers that those powers might have
travelled towards what we call the good continu-
allv, and never have turned aside towards
what we call evil. But what would have been
the condition of such an easy accomplishment ?
It must have been that man would have been
an automaton, moved by a compelling force with-
out him, which imperiously laid upon him a law
which he was compelled to fulfil, from which he
could not escape. The mineral world is under
such a law ; the affinities that bind atom to atom
obey such an imperious compulsion. But as we
rise higher we find greater and greater freedom
gradually making its appearance, until in man
we see a spontaneous energy, a freedom of choice,
which is really the dawning manifestation of the
God, of the Self, which is beginning to show
itself through man. And the object, the goal
FIRST STEPS /
which was to be attained, was not to make au-
tomata who should blindly follow a path sketch-
ed out for their treading, but to make a reflex-
ion of the Logos Himself, to make a mighty as-
semblage of wise and perfected men, who should
choose the best because they know and under-
stand it, who should reject the worst because
by experience they have learnt its inadequacy and
the sorrow to which it leads. So that in the
universe of the future, as amongst all the great
Ones who are guiding the universe of to-day, there
should be unity gained by consensus of wills,
which have become one again by knowledge and
by choice, which move with a single purpose be-
cause they know the whole, which are identical
with the Law because they have learned that the
Law is good, who choose to be one with the Law
not by an outside compulsion, but by an inner ac-
quiescence. Thus in that universe of the future
there will be one Law, as there is in the present,
carried out by means of Those who are the Law
by the unity of Their purpose, the unity of Their
knowledge, the unity of Their power — not a blind
and unconscious Law, but an assemblage of living
beings who are the Law, having become divine.
There is no other road by which such goal might
be reached, by which the freewill of the many
should reunite into the one great Nature and the
one great Law, save a process in which experience
8 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
should be garnered, in which evil should be known
as well as good, failure as well as triumph. Thus
men become Gods, and because of the experience
that lies behind them, they will, they think, they
feel, the same.
Now in working towards this goal, the divine
Teachers and Guides of our humanity planned
many civilisations, all moulded towards the end
that was in view. I have no time to go back to
the great civilisation of the Fourth Race that pre-
ceded the birth of the mighty Aryan people. I
may only say in passing that there was a great
civilisation which was tried, which for a time
under its divine Rulers succeeded ; then the divine
Rulers withdrew their immediate guiding — as
a mother withdraws her hand from her babe
that is learning to walk, in order to see if with-
out her supporting arm it is able to make its
own steps, it is able to use its own limbs. So
for the same purpose They withdrew into the dark-
ness— the divine Guides and Rulers — to see if
the child-humanity making these early steps
would walk or would stumble on its way. And
that infant humanity stumbled and fell, and the
great civilisation — mighty as it was, perfect in
its social order, glorious in the strength and the
wisdom by which it was builded — broke into
pieces under the selfishness of man, broke into
pieces under the yet unconquered lower instincts
FIRST STEPS 9
of humanity. Another attempt had to be made,
and the great Aryan race was founded — again
with divine Rulers, again with divine Guides,
with a Manu who gave it its law, founded its
civilisation, sketched out its polity, with the
Rshis who gathered round Him, who administer-
ed His laws and guided the infant civilisation ;
thus again humanity was given a pattern, again
the race was shown a type towards which it
should evolve. Then once more the great Teachers
drew back for a while to let humanity again try
its own strength, again experiment if it were
strong enough to walk alone, self-reliant, guided
by the Self from within, instead of by outer
manifestations. And again, as we know, the ex-
periment has largely been a failure. Again, as
we know, glancing backward, we see this civilis-
ation, originally divine, gradually degenerating
under the still unconquered lower nature of man,
again going downward for a while under the
still uncurbed passions of humanity. Looking back,
as we now do, to the India of the past, we see its
perfect polity, its marvellous spirituality, and we
trace its degradation millennium after millennium
as the guiding hand withdraws out of the visible
sight of man, and once more humanity blunders
and fails as it tries to walk. We see how in
each case there has been the failure of the realis-
ation of the divine ideal. We glance over the
10 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
modern world and we see how the lower nature
of man has triumphed over the divine ideal,
which was set before him at the beginning of
the Aryan race. We see how in that day there
was the ideal of the Brahmana, an ideal that
might be summed up as that of the soul ap-
proaching liberation, which asks no longer for
the goods of earth, which asks no longer for the
enjoyments of the flesh, which asks no longer for
any gifts of wealth, of power, of authority, of
earthly pleasure, the type of the Brahmana being
that he was poor, but wise ; whereas to-day we
too often find the man who bears the Brahmana
name not poor and wise but wealthy and ig-
norant. There in that caste you have one of the
signs of the degeneration by which the ancient
polity fell ; and the same with each of the four castes.
Let us now see how it was proposed by the
great Teachers that man bj' experience should learn
to choose of his own free will the ideal which
was placed before him, and from which he turn-
ed aside ; how the great Teacher endeavored
to build up from the imperfect humanity towards
the perfected ideal manifested in the beginning
for the guidance of the race, and unrealised in
evolution by the weakness and the childishness
of men.
In order that this might in the course of ages
come, what is called Karma-Yoga was taught to
FIRST STEPS 11
the people — Yoga, or union, by action. That is
the form of Yoga which is fitted for the men
of the world, beset with life's activities ; it is by
these very activities, by the training afforded by
them, that the first steps towards union must be
taken. And so you find laid down for the train-
ing of men this Karma- Yoga.
Note the juxtaposition of the words ' action '
and ' union \ Action so performed that union
may result, action so carried out that union may
be the outcome. It is a thing to remember that
it is our activities that divide us, it is our ac-
tions that separate us, it is all this changing and
multifarious activity by which we are drawn and
kept apart. It seems almost a paradox then to
speak of union by action, union by that which
was ever a means of division, union by that by
which separation was brought about. But the
wisdom of the divine Teachers was equal to the
task of reconciling, of explaining, the apparent
paradox. Let us follow the steps of the explana-
tion and see what it is.
Man runs wild, runs wild in every direction
under the influence of the three energies in
nature, the gunas. The dweller in the body
finds himself under the domination of these gunas.
They are at work, they are active, they make the
manifested universe, and he identifies himself
with these activities. He thinks he is acting
12 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
when these are acting. He thinks he is busy
when these are bringing about results. Living
amongst them, blinded by them, under the illu-
sions which they produce, he loses entirely all
recognition of himself, and is taken here and
there, blown hither and thither, carried away
by the currents, and so the activity of the
gunas is all that the man sees in life ; clearly
he is not fit under these conditions for the
higher forms of Yoga. Clearly until these illu-
sions are at least partially conquered, the loftier
steps on the Path will be beyond his treading.
He must begin then by understanding the gunas,
by separating himself from these activities of
the phenomenal universe. And the great scrip-
ture of Yoga, as it may be called, the scripture
of this Karma- Yoga, is that which was repro-
claimed by Shri Krshna on the field of Kuru-
kshetra, when he taught this form of Yoga to
Arjuna, to the prince, to the warrior, the man
who was to live in the world, to fight in the
world, to rule the State, and take part in all
external activities ; here is the eternal lesson for
men who are living in the world, how gradually
they may rise beyond the gunas and so reach
union with the Supreme.
It will then first be in what we may call the
training and regulation of the activities of the
gunas that this Karma- Yoga will consist. There
FIRST STEPS 13
are, as you knew, three gunas, Sattva. Rajas
and Tamas, the three gunas out of which all
around us is builded and combined together in
various ways, mingled in various fashions. Here
one is acting and the other is working in every
direction. They have to be brought into equi-
librium ; they have to be reduced to subjection.
The dweller in the body, the lord of the body
must become sovereign master and distinguish
himself from the gunas. That, then, will be the
work that has to be done : their functions must
be realised, their activities must be controlled
and directed. You cannot at once rise above
them, you cannot at once cross beyond them —
any more than a child can do the work of a
full-grown man. Can humanity in its unevolved and
in its imperfect state accomplish perfection of
Yoga ? Nay, it is not even wise that man should
try ; for if the child be put to the work of the
full-grown man, he will not only fail to accom-
plish it, but he will overstrain his powers in
the attempt, and the result will be not only
failure in the present, but also failure in the
future. For the task too great for his powers
will thwart and distort them. They must be
trained to strength before they can accomplish,
and the child must grow to manhood before
manhood's |work should be his. Take for a mo-
ment the function of Tamas — translated darkness,
14 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
or sluggishness, or inertia, or negligence, and so
on. What function can that play, if it is to be used
for human evolution ? What use has this particular
guna in the growth of the man, in the liberating
of the soul ? The particular use of that guna,
the use to which it will be put in Karma- Yoga,
is to act as a force which is to be struggled
against and overcome, so that strength may be
evolved in the struggle, power of will may be
developed by the effort, self-control and self-dis-
cipline may be accomplished by the attempt. It
may be said to serve in the evolution of man
as the club or dumb-bell serves the purpose of
the athlete. He could not strengthen his muscles
unless there was something against which he
exercised them. He could not gain muscular
vigor unless there were opposing weights by
struggling to lift which the muscles should grow
strong. The value is not in the weight itself,
but in the use to which it is put, and if a man
wants his physical muscles, the muscles of his
arms, to grow very strong, the best way to
strengthen them is to take a club or dumb-bell
and daily exercise the muscles against that op-
posing force. In this way Tamas, negligence or
darkness, plays its part in the evolution of the
man ; he has to overcome it ; he develops his
strength in the struggle ; the muscles of the soul
grow powerful as he overcomes the negligence,
FIRST STEPS 15
the sloth, the indifference, which is the tamasic
quality in his nature.
So you will find for the overcoming of these,
the rites and ceremonies of religion are ordained,
part of their function being to train man to
overcome the sloth and the laziness and the in-
dolence of his lower nature, and by placing be-
fore him certain duties to be done at a parti-
cular time — whether at that time he is inclined
to do them or not, whether at that time he is
feeling active or feeling lazy — by imposing on
him duties at a particular time, he is trained to
overcome the sloth and heedlessness and obstinacy
of his lower nature, and to compel it to walk
along the path that the will has determined it
should follow.
And so if we take Rajas : you will find the
activities of man are guided in Karma-Yoga along
certain definite paths which I now propose to
follow, so that you may see how this quality of
activity, which is so much at work in the modern
world, which is manifesting itself in every direc-
tion, which leads to hurry, bustle and constant
effort to accomplish things in the lower life,
material manifestations, material results, material
phenomena — how this shall be gradually directed,
trained and purified until it no longer has the
power to hinder the real manifestation of the
Self. The object of Karma- Yoga is to substitute
16 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
duty for self-gratification ; man acts to gratify
his lower nature; lie acts because lie wants to
get something; he acts for fruit; he acts for
desire, for reward. He works because he wants
money in order that he may enjoy. He works
because he wants power in order that the lower
self may be gratified. All these activities, these
rajasic qualities, are set going with the purpose
of ministering to his lower nature. In order
that these activities may be trained and regulated
to serve the purpose of the Higher Self, he is
to be taught to substitute duty for self- gratifica-
tion, to carry on work as work because it is his
duty, to turn the wheel of life because it is his
function to turn it, that he may do as Shrl
Krshna said He does Himself. He does not act
because there is anything for Him to gain either
in this world or in any other; but He acts
because without His action the world would cease ;
He acts because without His action the wheel
would no longer revolve. And those who accom-
plish Yoga must act in the spirit of His acting,
acting for the whole and not for the separated
part, acting for the carrying out of the divine
will in the Kosmos and not for the pleasure of
the separated entity that imagines itself to be
independent when it ought to be a co-worker
under Him. This object is to be gained by
gradually raising the sphere of these activities.
FIRST STEPS 17
Duty is to be substituted for self-gratification
and religious rites and ceremonies are ordained
to train men gradually towards the true life
that is their function. Every religious ceremony
is but a way of training men into the true and
higher life. A man meditates in the early
morning and at the going-down of the sun, but
ultimately his life will be one long meditation.
He meditates for an hour to prepare himself for
meditating always. All creative activities are the
result of meditation, and you will remember that
it is by Tapas that all worlds are created. In
order then that man may reach that mighty and
creative power of meditation, in order that he
also may be able to exercise that divine power,
he must be trained towards it by religious cere-
monies, by intermittent thought, by Tapas taken
up and laid down again. Set meditation is a
step towards the accomplishment of constant
meditation ; it takes a part of daily life in order
to permeate the whole, and men practise it daily
in order that gradually it may absorb the life.
The time comes when for the Yogi there is no
fixed hour for meditation, for all his life is one
Ions" meditation. No matter what outer activities
be may be doing, he meditates • and he is ever
at the Feet of his Lord, although both mind and
body may be active in the world of man. And
so with all other forms of action ; first a man
2
18 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
learns to perform action as a sacrifice to duty
and a paying of his debt to the world in which
he is — the paying back to all the different parts
of Nature of that which they give to him. And
then later, sacrifice becomes more than the pay-
ing of a debt; it becomes a joyful giving of
everything the man has to give. The partial
sacrifice is the debt that is paid, the perfect
sacrifice is the gift of the whole. A man gives
himself, with all his activities, with all his
powers, no longer paying part of his possessions
as a debt, but all of himself as a gift. And
when that stage is reached Yoga is accomplished
and the lesson of Karma- Yoga has been learned.
Take as one step towards this those five daily
sacrifices which are familiar in name at least to
all of you, and realise what underlay the ordina-
tion of those sacrifices. Each one of the five is
the payment of a debt, the recognition of what
man as a separated individual owes as a debt
to the whole around him. And if you consider
them for the moment one by one, however hastily,
you will see how thoroughly each is this payment
of a debt. Take the first : the sacrifice to the
Devas. Why is that sacrifice ordained ? It is
because man has to learn that his body owes a
debt to earth and to the Intelligences that guide
the processes of Nature by which earth brings
forth her fruits, by which she produces nourish-
FIRST STEPS 19
merit for man ; as man takes the nourishment
for his body, his body owes back, in payment
of the debt, the returning to Nature an equival-
ent for that which has been given it through
the instrumentality of those kosmic Intelligences,
those Devas, who guide the forces of the lower
world. And so man was taught to pour his
sacrifice into the fire. Why ? The phrase that
was given as an explanation was : " Agni is the
mouth of the Gods, " and people repeat the
phrase and never try to understand its meaning,
nor to go below the surface of the external name
of the Deva to His function in the world. The
real meaning of course that underlies the phrase
is that all around on every side there are the con-
scious and sub-conscious workers in Nature in grade
after grade, a great kosmic Deva at the head, as
it were, of each division of that vast army ; so
that below the Deva as a Ruler in fire, in air,
in water, in earth, below that particular Deva
come a vast number of lower Gods who carry
on the different and separated activities of the
natural forces in the world, the rain, the product-
ive powers of the earth, the fertilising agencies
of various sorts. And this first sacrifice is a
feeding of these lower agencies, a giving to them
of food by fire ; and fire is called " the mouth
of the Gods " because it disintegrates, because it
changes and transmutes the solid and fluid things
20 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
which are placed in it, turns them into vapor,
disintegrates them into finer materials, and thus
passes them on into etheric matter to become the
sustenance of those lower grades of elemental
lives that cany out the commands of the kosmic
% Devas. And in this way a man pays his debt
to them, and then, in return, in the lower
regions of the atmosphere the rain falls, and
the earth produces, and nourishment is given to
man. And that was what Shrl Krshna meant
when he bade man " nourish the Gods and the
■ Gods shall nourish you ". For it is that lower
cycle of nourishment, as it were, which man has
to learn. At first he accepted it as a religious
teaching ; then came the period in which he
thought it superstition, knowing not the inner
working and seeing only the outer appearances;
p.rjd then comes deeper knowledge when Science,
which tends first to materialism, by deeper study
rises towards recognition of the spiritual realm.
Scientific knowledge begins to say in scientific
terms what the Rshis said in terms of the Spirit,
that man may rule and regulate the working of
the lower powers of Nature by action that he
himself performs ; and in this way growing know-
ledge justifies the ancient teaching, justifies to
the intellect what the spiritual man sees by
direct intuition, by the spiritual sight.
„ Q Next, there is the sacrifice to the Ancestors ;
FIRST STEP'S
21
the recognition of what man owes to those who
went before him in the world, the payment of the
debt that he owes to those who worked in the world
ere his last coming, the gratitude and veneration
which are due to those who pai'tly made the
world for us, and brought about improvements
that we should inherit them. That service
is a debt of gratitude due to those immediately be-
fore us in human evolution, who took their part in
it during their earthly lives and bequeathed to
us the result of their labors. As we reap the
benefit of their work, we pay back the debt of
gratitude. And so this is one of the daily sacri-
fices, the recognition of this debt of gratitude
to those who have gone before.
And then of course comes the sacrifice of Know-
ledge, that of study, in order that by the study of the
sacred words men may be able to help and train
those more ignorant than themselves, and may
also evolve in themselves the knowledge necessary
for the manifestation of the Self within them.
Fourthly the sacrifice to Men, the payment to some
particular man of the duty owed to humanity, the
feeding of some particular man as a recognition
that men owe to each other all kindly deeds in
the physical world, all the assistance that bro-
ther can give to brother. The sacrifice to men
is the formal recognition of this duty, and in
feeding those who are hungry, and in showing
22 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
hospitality to those who are in need of it, while
you feed one man as a concrete fact you feed
all humanity ideally and in intention ; when you
give hospitality to one man who comes past your
door, you open the door of your heart to humanity
as one great entity, and in helping and in sheltering'
one you give help and shelter to humanity as a
whole.
« And so also with the last of the five sacrifices,
that to Animals ; food is to be placed on the ground
by the householder that any passing animal may
take. In this you recognise your duty to the
lower world, your duty of giving help, of giv-
ing food, of giving training to them. The
sacrifice to animals is meant to impress on his
mind that we are here as trainers, as directors, as
helpers, of the lower creatures that stand beneath
us on the ladder of evolution. Every time we sin
against them by cruelty, by harshness, by brutality
of any sort, we sin against Him who is
dwelling within them and whose lower manifesta-
tions they also are. And in order that man
might recognise the good within the brute, in
order that he might understand that Shri Krshna
is in the lower animal, although more veiled
than He is in man, man was bidden to sacrifice
to the animals, not to the outer form but to
t the God within. The only way we can sacrifice
to them is by kindness, by gentleness, by com-
FIRST STEPS 23
passion, by training, by helping forward the
animal evolution, and not by beating it back
by the brutality and by the cruelty we see
around us on every side.
Thus man was taught by these outer rites and
ceremonies the inner spiritual truths, by which
his life was to be permeated. And when the five
sacrifices were over, he was to go out into the
world of men still to sacrifice by other forms of
action, still to sacrifice by the performance of
his daily duties. And his daily life that was
begun by these five sacrifices passed out conse-
crated into the outer life of men. With gradual
carelessness as to the five sacrifices has grown
carelessness of duty in that outer life of men.
Not because these sacrifices in themselves will
be for ever necessary, for a time comes when a
man rises above them. But remember this : he
only rises above them when his whole life has
become one long and living sacrifice. Until that
is accomplished, these formal recognitions of duty
are necessary for the sake of the raising of the
life. And unhappily in India to-day these have
largely dropped out of account, not because men
have risen above them nor because all their lives
are pure, spiritual and lofty, so that they have
no need of the lower training and the continual
reminder j but because they have become careless
and materialistic, and have fallen so far below
24 THE PATH OF MSCIPLESHIP
the ideal of their Manu. They refuse all duti-
ful recognition to the Powers above them, and
therefore they fail in their duty to the men
around them.
Let us consider next the outer daily life — the
duty of the individual in the world. Wherever
it is, he is born into some particular family ;
'- that marks his family duties. He is born into
some community ; that marks out his communal
-„ duties. He is born into a particular nation ; that
v marks out his national duties. For each man
the limitations of duty are set by the circum-
stances of his birth, which, under the good Law,
under the karmic direction, give to each man
the place of his woi'king, the training ground on
which he is to learn. Therefore is it said that
each man should do his own duty, his own
Dharma. Better to do your own, although im-
perfect, than to try to do the higher Dharma
of another. For that into which you are born
is that which you need ; that into which
> you are born is your wisest training. Do
your own duty careless of results, and then
you will learn the lesson of life, and you
will begin to tread the path of Yoga. At first
of course action will be done for its fruit; men
will do it because they desire to gain its re-
ward. And here we understand their early train-
ing, where men were taught to work for results
FIRST STEPS
25
in the world of Svarga. The child-man is trained
by rewards; Svarga is held out to him as a
thing to be gained by work ; as he accomplishes
his religious rites and duties he ensures their
svargic recompense. And in this way he is induc-
ed to practise morality, just as you induce a
child to learn its lessons by giving it some re-
ward or some prize. But if action is to be used
for Yoga and not for the gaining of reward,
either here or in any other world, then it must
be done only as duty.
Consider for a moment the four great castes
and see how each of these was meant to be
used. The Brahmana was to teach in order that
there might be a succession of wise teachers to
guide the evolution of the race. He was not to
teach for money, he was not to teach for power,
he was not to teach for anything he got for
himself ; he was to teach in fulfilment of his
Dharma, and he was to have knowledge that he
might in turn hand it on to others. Thus in a
well-regulated nation there would be always
teachers to instruct, able to guide and advise
unselfishly and without a selfish object ; thus
nothing would be gained by him for himself, but
everything would be gained by him for the peo-
ple, a In this way his Dharma would be accom-
plished and the soul set free.
