posted June 16, 2007 10:33 AM         

"Most great men and women are not perfectly rounded in their personalities, but are instead people whose one driving enthusiasm is so great it makes their faults seem insignificant."
~ Charles A. Cerami

"A man does not have to be an angel in order to be saint."
~ Albert Schweitzer

MUCH has been said and written on the Qualifications for Discipleship, as they are set down in Eastern Scriptures. They are laid down therein as the ideal according to which the aspirant should try to shape his life, and are intended to help a candidate for discipleship by pointing to the direction in which he should turn his efforts.... As these qualifications have become known in the Western world, they have been used in a somewhat different spirit, as a basis for the criticism of others rather than as rules for self-education.

It has been said that some people “used the bread of life as stones to cast at their enemies”; and the spirit which thus uses information is not uncommon among us....

Our great Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, has suffered much at the hands of those who use the qualifications for discipleship as missiles for attack, instead of as buoys to mark out the channel. It has been asked why a person who smoked, who lost her temper, who was lacking in self-control, should have been a disciple, while many eminently respectable people, with all the family virtues, who never outrage conventionalities, and are models of deportment, are not considered worthy of that title. It may not be useless to try to solve the puzzle...

A judgment which has not all of the facts before it, which knows nothing of the causes from which actions spring, which regards superficial appearances and not underlying motives, is a judgment which is worthless, and, in the eyes of Those who judge with knowledge, discredits the judge rather than the victim of the judgment. Eminently is this true as regards the judgments passed on H. P. Blavatsky, and it may be worth while to consider what is connoted by the words “disciple” and “initiate”, and why she should have held the position of a disciple and an initiate, despite the criticisms showered upon her.

Let us define our terms. A “disciple” is the name given, in the occult schools, to those who, being on the probationary path, are recognised by some Master as attached to Himself. The term asserts a fact, not a particular moral stage, and does not carry with it a necessary implication of the highest moral elevation. This comes out strongly in the traditional story of Jesus and His disciples; they quarreled with each other about precedence, they ran away when their Master was attacked, one of them denied Him with oaths, and later on showed much duplicity. The truth is that discipleship implies a past tie between Master and disciple, and a Master may recognise that tie, growing out of past relationship, with one who has still much to achieve; the disciple may have many and serious faults of character, may by no means - though his face be turned to the Light - have exhausted all the heavy karma of the past, may be facing many a difficulty, fighting on many a battlefield with the legions of the past against him. The word “disciple” does not necessarily imply initiation, nor sainthood; it only asserts a position and a tie - that the person is on the probationary path, and is recognised by a Master as His.

Among the people who occupy that position in the world today are many types. For those who are perplexed regarding them it is well that the law should be recalled, that a man is what he desires and thinks, not what he does. What he desires and thinks shapes his future; what he does is the outcome of his past. Actions are the least important part of a man’s life, from the occult standpoint - a hard doctrine to many, but true.

Certainly there is a karma connected with action; the past evil desire and thought, which are made manifest in an evil act in the present, have had their evil fruit in the shaping of tendencies and character, and the act itself is expiated in the suffering and disrepute it entails; the remaining karma of the action grows out of its effect on others, and this reacts later in unfavourable circumstance. Action, in the wide sense of the term, is composed of desire, thought and activity; the desire generates thought; the thought generates activity; the activity does not generate directly but only indirectly. Hence the man’s desires and thoughts are the most vital elements in the formation of the judgment passed on the man. What he desires, what he thinks, that he is; what he does, that he WAS.

It follows that a man with past heavy karma may, if he become a disciple, expedite the manifestation of that karma, and its fruitage in the outer world may be of actions that do not bring him credit in the eyes of his world. From the occult standpoint such a man is to be helped to the utmost, so that he may be able to pass through the awful strain, the bearing of which successfully means triumph, the succumbing to which means failure.

Moreover, in passing right judgments on actions, not only must we know the actor’s past, in which the roots of the actions are struck, but we must know the immediate past, that which immediately preceded the action. Sometimes a wrong action is done, but it has been preceded by a desperate struggle, in which every ounce of strength has been put forth in resistance, and only after complete exhaustion has the action supervened. From outside we see only the failure, not the struggle. But the struggler has profited by the efforts that preceded the failure; he is the stronger, the nobler, the better, and has developed the forces which will enable him to overcome the difficulty when it next presents itself, perchance even without a struggle. In the eyes of Those who see the whole, and not only a fragment, that man condemned by his fellows as fallen has really risen, for he has won as the fruit of his combat the strength which assures him of victory.

This disciple stands on the probationary path; he is a candidate for initiation. He comes under conditions different from those that surround men in the outer world; he is recognised as pledged to the service of Light, and hence is also recognised as an opponent of the power of Darkness. His joys will be keener, his sufferings sharper than normal. He has called down the fire from heaven; well for him if he shrinks not from its scorching. And well too for him, if, like the martyr at the stake, he can face an unsympathetic world with a serene face, however sharply the fire may burn.