Then there came the Yoga which was the
26 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
fitting of the active man of the world for govern-
ing- and regulating, the training of the domi-
nant class, the Kshattriya. There you had the
man who was to rule. Why ? Not that he
might gratify himself by power, but in order
that justice might be done, in order that the
poor man might feel secure and the rich man
might be unable to tyrannise, in order that fair-
ness and impartial justice might prevail in the
struggling world of men. For in the midst of
this world of struggle, in the midst of this world
of anger and strife, in the midst of this world
where men were seeking to gratify the spirit of
self instead of the common good, they have to
be taught that justice must be done, that if the
strong man abuses his strength the just ruler will
restrain that unfair exercise of strength, that the
weaker shall not be trampled upon, that the
weaker shall not be oppressed. And the duty
of the King was to do justice between man and
man, so that all men might look to the throne
as the fountain from which divine justice flowed.
That is the ideal of the divine Kingship, that is
the ideal of the divine Ruler. Rama came to
teach it, Shri Krshna came to teach it ; but
men were so dull that they would not learn the
lesson. The Kshattriya used his strength to grati-
fy himself and oppress others, and took their wealth
for his own and used their labor for his personal
FIKST STEPS 27
advantage. He lost the ideal of the divine Ruler
who incarnated justice in the warring world of
men. But he was meant to make that ideal the
object of his life, and his duty, thei'efore, was
to administer the land, to administer it for the
good of the nation and not for the gratification
of himself. And so also when his dut}r was the
duty of the soldier. The nation was to carry on
its functions in peace. Poor men and harmless
men were to live secure with their households
round them in happiness and prosperity. The
merchant was to carry on the work of a merchant
in peace. All the various avocations of life were
to be carried on fearlessly, secure against ag-
gression. And so the Kshattriya was taught that
when he was to fight, he fought as the defender
of the helpless and gave his life freely that
they might enjoy their lives in peace. He was
not to fight because he wanted gain. He was
not to fight because he wanted land. He was
not to fight because he wanted power or domi-
nion. He was to stand as an iron wall round
the nation, so that every attack should break
itself against his body, and within the circle
made by him all men should live in peace, in
security and in happiness. If he was to follow
Yoga within the duty of the Kshattriya, he
must look on himself as the agent of the divine
Actor, and therefore it was that Shri Krshna
28 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESBIP
taught that He had done all and that Arjuna
but repeated the action in the world of men.
And when the divine Actor is recognised in every
action of the man, then he can accomplish action
as duty without desire, and it loses its binding
power on the soul.
So again with the Vaishya who was to ac-
cumulate wealth. He was to do it not for his
own gratification, but for the support of the
nation. He was to be rich in order that every
activity that needed wealth should find a store
of wealth at hand and be earned out in every
direction. So that everywhere there might be
homes for the poor, everyAvhere rest-houses for
the traveller, everywhere hospitals both for men
and beasts, everywhere temples for worship, and
everywhere the wealth which was needed to
support these activities of perfect national life.
And so his Dharma Avas this accumulation for
the common good and not for individual self-
gratification. In this way he too might folloAv
Yoga, and by Karma-Yoga prepare himself for
the higher life.
So also Avith the Shudra, Avho Avas to perform
his Dharma in the common Avealth. His Avork lay
in accomplishing the duty of forming the great
hand of the nation, which brought into it Avhat
was Avanted and carried on the serving external
activities. His Yoga, if it were to be accom-
FIRST STEPS
29
plished, lay in gladly discharging his duties,
doing them for the sake of doing them and not
for the reward that by doing them he might
gam.
First men do action for self-gratification, there -
only progress in experience is gained; then they
learn to do it as duty, and so they begin to
practise Yoga in their daily life; lastly they do
it as a joyful sacrifice for which they ask nothing
back, but give every power they possess for the
accomplishment of the work. And in this way
union is accomplished.
We understand what is meant by purification,
when we notice these stages of self-gratification,
of doing duty as duty, of giving everything as
a free-will sacrifice. These are the stages of the
path of purification. But how shall such purifica-
tion be made as shall lead to the higher steps,
to the beginning of the discipleship for which
all created activity is to be the preparation ?
Every part of man must be purified, body as
well as mind. On the purification of the body
I have not time to dwell, but I may remind
you that according to the teaching of the
Bhagavad-Glta it is by way of moderation that
this purification is accomplished and not by self-
torturing asceticism, torturing the body and Him
that dwells within it, as Shri Krshna says.
Yoga is accomplished by temperate self-control,
30 THE PATH OF DISCTPLESHIP
by deliberate training of the lower nature, by
quietly choosing the pure path in food, by care
and moderation in all physical activities, thus
gradually training and regulating and moderating
until the whole body comes under the control
of the will and of the Self. Therefore the house-
hold life was ordained; for men were not fit for
the hard road of celibacy, save here and there
a few. Brahmacharya was not for all. By house-
hold life were men taught to control and moder-
ate their sexual passions, not by crushing them
out — which is for the mass of men impossible,
and if attempted with unwise energy often results
in a re-action that throws the unwise person
into the worst profligacy of life — not by a single
effort which tries to kill and to uproot in a
moment, but by gradual training in moderation,
and by practising the self-denial of the home,
where the lower nature should be slowly trained
to temperance and be accustomed to be controlled
by the higher, trained out of its over-activity and
made utterly subordinate to the One. There is
where this Karma- Yoga comes in. The house-
holder has gradually to learn self-control, moder-
ation— i.e., making the lower nature yield to the
higher, training it day by day until it is abso-
lutely subject to the will. In that way he purifies
the body and becomes fitted for the higher
paths of Yoga. Then again he must purify the
FIRST STEPS 31
passions of the lower nature all through. Take
as an illustration of it — I want to give you
three illustrations of this so that you may work
it out in your lives — take the passion of anger,
and see how it may be worked upon in Karma-
Yoga, in order that it may be transmuted in
quality. Anger is an energy, an energy that
goes out of man to fight his way. You see it
in an undeveloped and untrained man as passion,
showing itself in many brutal forms, beating
down opposition, caring not what methods are
used if he strikes out of his way all that
which opposes the gratification of his will.
And in that form it is an undisciplined and
destructive energy of Nature which he who would
do Karma-Yoga must most certainly subdue. How
shall he subdue and train the passion of anger ?
He gets rid of the personal element to begin
with. When a personal injury is done to him
he trains himself to cease to resent it. There is
the duty which lies before many of you. Some
man does you a wrong ; some one does an in-
justice against you. What shall you do ? You
may let the passion of anger carry you away
and you may strike at him. He has cheated
you : you try to injure him in return, and to
take advantage of him. He has injured you :
you try in turn to injure him. He has gone
behind your back ; you go behind his back and
32 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
do him wrong in turn. And so the passion of
anger rages and destruction is seen on every side
in what should be the society of men. How
shall this passion be purified ? You may take the
answer from any one of the great Teachers who
taught Karma-Yoga, who taught how action in
the world of men might be used for the purposes
of the Self. You may remember that amongst
the ten-fold system of duty which Manu laid
down, forgiveness of injuries is one of the duties.
You may remember that when the Buddha was
teaching He taught : " Hatred ceases not by
hatred at any time, hatred ceases by love."
You may remember that the Christian Teacher
followed the same line of thought and He said :
" Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil
with good." That is Karma-Yoga. Forgive the
injury ; give love for hatred ; overcome evil with
good. In that way you eliminate the personal
element, you will no longer feel angry because
you are wronged ; you will have purified away
the personal element, and anger in you will no
longer be of this lower kind. But still a form
of anger may remain of a higher kind. You
see a wrong done to the weak : you are angry
with the wrong doer ; you see an animal ill-used :
you are wrathful with the person who is cruel ;
you see a poor man oppressed : you are angry
against the oppressor. Impersonal anger — far
FIRST STEPS
33
nobler than the other and a necessary stage in
human evolution ; far nobler and better to be
angry with a wrong-doer than pass by in stolid
indifference, because you have no sympathy with
the suffering that is inflicted. That higher, im-
personal anger is nobler than indifference, but
it is not the highest. It also in turn has to be
changed, and it has to be changed into the
quality of doing justice to the strong and the
weak alike ; which compassionates the wrong-doer
as well as the wronged ; which sees that he
injures himself even more than the person whom
he hurts ; which is sorry for him as well as for
the person who suffers under him ; which embraces
all, wrong-doer and sufferer, in one embrace of
love and of justice. The man who has thus
purified the passion of anger stops the wrong*
because it is his duty to stop it, and is gentle
to the wrong-doer because he also must be help-
ed and trained ; thus what was anger striking
back against a personal wrong becomes justice
which stops all wrong and makes the strong and
the weak equally safe and equally protected.
That is the purification which is done in the
world of action, that the line of daily effort by
which the lower nature is purified in order that
union may be attained.
Take again love. You may have that in the
lower brutal form — the animal passion between
34 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
the sexes of the very lowest and the poorest
kind, which cares nothing for the character of
the one for whom the attachment is felt, which
cares nothing for the beauty of the mental and
of the moral nature ; it cares only for the physical
beauty, the physical attraction, and the physical
pleasure. There is passion in its lowest form.
Self is sought and only self. That is purified by
the man who follows Karma- Yoga into love which
sacrifices itself for the one who is loved ; he
performs family duties, he takes care of wife
and of child. and does his very best for them at
the sacrifice of his own inclinations, of his own
leisure and his own gratification ; he works in
order that the family may be better supported,
he works in order that the family-wants may be
supplied ; in him love no longer seeks only its
own pleasure but seeks to help those who are
beloved, and to take on itself the evil that
threatens them in order that they may be shelter-
ed and spared and guarded ; by following Karma-
Yoga the man purifies his love from the selfish
elements, and that which was an animal passion
for the other sex becomes the love of the husband,
of the father, of the elder brother, of the relative,
who fulfils his duty, working for the sake of the
loved and in order that their lives may be fairer
and happier. And then there comes the last
stage, when the love that is purified from self
FIRST STEPS 35
goes out to all. Not only in the narrow circle
of the home does it work, but it sees in every
one whom it meets a person who is to be help-
ed, sees a brother to be fed in every starving
man, sees a sister to be protected in every
woman who is left forlorn. Finding* any one
who is lonely, a man thus purified becomes father
and brother and helper to that one, not because
he loves personally but because he loves
ideally, and because he seeks to give fox-
love's sake and not even for the gratification
of being loved in return. The highest love, the
love that grows out of Karma- Yoga, asks nothing
back in return for what it gives ; it seeks no
gratitude ; it asks for no recognition ; it is
willing to work unknown ; nay, it is more glad
to work unknown and unrecognised than to
work in a way that brings recognition ami
that brings praise. And the ultimate purifica-
tion of love is where that love becomes
absolutely divine, where it gives because it
is its nature to spread happiness, where it asks
nothing for itself but seeks only that others
should be glad.
And so again with greed, covetousness. Men
seek to gain in order that they may enjoy; they
desire gain in order that they may have power;
they strive to gain in order that they may be
lifted up. They purify that first form of greed ;
36 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
and they begin to desire gain that the family
may be better off, that the famiry may be in a
better position, that the family may be beyond
suffering and want and starvation ; thus they
grow less selfish than before. Then they go fur-
ther. They desire power in order that they may
use it for good, that they may spread it to do
good over a wider area than the family, that
they may serve in a wider field than the home ;
and at last, as in the case of love, they learn
to give without any return. They learn to de-
sire knowledge and power not that they may
hold it but that they may give it, not that
they may enjoy it but only in order that it may
be spread. And in this way selfishness is burned
up.
Have you ever wondered why He to whom is
given the name of Mahadeva, why He dwells in
a burning-ground ? A strange place, men would
have thought, in which the Mightiest One should
dwell. Strange surroundings with which to en-
viron Him who is purity itself. What is hidden
under the symbolism of the burning-ground is
human life ; and in that burning-ground where
Shiva dwells all the lower things in human life
are consumed as by fire. If He dwells not with-
in it, then these earthly things remain to putrefy,
to corrupt, to be a source of danger, to spread
disease and corruption everywhere. But in the
FIRST STEPS 37
burning-ground in which He dwells, through
which His fire passes from side to side, is burn-
ed up everything that is selfish, everything that
is personal, everything which is of the lower
nature; out of those regenerating flames the Yogi
rises triumphant, with nothing of the personal
element left within him; for the fire of the Lord
has burned up all lower passions, and there is
nothing there remaining to corrupt or to spread
disease. Therefore is He called the Destroyer —
the Destroyer of the lower in order that regene-
ration may come ; for out of His Fire the soul
was originally born, and from that burning-ground
the purified Self arises.
Thus do these first steps lead onward : lead on-
ward towards true discipleship, lead onward to-
wards the finding of the Guru, lead onward to-
wards the Inner Temple, the holiest of holies,
where the Guru of humanity resides. These are
the first steps that you must take, this is the
route by which you must travel. Men you are,
living in the world and bound by worldly ties,
men living the social and political life; and yet
at the back of your hearts you are desiring true
Yoga and the knowledge which is of the per-
manent and not only of the transitory life. For
in the hearts of every one of you, if you go
down to the very bottom of them, you will find
a yearning to know something more, a desire to
38 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
live more nobly than you live to-day. You may
have the outer appearance of loving the things
of the world, and you do love them with your
lower natures ; but in the heart of every true
Hindu, who is not absolutely renegade and
apostate to his religion and his country, there is
still an inner yearning for something more than
the things of earth, still a faint longing, if only
from the past traditions, that India shall be
nobler than she is to-day and her people more
worth}- of her past. Here then is the route that
you must begin to tread : no great nation unless
individuals are great; no mighty people if indi-
viduals are sordid and poor and selfish in their
lives. You must begin where j-ou are to-day, in
the life that }'ou are leading; and following
these lines that I have roughly sketched you
will take your first steps towards the Path.
Let me close by reminding you of what the
end of that Path is, although I have still to
take you further towards it in the lectures that
lie before us in these morning hours. The end
of the Path is union — the Karma-Yoga which we
have been studying is Union by Action. There
are other steps to take, but what is ' union ' ?
You remember how Shri Krshna gave the marks
of the man who had passed beyond the gunas,
the marks of the man who had crossed beyond
them and who was fit for the nectar of immortal-
FIRST STEPS 39
ity, the man who was ready to know that
which is Highest, to come into union with the
Supreme. He perceives no agent save the gunas.
He knoweth That which lies beyond. He sees
the gunas acting; he desires them not when they
are absent, he repels them not when they are
present. He is balanced amidst friends and foes,
balanced in praise and in shame, self-reliant,
looking on all things with an equal eye, on the
clod of earth, on the piece of gold, on friend
and on enemy alike. He is the same to all, for
he has crossed over the gunas, and is no long-
er deluded by their play. That is the goal that
we are seeking. These are the first steps towards
the Path that crosses over. Until these are trod-
den no other steps are possible ; but as these
are gradually accomplished the beginning of the
true Path is seen.
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP
Control of Mind. Meditation. Building of
Character
Brothers : The special section of the subject
with which I am to deal this morning is the
qualifications for discipleship. And let me begin
by drawing your attention to the question of
re-birth and the way in which a man may realise
what is meant by discipleship and may deliberate-
ly choose that as his future path in life. You
will remember what was said yesterday, how I
traced for you the different stages of action :
how a man first performed action for the grati-
fication of his own lower nature ever seeking for
fruit ; how then he gradually learnt in the practice
of Karma- Yoga to perform action not for the
sake of the fruit for the lower self, but because
the action ought to be done, thus identifying
himself with Law, thus consciously taking part
in the great work of the world. Then I hinted
to you that there was a stage beyond that, where
the sacrifice was made not only as duty but
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 41
as a joyful giving of everything that a man
possessed. It is clear that when that stage is
aimed at, when a man performs work not merely
because it ought to be done but because he
desires to give everything that he is and has
to the service of the Supreme, then it is that
it becomes possible for a man to break what
are called the bonds of desire and in that way
to liberate himself from re-birth. For that which
draws man to re-birth in the world is desire ;
the desire to enjoy the things that here may
be enjoyed, the desire to achieve the things
that here may be achieved. Every man who
puts before him some earthly aim, every man
who makes the goal of his life some earthly
object, that man is evidently bound by desire.
And so long as he desires that which the earth
can give him, he must return for it ; so long
as any joy or any object belonging to the
transitory life — physical life upon earth — is a
thing that has power to attract, it is a thing
that has also power to bind. Every attraction,
in other words, is that which binds the soul,
and brings it back to the place where the desire
may be accomplished.
Man is so divine in his nature, so God-like
in himself, that even this out-going energy of
his, that we speak of as desire, has in itself
the power of accomplishment. That which he
42 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
desires lie attains, that which he desires nature
gives to him in due course when the time is
ripe ; so that man, as has often been said, is
master of his own destiny, and whatever he
demands from the universe that the universe will
give. He must of course take the results of the
desire in that portion of the universe to which
the desire belongs. So that if he desires the
things of earth, he must come back to earth
that that desire may be accomplished. So again
a man is bound to re-birth by any of those
desires which find their satisfaction in the temporary
and transitory worlds on the other side of death;
those worlds which are transitory, beyond the
gate-way of death, those all lead back again, as
we know, to re-birth here ; so that if a man's
desires are fixed on the joys of Svarga, if he
looks for the fruits of his life in this woi'ld in
some other world which is also transitory, suppos-
ing that he denies himself earthly joys with the
deliberate object of attaining the joys of Svarga,
then those joys are the fruit of his work and
that fruit will be given to him in due course.
But inasmuch as Svarga is itself fleeting, inas-
much as Svarga is itself transitory, he has only
taken for his path what has been called the path
of the Moon, the path that leads to re-birth —
you may remember it is written that " the moon
is the door of Svarga " — and then from Svarga
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHU'
43
the soul comes back to the earthly world of men.
In that way desire — whether it is to be accomplish-
ed in this world or in some other world, also
transitory and fleeting — ties the soul to re-birth,
and therefore it is that it is written that only
when " the bonds of the heart are broken '; can
the soul reach liberation.
Now liberation pure and simple (for an age)
may be gained by this mere destruction of desire.
Without any very very high achievement, without
any very lofty stage in the evolution of the soul,
without the unfolding of all the divine possibilities
that lie enwrapped in human consciousness, without
attaining those great heights on which the Teachers
and the Helpers of mankind are standing, man
may gain, if he so desire it, a liberation which
is fundamentally selfish, which lifts him indeed
out of the world of change, which breaks indeed
the bonds that bind him to the worlds of life
and death, but which helps not in any way his
brethren, which does not break their bonds nor
set them free ; this is a liberation which is for the
unit rather than for the whole, in which a man
passes out of humanity and leaves humanity to
struggle along its way. I know that many men
have in life no higher thought than that ; that
there are many who seek simply for liberation,
careless of others so that they themselves escape.
That, as I say, may fairly easily be gained. It
44 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
needs a recognition of the transitoriness of earthly
things, of the worthlessness of the objects of
ambition with which a worldly man naturally
busies himself day by day. But after all that
liberation is only for a time, for a manvantara
perhaps ; after that there is a return. So that
while it sets the soul free from this world and
leaves it liberated so far as this earth is concern-
ed, in a future cycle such souls have to come
back to take another step towards what is the
really diviner destiny of man, the evolution of the
human consciousness into the All-consciousness
which is to be used for training, for helping, for
guiding the worlds of the future.
I turn aside then from that to those wiser and
more generous souls who, while they would break
the bonds of desire, would fain break them not
that they themselves may escape from the diffi-
culties of earthly life, but in order that they may
follow that higher and nobler Path which is called
the Path of Discipleship, follow the Great Ones
who have made the pathway possible for humanity ;
such seek to discover the Teachers who are will-
ing to accept those who qualify themselves for
discipleship with a view not of simply liberating
themselves, not of simply gaining escape from
trouble, but of becoming the helpers and teachers
and saviors of humanity, giving back to the world
at large that which the individual has received
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 45
from the Teachers who have gone in front. That
discipleship is hinted at in all the great Scriptures
of the world. The Guru who may be found and
who teaches men is one of the ideals of all the
highest and most developed souls who in this outer
world have sought to realise the divine. Take any
Scripture that you will, and see how this thought is
expressed there. Take Upanishat after Upanishat
and see how the Guru is mentioned, and how the
attention of the would-be disciple is directed to-
wards His seeking and His finding. It is that
which I desire to put to you this morning ; the
qualifications for discipleship; that which has to
be done before discipleship is possible ; that which
has to be accomplished before the search for the
Guru has any chance of success ; that which has
to be done in the world, in the ordinary life of
men, utilising that life as a school, as a place
for learning the preparatory lessons, as a place
for qualifying the man to be fit to touch the Feet
of the great Teachers who shall give him the true
re-birth — the re-birth which is symbolised in all
exoteric religions by one or another external
ceremony, sacred less for itself than because of
that which it symbolises. You will find in
Hinduism the word 'Twice-born,' implying that
the man is not only born of earthly father and
mother, but has passed the true second birth
which is given by the Guru to the soul. That
46 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
is symbolised — alas ! only symbolised, in too many
cases now — by the initiation given by the family
Guru or by the father to the son, when he be-
comes what in the outer world is called the twice-
born man. But in the days of old — and in the
present days as well — there was and is a real, a
true Initiation, which is the original of that
external ceremony ; there is a realj a true Initia-
tion which is not simply initiation into an exoteric
caste but into a really divine birth ; which is given
by a mighty Guru ; which comes from the Great
Initiator, the One Initiator of humanity. We
read of these Initiations in the past ; we know them
to exist in the present. All history bears testimony
to their reality. There are temples in India
beneath which are the places of the ancient Initia-
tions, places which now are unknown to the people,
places which now are hidden from the eyes of
men, but which none the less are there, which
none the less are accessible to those who prove
themselves worthy to attain them. And not in
India alone are such places to be found. Ancient
Egypt had also her crypts of Initiation, and mighty
pyramids in one or two cases stand over the
ancient places, that now are hidden from the eyes
of man. The later Initiations that took place in
Egypt, those of which you may read in the history
of Greece and the history of Egypt itself, those of
which you may have heard that one or another
QUALIFICATIONS FOR D1SCIPLESH1P 47
of the great philosophers was there initiated —
those took place in the outer buildings known to
the people, which covered the real Temples of
Initiation. Into these entrance was not gained by
outer knowledge but under conditions that have
existed from the furthest antiquity and that exist
to-day as really as they existed then ; for as all
history bears testimony to the reality of the Initia-
tion, so does history bear testimony to the reality
of the Initiate. There stand at the head of every
great religion Men who were more than ordinary
men, Men who gave the Scriptures to the people,
Men who traced the outlines of the exoteric faiths,
Men who stand out in history head and shoulders
above Their fellows by the sph'itual wisdom that
gave Them glory, by the spiritual insight by means
of which They saw, and who testified of what
They saw ; for there has been one note which we
have often remarked with regard to all these great
Teachers. They do not argue, They proclaim ;
They do not discuss, They declare; They do not
reach Their conclusions by logical processes, They
reach them by spiritual intuitions; They come
forth and speak with authority, with authority that
justifies itself in the very speaking, and men's
hearts recognise the truth of Their teaching, even
when it rises higher than their intellect is able to
follow. For there is in the heart of every man
that spiritual principle to which every divine
48 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
Teacher ever makes His appeal, and that answers
to the truth of the spiritual declaration, even
though the intellectual eyes may not be keen
enough to discern the reality of that which the
Spirit sees. Those great Gurus then who are found
in history as the greatest Teachers, as well as
Those whom we find standing out as the mightiest
philosophers, Those are the Initiates, who have
become more than man ; such Initiates exist to-
day as they have ever existed. Nay, how should
death touch Them who have overcome life and
death, and are the Masters of all lower nature ?
They have evolved out of humanity in the course
of the millennia which lie behind, some out of our
humanity and some out of humanities anterior to
our own. Some of Them came from other worlds,
from other planets, when our humanity was
a child ; others grew up when this humanity
had trodden long enough the path of evolution
to produce its own Initiates, Gurus of our own
race to help onwards the humanity to which
They Themselves belong. When that path is
ti'odden and that goal is reached, for such a
Man there is no more possibility that death
should have power over Him, and that having been
He shall not continue to be j the very fact that
They are found in history is the guarantee for
Their present existence ; that would be enough
to show that They exist, without the testimony
QUALIFICATIONS FOE DISCIPLESHIP 49
which is growing year by year of those who
have found them, and who know Them, those
who are taught by Them, who take lessons at
Their Feet. For in our own time and in our
own day, one after another finds the ancient
path; in our own time and our own day one
after another finds that ancient and narrow path,
keen as the edge of a razor, that leads onward
to the gateway of discipleship and makes en-
trance on the Path of Discipleship a possibility
for men ; as one after another finds it, one
witness after another in modern times is able to
proclaim the truth of the ancient writings, and
entering on that Path they may follow it stage
by stage.
But for the moment we are concerned with
finding what qualifications are demanded ere
entrance to the Path may be gained. Now the
first of these qualifications is one which must be
met to a very considerable extent at least before
discipleship in any sense is possible. One of these
qualifications is what is called control of the
mind, and my first task now is to explain to
you very definitely what control of the mind
means, what the mind is which is controlled
and who it is that controls it. For you must
remember that for the great mass of people the
mind is the representative of the man. When
he speaks of 'himself,' he really means his
4
50 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
mind. When he says ' 1/ he is identifying that
' I ' with the mind, the conscious intelligence
that knows ; and when he says ' I think, I feel,
I know,' you will not find, if you inquire closely
into the meaning, that he goes beyond the limits
of his consciousness in his waking hours. That
is what he means by the ' 1/ for the most part.
Certainly those who have studied carefully know
that such an 'I' is illusory; but while they know
it as an intellectual proposition, they do not
realise it as a practical matter in life. They may
admit it as philosophers, they do not live it as
men in the world. And in order that we may
understand clearly what this control of mind is,
and how we may control the mind, let us just
for a moment pause at what we call self-control,
when we are dealing with the man of the
world; and we shall see how very inadequate
that is when it is compared with the self-control
which is one of the qualifications for discipleship.
When we say a man is self-controlled, we mean
that his mind is stronger than his passions : that
if you take the lower nature, the passions and
the emotions, and over against that you set the
intellectual nature, the mind and the will and
the reasoning power and the judgment, that
these last are stronger than the first; that the
man is able in a moment of temptation, under
an appeal to his passions, to say : " No, I will
QUALIFICATIONS FOK DISCIPLESHIP 51
not yield to that; I will not permit myself to
be carried away by passion, I will not allow
myself to be run away with by means of the
senses; these senses are simply the horses that
draw my chariot; I am the driver, and I will
not permit them to gallop along the road they
desire ; " and then we say that that man is self-
controlled. That is the ordinary sense of the word,
and mind you, that self-control is an admirable
quality. It is a stage through which every man
must pass. The uncontrolled and unregulated man,
who is subject entirely to the senses, he indeed
has much to do ere even this quality of worldly
self-control will be acquired ; but very very much
more than that is wanted. When we talk about
a strong-willed man and a weak-willed man, we
mean for the most part that the man who has
got a strong will is a man who under the ordinary
circumstances of temptation and difficulty will
choose his path by reason and by judgment, and
will guide himself by the memory of the past
and by conclusions which are based thereon
then we say a man has a strong will; he is not
a man who is at the mercy of circumstances; he
is not a prey to every impulse, he is not like a
ship carried by the currents of the river, or driven
about by the winds as they blow upon it. He
is rather like a ship controlled by a seaman who
understands his duty, who utilises the currents
52 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
and the winds to drive his ship in the direction
in which he desires to go, who uses the rudder
of the will to make the ship follow the path on
which he himself has determined. And it is
true that this difference of strong and of weak
will is a mark of growing individuality ; as the
man himself grows, as the individuality increases,
this power of direction from within is one of the
clearest marks of the growth. I remember H. P.
Blavatsky saying in one of her articles when she
was dealing with individuality, that you might
recognise individuality in man and the absence
of individuality in the lower animals by observ-
ing the way in which the man and the lower
animals act under certain circumstances. If you take
a number of wild animals and surround them with
similar circumstances, you will find them all act
in the same general way. Their action is
determined by the circumstances that surround
them; each does not arrange his own action to
modify the circumstances, balancing the one against
the other in order to make the path which he
selects ; they act all alike. If you know the
nature of the animal, and if you know the circum-
stances, you might judge of the action of the
whole class by the actions of one or two. Now that
distinctly shows the absence of individuality. But if
you take men, a number of men, you cannot judge
beforehand that they will all act in the same way ;
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 53
for according to the development of the indivi-
duals will be the variety of the action taken by
them under the same circumstances. One indivi-
dual is different from another, therefore he acts
differently ; he has will of his own, therefore he
chooses differently ; the man who is weak-willed
has less individuality, he is less developed, he is
not as far advanced on the road of evolution.
Now supposing that this is realised, then :i
man may go a step further than the control of
the lower nature by the higher, and he may
begin to realise something of the creative power
of thought. This will imply more than the
thought of the ordinary man of the world; it
will imply knowledge of some philosophy. If for
instance he has studied the great writings of
the Hindus he will there gain a definite in-
tellectual apprehension of the creative power of
thought, but the moment he has seen that he
will further see that there is something behind
what he calls his mind ; for if there be a
creative power of thought, if a man can generate
thought through the mind, then there must be
something that generates, and that is hidden
behind the mind producing these thoughts. The
very fact that there is such a creative power
of thought, that a man is able to influence and
train his own mind and the minds of others by
this creative power, is enough to show that there is ^>
54 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
.something behind the mind, something which is
as it were separable from it, and something'
that will use the mind as its instrument. And
then there dawns on the student who is en-
deavoring to understand himself, that he has
to deal with a mind which is exceedingly
difficult to deal with, and that thoughts come
unbidden, and spring up as it were without
choice of his own ; when he begins to study
the workings of the mind he finds thoughts
come rushing into it without his asking them
to come ; he finds himself possessed of ideas
which he would wish very different. All kinds
of fancies come into his mind which he wants
to expel; he finds himself helpless, he cannot
get rid of them. He finds himself compelled to
grind on at thoughts that dominate the mind,
and which are by no means at his bidding nor
under his authority. And he begins to observe
these thoughts ; he begins to ask : whence
come they ? how do they work ? how may they
be controlled ? and he gradually learns that
many thoughts that come to his mind have
their origin in the minds of other men, and
that according to the line of his own thinking
so will he attract from the outer world of
thought the thoughts of others ; in turn he
influences the minds of others by the thoughts
that are generated by himself, and he begins
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 55
to understand that this responsibility is much
greater than he ever dreamed. He used to
think that only when he spoke did he affect
the minds of others, only when he acted did
he by example influence the actions of others ;
but as he learns more and more he begins to
understand that there is an invisible power which
goes out from the thinking man and plays on the
minds of other people. Modern science tell us
something of this, and to the same effect ; modern
science in many of its experiments has learned
that thought may be sent from brain to brain
without the spoken word or without the written
message, and that there is something in thought
which is palpable, which is observable, Avhich is
like a vibration that sets other things vibrating,
although no word be formulated, no articulate
speech be uttered. Science has discovered that
in silence thought may be sent from man to man,
that without any outer communication — or as
Professor Lodge said, without material means of
communication, using the word " material " in its
physical sense — it is possible for mind to affect
mind.
If that be so, we are all affecting each other by
thought without either word or action ; for the
thought that we have generated goes out into
the world to affect the minds of other men ; the
thoughts that they think come to us to affect in
56 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
turn our thinking, and we begin to realise that
for the most part thinking is a very small part
of the life of most people, and that the mere
receiving- of other people's thoughts is what we
are apt to call thinking. In fact men's minds
are very much like houses, rest-houses, through
which travellers pass and in which they stay for
a night ; most men's minds are not very much
more than that. The thought comes in and goes
out. The man contributes very little towards the
thought he receives. He receives it, harbors it,
and it passes away. But what we ought to be
doing is to be thinking deliberately, and thinking
with a purpose behind the thought to accomplish
that which we determine.
Why should this control of thought, this stop-
ping of thought, this refusing of harborage to the
thoughts of others, be so valuable ? Why should
this be a condition of discipleship ? Because when
a man becomes a disciple his thoughts gain added
power; because when a man becomes a disciple
his individuality is growing, is increasing, is
becoming mightier ; and eveiy thought that he
thinks has increased vitality and increased energy
and influence on the outer world of man. By a
thought a man can kill; by a thought a man can
heal a disease; by a thought a man can influence
a crowd ; by a thought a man can create a visible
illusion which shall deceive other men and lead
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 57
them astray. As thought has such mighty power
as the individual grows and increases, and as
discipleship means the rapid growth and the
increase of individuality, so that a man accom-
plishes in a few lives what otherwise would take
millennia of years to accomplish, it is neces-
sary, before these added powers come within
his reach, that he should learn to control his
thoughts, that he should learn to check all that
is evil in them, that he should learn to harbor
nothing save that which is pure and beneficent
and useful. Control, then, of the mind by the
Self is made a condition of discipleship, because ere
a man has the added power of thought that
comes from the teaching of the Guru, he must
have obtained control over the instrument by
which the thoughts are produced, so that it
may make what he determines that it shall
make, and produce nothing without his full
consent.
I know that on this point people will feel
difficulty. They will say : what is this individual
that is always growing ? What is this individual
who develops will and power of control over
the mind, who, you say, is not the mind but is
greater than the mind ? May I take a picture
from the outer world so as to help you to
image in your thinking the way in which the
individual comes to be and the way in which
58 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
he grows ? Suppose that you went into an atmo-
sphere supercharged with watery vapor, but
the atmosphere was so hot that the water re-
mained in suspension, invisible, so that the place
seemed to you to be empty ; nothing is there,
you would say, it is empty air. You know
quite well that if a chemist took some of that
air thus charged with vapor, enclosed it, and
gradually cooled it down, you would see appear
out of the emptiness a faint mist or cloudi-
ness, and that faint mist would gradually grow
a little denser and a little denser, until, as more
and more the atmosphere was chilled, there would
be formed a drop of water where before nothing-
was seen. Now that may serve as one of the
clumsy physical images that one may take to
illustrate the formation of the individual. Out of
that Invisible which is the One from which all
proceeds, appears as it were a faint cloud becom-
ing visible, a faint mist condensing, which sepa-
rates itself from the invisible vapor around it,
and gradually condenses more and more till it be-
comes the individual drop, that we recognise as a
unit ; out of that which is All comes the separated
and distinct; one indeed in its nature with the All,
the same in its essence but separated by its condi-
tions, and so individualised out of the whole. And
the individual soul of man is such an individual-
isation from th One Self, and it grows and grows
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 59
by experience. It grows and increases and deve-
lops as it is re-born life after life and time after time,
hundreds of times into the world. And what we
call the mind is just a little out-putting of this
individual into the world of matter. As the amoeba
when it wants food thrusts out a portion of itself
and takes in a little particle of nutritive matter
and draws the protruded part containing the food
back into its own substance, thus nourishing itself
with the food that it takes in, so does the indivi-
dual put out into the world — the physical world —
a little protrusion from its Self, to gather experi-
ence as food for the individual, and draw it in
again in what we call death, absorbing this gained
experience to nourish his growth. And the mind
is this out-putting into the physical world ; it is
part of the individual, of the soul ; the conscious-
ness that is you is greater than your mind, the
consciousness that is you is greater than that
which you recognise as the intellect. All your
past, all the expei'ience that you have gained, is
garnered in consciousness. All the knowledge that
}rou have acquired is treasured in the conscious-
ness that is really you. You put out at your
birth a little part of yourself to gather new ex-
perience and to increase this consciousness still
more ; this the soul takes for his own growth, and
in each life out of its wider consciousness he tries
to influence that out-put portion of himself ; what
60 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
we call the voice of conscience is nothing but this
greater Self speaking to the lower self, and trying
to guide the lower self in its ignorance by the
wisdom which the Higher Self has acquired life
after life.
But we know there is a difficulty about this
lower self of ours, the mind. Do you remember
what Arjuna said to Shri Krshna when he was
dealing with this control of the lower Manas that
we are studying ? You remember how he said to
his divine Teacher that Manas was so restless ;
" Manas is verily restless," he said. " O Krshna,
it is impetuous, strong, and difficult to bend ; I
deem it as hard to curb as the wind." And that
is true ; every one knows it to be true who tries
to curb the mind. Every one who tries to control
Manas knows how restless, impetuous, and strong
it is, and how hard to curb. But do you remem-
ber how the Blessed Lord gave answer to Arjuna
when he said it was hard as the wind to curb ?
His answer was : " Without doubt Manas is hard
to curb and restless, O mighty-armed ; but it may
be curbed by constant practice and by indiffer-
ence." There is no other way. Constant practice:
no one can do it for you; no Teacher can accom-
plish it for you. You yourselves must do it, and
until you begin to take it in hand no finding of
the Guru is possible for you. It is useless to cry
out and desire to find, if you will not take the
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIl" 6]
steps that are laid down in the published words
of all the great Teachers in order to guide you to
Their Feet. Here is a mighty Teacher, an Avatara,
who lays down what must be done and who says
it may be done. And when an Avatara says it
may be done, He means that it can be done by
the man who wills it; for He knows the powers
of those whom He can see, and whom He as the
Supreme has brought into the world ; and when
He gives His divine word that the conquest is
possible, shall we dare to say that we cannot do
it, and so as it were give the lie to the God that
speaks ?
How then shall it be done ? " By constant prac-
tice," says the Lord ; that is to say in your daily life
as you have it, in the busy life of men, you are to
begin to train this restless mind of yours and
make it subject to your will. Try for a moment
to think steadily. You will find your thoughts fly
away. What shall you do ? bring them back
again to the point on which you desire to fix
them. Choose a subject and then think definitely
and consecutively upon it. Remember you have
an immense advantage in this training of the mind ;
you have the ancient Hindu traditions, you have
the physical heredity which has been moulded
under these conditions, and the training in your
youth which ought to have accustomed you to
this regulation of the mind. It is far harder for
t>2 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
a western-born person to conquer the restlessness
of the mind than it ought to be for you, because
there the control of mind has not been taught,
there the training of the mind is not part of
the religious education in the same way, and men
are inclined to fly from one subject to another.
The habit — to take a trivial case — of constant
newspaper reading, three or four papers, perhaps,
a day, is one of the things that makes very diffi-
cult the control of the mind. You fly from one
subject to another ; here a number of telegrams
that whirl the mind off to England, to France,
to Spain, to Kamskatcha, to New Zealand, to
America ; when you have read that column or
half-column you find another kind of news.
Accounts of the doings of well-known people.
Reports of plays in the theatres, of cases in the
law-courts. Here a race of ships or of men ;
there descriptions of sports or athletics, and so on.
You all know the varied contents of the news-
paper. Men do not understand the harm they
do themselves by wasting the energies of the
mind as they habitually waste them on these
trivial and unimportant matters. You will find
men in England, I know, who will read half a
dozen papers every day ; that means more than
that they are for the time scattering the powers
of the mind ; for if you scatter them day after
•day you get into the habit of scattering, and
QUALIFICATIONS FOB DISCIPLESHIP 63
you cannot then readily concentrate your thoughts
on one idea. In addition to that there is the
waste of time which might be given to higher
matters. I do not mean to say that as men in the
world you should not know what is going on in
the world around you ; but it is quite enough to
take up a single paper which deals with the more
important matters of the outer world, and read
quietly through for a few minutes ; if you know
how to read, that is enough so far as these outside
things go.
In order that you may fight against this modern
tendency of scattering thought you should make it
a daily habit to think consecutively and to con-
centrate your attention for some time on one sub-
ject; make it a serious practice in the training of
your mind to read every day some part of a book
that deals with the graver matters of life, with
the eternal rather than with the transitory ; fix the
mind upon it while you are reading. Do not allow
it to wander, do not allow it scatter. If it travels
off bring it back, and place it again on the same
idea, and in that way you will strengthen the
mind, you will begin to curb it, you will by constant
practice learn to control it, and make it go along
the path that you desire it should follow. Even
in things of the world this quality is of great
advantage. It is not only that in doing this you
are preparing yourself for the greater life which
64 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
is open to you, but even in the common things of
life the man of concentrated thought is the more
successful man ; the man who is able to think con-
secutively, clearly and definitely, he is the man who
even in the lower world will be able to make his
way. So you will find this constant practice in
training the mind useful in this unimportant world
as well as in greater things. And then you will
gradually learn the control which is one of the
conditions of discipleship.
As you thus train the mind you will perhaps
take another step — meditation. Meditation is the
deliberate and formal training of the mind in con-
centration and in fixity of thought. You are to do
it every day, because if you do it every day you
are helped by what is called the automatism of
the body and mind. That which you do daily
becomes a habit ; that which is done daily is done
without an effort after a time ; that which is hard
to begin with becomes easy by practice. Now
meditation may be taken partly as devotional and
partly as intellectual, and the wise man who is
training himself for discipleship will meditate in
both ways. He will concentrate his mind, fix his
thought, on the divine ideal, on the Teacher whom,
unknown at present, he still ultimately hopes to
find ; and keeping before him this perfect ideal,
he will fix his lower mind on that ideal in the
hour of meditation, and will aspire upwards towards
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 65
it with fixed and unswerving thought. As the
mind grows, this will become easier and easier ;
as he keeps this ideal before the mind in medita-
tion he will begin to reflect it, to grow a little
i like it. That is one of the creative powers of the
mind — the man becomes that upon which he
reflects ; and if he reflects daily on the perfect
ideal of humanity he will begin to grow towards
that perfect ideal himself. Then he will gradually
find that as he fixes the mind steadily on this
ideal, as he aspires upwards towards it, and longs
to come into contact with it, he will find during
this time of meditation that the lower mind will
become peaceful, that the lower mind will sink
into quietude, that the outside world will fade
away from consciousness, and that the deeper con-
sciousness will shine as it were from within — the
higher consciousness, that of the individual himself,
realising and knowing what he is. For as the
lower mind is thus quieted, as its restlessness is
conquered, it becomes like a still lake of water which
is unruffled by any wind, unmoved by any currents.
That lake is like a mirror ; on that mirror-like
surface, unruffled, tranquil, the sun which is in
heaven shines down, reflecting itself in the quiet
water ; so also the higher consciousness reflects
itself in the mirror of the tranquilised lower
mind. And then the man knows, no longer by
authority but of his own knowledge, that he is
5
66
THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
more than the mind which he has realised as
intellect, that his consciousness is greater than
the passing consciousness of the mind; then it
becomes possible for him to begin to identify
himself with the higher, and if only for a
moment to catch a glimpse of the majesty of
the Self. For remember how in the great
Scriptures you are always taught that you your-
self are the higher and not the lower. What
means the saying that we read in the Chhan-
dogyopanishat and elsewhere, the proclamation :
" Thou art Brahman," " Thou art That " ? So the
Buddhists repeat also : " Thou art Buddha." That
will never be a fact of consciousness to you,
however much you may intellectually realise it,
until by meditation you have made the lower
mind the mirror in which the higher may be
reflected; then, in a further stage of meditation
you yourself will consciously become the higher,
and then you will know what every great
Teacher has meant by that famous phrase, which
has in it the assertion of the inherent divinity
of man.
When this is done daily, is practised by
meditation followed day after day, month after
month, year after year, it gradually permeates
all the life and becomes constant instead of
partial. First, confined to the time of meditation;
then spreading over into the life led in the
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 67
world. You may say : How can I be conscious
of that when I am busy in the outer world ?
How can I keep consciousness of the higher
when the lower is in full activity ? Do you not
know how, bowing before the altar, you may use
your body to offer flowers, whilst the mind is
concentrated on the Deity Himself ? The outer
activity of the body is there, yet your thought
is not on the flowers that you are offering but
on the Object of the offering ; the hands perform
their duty and offer their flowers perfectly, al-
though the mind is fixing its thoughts on the
Divine itself. And so in the outer world of
man, you may offer the flowers of duty in a
life of constant activities, of daily work; you
may offer these flowers with the body and with
the mind, fulfilling to the utmost your duty in
the outer world, but you yourselves will be fixed
ever in meditation and in worship. Once learn
to separate your higher consciousness from your
lower, yourself from your mind, and you will
gradually acquire the power of carrying on men-
tal activities without losing the real " I " in them,
the mind working perfectly at its appropriate
duties while the Self remains at a loftier height.
You will never leave the inner sanctuary, however
much the outer life is busy in the world of men.
In this way the man is preparing himself for
discipleship.
68 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
There is another stage which we must just
glance at, that which I call the intellectual side
of meditation, concerned with the gradual and
conscious building of character. Again I turn to
the great treatise of Karma- Yoga, the teachings
of Shri Krshna in the Bhagavad-Gita. If you
turn to the sixteenth discourse you may find
the long list of qualities there given which
a man must develop in himself so that he may
be born with them in the future. They are
called " the divine properties," and Arjuna is
told : " Thou art born with divine properties, O
Pandava." Now in order that you may be born
with them in future births you must make them
in the birth that is; if you are to bring them
back with you into life you must gradually create
them in lives as they come one after another ;
and the man of the world who wants to know
how to build his character can do nothing better
than take this list of qualities, the divine pro-
perties which are wanted in discipleship, and
build them one by one in his daily life by a <,
conjoint process of meditation and action. Purity
for instance is one of them. How shall a man
build himself into purity ? By, in his morning
meditation, taking purity as part of the subject
on which he thinks, realising what it means.
No impurity of thought must ever touch him;
no impurity of action must ever stain him, he
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 69
must be pure in the threefold thread of action,
word and thought. That is the threefold cord
of duty, as I once reminded you, and is that
which the Brahmana's threefold thread is intend-
ed to i represent. In the morning he thinks of
purity as a thing that is desirable, that he
must accomplish ; and when he goes out into
the world he carries the memory of his medi-
tation with him. He watches his action; he
allows no impure actions to stain his body ; he
commits no impure action all through the day,
for he steadily watches every action that no
touch of impurity may soil it. He watches his
words. He speaks no word that is impure ; he
makes no reference in his talk to an unclean
subject; he never permits his tongue to be soiled
by making an unclean suggestion. Every word
of his is pure, so that he would dare to speak
it in the presence of his Master, whose eye sees
every lightest stain of impurity which the ordinary
mortal eye would miss. He will watch every
word that it may be the purest that he can utter,
and he will never foul himself or others by a
single word or phrase coarse with impure sug-
gestion. His thought will be pure. He will
never allow an unclean thought to come into his
mind, or if it comes into his mind it will at
once be cast out ; the moment the thought comes
he will cast it out; and as he knows that it
70 THE PATH OP DISC1PLESHIP
could not come into his mind unless there was
t* in his mind something to attract it, he purifies
his own mind, so that no unclean thought of any
one else may be able to gain entrance. Thus he
watches on this one point through the whole of his
day. And then again he will take truth in his
morning meditation ; he will think of truth, its
value in the world, its value in society, its value
in his own character ; and when he goes out
into the world of men he will never commit an
action that will give a false impression, he will
never speak a word that conveys a false idea.
Not only will he not lie, but he will not even
be inaccurate, because that also is speaking a
o falsehood. To be inaccurate in recounting what
you have seen is to speak untruth. All ex-
aggeration and painting up of a story, everything
that is not perfectly consistent with fact, so far
as he knows it, everything which has any shade
of untruthfulness, may not be used by him who
would become a disciple. And so in thought
again he must be true. Every thought must be
as true as he can make it, with no shadow of
falsehood to pollute his mind. So with compas-
sion. He will meditate on compassion in the morn-
ing and during the day he will seek to practise
it; he will show all kindness to people around
him ; he will do all service to family and friends
and neighbors. Wherever he sees want, he will
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 71
try to relieve it; wherever he sees sorrow, he
will try to comfort it ; wherever he sees misery,
he will strive to lighten it. He will live com-
passion as well as think it, and so make it part
of his character. So with Fortitude. He will
think of the nobility of the strong man, the
man whom no outer circumstances can depress
or elate, the man who is not joyful over success
nor miserable under failure, who is not at the
mercy of circumstances, sad to-day because things
are troublesome and joyful to-morrow because
things are easy. He will try to be himself, al-
ways balanced and strong; as he goes out into
the world he will practise ; if trouble comes, he
will think of the Eternal where no trouble is ;
if loss of money comes, he will think of the
wealth of wisdom that cannot be taken away
from him ; if a friend be snatched by death, he
will consider that no living soul can die and
that the body that dies is only the garment
which is thrown aside when it is out-worn, and
another taken, and that his friend shall be found
again. And so with all the other virtues of self-
restraint, of peaceableness, of fearlessness — all
these things he will think of and practise. Not
all at once. No man living in the world would
be able to give sufficient time to meditate on
each of these every day ; but take them one by
one, and build them into your character. Work
72 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
on steadily : do not be afraid of giving time to
it; do not be afraid of giving trouble to it.
-4 Everything that you build you are building for
eternity, and you may well be patient in time
when eternity spreads before you. Everything
you gain, you gain for evermore. Meditation
alone or practice alone is insufficient for the build-
ing of the character. Both must go together;
both must form part of the daily life, and in
this way a noble character is made.
A man who has thus trained himself, a man who
has thus done the utmost that he can do, who has
given his time and thought and trouble to make
himself fit to find the Teacher, even by him the
Teacher shall verily be found ; or rather, the
Teacher shall find him and manifest Himself to
his soul. For do you imagine, in blindness and
in ignorance, that these Teachers desire to be
hidden ? Do you imagine, veiled in illusion, that
They deliberately hide Themselves from the eyes
of men, in order to leave humanity to stumble
helpless, unwishful to aid it and to guide ? I
tell you that much as you may for a moment
desire to find your Teacher, the Teacher is a
thousand-fold more constant in His desire to find
you, in order that He may help. Looking out
over the world of men, They see so many helpers
are wanted and so few are found. The masses
perish in ignorance; teachers are wanted for them
QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 73
and they perish by myriads ; there is none to help
them. The great Teachers need disciples who are
living in the lower world, and who, trained by the
Teachers, shall go out into the world of men, and
bring help to the suffering, bring knowledge to
the darkened minds. They are always looking
out into the world to find one soul that is will-
ing and ready to be helped j always looking over
the world in order that They may at once come
to the souls that are ready to receive Them, and
will not shut the doors of their hearts against
Them. For our hearts are closed against Them
and fast-locked, so that They cannot enter. They
may not break down the doors and come in by
force. If a man choose his own way and if he
lock the doors, none other may turn the key ; we
are locked up by worldly desire ; we are locked up
by grasping after the things of the earth ; we are
locked up with the keys of sin and indifference
and sloth; and the Teacher stands waiting till the
door be opened, in order that He may cross the
threshold and illuminate the mind.
Do you say : how do They know among the my-
riads of men one soul that works for Them and
makes itself fit for Their coming ? The answer was
once given in the form of a picture ; that as a man
standing on a mountain-top looking over the adja-
cent valley sees a light in a single cottage because
the light shines out against the surrounding dark-
74 THE PATH OP DISC1PLESHIP
ness, so does the soul that has made itself ready
show the light in the darkness of the surround-
ing world which catches the eye of the Watcher
on the mountain-side and draws His attention
by its own light. You must light the soul, in
order that the Teacher may see it. He stands
watching, but you must give the signal in order
that he may become your Teacher and guide you
on the way. How great the need you will per-
haps understand better at the end of the remain-
ing work that lies before us, as I trace the work of
the disciple and what may really be done by him, but
let me leave you this morning with this thought: in
your minds : that the Teacher is watching, is waiting,
is desiring to find you, desiring to teach you:
that you have the power to draw Him to you,
that only you can let Him come. He may knock
at the door of your heart, but you must cry out
the word that bids Him enter; and if you would
follow the path I have traced for you this
morning, if step by step you would thus learn
control of mind, meditation, building of character,
there you would have spoken the threefold word
which makes it possible for the Teacher to reveal
Himself. When that word is breathed out in the
silence of the soul, then the Master appears be-
fore it, and the Feet of the Guru are found.
THE LIFE OF THE DISCIPLE
The Probationary Path. The Four Initiations.
It is a difficult task, my brothers, that lies
before us this morning. In the two preceding-
lectures I have been dealing with the life of
men in the world, and pointing out to you how
in this ordinary life men might gradually prepare
themselves for the higher stages of evolution ;
how they might gradually train themselves for
swifter progress, for swifter advance. But to-day
we have to go outside the life of man in the
ordinary sense of the term — not so far as the
outer appearance is concerned, but so far as the
reality of the inner life which is to be studied.
For the stages of human progress that we are now
to deal with are distinct and definite stages,
which lead men out of the life of the world
into the life of the higher regions ; out of the
ordinary humanity into a humanity which is divine.
And inasmuch, therefore, as it must take us
more outside common experience, the task is,
as I say, more difficult, both for you who hear
76 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
it and for myself who speak. For in these higher
matters higher faculties must needs be brought
into play; and they best will be able to follow
this lofty teaching who, at least, have tried to
some extent that purification of life and building
of character to which our last two mornings have
been devoted in thought.
I brought you yesterday up to the point at
which a man, having tried to improve his life
and control his thought, to bring himself into
preparation for discipleship, has drawn the atten-
tion of some great Teacher, has drawn the atten-
tion of a G-uru, so that he may now begin the
first stages of discipleship. And it is these first
stages that we will take in beginning this
morning. However large the subject, I have to
try and run through the whole of the life of
discipleship, of chelaship, this morning.
The first stages make up what has been called
' the probationary path,' that is the stage of
probationary, as separated from the stage of accept-
ed, chelaship. In the probationary path, while we
can recognise certain stages, and the acquirement
of certain definite qualifications, we do not find
them so definitely marked out as are those of
what we will call the Path proper — that of chelaship
recognised and distinct. In the true Path, the
Path where the disciple is not only recognised
by his Master, but recognises his Master, in that
THE LIFE OF THE DISCIPLE
77
Path the four stages are exceedingly distinct,
are known by separate names, and are separated
by distinct Initiations. On the probationary path
the stages are marked, but they are not separat-
ed in that distinct way. The stages may be
said rather to run side by side than successively
and one after the other. The probationary chela,
as we may call one entering on the stages of
this path, is not expected to perform perfectly
everything he begins to practise. He is expected
to attempt, but perfect performance is not demand-
ed from him. It is sufficient if he be in earnest,
if his efforts are sustained, if he does not change
his mind nor lose sight of his goal. Many allowances,
as we say in human affairs, are made for him
on the ground of human frailty, human weakness,
and the lack of knowledge which still hinders
his advance. The trials he meets with, the tests
he undergoes, are the trials and tests which are
met with in ordinary life, troubles of every kind
and form, on which I shall have a word to say
presently, but they are not of the nature of
those which belong to the distinct and definite
Path. The stages of the probationary path, if I
remember rightly, were traced some years ago
from the well-known Hindu teachings, by a
Brahmana, then in England, and a member of
the Theosophical Society, Mohini Mohun Chatterji
of Calcutta ; he recounted what have been called
78 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
the preliminary steps which men must take and
must accomplish, helped to a certain extent by
their Teachers, but for the most part unconsciously
to themselves — that is, as far as their waking
consciousness is concerned; the chela appears to
himself to be treading the path alone, and to be
dependent on his own strength and energy. I
need not say that this is an illusion due to his
own blindness and ignorance, for the eyes of
his Teacher are on him, although it may not be
known to him in his waking consciousness, and
help is ever extended to him from the higher
planes of being, help that shows itself in his
life, although it may not show itself clearly to
his waking mind. And now we shall find the
qualifications we have dealt with as preparatory
in a general sense take to themselves more
definite shapes on the probationary path.
The first qualification is the outcome of the
experiences through which he has passed ; they
awake and train in him Viveka, or discrimination.
Discrimination between the real and the unreal,
between the eternal and the transitory. Until
this appears he will be bound to the earth by
ignorance, and worldly objects will exercise over
him all their seductive glamor. His eyes must
be opened, he must pierce through the veil of
Maya, at least sufficiently to rate earthly things
at their true value, for from Viveka is born
THE LIFE OP THE DISCIPLE 79
the second of the qualifications —
Vairagya. I have already pointed out to you
that a man must begin to train himself in separa-
tion from action as regards its fruit. He must
train himself to do action as a duty without con-
tinually . looking for any sort of personal gain.
That training we will suppose has been carried
out by a man certainly for life after life, before
the demand is made on him which he must
answer to a very considerable extent before
Initiation is possible, that he shall become definitely
indifferent to earthly objects. Indifference to earthly
objects, indifference to worldly objects, Vairagya, is
the second of the qualifications in the probationary
path of chelaship. He has developed Viveka and, as
we have seen, this means the discrimination between
the real and the unreal, between the transitory
and the permanent. And as reality and permanency
make themselves felt in the man's mind, it is
inevitable that worldly objects shall lose their
attraction, and that he shall become definitely
indifferent to them. When the real is seen the
unreal is so unsatisfactory ; when the permanent
is recognised, if only for a moment, the transitory
seems so little worth striving after; in the pro-
bationary path all the objects around us lose
their attractive power, and it is no longer an
effort for the man to turn away from them; it
is no longer by deliberate effort of the will that
80 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
he does not permit himself to work for fruit.
The objects have no longer an attraction in
themselves ; the root of desire is gradually perish-
ing, and these objects, as it is said in the Bhagavad-
Glta, turn away from the abstemious dweller in
the body. It is not so much that he deliberately
abstains, as that they lose the power in any
way to satisfy him. The objects of the senses turn
away from him, because of that training that we
have already dealt with, that he has passed through.
Seeing objects then in their .transitory character,
it is quite natural that out of indifference to the
objects should also grow, as a matter of course,
that which he has long been striving after, namely,
indifference to their fruits ; for the fruits are them-
selves but other objects. The fruits themselves
share the impermanency and unrealit}' which
he recognises, having seen the real and the
permanent.
And then the third of the qualifications has to
be gained on the probationary path : Shatsampatti,
the six-fold group of mental qualities or mental
attributes which show themselves within the life
of this chela-candidate — as perhaps, we may call
him. He has long been striving to rule his
thoughts in the manner with which we are familiar.
He has been practising all those methods which
we spoke of yesterday, to gain self-control, to
acquire the habit of meditation, and to perform
THE LIFE OF THE DISCIPLE 81
the building of character. These have prepared
him now to show forth in the real man — for we
are concerned with the real man and not with
the illusory appearance — to show forth in the real
man, Shama, control of the mind, that definite
regulation of thought, that definite understanding
of the effects of thought, and of his relation to
the world around him, as he effects it for good
or for evil by his own thinking. By the recogni-
tion of that power that he has either to help or
to mar by his own thought the lives of other
men, how to hinder or to help the evolution of
the race, he becomes a deliberate worker for
human progress and for the progress of all
evolving beings within the limits of the world
to which he belongs. And this regulation of
thought — now a definite attitude of the mind — is
preparing him, as we shall see, for complete and
definite chelaship, where every thought is to be
made the instrument of the Master's work, and
where comparatively without effort the mind is
to run along the grooves that are traced for it
by the will.
Out of that regulation of thought, now so largely
accomplished, follows inevitably Dama, control of
the senses and the body, that which we may
call regulation of conduct. Do you notice how
when dealing with things from the occult stand-
point, they are reversed as compared with the
6
82 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
standpoint of earth ? Worldly men think more
of conduct than of thought. The Occultist thinks
far more of thought than of conduct. If the
thought be right the conduct must inevitably
be pure ; if the thought be regulated, the conduct
must inevitably be well-controlled and governed.
The outer appearance, or action, is only the
translation of the inner thought which in the
world of form takes shape as what we call action ;
but the form is dependent on the life within,
the shape is dependent on the moulding energy
which makes it. The Arupa world is the world
of causes, the Riipa world is only the world of
effects ; and therefore if we regulate thought
the conduct must be regulated, as it is the
natural and inevitable expression of thought.
The third mental attribute that marks this
attitude of the inner man is Uparati, best tran-
slated perhaps as a wide and noble and sustained
tolerance — I use that word in the very widest
sense that you can give to it — tolerance of all
that is round him, a kind of sublime patience
which is able to wait, which is able to understand,
and, therefore, demands from none more than he
can give. This again is the preparation for a
very distinct stage on the path of full chelaship.
This attitude of the man, the tolerant attitude,
is able to make allowances for everyone and every-
thing, looks on all men not as they are seen
THE LIFE OP THE DISCIPLE 83
from without but as they are seen from
within, sees their aspirations, their desires and
their motives, and not only the clumsy mistransla-
tions which appearance often gives in the outer
world. He learns tolerance of all different forms
of religion, tolerance of all different kinds of
custom, tolerance of all the varying traditions
of men. He understands that all these are transi-
tory phases which men ultimately outgrow, and
he is not so unreasonable as to expect from the
child humanity that wideness, that breadth, that
sense of dignified patience which is characteristic
of humanity in its manhood and not in its early
stages. This attitude of the mind must be con-
stantly cultivated by the man who is approaching
Initiation, and he must gain that tolerance by
insight into truth and be able to recognise the
underlying truth underneath the veil of misleading
appearances. Do you notice how all through it
is the dawning of the sense of Reality that is the
great change that has come over the man in this
probationary path ? He is no longer deceived by
appearances as he was in the early days. As he
grows he sees Reality and so gradually gets rid of
illusion. He is shaking off subjection to appear-
ances, and he is recognising truth, no matter
what may be its illusory form.
The next point in his mental attitude is Titilcsha,
endurance, a patient bearing of all that comes,
84 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
a total absence of resentment. You will remember
how I drew your attention to this as a thing to
strive for, how a man was gradually to get rid of
the tendency to feel injured, how he was to
cultivate love and compassion and forgiveness
and the result of that cultivation of the mind is
this mental attitude, steady and defined. The
inner man thus gets rid of resentment — resentment
towards everything : towards men, towards circum-
stances, towards everything that sui*rounds him in
life. Why ? Because he sees truth and he knows
the Law, and therefore knows that whatever
circumstances surround him, they are the outcome
of the good Law. He knows that whatever men
may do to him they are only the unconscious
agents of the Law. He knows that whatever
comes to him "in life is of his own creating in the
past. And so his attitude is the attitude of
absence of resentment. He realises justice, there-
fore he cannot be angry with anything, for
nothing can touch him which he has not deserved;
nothing can come in his way which he has not
put there in his former lives. Thus we find that
no troubles and no joys can turn him aside from
his path ; he is no longer to be changed in direc-
tion by anything that comes in his way. He sees
the path and treads it; he sees the goal and he
presses towards it. He is no longer following
devious and indefinite ways, here, there and every-
THE LIFE OF THE DISCIPLE 85
where ; but firmly, steadily, he follows the path he
has chosen. He cannot be attracted away from
it by pleasure; he cannot be driven away from
it by pain. He cannot be discouraged by dullness,
by voidness, by emptiness j he cannot be induced
to stray from it by offers from any save the one
Guru whose Feet he seeks. Incapacity to be turned
aside, strong in endurance — ah ! there is a quality
he needs indeed on this probationary path. For
I spoke of the tests and ordeals which will beset
his way, and it is well that you should understand
why these difficulties should come. The man who
has entered on the probationary path intends to
accomplish within a very limited number of lives
what the man of the world will accomplish in
hundreds upon hundreds of lives. He is like the
man who, wanting to reach the top of the moun-
tain, refuses to follow the track that winds round
and round. He says : " I am going straight up
the mountain-side, I am not going to waste my time
on this winding beaten track which will take me
so long, the slow way on which most of the going
is smooth and easy, beaten by the myriads of
feet that tread it. I shall go by the shorter
route, I shall take the swifter path, I shall go
straight up the mountain-side. No matter what
the difficulties, I will climb the mountain. No
matter what obstacles there may be, I will
go; precipices there may be — I will cross
86
THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
them ; walls of rock there may be — I will climb
them; obstacles and boulders in my path there
may be — I will manage in some way to surmount
them or get round them; but up that mountain-
side I mean to travel." What will be the result ?
He will find a thousand-fold more difficulties
surround him on the path. If he gains in time
he must pay in trouble for the difficulty of the
achievement. The man who enters on the pro-
bationary path is the man who chooses the short
way to the mountain top, and calls down on him-
self the whole of his past Karma, which is largely
to be got rid of before he is fitted for Initiation.
The great Lords of Karma who administer the
karmic Law — those mighty Intelligences high
above us, greater than our comprehension can
understand, greater than our reason can in any
way fathom, who have been spoken of as the
Recorders of Karma, Those who keep the akashic
records in which are written down all the past
thoughts and deeds of men — They have, as it
were, an account of each individual. They have
before Their omniscient eyes the life-record
of each man, and that record which lies under
Their eyes has to be mostly discharged, ere
he passes through the portals of Initiation.
And when he enters on the probationary path,
when deliberately of his own set will he puts his
feet on that path, the very putting of his feet
THE LIFE OP THE DISCIPLE 87
there is a cry to the great Lords of Karma that
They will balance up the account that there is
against him, and present him with the karmic debt
he is obliged to discharge. Is it then any wonder
that difficulties grow round his path ? The karma
that would have spread over hundreds of lives
will have to be passed through in a few, perhaps
in one, and so naturally the path is difficult to
tread. Family troubles come round the man, busi-
ness troubles press upon him, troubles of mind and
of body assail him; do you wonder then that I
said he needs steadfastness, in order to proceed
along the probationary path and not turn back, in
order not to be discouraged. It may seem that
everything is against him. It may seem to him
that his Master has forsaken him. Why, when he
is trying his best should the worst befall him ?
Why, when he is living better than he ever lived
before, should all these difficulties and pains assail
him ? It seems so unjust, it seems so hard, it
seems so cruel, that when he is living more nobly
than he has ever tried to live before, he finds him-
self more hardly treated than ever before by
Destiny. He must stand the test, he must refuse
to allow any sense of injustice to penetrate into his
inner life. He must say to himself : " It was my
own doing, I challenged my karma; what wonder
then that I am asked to pay it ?" And at least he
has the encouragement of remembering that the
88 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
debt once paid is paid for ever ; once lived through,
no more of it can come to disturb him. Every
karmic debt he pays is struck from off life's ledger
for evermore. That debt at least is done with.
So that if illness strikes him down, he thinks it is
well that that much trouble should be arotten rid
of; if pain and anxiety assail him, he thinks it is
well ; he answers : " It will be behind me in the
past and not before me in the future." And so it
is that in the midst of sorrow he is joyful, in the
midst of discouragement he is hopeful, in the midst
of pain he is at ease, for the inner man is content
with the Law, he is satisfied with the answer
which has come to his demand. If there were no
answer, it would mean that his voice had not
reached the ears of the Great Ones, it would mean
his prayer had fallen back to earth ; for this
trouble is the answer to his petition. Thus in
these struggles, these difficulties, these efforts, he
gains the fifth mental attribute and that is :
8hraddha, faith, or we may call it confidence —
confidence in his Master and in himself. You can
understand how that will be the result of such a
struggle. You can understand how on the further
side of the struggle confidence must come out, as
the flower must open under the stimulating influ-
ence of sunshine and rain. He has learned confi-
dence in his Guru, for has He not led him through
all this thorny path and brought him to the other
THE LIFE OP THE DISCfPLE 89
side, where the gateway of Initiation begins to
open in front of him ? And he has learned confi-
dence in himself — not in his lower self whose weak-
ness he has conquered, but in his divine Self whose
strength he is beginning to recognise. For he
understands that every man is divine, he under-
stands that what his Guru is to-day, he himself
is going to become in the lives that still stretch
out in front of him. And the confidence he feels
is in the power of the Master to teach and to
guide him, in the wisdom of the Master to lead
and to instruct him ; and a confidence in himself,
most humble yet most strong, that inasmuch as he
is himself divine, he also has the power to accom-
plish; that however much of effort may be needed,
however much of difficulty still remains to conquer,
the strength that is in him is one with Brahman,
and is enough for every difficulty, enough for
every trial.
The sixth mental attribute is Samadhana, balance,
composure, peace of mind, that equilibrium and
steadiness which result from the attainment of the
foregoing qualities. With the gaining of this the
probationary path is trodden, the chela-candidate
stands ready before the gateway, and there appears
without further effort the fourth qualification :
Mumuksha, the desire for emancipation, the wish
to gain liberation, that which, crowning the long
efforts of the candidate, shows him to be an
90 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
Adhikari, to be ready for Initiation. He has been
proved and not found wanting ; bis discrimination
is keen, his indifference is no temporary disgust,
due to a passing disappointment, his mental and
moral character is lofty — he is fit, he is ready for
Initiation. No more is asked ; he stands fit to come
face to face with his Master, face to face with the
life that he so long has sought.
Notice ere we put our hand on the gateway of
Initiation that every quality of the probationary
path is a preparation for what lies in front, is a
moral and mental quality. Moral and mental qualities
are the qualifications that are demanded — not
powers, as they are called, not abnormal psychic
development, not the Siddhis. These are not in
any sense demanded or required. A man may have
gained some of the Siddhis and yet not be fit for
Initiation ; but he must have the moral qualifications.
These are demanded with a rigidity that nothing
can change — with a rigidity, let me say in passing,
that is the result of experience. For the great
Gurus in Their vast experience of humanity, have
been training it step by step for myriads of years.
They know well enough that the qualification for
true discipleship must be found in the mind and
in the moral character and not in the development
of the psychic nature ; that has to come in its
own place and in its own good time. But to be
a recognised disciple, an accepted chela, the
THE LIFE OF THE DISCIPLE 91
mind and morals must be fitted to meet the
gaze of the Guru ; such as have been
stated are the qualifications He demands, and
these His pupils must give Him ere the second
birth will be granted by Him who alone can
give it. And notice also that these imply know-
ledge and devotion — the growth of knowledge
that the man may see, and the growth of devo-
tion without which the path cannot be trodden.
And, therefore, it is written in the Upanishad
that knowledge unallied to devotion is not enough ;
that devotion by itself is not sufficient ; it must
be knowledge wedded to devotion, for these ai'e
the two wings by which the disciple rises.
We come to the Path itself. Of the great Initia-
tions which mark the stages of the Path after
the chela is accepted by his Guru and when the
Guru takes upon Himself the guidance and in-
struction and guardianship of His chela — of these
great Initiations from time to time a word has
been dropped from the lips of some Teacher in
the outer world, and we can find hints thrown
out here and there, hints which are verified by
the experience of those who pass within the
gateway, hints which are permitted to be expand-
ed to some small extent, not for the gratification
of idle curiosity, but for the training of those
who would fain prepai*e themselves for this great
step in advance. What can be said about them
92 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
must obviously be imperfect ; that which can be
revealed in the world of men of these great
Mysteries can only be fragmentary information.
Many questions will rise in your mind as I take
these hints and weave them together into a slight
but connected whole. Many questions will rise
in your minds the answers to which could
not be wisely given. The whole object, as I say,
of giving the information is not to gratify
curiosity ; it is not in order that a man may ask
a number of questions and get answers given to
them one after another ; the hints that are given
are meant for men who are in earnest, for those
who want to know in order that they may pre-
pare, for those who want to understand in order
that they may be able to accomplish. And so
from time to time these hints are given, the
partial information which is enough for immediate
guidance, but not enough to satisfy mere idle
and worldly curiosity.
Two mighty Teachers stand out in history as
having given more information on this subject
than any others — each of Them a Teacher of a
world-wide religion — world-wide not in the sense
of area, but world-wide in their bearing on the
souls that are ready for their reception. One
of these great Teachers was the Founder of
Buddhism, the Lord Buddha ; and the other of
these Teachers was ShrI Shankakacharya, who
THE LIFE OF THE DISCIPLE 93
did for Hinduism what we may say the Buddha
did for countries beyond its reach in founding
His exoteric faith. As regards the Path Their
teachings are identical, as the teachings of
every such great Initiate must needs be. Each
of Them laid down the same stages; each of
Them marks the stages by definite Initiations
which separate each stage from those which
precede it and those which follow it. In the
teaching itself there is perfect identity ; it is
only in the phraseology adapting it respectively
to one faith or the other that differences arise.
Here again, of course, is one of the reasons
why men must learn to seek truth under diverse
forms and appearances ; otherwise they quarrel
about the forms instead of realising the identity
that underlies these outer labels that are merely
names.
Four different stages there are, as I say, and
each of them marked by an Initiation. Now
Initiation means this; it means the expansion' of
consciousness which is brought about by the
definite intermediation of the Guru, who acts in
place of the one Great Initiator of humanity
and gives the second birth in His Name. This
expansion of consciousness is the note, as it were,
of Initiation, for this expansion of consciousness
gives what is called ( the key of knowledge ; '
it opens up to the Initiate new vistas of know-
94 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
ledge and of power ; it places, within his h and
the key which unlocks the doors of nature. To
what end ? In order that he may become more
serviceable to the world at large ; in order that
his power for service may be increased ; in order
that he may join that scanty band of men who
are vowed to humanity and who have renounced
the lower self ; who seek nothing save the service
of the Master and of humanity ; who know that
the service of the Master and of humanity is one
and the same service ; who have done with the
world and everything that the world can offer ;
who have dedicated themselves for ever to the
service of the Great Ones to be Their instru-
ments of work, the channels of Their help and
of Their grace. And between each of the great
Initiations certain definite things have to be
done — changes in the inner man — but with a
great difference from the changes which have
hitherto been considered. When a man is once
initiated, what is done has to be done perfectly,
no longer imperfectly ; every accomplishment is
completely achieved, every chain is definitely cast
off. No longer the imperfect working out ; he
cannot pass onwards till perfectly the work of
the stage is accomplished. So that there is this
definiteness about it, which is nowhere else in
life, that each successive stage is finished before
the man passes further. No half-work, no in-
THE LIFE OF THE DISCIPLE 95
complete achievement is here accepted. However
long it may take, the work must be absolutely
finished before another step forward can be taken.
Technically that has been called ' the casting off
of the fetters, ' of certain things that still
bind the soul. At the end of the Path lies
Jivanmukti ; to have trodden it is to reach that
stage where life is free, so that every fetter
must be cast off wholly in order that nothing-
may bind the living man.
The first great Initiation makes the man what
is called by Shri Shankaracharya the Parivrajaka
— what is called by the Buddha the Srotapatti.
The Buddhist word, generally given in its Pali form,
means ' he who has entered the stream ' which
separates him from this world. He no longer
belongs to this world, though he may live in it;
he has here no place, nothing can hold him.
Exactly the same idea is conveyed by the word
Parivrajaka, a man who wanders about, that is,
who has no settled home ; not necessarily wander-
ing about in the body, not necessarily no settled
home in the body — as it has come to mean in the
exoteric sense — but the man who in his inner life
is separated from the world, who has in this
transitory world no fixed place of abode, to whom
in this transitory world one place is not different
from any other. He can go here, there and any-
where, where his Master may send him. No
96 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
place has power to hold him, no place has
power to bind him ; he has shaken off the
fetters of place. And so he is called " the wanderer ".
I know of course, as you know, that this stage is
taken in quite an exoteric sense to-day; but I am
taking it in the inner sense, in the meaning of the
Great Ones who gave it. We know, alas ! how
much things have changed from the older days ;
how that which was then a reality in life has now
become a matter of words and of outer appearance.
But I am anxious that you should know the four
stages of the Path as they are spoken of in Hindu-
ism, as some people imagine that they were reveal-
ed only by the Lord Buddha, whereas He but
proclaimed again the ancient narrow Path, that all
Initiates of the One Lodge have trodden, are
treading, and shall tread.
Let me take the reality first. The man who has
crossed the stream, as I said, has definitely parted
with the world — he wants no more of it, except as
he can serve it. He asks no more of it, except as
in it he can do his Guru's bidding. That is the
mark of the first great Initiation — of the man who
is re-born. For the most part the re-birth takes
place outside the body but in waking consciousness :
i.e., the man is initiated generally in his astral
body in full consciousness, the physical body being
left entranced ; occasionally a chela is initiated
without the waking consciousness being permitted
THE LIFE OP THE DISCIPLE 97
for a time to share in the knowledge. But in
either case the act can never be undone ; the man
can never again be as he was before. The babe,
when it is born into the world, may for a time
be unconscious of the new world around it, but
that babe cannot return into its mother's womb,
and be as though no birth had been passed
through. So neither can the Initiate who has
passed through the second birth ever again be as
though he had not been thus born, and share in
the life of the outer world as those who have
not passed the second birth may share in it. He
may delay in his progress, he may be slow in
his advance, he may take a longer time than
is necessary to throw off the fetters that still
bind him ; but he can never again be uninitiated,
the key can never again pass out of his grasp.
He has stepped into the stream ; he is separated
from the world; he must go forward, however
slowly, however many lives he may spend in the
doing.
A question has been raised as to the number
of lives intervening between this step and final
liberation, the attainment of Jivanmukti. I re-
member hearing that Svami T. Subba Row, speak-
ing here to some friends about the general idea
that seven lives had to be passed in this division
of chelaship, made the perfectly true and significant
remark : " It may be seven lives or seventy, it
7
98 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESH1P
may be seven days or seven hours." That is : the
life of the soul is not counted by mortal years or
by mortal time ; it depends on its energy, on its
strength, on its will to succeed. A man may
waste his time or spend it to the best advantage,
and according to that will be the progress that
he will make.
But during this stage, which is commenced by
the first great Initiation and is closed by the
second, there are three different things that a
man must get absolutely rid of ere he can pass
the second portal. The first of these is the
Illusion of the Personal Self. Personality must be
destroyed ; no longer now controlled, no longer
now diminished, no longer kept in check : but
destroyed, killed for evermore. The illusion of
the separated personal self has to go. The chela
must recognise himself as one with all other
selves, for the Self of all is one. He must realise
that all around him, man, the animal and plant
worlds, the mineral and elemental forms of life,
are all one. The illusion of personality must be
gotten rid of. See how the extending conscious-
ness will help in this ; how the recognition of the
true Self will make it possible to get rid of the
false ; how the seeing of the Real will cause the
disappearance of the unreal ; and so the illusion
of the personal self is absolutely killed. Why ?
because his eyes are opened and they pierce
THE LIFE OP THE DISCIPLE 99
through the illusion ; thus he becomes free and
casts off the fetter called ( the delusion of self '.
And he must get rid of Doubt. That is the
second obstacle that will prevent him from going
further. But he has to get rid of doubt in a
very definite way — he is to get rid of doubt
by knowledge. No longer to him are the
things of the invisible world to be questions of
speculation ; no longer to him are the great truths
of religion to be philosophic ideas. They are to
be realised facts. He must no longer have
any question in his mind as to how is this, or why ?
There are certain fundamental truths of life on
which no longer possibility of doubt must remain to
him. Ere he can go one step further forward, he
must be absolutely convinced beyond the possibility
of question of the great truth of Re-incarnation ;
he must know beyond the possibility of question
the great truth of Karma ; he must know beyond
the possibility of question the great truth of the
existence of the divine Men, of the Jivanmuktas,
who are the Gurus of humanity. On these points
no possibility of doubt must remain; that is, he
must have knowledge no longer theoretical but
real, no longer theoretical but practical, so that
no shade of questioning on these can ever
again possibly cloud his mind; the only position
that is thus secure is where knowledge replaces
speculation, and where absolute contact with the
100 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
reality makes impossible any more the deceptions
that are caused by the illusions of the outer
world.
The last of these three fetters that he has to
entirely cast off at this stage is Superstition.
Realise clearly what that means and then you
will understand very fully why both ShrI Shan-
karachArya and the Buddha used the names
that They did respectively use for this stage of
chelaship. Superstition means this, in the tech-
nical sense (in which, I am, of course, now
using the word) : it means the reliance on ex-
ternal sectarian rites and ceremonies for spiritual
help. So far as their external nature is concern-
ed, the man recognises the truth beneath the
form, and if the truth be there the value of
the outer shape depends on its adaptation to
this world of ignorance and illusion. The man
has risen above exoteric forms and ceremonies.
But you are familiar with this idea in your
every-day life. The SannyasI is supposed to be
a man who has risen above these things, and
from whom they are no longer demanded. And
why not ? Because he is supposed to have touched
Reality, because he is supposed no longer to have
any need of these things which are the rungs
of the ladder by which men must climb ; they
are necessary in the earlier stages — do not forget
that fact — this is a case of growth. If you would
THE LIFE OP THE DISCIPLE 101
mount to the top of the house you must mount
by the staircase or ladder, and foolish would be
the man who said : " I will not climb by the
staircase or steps/' unless that man had such
power and such knowledge of the laws of nature
that he was able to change the polarity of his
body and rise by what is called levitation — by
the action of the will, instead of by the com-
paratively slow and clumsy method of going up
step by step. For such a man the staircase is
unnecessary because he can rise upward by his
own power, and reach the top of the house
without the slow method of climbing. But it
does not therefore follow that the staircase is
useless; it does not therefore follow that other
men can reach the top of the house by refusing
to use the staircase. And too many men to-day,
who are unable to raise themselves, refuse to
use the staircase, forgetting that until the will
is developed the lower forms are necessary if the
man is to rise at all.
And this brings me to say a word on the
' true Sannyasi '. Even five thousand years ago,
the word was used without the reality. Even
five thousand years ago, at the beginning of
the Kali Yuga, we find She! Krshna drawing
a distinction between the Sannyasi in appearance
and the Sannyasi in reality. Do you remember
how speaking on this very subject he said : " He
102 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
that performeth action as duty, independently of
the fruit of action, he is a Sannyasi, and he is
a Yogi ; not he that is without fire and who
doeth nothing." You know the meaning of the
technical phrase, " he that is without fire," that
is, he who does not light the sacrificial fires,
who does not perform rites and ceremonies; for
from the Sannyasi these are not demanded. But,
said Shri Krshxa, he is not the true Sannyasi
who is known only by the absence of rites and
ceremonies and by the absence of his actions in
the world of men. And if this were true five
thousand years ago, it is far more true, alas ! to-
day. If it were true when the great Avatara
was treading the plains of India, it is far more
true when five thousand years of darkness have
elapsed. When we glance over the whole of the
Eastern world, if we take India herself with her
countless Sannyasis, we see men who are Sannyasis
by the cloth and not by the life, men Avho are
Sannyasis by outer appearance and not by inner
renunciation. And if we leave Indian soil and
tread that, say, of Ceylon, Burma, China or Japan,
so there too we find Buddhist monks who are
monks by the }'ellow robe and not by the noble
life, in the external appearance and not in the
internal truth. And although it be still true that
religion is easier to live here than in any other
land; although it be still true that the traditions
THE LIFE OP THE DISCIPLE 103
of India make her very soil sacred and her very
atmosphere more spiritual than the atmosphere of
other lands; although there are places so holy
through the lives that have been led in them that
even for the worldly man to go to them quiets the
mind and wakes up the aspirations of the soul ;
although all this be true of India, and therefore
she is beloved and sacred evermore, alas ! her
children are unworthy of her possibilities, and they
have fallen on every side. Looking over the world
of men we see no place where the spiritual life is
generally led, -no nation where this is recognised
as supreme. The heart might go well nigh to
breaking that knows the possibilities and sees the
actualities, that knows what might be and sees
what is, that knows the truth and sees, alas ! the
lie that simulates the truth. And yet despite all,
no disciple's heart need break, for the Masters
live for evermore and Their disciples also still
tread the world of men ; but now their discipleship
is shown not in the outer garb but in the inner
life, not in the mere cloth that is worn but in the
knowledge, the purity and the devotion which still
open the gateway of Initiation.
So we come onward to the second stage called by
Shri Shankaracharya the Kutlchaka, the man who
builds a hut, called by the Buddhists the Sakrd-
agamin, the man who receives birth once more.
This stage is one in which no definite fetters
104 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
are cast off, but certain acquirements are made.
Here comes in the place of the Siddhis. After
the second Initiation it is necessary that the Sid-
dhis should be developed, because the disciple
has reached a stage of his life in which he
must be capable of very extended service, in
which he must be able to do his Master's work
not only in the world of physical men, but also
in the other worlds that surround it and lie
outside the physical plane. He must be able not
only to speak with the lips, but also to speak
directly from mind to mind with conscious and
deliberate intention. I shall try to show you to-
morrow what the possibilities of service are that
lie before him and which re-act on the physical
world, and which, if they were thoroughly ac-
complished, as they are not to-day, would largely
change the trend even of the physical life of
man. But in order that he may do this part of
the work, in order that he may prepare himself
for the lofty tasks that lie before him when all
knowledge will be open to him, and Nature will
have no veil able to blind his eyes, he must at
this stage develop his inner faculties and unfold
one by one those inner possibilities of the man.
It is at this stage that it is necessary, if it
has not been done before, that the inner fire
should be awakened ; it is here that Kundalin!
must be roused to function in the physical body
THE LIFE OP THE DISCIPLE 105
and in the astral body of the living man. You
can read about it in some books, as in the
Ananda Lahari of She! Shankaeacharya, of the
awakening of the living fire, of the leading it
from chakram to chakram; as it wakes up it
gives the man the power to leave the physical
body at will, for as it is led from chakram to chak-
ram it disengages the astral from the physical and
sets it free. Then without break of consciousness,
without any chasm of blankness separating one
world from the other, a man is able to pass out
of the physical body into the invisible world, and
is able to work there in full consciousness and to
bring back all knowledge of the work that he has
there accomplished. It is within the second stage
that all these powers are developed and evolved,
if they have not been evolved earlier, and until
they are in full working order, until they are en-
tirely at the command of the chela, until there are
no barriers left as between the visible and invisible
world, he cannot pass on. As those barriers break
away by the unfolding of the inner senses and
powers of the man, by the gaining of the Sid-
dhis, he becomes ready for the third great step in
his progress, ready to pass onwards into the next
higher stage of being. You will readily under-
stand how easily mischief may be done to unfit
men who try to artificially bring about this stage
before they are spiritually developed, before the
106 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
time when they should reach it in orderly evolution.
In published writings there are many hints thrown
out, especially in the Tantrika books, which are
greedily seized on by those who desire to possess
powers, and care little for their moral and mental
ability to wield those powers aright. In many of
the Tantras there are underlying truths for those
who can reach them, but the statements on the
surface are often exceedingly misleading from their
incompleteness for those who do not know the real
facts, and who have no Guru to explain blinds and
to fill up gaps. And so people — ignorantly taking
these up to practise, with the object of forcing
their psychical development before their mental and
moral development has fitted them to do it with
safety — very often bring about results indeed, but
results which work for evil and not for good. They
often ruin their physical health, they often lose
their mental balance, they often injure their intel-
lectual faculties, because they are trying to pluck
the fruit of the tree of life before it is ripe for
the plucking; because with hands unclean and
senses unpurified they try to penetrate into the
Holy of Holies. Within that fane the atmosphere is
such that nothing unclean can live in it; its vibra-
tions are so powerful, that it breaks in pieces
everything which is set in a lower key ; it shivers
all that is impure, all that is not able to adapt
itself to that subtle and tremendous motion.
THE LIFE OP THE DISCIPLE 107
When, however, under the training of his Guru
— for only thus should it even be attempted — when
under the training of his Guru the disciple has
completely accomplished this stage, then comes the
third great Initiation, that which makes the man
what ShrI Shankaracharya called Hamsa, what is
called in the Buddhist literature, an Anagamin, the
man who receives birth no more, save indeed by
his own free will. This stage is one — as the name
given by ShrI Shankaracharya implies — in which
the man realises unity, in which he knows that he
is one with the Supreme. The name is given be-
cause in his expanding consciousness he had al-
ready risen into the region in the universe where
that identity is realised, and had experienced
" I am It ". With the perfecting of his psychic
senses and their correlation with the physical,
he is able not only to penetrate the region where con-
sciousness is felt as a unity, but he is also able to
bring back the memory of that consciousness into
his waking hours, to impress it on his physical
brain. Need it be said that the last shred of
earthly desire must needs now fall away from him
if at this stage any shred still remains. So that
in this stage a fetter is cast off which is called
Kamaraga, desire, little of earth indeed as there
can be in it ; but with that realising of the unity
of all, everything that is separate in appearance
loses its power to deceive for evermore. f He has
108 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
risen far far above the limitation of separateness
and so he stands above not only what here
we should call earthly desires, but above the
most highly refined, the most spiritual desires
which have in them aught for the separated
self; even spiritual desires fall away from the
man who reaches such a height ; he cannot
separate himself in thought from others, therefore
he cannot have spiritual desires for himself as
separate, for himself save as part of the whole.
Everything that he gains, he gains for all ; every-
thing that he wins, he wins for all. He stands
in a region of the Universe whence strength
comes down into the world of men, and as he
gains it he passes it on, he sheds it on all, he shares
it with all. Thus all the world is better for
each man who reaches this stage. All he wins
is won for humanity, and all that comes into
his hands comes only to pass through them into
the wider world of men. He is one with Brahman,
and therefore one with every manifestation; and
he is that in his own consciousness, and not
only in hope and aspiration. A strange word is
here used to describe the other chain that he
casts off in this stage — the Pali word Patigha,
which in English we are obliged to translate as
' hatred,' although the English word is absurd in this
connexion. What it really means is this; that
inasmuch as he has become one with all he no
THE LIFE OF THE DISCIPLE 109
longer feels the distinctions between races and
families, between all the differentiated objects in
the world. He no longer can either love or hate
because of external distinctions. He can no
longer love or hate because a person belongs
to a different race. He can no longer love
or hate because he draws distinctions between
men and the things around them. You remember
that strange phrase of ShrI Krshxa, when he
speaks of the Sage making no distinction between
the illuminated Brahmana and a dog. He has
reached unity, he sees Brahman in everything.
Or to take another phrase : he sees ShrI Krshxa
everywhere, and the outer garment of the Lord
makes no difference to his purified vision ;
therefore he is absolutely without what we are
obliged to call ' hatred ' or ' repulsion'. Nothing
repels him, nothing drives him back. He is love
and compassion to everything, love and compassion
to all. He spreads round him as it were an all-
embracing circle of affection. All that come near
him, all that approach him, feel the influence of his
divine compassion. And that is why in the days when
Brahmanas were really all that their name implies,
it was said of the Brahmana that he was " the
friend of everything, of every creature". The
heart being one with the Divine was wide enough
to enclose within its limits everything that the
Divine had made.
110 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
Having then cast separateness aside for ever,
he passes into the final stage of chelaship :
Paramahamsa, ShrI Shai?jkaracharya calls it, Arhat
is the Buddhist term. Here again one feels the
terrible modern degradation of sacred names, that
lofty condition having its name used so widely
and so carelessly, used so often for mere compli-
ment, for an outer appearance instead of for a
living reality. The real meaning of this name
is that the man has passed the fourth great
Initiation, and stands within the stage that precedes
Jivanmukti ; in his waking consciousness he can
rise to, live in, the Turiya region. He has no
need to leave the body to enjoy it. He has no
need to leave the body to be conscious in it. His
consciousness embraces, has expanded to, that,
although at the same time it may be working
in the lower brain. And that is one of the great
marks of the attainment of that stage. There is
no such thing as physical unconsciousness necessary
in order that that high region of consciousness
may be trodden ; for his consciousness has
expanded to it, and while he is speaking and
talking and living in the world of men, he
has all that vast knowledge within his reach and
is consciously experiencing it at will. In this
stage, he throws off the last five ' fetters/ that
he may become the Jivanmukta. The first of
these is called Ruparaga, desire for ' life in form '
THE LIFE OF THE DISCIPLE 111
— no desire for such life can move him. Then, he
casts off Aruparaga, desire for f life without form'
— no such desire has any power to bind him.
And then Mana is cast away, and again we have
to use an English word far too gross to express
the real, subtle nature of the fetter cast off — pride ;
not thinking even for a passing moment of the
greatness of his own achievement, of the dizzy
altitude at which he stands, for he recognises
neither high nor low, neither lofty height nor
lowly vale. He sees and feels them all as one.
He casts off next the possibility of being ruffled
by anything that may occur. Whatever happens,
he will remain unshaken. The spheres may clash
together, he will remain unmoved. Nothing that
can happen to the manifested world can shake the
sublime serenity of the man who has risen thus
to the realisation of the Self of all. What matters
a catastrophe — it is but the form that is broken.
What matters the crash of a world — it is but
the manifestation that is changing. The eternal,
the undying, the ancient and the constant, he
lives in That, and there is nothing that can
shake his serenity, there is nothing that can mar
the perfection of his peace. And then there falls
from his limbs the last fetter of all — Avidya
— that which makes illusion ; the last faint film
which prevents the perfect insight and the perfect
liberty. While he need be born no more, he may
112 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
take birth if he will ; no compulsion can bring
him back to earth, but of his own will he can
re-incarnate. He brings within his knowledge
everything of our planetary ring. He learns all
that this manifestation has to teach ; not one
lesson is left unlearnt, not one secret remains
hidden, not one corner exists into which his
eye cannot pierce, not one possibility that he is not
able to grasp. At the end of this stage all the
lessons have been learnt. All the powers have
been achieved. He is omniscient, omnipotent, with-
in this planetary chain. He has accomplished the
evolution of humanity ; he has trodden the last
step that humanity shall have taken when the
great Manvantara is accomplished and the work
of this universe is achieved. There is nothing
that is veiled from him, nothing that is not with-
in himself : his consciousness has expanded to
take all into himself. He can enter Nirvana
itself at will ; and there there is unity, there there
is all-consciousness, there there is the fulness
of life. He has reached the goal of humanity;
only the last gateway is before him, and that
swings open at the sound of his foot-step. That
gateway passed, he becomes the Jivanmukta,
according to the Hindu phrase, the Asekha Adept,
or He who has no more to learn, according to
the Buddhist nomenclature. All is known, all is
accomplished. Before Him lie open different
THE LIFE OP THE DISCIPLE 113
paths, any one of which He may choose; before
Him spread vast possibilities, any one of which
He may stretch forth His hand and take. Out
of the limits of this planetary chain, outside the
limits of our Kosmos, into regions far beyond
even our dimmest apprehending, paths lie open
that the Jivanmukta may choose to tread. One
path, the most difficult, the hardest of all,
though the swiftest, is that which is called the
Path of the Great Renunciation. If He chooses
that, deliberately looking over the world of men
the Jivanmukta refuses to leave it, refuses to go
away from it, says that He will remain and take
to Himself a body again and again, for the
teaching and for the helping of man. Once
more Shri Shankaracharya speaks of Those who
wait and function until the work is accomplished.
Their own task is over indeed, but They have
identified Themselves with humanity, and until
the evolution of humanity is over They will
not pass away from the struggling ranks of
men. They are free, but remain in a voluntary
bondage; they are liberated, but in a liberation
that will not complete itself until others are
libei*ated too. They are the great Masters of
Compassion, who live within the reach of men,
that humanity may not be an orphan without a
father, that the pupils may not be seeking a
Guru and find no Guru to instruct. They are
8
114 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
Those to whom some of us feel such an intensity
of gratitude, because They stay within the sphere
of earth though They live in Nirvanic con-
sciousness beyond it, in order that a link may
be kept between the higher worlds and the
men who are yet unliberated, those to whom
the body is still a prison, in whom the life is
not yet set free. All are glorious who have
reached that lofty level, all are divine who stand
where They are standing. But perhaps one
may dare to say without irreverence, that the
dearest to the heart of humanity, the most closely
bound to it by the ties of passionate gratitude
for the renunciation made, are Those who might
have gone from us but who stay with us, who
might have left us orphans but who remain as
the Fathers of men. Such are the great Gurus
at whose Feet we bow; such the great Masters
who stand behind the Theosophical Society. They
sent Their messenger, H. P. Blavatsky, to bring
the message to the world which the world had
well-nigh forgotten, to point again to the narrow
and ancient Path along which some feet are
treading now, along which your feet may tread.
THE FUTURE PROGRESS OF
HUMANITY
Methods op Future Science. Man's Coming
Development.
Brothers : The task that lies before us this
morning is by no means an easy one. Hitherto I
have been tracing for you the progress of the
individual ; hitherto I have been trying to show
you how a man who thus determined on his future
might be able step by step to rise from the life
of the world to the life of the disciple, and how
he might anticipate the progress of humanity,
how he might accomplish in a few short years
what the race will accomplish in the course of
untold millennia. But this morning a different
task lies before us. I am going to try to trace
for you that progress through the ages. I am
going to try to lay before you, necessarily exceed-
ingly briefly, the great stages of human progress,
taking humanity as a whole. So that we shall,
as it were, have a bird's eye view of evolution,
realise not only the past out of which we
have grown into the present, but the future
that lies before us as a race. It is the
progress of nations with which I propose to
116 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
deal, the unfolding of humanity with which we
are now concerned. And in trying such a flight
as that, I feel almost as though I were asking
you to mount with me upon the back of Vishnu's
vehicle, Garuda the mighty bird, and sweep
through the atmosphere of untold ages, glancing
downwards at the landscapes over which we
pass. I feel that I shall leave you and myself
well nigh breathless after the transit. It is
easier for me in one way than it is for you,
because by often dwelling on the thought it has
become more familiar, while to many of you
the ground may perhaps be almost strange, and
the Theosophical conception of evolution through
the ages may be new in its detail. I shall neces-
sarily be compelled to pass rapidly from point
to point without elucidation, and shall there-
fore be sweeping you over many difficulties
rather perhaps by the speed of the transit than
by a complete and detailed comprehension of
the whole. But let me say this to you : I may
be mistaken in some of the details that I may
give ; I may be in error in some of the smaller
points of this vast picture; but the outline as a
whole is true; it is not mine, it comes from
elsewhere ; and although the weakness of the
representer may cause error in detail, the funda-
mental accuracy of the sketch is an accuracy on
which you may rely.
METHODS OP FUTURE SCIENCE ETC.
117
Man in the vision of the Great Ones who were
his earliest Teachers, Rulers and Guides, is not
man as he is to-day, for he is not all that he is
meant to be, all that he shall yet become. I
do not mean by that that his progress has on
the whole been unsatisfactory. It has not. The
place in evolution he has reached, surrounded
with difficulties, with doubts, with much of suffer-
ing, is a place which, on the whole, looked at
from the highest standpoint, is fairly satis-
factory, considering the shortness of the time
that lies behind him, short in the divine measure-
ment, although so long, measured by mortal years.
Certainly man as he is to-day is by no means
what man is in the minds that projected his
pilgrimage, in the sight of Those who started him
on his evolution. He has come downwards; he
has passed his lowest point ; a mighty climbing
lies in front of him, at the end of which human-
ity, perfected and glorious, shall indeed be very
different from what it is to-day, shall be as it
was projected in the divine thought.
The universe, you must bear in mind all
through, the universe consists of seven great and
distinct regions, thrown out as it were from the
divine Mind, thrown from within outwards or
from above downwards] whichever expression you
prefer — a mighty universe in seven planes or
regions. Each plane is distinct in its material,
118 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
although the essence of all be one and the same,
Paramatma whence all proceeds. As this out-
pouring of the divine Thought took shape by
the divine Will in the manifested universe, and
as plane after plane was formed, each plane was
characterised by the difference of the density
of its material, by the difference of the number
of enwrappings in which the primal energy was
veiled. So that speaking broadly, you may con-
ceive of this great Kosmos with the Logos who
gave it birth, you may conceive of it as a mighty
solar system, the sun representing the Logos
and, coming outwards, orb after orb, each orb
representing a plane of the universe. Those with-
in would be those in which the matter was
subtlest and the energy was least fettered; those
outside would be those in which the matter was
growing denser, and the energy was more crippled
by this density of the material by which it was
enfolded.
Next you have to realise that each of these
regions has its own inhabitants, and that the
course of evolution is the sweeping outwards from
the centre to the circumference, and then the
returning inwards from the circumference towards
the centre. As the Great Breath goes outwards
and matter comes into existence, becoming denser
and denser, there will be a point at which matter
will be at its densest and energy at its feeblest,
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 119
at which form will be at its most rigid and life
at its most hidden ; so that this outward process
will be a process in which matter will be densify-
ing and form will be increasing in rigidity, while
life will be becoming more and more veiled in
its manifestation. On the other hand, when there
is the returning of the Breath, the bringing again
of this creative activity as it were to the centre,
matter will grow more and more subtle, life will
become more and more unveiled, until finally the
Great Breath will draw in from this manifested
Kosmos all the world's experiences that have
been gained. The humanity which was the object
and outcome of this evolutionary process will
have become divine and ready for yet mightier
stages of advance. And following that great sweep
outwards we realise that as we follow it out-
wards there is as regards the inhabitants a process
towards individualisation as they pass into denser '
matter. So that looking at the inhabitants of
these planes, as they lie behind us, we shall
see what is called the elemental essence gradual-
ly taking to itself more and more definite forms;
its evolution, being on the descending arc, lies
in its becoming more separated and taking more
material forms; it is a process downwards into
matter, whereas the evolution now of mankind,
being on the ascending arc, lies in its rising into
unity and taking more subtle forms, for it is a
120 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
process upwards into the unveiled life.
You may roughly grasp in this way an idea
of the Kosmos as a whole, and you will under-
stand that in the planes that are less dense than
the physical, we have not only evolving and
ascending humanity but also the involving and
descending elemental essence. In the mineral
world is the turning point, for there the densest
stage has been reached. In the upward evolution
the mineral and the vegetable kingdoms of
this physical world occupy the physical plane
and pass not to a consciousness beyond it ; as
evolution proceeds the animal world takes one
step upwards, and the animal has to live on
what is called the astral plane as well as on
the physical; man is intended in the thought of
his Builders to conquer and occupy during this
evolution five out of the seven planes of the
universe. He is intended to function and to be
master on the physical, to function and to be
master on the astral, to function and to be
master on the plane above the astral, the mental,
which includes the Svarga of the Hindu, the
Devachan of the Theosophist ; we may use another
term that better expresses the whole range of
that state of consciousness, the term Sushupti,
a state now known during earth-life only by the
exceptionally experienced and developed, but
which in the course of evolution will be experi-
METHODS OP FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 121
enced by the majority of the human race.
Above this comes the fourth, or Turiya plane,
the plane of Buddhi, and above that yet again
the plane of Nirvana, or Turiya -tita. So that
you get five distinct regions of the Universe
which humanity is meant to occupy in the course
of this evolution — the physical, the astral, the
sushuptic, the turiyic and the nirvanic. Those
are the stages of expanding consciousness through
which man has to pass, if he is to succeed in
the pilgrimage which he has to make. The
individual may take these steps more rapidly, by
Yoga, but the majority of the race is to accom-
plish this evolution only in the course of ages;
not quite the whole race, but the majority of
human kind, ere this Manvantara is over, will have
conquered all these planes of expanded conscious-
ness and will be functioning upon the whole five.
Man will then have formed to himself vehicles in
which consciousness can work on each plane. And
when we look at man to-day, we know that in him
there is the possibility of the unfolding of this
five-fold life, the five-fold vehicles which will
occupy these different regions and make him, as
he is meant to be, master and lord of this mani-
fested universe.
Two planes yet lie above and beyond, which
will not be touched by the majority of mankind in
this evolution at all — two planes which are mere
122 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
names for us, names conveying no definite meaning,
so high are those spheres beyond our loftiest im-
aginings. These are that which is spoken of as
Paranirvana and that which is still higher, Maha-
paranirvana. What these states are we cannot
even dream. These are the seven stages of the
Kosmos. Humanity as a majority is to conquer
and occupy five of them, and some of humanity's
children will reach to the yet higher that remain;
but for the bulk of our race its evolution is within
the five-fold universe.
That may perhaps give you a hint — I have no
time to work it out in this lecture — as to what un-
derlay the controversy that arose as to the 'five'
and ' seven ' in Nature. There has been much
dispute as to that, especially between some of
the Theosophists and some of our Brahmana bro-
thers. The Brahmanas claimed the five-fold classi-
fication, whereas the Theosophists insisted on the
seven-fold. The truth is that the total classi-
fication is seven-fold, as you will find in the
sacred Books, the seven-fold fire dividing itself,
hinted at here and there in the Upanishats.
But the present evolution is an evolution of the
five-fold nature only, the evolution symbolised in
the five pranas familiar in Hindu literature. I
only say this in passing, because so many dis-
putes are disputes which need not arise if people
understood each other a little better than they
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC.
123
do; if instead of fighting over mere appearances
they would look beneath the surface, they would
generally find a point of union. As I say, I
have not time to dwell upon it, but it is here
that really lies the key to the riddle of the
five and the seven. Mankind as a whole deve-
lopes five vehicles for the five-fold evolution,
whereas those who are the very flower of human-
ity reach two stages that lie still beyond.
Now studying the evolution of humanity, we
find the First and the Second Races employed
in the evolution of form, and in the evolution
of the lower or animal nature; that is they de-
veloped the physical, the etheric double (which
in the Theosophical books has been called the
Linga Sharira) and the kamic or passional nature
— that which you find in the animal and also find
in man. Coming to the Third Race of humanity,
we find that special help was given to it when it
had reached its midmost point ; it was not that
humanity could not have developed in the course
of ages without that special help, but that that
help enormously quickened the process and made
its evolution far more rapid than otherwise it would
have been. The great Kumaras, Those who are
spoken of as Manasaputras, Sons of Mind, the first
fruits of a past evolution, Those came to humanity
in order that They might hasten its growth, might
quicken its development, and by throwing out a
124 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
spark from Their own essence They gave that im-
pulse we have read of, by which Manas, or the
individual soul, was born in man.
The outcome of that special help was, as I have
said, a great increase in the rapidity of human
evolution. And then was formed that vehicle
known as Karana Sharira, or causal body. It is
the " body of Manas " that lasts through the whole
life of the reincarnating soul. It lasts from life to
life, carrying on the result of each to the next.
Therefore is it called the causal body, because in
this body there are the causes which unfold them-
selves into effects on the lower planes of earthly
life.
Now the plan of human development from that
time forwards is this; the causal body being form-
ed, there was a vehicle in which everything could
be laid up and accumulated, the receptacle and the
storehouse of experience. Passing into earthly
life and throwing out, in the way I explained
to you before, a projection of itself, its earthly
life is spent in the gathering of experience, in
the collecting in the physical world of certain facts,
certain knowledge, that which as a whole we call the
experience of life. Passing through the gateway of
death, man has to assimilate the experience that he
has gathered, and he lives a life out of the body,
when he is no longer to be seen in the physical
world, but is dwelling on the astral and the
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 125
devachanic planes that lie beyond it. There he
works out certain effects and assimilates the
experience he gathered on earth, working them
into his own nature. Each life gives him certain
results ; these results are taken and worked up
into faculties and powers. If a man for instance
exercised during his physical life much power
of thought, used much effort to understand, to
accumulate knowledge, to develop his mind, then
during the period that intervenes between death
and birth, he is employed in turning all these
efforts of his into intellectual capacities, with
which he will return for his next birth in this
world ; so also all his higher aspirations, his
spiritual hopes, his spiritual longings, will be
worked into the essence of his nature, during
the time which intervenes between his death and
his next birth. When he returns again to earth
he will be born under circumstances which will
facilitate his growth and he will bring with him the
developed spiritual capacities which he can use
for further development during his next life
upon earth.
You see how perfectly regular are the stages
of growth in the body that lasts from life to
life. The Karana Shaiira puts out a projection
from itself on the lower planes, and gathers a
harvest of experience ; then it withdraws it with
its experiences towards itself, letting it remain
126 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
in the lower reg-ions of Devachan for the assimi-
lation of that experience and the building it
into faculty, into power, into capacity; then it
withdraws it wholly into itself as the containing
vehicle of consciousness ; and then comes another
putting forth of this now more highly developed
life, which shows on the lower planes the powers
it has gained in this way. Thus there should
be a steady and continuous advance, life after
life, the Karana Sharlra being the receptacle of
all the experiences, and being the permanent man
into which the whole of these experiences are
built.
Realising that, you will understand what is meant
by the ' pilgrimage of the soul ' : each life should
find a man greater in his mind, greater in his
moral powers, greater in his spiritual faculties.
That is the plan of evolution. It is carried out
very imperfectly, and hence the enormous length
of the pilgrimage. It is carried out with many
turns and twists and wanderings into bye-ways and
travelling along devious paths, instead of pursuing
a straight and upward road. Therefore humanity
is long in its journeying and the evolution
needs such myriads of millennia to accomplish.
None the less it shall be accomplished, for such
is the divine Will for humanity, and that cannot
be finally frustrated, however much delay may be
made in its accomplishment.
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 127
Evolution proceeded through the second half of
the Third Race and onwards into the Fourth. Now
in the Fourth Race grew up that mighty civilisation
of Atlantis which reached its highest point in the
great sub-race of which you have heard a few
words even from western science — the Toltec. It
was a civilisation which was marvellous in its
accomplishments; but there was this difficulty in
connexion with it. Man was very low down on
the ascending arc, and was deeply immersed in
matter. His mental faculties were very largely
what we should now call psychic, and it was neces-
sary that they should be veiled for a time in order
that intellectual power might be evolved and make
a higher evolution in the future possible for human-
ity. Therefore the great kosmic law, that law
that nothing can resist, swept the race into a great
but a very material civilisation. This disappearance
of the psychic faculties was quickened to some
extent by the deliberate action of the higher and
ruling classes in the Toltec empire of Atlantis.
They deliberately for their own selfish purposes
tried to dwarf, tried to stunt, the use of the
psychic faculties in the lower classes of the popula-
tion, lower in evolution and therefore in the social
scale: and in order to make them more apt instru-
ments for their own purposes they used their
occult knowledge for the deliberate dwarfing of
their psychic faculties. In this way the faculties were
128 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
artificially stunted in excess of the working of the
great kosmic law; and this makes me remind you
of one thing that is worth thinking out for your-
selves at leisure. That is, that no man can resist
the great sweep of kosmic law ; no man can stop
the mighty march of the divine evolution ; but man
may co-operate with it or work against it. He may
work for good or for evil. Recognising the wisdom
and grandeur of the march, he may work with it
for duty's sake and in submission to the divine
Will; or he may try to grip for his own personal
gain some of these forces of nature, and use them
for his own transient, for his own personal and
selfish gratification, instead of for the carrying out
of the divine purpose. Where a man uses for
selfish purpose these great forces of the Kosmos
he makes his individual karma bad, although the
tendency of the great karma of the race remains
unaffected ; thus the individual may mar his
own future ; while he is within the wide sweep
of the kosmic law, he may make misery for
himself in the narrow circle of his own individual
development; for if he uses kosmic law selfishly
he will reap a selfish harvest, and so with-
in this one great law both happy and un-
happy individual karmas are made. I say that,
recommending it to you for detailed consideration,
for it may solve for you some of the puzzles men
often feel : how karma can be a divine law by
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 129
which man is swept onwards, seeming like a
destiny imposed on him. while he yet knows that
his own will is relatively free ; he can choose his
own path, but within this mighty sweep.
As I say then, in that civilisation of the past,
man used this great law of the Kosmos for his
own selfish purposes, and the final result was the
destruction of Atlantis, the total sweeping away
of that civilisation, save for such wrecks of it as
remained here and there in the world, especially
in South America in the civilisation of Peru,
where some faint traces of its glory were left ; so
beautiful were these even in their degradation
that when Peru was conquered by the Spaniards
from the West they stood marvelling before the
happiness of the community, before the sweet-
ness, the gentleness, the purity of the people who
lived there, the wisdom of the government and the
prosperity of the nation as a whole ; that civili-
sation which was slain by the Spaniards, trampled
under foot by their advancing hosts, that was the
last faint gleam of the civilisation that I speak
of which was so grand at its zenith, which had so
great a fall, and was swept away by the catastrophe
that made the Atlantic waves roll where once fair
lands stretched.
Passing onwards swiftly from that, we come to
the evolution of our own race. To follow the
remainder of this evolution you must remember
9
130 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
that the Logos of our system reveals Himself in
three-fold aspect. You know that in every great
religion the Trimurti, the Trinity, is the re-
presentation of the manifested God ; and you
know also, at least the more thoughtful and
philosophic among you know, that the Three are
but a three-fold manifestation of the One ; the
three aspects of the one unmanifested Existence,
that can be known only as it is manifested in the
Universe. And you know that in the three-fold
Logos there is seen the aspect of Power, the aspect
of Wisdom, the aspect of Love.
Now all human activities bear the impress of
this three-fold Logos; all human activities may
be classed under one or another of these headings
— they fall under the heading of power, of wisdom,
or of love, and under these three all races of men
are grouped, and all activities of nations and
individuals are classed. I take that classification
because in a subject so complex as is mine this
morning, the classification gives us a set of little
boxes into which you may put the different parts
of the subject of the lecture for your further
thought and consideration. Remember that the
three are one. Remember that they interpenetrate
each other. Remember that these divisions are
divisions of phenomenal appearance and not of
essence ; but inasmuch as we are in the world of
phenomena and the separation is phenomenal, we
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 131
may fairly take it, and we shall not be misled
by it, if we realise the fundamental unity from
which all proceeds.
Suppose then we take the three-fold classifica-
tion and sub-divide a little more : under Love we
shall find those activities of mind will naturally
fall which have to do on the one side with
religion, on the other side with philanthropy,
using both the words in their widest sense,
religion meaning the service of those above us,
philanthropy meaning the service of those around
us and below us ; so that under this one head
of Love we include the whole of the human
activities which pay homage and service to Those
who are above us in evolution, and give help and
compassion and assistance to all who are below
and around us. Taking the division of the Gods
and men, religion would have to do with the direct
service of the Gods — and how much that means
you will see in a few moments — while philanthropy
would have to do with the direct service of men,
in this physical plane at first, of the men we see
around us. Under the heading of Wisdom will
come all those activities of the human mind, both
lower and higher, that we can divide further into
science, philosophy and art. There we have three
great fields of the activities of the mind that fall
under the heading of Wisdom ; not that knowledge
itself is wisdom, but it is the ^material out of
132 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
which, by a spiritual alchemy, wisdom is evolved,
for spiritually transmuted knowledge becomes wis-
dom ; so we put all these activities of knowledge
under the heading of Wisdom as a whole. And
then under the heading of Power will come all
those human activities that have to do with the
governing of man, with the exercise of administra-
tive and executive functions, with the building of
the nations, with the forming of communities, with
everything in which power is exercised ; and under
this also come those creative faculties in man which
are his birthright, by virtue that he is the offspring-
of the Divine — those creative faculties that so few
understand, that so few exercise with knowledge,
which are the great means for human elevation,
and the great force for human advance. All the
efforts of the divine Teachers in the past and in the
present are directed to bring these great fields of
activity under intelligent human cultivation, so
that they may be rightly tilled by man and that by
such tillage his evolution may be ensured. All
Their efforts tend to give a right direction to these
activities, that whether they be of love or of
wisdom or of power, they may be sent along the
right road for the general evolution of mankind.
For this has every great religion been founded ;
for this has every noble code of morals been
proclaimed ; for this has every strong impulse
towards intellectual development been intended;
METHODS OP FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 133
and for this in our own days is man given
the fuller re-statement of all the ancient truths,
under that name of Divine Wisdom which, in its
Greek name, is now familiar to you as Theosophy.
It is but another re-statement of the old truth :
another effort of the same Teachers to guide
those activities of human life.
At the present time it is needed most especi-
ally ; for if you look abroad in the world you
will find that in each great department of human
activity man seems to have come well-nigh to
the limit of his powers. He has conquered the
physical plane ; he has so brought it into subjection
that the physical is occupying far too much of
his attention and interest, and the realities of
the higher planes are veiled from his vision. If
we look at the activities of life we find as to
religion that materialism is fighting against it
from one side and superstition is undermining it
from the other ; so that against religion there
are turned two daggers in the hands of human-
ity, each of which is menacing its life — the
scepticism that disbelieves, and the superstition
that misbelieves. Both are fatal to human pro-
gress along this particular line of activity. When
you turn from religion to philanthropy in the
modern world, you find human misery too vast
and too great for men to be able to grapple
with it j where the modern civilisation is the
134 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
most successful, where the modern civilisation is
the most triumphant, there you find the greatest
aggregate of suffering, and the most horrible
misery which can crush the human life ; when
you look at these miseries you not only see that
philanthropy is helpless against them, but that
they are giving birth to resentment, to class
hatreds, to threats of revolution and of anarchy.
Thus the civilisation is menaced from its very
foundation, and men know not how to meet
danger, for they have lost the spirit of Love.
And if from Love you turn to Wisdom, you find
that there is difficulty everywhere in its three
great fields. Science seems to have come to the
end of its material resources. Its apparatus is
so marvellously delicate that no further develop-
ment seems within reach, its balance so mar-
vellously accurate that it can weigh what seems
an unperceivable part of a grain ; and yet they
sa}r that there are substances imponderable even
for their delicate balances. Science is almost at
the end of its resources so far as its methods
are concerned ; and, against its will, it is being
pressed upon by forces of a subtler and far
more mysterious kind than it has been wont to
recognise. If we look into the laboratory of
the chemist, into the study of the scientific man,
there seem to be pressing in forces that he
cannot deal with by weight or measure ; they
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 135
puzzle him by their reality, while at the same
time they are against every method of his science,
they are against everything that he thinks he
knows of nature. In philosophy you find the
struggle between materialism which is proven to
be inadequate and idealism which fails to find a
steady and unassailable foundation ; and you find
also in the realm of art, that art is tending to
barrenness, to sterility, that no great new things
are being produced but only inferior copies of
the old ; sterile, barren, it has lost its creative
power.
And if you turn to the third great activity I
have spoken of, the activity of Power, what do
you see in the modern world ? Nation after
nation trying experiments ; they have lost the
divine Rulers that once were there, able to govern
the nations and to guide them along the path
of prosperity and of happiness ; they are trying
to make up for the loss of these divine Kings
by having a many-headed king that is called the
People : instead of the divine Kingship of mighty
Initiates they have what is called self-govern-
ment and the methods of democracy — as though
by multiplying ignorance by a sufficiently big
multiplier, you might be able to multiply it into
knowledge. You find so far as the creative
power is concerned that the very knowledge of
it is gone, and people would be ridiculed who
136 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
should speak of it, so far has man lost sight of
his inheritance that is divine.
What does all this tell us ? It tells us that
mankind as a whole is going to take another step
onwards. It tells us that we have reached one
of those transition periods, where the old being
outworn must give place to the new growth and
the new development ; under all the turmoil
and the trouble, under all the distress and
the perplexity, there are slowly forming within
humanity the seeds of its next advance, which
shall give back to these three great types of
activity the ancient power with a new develop-
ment, -the ancient definiteness with new lines of
progress opening ; for while evolution does not
go backward, retracing its past steps and re-
producing its ancient forms, it goes on a spiral
which reproduces on a higher level all that was
best on the lower ; and upon such a spiral
humanity is treading now, to accomplish with
new powers and wider possibilities that which in
the past we see under different forms.
Consider Love. When humanity takes its next
step upwards — and already there are signs here
and there that it is preparing for it — having
made the physical vehicle perfect, its work will
be to perfect its second vehicle of consciousness,
that in which it is to function freely on the
astral plane. As thousands of years go by, man-
METHODS OP FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 137
kind will develop this second vehicle of con-
sciousness, and the majority will be able to
function in it on the astral plane as easily and
as readily as they function in the physical body
on the physical plane to-day. Not quite the
whole of mankind, for all men are not equal, as
the modern absurdity pretends ; but a great
mass of men will take this step forward in
evolution, will develop that astral body and
function in it completely, and so the progress of
humanity will go on.
What difference will this step make ? In religion
the open vision of humanity will bring within its
scope that plane of existence called the astral,
where many of the greater Intelligences manifest
themselves in form, for the helping and the
teaching of men. Men will learn to see and know
the Beings whose existence has been proclaimed to
them by every mighty faith; they will know
Them as now they know, or think they know,
the physical bodies around them. They will
know the beings of the, at present, unseen world.
So that the majority of men will share with
the advanced people of the present that first-
hand knowledge that is now so rare, that first-
hand certainty which will render scepticism for
ever impossible. No man can be a sceptic as to
the unseen world when he knows in his ordinary
waking consciousness the existence of those
138 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
beings surrounding us on every side, any more
than you can be sceptical as to the existence
of your fathers and mothers and your children.
(I am not discussing the philosophic question of
the Real and the Unreal. I am dealing with
the phenomenal universe, and use words in the
ordinary sense in which they are employed
amongst us in our intercourse with each other.)
When this step is taken, religion will so far
change its character that that which is known
and proclaimed by seers and prophets will be
known by all men, and will be a matter within
their experience and their daily cognisance ; and
the result will be that scepticism will be impos-
sible, as it is impossible as regards much of
the science of the present day. Superstition will
be slain as much as scepticism. Superstition lives
in darkness. It lives by human ignorance ; it
lives and grows and flourishes and is a curse
to the nations, because some men who have the
tradition of knowledge without its reality use that
tradition for the enslavement of their fellow-
men ; and these, being ignorant, are terrified
by the claim to knowledge and they bow down
before those who assume to hold its keys, even
though the keys be rusty and turn not in the
locks at all. And we shall find, as you find to-
day, that as men's eyes are opened superstition
becomes impossible. You do not know the mis-
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 139
chief that superstition works on the other side
of death. You do not know the misery and the
terror that too many souls undergo when they
pass from the body into the world which to
them is unknown, and is crowded for them with
all the imaginary terrors with which superstition,
dominated by pretended knowledge, has peopled
it ; especially is this the case in the West,
where men talk about eternal hell, and tell peo-
ple that after death there is no growth and no
progress, that a sinful man is plunged into the
lake of fire and brimstone, there to spend the
countless ages of eternity without hope of salvation,
without hope of escape. You cannot imagine what
the effect of that is on souls passing into the
other world through the gateway of death, and
imagining that all this is, or even may be
true, imagining that they may be victims of this
horror that they have heard of from their
ignorant teachers ; great are the difficulties they
have who help the souls on the other side, to
gradually do away with the terror and to make
them understand that law is everywhere, and
that malice and malignity are not found amongst
the ruling Powers of the Kosmos. So, as I say,
scepticism will be impossible, superstition will be
impossible ; there will be other difficulties, other
problems, other obscurities, but these twin enemies
of man, scepticism and superstition, will be slain
140 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
beyond resurrection when that day shall come
for humanity.
And with Love also on its philanthropic side
the gain will be great ; so much more can be
done for man from that plane than from the
physical. Physical activities make a great fuss,
and have comparatively small results. You see
a man running about making laws, and doing
this and that in the world of the State and of
society, and you think how great is his work,
how wonderful are his results. But how small
and petty they are in comparison with the results
which flow from unseen labor done in quiet-
ness and silence, without speech of tongue, with-
out effort of the physical body, done by the
working of the mind in the subtler medium which
affects men's thoughts more than their bodies,
which influences their minds more than their out-
ward frames. When humanity rises on to that
higher plane, then this influence will be far more
widely spread than it is to-day, and misery, crime
and wretchedness will be met by working on
the minds of men, purifying them and raising
them, so lifting them above the possibilities that
engulf them now. /Do you realise, you to whom
I am now speaking, that every one of you, who
generates an impure or revengeful or angry or
sordid thought, sends out that thought into the
world of society as a living force, as an active
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 141
entity, which plays upon society, which is taken
in by the weakest, by the most receptive, by
the least developed, so that out of those thoughts
of so-called respectable men there are scattered
the seeds of crime through the lower masses of
the people, and the sins of these which show
out in actions belong very largely to the karma
of those whose thoughts have given them birth .^
That is not known as widely it should be known.
It is not believed as it should be believed.
Every man who feels revenge sends out into
the astral world a power for destruction; and
when some weak creature comes along with a
bad karma behind him, and bad circumstances
surrounding him, with impulses which are not
under his control and passions which are stronger
than his mind, these evil thoughts come down
upon him, all these angry thoughts from men
living in respectable conditions in society, and if
he be stimulated by some wrong, maddened by
some injury, these impel him to strike a blow
which we call murder; though he holds the knife
in his physical hand, the blow is largely struck
by the thoughts of many men whose revengeful
feelings are of the essence of murder, although
they appear not in outward form. You will not
get rid of crimes in the lower strata of society
until you purify the thoughts of the higher
classes, of those who are educated and can
142 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
understand the nature of things. And when all
this is seen and known, when the astral world
lies open to men's vision, there will be a new
force available to help and to raise mankind; for
men will no longer disbelieve in the power of
thought, they will then appreciate their responsi-
bility for the thoughts they generate, and will
send out loving and helping influences instead of
the degrading influences that go out so often
to-day. Then also we shall find that direct help
is possible, as it is indeed given now from that
higher region ; for the discoveries that men of
science are making often come to them from that
world by direct play on their minds. When a
man of science takes a new departure, when a
man, say like Mr. Crookes, discovers the genesis
of atoms — one of the finest generalisations of
modern science — do you think he has climbed up
to that from below ? I tell you that such ideas
come from above and not from below. It is thus
that the Teachers work on the minds of those
who have some special capacity which is able to
be utilised ; and out of the world of thought,
through the astral plane where thoughts are active
functioning entities, They occasionally influence
particular individuals in order that the progress
of the world may be quickened and the growth
of humanity may be facilitated. The reason why
this is not done more than it is to-day is this :
METHODS OP FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 143
that until man's moral nature grows, it is not well
that he should have too much knowledge of the
unseen forces that lie behind the veil; he would
misuse them instead of utilising them, use them for
oppression and for selfish purposes instead of for
the lifting and helping of man. Therefore it is
that knowledge is not more widely given ; therefore
it is that science is not more helped. Science,
as one of the Great Ones said, must become the
servant of humanity, for it to receive very much
help from Those who are above all the Helpers
and Saviors of the race.
In another way more rapid progress will
be made in the days towards which we are
looking. In education I suppose it has hardly
struck you when dealing with children, when
dealing with very young lads, how great are the
possibilities that lie within them, if only their
teachers had knowledge enough to directly foster
the good and to dwarf and starve out the evil
in them. You know that round every man there
is visible to the trained eye, say to the eye of
the Yogi, there is visible what is called an
aura, which shows the development of the
mind, the nature of the character, which gives
definite information as to the stage of advance-
ment reached by the soul that dwells in that
body, and as to the characteristics and attri-
butes of that soul. Every one of you bears
144 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
around him this record of his own state, the
clearly seen evidence of the stage that he oc-
cupies in evolution ; round each one of you there
is this atmosphere that shows your thoughts, that
shows your character, that is as legible to the
trained eye as are the physical features to the
physical eye, and is far more instructive as re-
gards the character of the man. Now when a
young child comes into the world and passes
through the early stages of its growth, there is
this peculiarity about its aura : it brings with it
the k.vrmic outcomes of its past, but a large
number of the mental and moral tendencies that
it brings over from the past are present in it
in germ and not in full fructification. If you
take the aura of a young child it is comparative-
ly clean ; its colors are pure and transparent,
not dense and muddy and thick as they are in
grown-up men and women ; within that aura lie
the germs of tendencies which may be developed.
Some are good and some are evil. The trained
eye, distinguishing these characteristics, might
cultivate the good and starve out the evil by
bringing suitable influences to bear on the child.
If you want a healthy plant from a seed, you must
take it and put it into good soil, and you must
water it and let the sunshine play on it. All
the essentials of the plant are in the seed, but
all the plant is not yet in manifestation, and
'methods of future science etc. 145
according to the soil that you give it, the care
you take of it, the air that plays upon it, the
sunshine that warms it — according to these will
be the greater or the less development of the
seed ; it may be made to grow into great beauty
or it may be stunted and dwarfed in its growth.
So it is to a great extent with the little child.
A child is born; it has in it the germ say, of
anger, of hot and passionate temper. Suppose
that those around it are endowed with knowledge
and wisdom, they will know how to deal with it.
It should never be allowed to hear an angry
word, it should never be allowed to see a pas-
sionate action. Everyone around it should be
gentle and loving and self-controlled ; and there
should never be sent to the germ that is within
the child the stimulating force of the anger of
older people, that is like a force to make it grow
more rapidly, to intensify it and force it to
fructification. You should take care that round
the children there should be influences that will
stimulate all that is good, all that is noble and
all that is pure. And if you did that for every
child, humanity would go forward at a racing
speed, whereas it goes forward with the gait of
a cripple at the present time. Ignorance clouds
men's minds and they know not how to train
the young j there is failure round us, failure that
will not exist when man rises to wider know-
10
146 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
ledge and educates by sight instead of blindly
as he does to-day, educates with knowledge
instead of ignorance. This need of real edu-
cation explains why in the ancient days
every boy was sent to a Guru. That ancient
institution was meant to give to the child the
advantage of a trained mind playing on his, and
the help of an insight that went beyond the
insight of an ordinary man. The Guru used to
be a man who knew : the Guru used to be a
man who could see, and the child passed into
his hands because under such training the evil
was dwarfed and the good was developed. As
the real Gurus have gradually disappeared man-
kind has lost that great advantage ; but it will
come back when knowledge is spread amongst
the people, and then a higher stage of develop-
ment makes this nobler education possible.
All through the sphere of knowledge the
methods will be changed. The doctor will no
longer be obliged to guess at a disease from
outside symptoms but will diagnose by vision and
not by reasoning ; men already are beginning to
diagnose by the use of what are called clairvoyant
faculties ; instead of the doctor being shut out
by the density of the physical body, he utilises
the clairvoyant whose sight pierces through
physical matter, who can see the disease, who
can see exactly what is wrong with any one of
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 147
the organs of the body ; he, by this vision,
giving the necessary information of knowledge to
the doctor, enables him to act with perfect definiteness
and to trace the action of his drugs. Think how
different all medical science would be if the
doctor had that clairvoyant vision, and if what
is now held only by a few were generally spread
amongst them, so that they might diagnose with
certainty and trace the action of every remedy
with the precision that comes from sight. So
with chemistry : how much more might the chemist
do than he can to-day if his eyes were opened ;
how much more if he could trace all the stages
of the combination of his materials, if he could
make his compounds by vision instead of very
often by guess-work, waiting for the result of
an experiment before he is sure of the result
coming about. How much of accident might be
avoided, how much might this knowledge quicken
the progress of science. A hint is given how
such progress can be made in an article that can be
found in the November (1895) number of Lucifer.
You will see there how the limits of knowledge
will enlarge, when the mind has made manageable
its vehicle upon the astral plane. And so with
psychology : when men shall communicate with
each other by thought instead of by the slow
methods of material science, how thought will
speed from brain to brain, communicating ideas
148 THE PATH OP DISC1PLESHIP
without the clumsy processes that we use to-day.
You will see at once what that means to
humanity from the mere standpoint of this lower
world. It means that separation will be a thing
of the past; no mountain or sea will he able to
divide man from man, friend from friend, relative
from relative. It means that when men have
conquered this region of nature they will be able to
communicate with each other, mind with mind, no
matter where they may travel, no matter in what
land they may dwell; for to the mind there are no
limitations of space and time as there are in the
lower world. When man has perfected his astral
vehicle he will always be within reach of those he
loves, and separation will have lost its pain, as
death also will have lost its power to divide. Take
the life of man as it is to-day, take the life of nations
as it is lived in the present, and you know that
death and separation are two of the great sorrows
that oppress humanity. Both of these will have
lost their chief wounding power when man has
taken this great step forward; both these will have
lost their power to divide when man has reached
that higher stage. That which only disciples have
to-day shall then be shared by the majority ; and
how much fairer will be the lower life of man
when these influences are swept away from disturb-
ing him.
So also, of course, with philosophy, with its then
METHODS OP FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 149
keener knowledge of the possibilities of matter and
its then keener insight into the realities of life. So
too with the writing of history, when all history
shall be written from the akashic records and not
in order to gratify the passions of a political party,
or to support some theory of human growth, or to
strengthen some hypothesis of scientific imagination.
All history lies in the akasha; its records are there
imperishable and indestructible ; not one act of
humanity that is past but has its writing there ;
not one fact of human history that is not written
there for the eyes that are able to see. The time
will come when all history will be written from
that, instead of in the ignorant way that it is
written now, and men when they want to know
the past will look back into the imperishable records
and use them for swifter development, utilising
past experience to promote a swifter growth of
humanity.
And what art will be when these new powers
come within the reach of man, only those perhaps
can estimate who to some extent use them now.
Possibilities of new forms beautiful beyond expres-
sion, of colors dazzling beyond all imagination,
colors unknown in the physical world that take
existence in the subtler matter of the astral plane
— colors that none can describe because a color
that is not known cannot be understood by verbal
description. All those will come within the region of
150 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESH1P
art,and all marvellous possibilities of the subtler senses.
And what of will and power ? Then divine King-
ship will return to earth j then men will take their
places in society according to the stage of develop-
ment that they have reached, and not according
to mere guess-work as they do to-day. All men
will be able to see what they themselves and
others are, for, printed on each man's aura, visible
to all men's sight, will be his mental attributes and
moral capacities, and therefore the place in human
society that he is best fitted to take. Then we shall
find young men trained for work for which their
capacities fit them, for which their powers give
possibility of achievement ; there will not be the
discontent there is to-day, for discontent arises
out of faculties that are frustrated in their
accomplishment and from a sense of injustice that
works in the mind of men when they feel that they
have powers and no opportunity of showing them,
when they feel that they have capacities that they
are not able to expand. If they were wise they
would know, of course, that their circumstances
were karmic. But now we are dealing with the
masses, and not with the more thoughtful indi-
viduals. For them discontent will be impossible
when each man is in the place for which his
visible faculties fit him, and so there will be again
a really orderly society. Then also we shall know
better how to deal with the lower types of human-
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 151
ity. We shall not punish our criminals but cure
them; we shall not slay them but educate them.
We shall be able to see the very point at which
help is needed; and there will be wisdom to re-
form instead of anger to punish. Not only will
society change by thus woi'king on the very natures
of men, but all the outside world will also change
its appearance; all the animal world will come
under the moulding power of man. He will no
longer be a tyrant and oppressor as he is now ;
but he will be a helper and educator and teacher
of the lower animal world. He will do what he
was meant to do — be the helper and the trainer
of the brute, and not its ill-user and its oppressor,
as he so largely is to-day. I need not say that
all forms of cruelty will gradually fade away; no
longer will animal blood stain the earth as it
stains it so deeply now; no longer will animals
fly from man with dread and horror, knowing
him as enemy instead of recognising him as friend ;
for we shall be passing onwards towards a golden
age, when all living things shall love instead of
hate.
I have given you what seems a fairy tale,
but it is only the next stage of man's growth,
it is only the result of the conquest of the
astral plane, of that which is next to the
physical. What shall it be when man rises still
higher, and occupies in full and waking con-
152 THE PATH OP DISCIPLESHIP
sciousness the manasic or mental plane ? I can
only take one or two of the points and show you
how the expanding consciousness will triumph.
If in those far-off days there should be an orator
and an audience, how different then would be the
oratory and how different would be the effect
on the people. Instead of their hearing words,
articulate sounds that reach the ears, and convey
so imperfectly and inadequately but a small por-
tion of the thought, they would see thought as
it really is; thought springing out before their
eyes radiant in color, beautiful in sound, exquisite
in shape, and they would be spoken to as it were
in music, they would be spoken to in color and
in form, until the whole hall would be full
of perfect music and perfect color and perfect
shapes. For that is the oratory of the future
when men have conquered that higher plane of
consciousness and of life. Do you think I dream ?
I tell you there are those to-day who can go
to that plane of consciousness and know it and
feel it and see it, who are behind the veils
that blind the majority and shut out from their
view the wider possibilities of the life. For as
a man standing on the top of a tower can see
all the country round, and as from every part
of the landscape there come to him colors and
sounds and forms, but if he goes down the
tower by the staircase he can only see as much
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 153
of the landscape as a window in the wall may
permit him to see : so is it with the life of man
on the mental plane. Knowledge flows in to him
on every side. Not through the senses as we
know them, but through a single sense that
answers to every vibration that comes from with-
out. And as man goes down into the lower
bodies it is just as though he descended into the
tower ; he can only see as much as the eyes and
the ears and the nose — the little windows in the
wall — enable him to know of the outside world ;
for the senses are only windows, and the wall of
the body shuts us in, and only as we rise above
the body are we able really to see the world
around us in its glory, in its beauty and in its
wonders.
Then again life will be so much mightier. All
the greatest intellectual thoughts come from that
region through the astral. The mightiest mental
agencies for helping man in the physical world to-
day are being sent down from the manasic region
by those who are able to function there. The
disciples of the Masters are there in waking con-
sciousness, working for the helping of man, work-
ing for the raising of humanity ; and every one
who has passed those great portals of Initiation,
about which yesterday I spoke to you, lives in
that region working there for the helping of man.
The disciple may work in the physical world ;
154 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
but he works far more in the higher and more
effective region. There his greatest activities are
carried on ; there his furthest-reaching services
are rendered. And when the majority of men
rise to that region, how numerous will be the
workers, how vast the congregation of the
helpers ! Only a few hundreds are functioning
there to-day for the helping of the millions of
mankind, and the work is imperfectly done
because of the small number of the workers. But
when the bulk of humanity rises there how swift
will be the growth out of the lower stages in
men. Mankind will be elevated with a speed
that we can scarcely imagine to-day.
Higher yet and higher to another region that
man shall conquer; that region where all is one
and man knows himself as one with every
manifested thing ; the region called Turiya, which
man shall occupy ere the Manvantara closes, that
region which is now open to the waking con-
sciousness only in the last stage of discipleship
that I spoke to you about yesterday; into this
the Seventh .Race of men shall climb and this
shall occupy. In that extended consciousness there
is no separation that divides man from man ; each
knows himself to be one with others ; feels as
they feel, thinks as they think, knows as they
know — a consciousness that stretches out to em-
brace myriads ; and then the Brotherhood of man
METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE ETC. 155
becomes an accomplished fact. There the essence
of things is seen, and not only the appearances ;
there realities are seen, and not only phenomena.
The one Self is recognised that lives in all ;
hatred is for evermore impossible to the man who
knows.
And above that still one step further, that no
words of mine can image, that no phrase of
mine can represent, that which the Sages have
spoken of as Nirvana, which they have tried to
explain and have failed, because human language
is inadequate to the task, and from their efforts
to impart their own knowledge only misunder-
standing has resulted. It is consciousness so
great that it is unimaginable ; it is consciousness
embracing the whole universe and therefore seems
as unconsciousness to men's limited apprehension ;
but I tell you that the life of Nirvana, the life
of the mighty Ones that have attained it, is a
consciousness beside which our consciousness is as
that of the stone, in the limitations that bind it,
in the blindness that darkens it, and in the in-
capacity of its methods. There is life there
beyond all dreams of living, activity there beyond
all possibilities of our thinking, life which is one
and yet that spreads itself forth in manifested
activities, where the Logos is the manifested
Light, the beams whereof shine out through all
regions of the world. That too is man's goal for
156 THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
this Manvantara, that too he shall know when
the Seventh Race has run its course; and the
first fruits of our humanity who know it now
shall find Themselves surrounded by countless myri-
ads who then shall know it. Then the Life of the
Logos for untold periods, then the perfect reflex-
ion of the Logos in Those who have grown into
His image and likeness, until a new universe is
to be born, until a new Kosmos is to come into
activity. And These, in Their turn a Logos, shall
build a new universe, shall train a new humanity.
Such is the future that awaits us ; such the glory to
be revealed.
INDEX
Action and Union, H
„ as a sacrifice, 18
„ stages of, 40
Anagamin, 107
Ancestors, sacrifice to, 20
Anger, higher, impersonal,
31, 32, 33
Art, 135
in the future, 149
Aruparaga, life without
form, HI
Ariipa world, 82
Aryan Race and its Di-
vine Rulers, 9
Aryan Race, the, 10
Asekha adept, 112
Atlantis civilisation, 127
destruction, 129
Aura, 144
Avidya, 111
Blavatsky, H. P. 114
Brahmana, ideal of, 10
Brahmana to-day, 25
Brahmana's threefold
thread, 69
Buddha, Lord, 92
Castes, four great, 24
Causal body, formation
of, 124
Character, 71, 74
Chela, accepted, 90
,, probationary, 77
Chelaship, 76
Chemistry of the future, 147
Circumstances and pro-
bationary pupil, 87
Communal duties, 24
Compassion, 70
Concentration, 63
Conduct, regulation of, 81
Confidence, 89
Conscience, voice of, 60
Consciousness, 59
,, higher and lower, 67
stages of expand-
ing, 121
„ second vehicle, 137
Control of thought, 56
Covetousness, 35
Crimes, 141
Criminals, 151
Dama, Control of the
senses and the body, 81
Dawning manifestation
of the God in man, 6
Desire, 41, 42
Devas, Sacrifice to, 18
19
Dharma, 24, 25
„ Kshattriya, 26, 27
Difficulties 86
on the Path, 87
Discipleship, 45, 76
„ means of, 57
,, conditions of, 57
„ path of, 49
Discoveries, scientific, 142
Discrimination, 78
Divine properties, 86
Doctor of the f uture, 146
Doubt,
99
158
THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
Duty of the individual in
the world, 24
Duty , limitations of, 24
„ threefold cord, 69
Education, 143
Endurance, 82
Energies, three, 11
Essence, elemental, 119
Evolution, course of,
meaning, object, 3
Evolution, course of, 118
„ a bird's eye- view
of, 115
„ of humanity, 6
Failure of the realisation
of the divine ideal, 9
Family duties, 24
Fetters, last five, 110
Fortitude, 71
Foui'th-Race, civilisation 8
Functions of gunas, 13
Functions of tamas 13
Goal to be attained, 7
Goal we are seeking, 39
Goal of humanity, 112
Greed, 35
Gunas, the, 11
Gunas, three, 12,13
Habit, 64
Hamsa, 107
Higher teaching bear-
ing on lives of men, 2
His Laws, 9
Human progress, stages
of, 75
Idealism, 135
India of the past, 9
India, 103
Indifference, 79
Individuality, 53, 57
Individual, 59
,, soul of man, 58
Inhabitants, 118
Intelligences, kosmic , 19
Initiate, 47,97
Initiation, true, 46
Initiates, 48
Initiations, 46, 91
, four, 77
Initiation, meanings of, 93
„ note of, 93
„ first, 95
,, mark of the first, 96
„ second, 104
„ third, 107
„ fourth 110
,, later, 46
„ Temple of, 47
Initiator, Great 46, 93
JlVANMUKTAS, 99
Jivanmukta, 112, 113
Jivanmukti, 95
Kamaraga, 107
Karana Sharlra, forma-
tion of causal body, 124
Karana sharlra, 125
Karmic debt, 88
Karma, 86, 99
Karma Recorders, 86
Karma- Yoga, fitted for the
men of the world, 10
„ -Yoga, Scriptures of,
12
„ -Yoga, 12, 15, 18, 31,
32, 38, 40.
INDEX
159
Key to the riddle of the
five and the seven, 123
Kingship, divine, in the
future, 150
Kosmic law, great sweep
of, 128
Kosmos, seven stages of
the, 122
Knowledge and devotion 91
Knowledge, 112
,, key of, 93
,, saci'ifice of, 21
Kshattriya, 26, 27
Kuydalinx, living fire, 10-1
Kutichaka, 103
Law, 84
in Universal World, 6
Lesson, eternal, for men
who are living in the
world, 12
Liberation, 43, 44
Life after Initiation, 94
Love, 33
„ aspect, 131
,, highest grows out
of Karma- Yoga, 35
,, ultimate purifica-
tion of, 53
Man of concentrated
thought, 64,
Man, object of 85
„ past, present, fu-
ture, 117
Mana, 111
Manas Masters 60
Manasaputras, sons of
mind, 123
Masters of compassion, 113,
„ behind the T. S. 114
Materialism, 135
Meditation, 17, 61, 64, 65,
66, 74
, devotional, intel-
lectual, 64
, intellectual side
of, 68
, Practice of 72
Men, sacrifice to, 21
, divine, 99
Mental attributes, 80
Mind, control of, 49, 50,
62, 74
„ the, 59, 60
,, and thoughts, 54
„ training, 60
„ growth of, 65
„ working of, in the
future, 140
Moral nature and know-
ledge, 143
Mumuksha desire for
emancipation, 89
Mysteries, great, 92
National duties, 24
Newspaper reading, 62
Nirvana, 121
Orator of the future, 152
Oratory, 152
Paramahamsa, 110
Parivrajaka, 95
Path, end of the, 38
„ first steps of the 39
„ of Discipleship, 49
„ probationary, the,
76, 77, 85, 86
„ proper, the 76, 91
„ on the, 86
160
THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP
Paths before a Master, 113
Patigha, 108
Personal self, illusion
of, 98
Peru, civilisation of, 129
Philosophy in the modern
world, 133
,, of the future, 148
Planes, seven, 117
Possibility of being ru-
ffled by anything- that
may occur, 111
Power, 132, 135
Pride, 111
Probationary trials, 77
Purification of the
body, 29
,, done in the world
of action, 33
Purity, 68
Races, first and second,
123
Race, third, 123, 127
Race, seventh, 154, 156
Rajas, 15
Reality, sense of, 83
Re-birth and desire, 41
Recorders of Karma, 86
Regions, 118
Religious rites and cere-
monies, 17
Religion, 133
in the future 137
Renunciation, great, Path
of, 113
Rites and ceremonies of
religion, 15
Riiparaga, desire for life
in form, 110
Sacrifices, five daily, 18
,, to the Devas, 18
,, to the ancestors, 20
Sakrdagamin, 105
Samadhana, balance, 89
Sannyasi, the, 100, 102
„ true, 101
Science, 134
Scepticism, 138
Second birth, 91
Second portal, three
things ere, 98
Self-control, 50, 51
Separateness, 110
Shama, Control of
mind,
Shatsampatti, six-fold
group of mental quali-
ties, 80
Shradda, 88
Shudra-dharma, 28
Siddhis, 90, 104
Solar system, 118
Soul, pilgrimage of, 126
Srotapatti, 95
Stages, four, 93
Superstition, 1P0
Sushupti, 120
Tamas, function of, 13, 14
Tapas, 17
Teachers, great, 47, 72, 73
Telepathy , 55, 148
Temples of initiation, 47
Theosophy, 133
Thinking, 56
Thought, control of, 56
„ power of, 56
„ conduct and
action of, 82
INDEX
161
Thought creative
power
Universe, the,
4,117
of,
53
Uparati,
82
Thoughts,
140
Vairagya
29
Time at the presenl .
133
Vaishya-dhanna.
28
Titiksha, endurance,
83
Viveka
78
Tolerance.
82, 83
Wanderer, the.
96
Toltec, the,
127
Will,
:>•_'
Training of the Young, 148
Wisdom aspect.
131, 132
Trinity,
130
,, in modern d
iys, 134
Trimurti,
130
Work on H igher |>l
a ne. 154
Truth, '
70
World, Mineral.
120
Turiya,
121
, in the mode
•n, 135
Turlyatita
121
Writing of 11 istor;
f in
Twice -born,
145
the future.
Yoga practice in
154
daily
Union and Action
11
life.
29
,, by Act ion,
11, 38
Yogi,
17. 120
f
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