What of the famous qualifications for initiation which he must now seek to make his own? They are not asked for in perfection, but some possession of them there must be ere the portal may swing open to admit him. In the judgment passed on him, which opens or bars the gate­way, the whole man is taken into account. With some, so greatly are other qualities developed, that but a small modicum of those specially demanded weighs down the scale in favor of the disciples. With others, more average in general type, high development of these is demanded. It is, so to speak, a general stature that is expected, and the stature is made up in many ways. A candidate may be of great intelligence, of splendid courage, of rare self-sacrifice, of spot­less purity, but lack somewhat in the special qualifications, though something of them must be present. If he has no sense of the difference between the real and unreal; if he be passionately addicted to the joys of the world; if he have no control over tongue or thought, no endurance, no faith, no liberality, no wish for freedom, he could not enter. The completion of the qualities may be left for the other side, if the beginnings are seen; but the initiate must fill up the full tale, and the more there is lacking the more there is left to be done.

It is not well to minimise the urgency of the demand, for these qualities must be reached some time, and far better now than later. Every weakness that remains in the initiated disciple, who has entered the path, affords a point of vantage to the Dark Powers, who are ever seeking for crevices in the armour of the champions of the Light. No earnestness is too great in urging the uninitiated disciple to acquire these qualities; no effort is too great on his part to compass their achieving. For there is something of pathos in the case of a hero-soul who has “taken the kingdom of heaven by storm” and has to pause to give a life-time to the building up of the lesser perfections which in the past he neglected to acquire.

"Though the mills of God grind slowly
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though He stands and waits with patience
With exactness grinds He all."

The lofty initiate who has left some minor parts of human perfection unbuilt must be born into the world of men to lead a life in which these also shall be perfected. And if you chance to meet such a one in the flesh you would do wisely to learn from his best, rather than to use his worst as an excuse for your own shortcomings, making it a justification for your own faults that you share them with an initiate.

Pre-eminently is this true of the criticisms leveled against H. P. Blavatsky. “She smoked.” But smoking is not the sin against the Holy Ghost. The use of it to depreciate a great teacher is a far worse crime than smoking.

“She had a bad temper.” So have a good many of her critics, without a thousandth part of the excuse she well might have pleaded. Few could bear for a week the strain under which she lived year after year, with the dark forces storming round her, striving to break her down, because the breaking down meant a check to the great spiritual movement which she led. In the position she was bidden to hold the nervous strain and tension were so great, the cruel shafts of criticism and unkindness were rendered so stinging by the subtle craft of the Brothers of the Shadow, that she judged it better at times to relieve the body by an explosion, and to let the jangled nerves express themselves in irritability, than to hold the body in strict subjection and let it break under the strain. At all hazards she had to live, with strained nerves and failing brain, till the hour struck for her release. It is ill done to criticise such a one, who suffered that we might profit.

“She lacked self-control.” Outside sometimes, for the reasons above given, but never inside. Never was she shaken within, however stormy without. It may be said that such a statement will be used as an excuse for ill­-temper in ordinary people. Let them stand where she stood (i.e., become extraordinary people), and then they may fairly claim the same excuse.

H. P. Blavatsky was one of those who are so great, so priceless, that their qualities out­weigh a thousand-fold the temporary imperfections of their nature. Her dauntless courage, her heroic fortitude, her endurance in bearing physical and mental pain, her measureless devotion to the Master whom she served ­with these splendid qualities, united to great psychic capacities, and the strong body with nerves of steel that she laid on the altar of sacrifice, made all else as dust in the balance. Well might her Master joy in such a warrior, even if not free from every imperfection. But where, through lack of effort in past lives, a person has developed no heroism, no great intelligence, little devotion, and but small tendency to self-sacrifice, a strong manifestation of the special qualifications may well be demanded to counterbalance the deficiencies. Man worships the sun as a luminary and not for its spots. In the sunlight of H. P. Blavatsky’s heroic figure, the spots are not the things that catch the eye of wisdom. But these spots do not raise to her level those who are nearly all spots, with little gleams of light. It is ill done in these days of small virtues and small vices to criticise harshly the few great ones who may come into our world.

Often, with St. Catherine of Siena, have I felt that intense love for someone even but a little higher than ourselves is one of the best methods for training ourselves into that lofty love of the Supreme Self which burns up all imperfections as with fire. Hero-worship may have its dangers, but they are less perilous, less obstructive of the spiritual life, than the cold criticism of the self-righteous, directed constantly to depreciation of others. And still I hold with Bruno, the hero-worshipper, that it is better to try greatly and fail, than not to try at all.

- Annie Besant "The Spritual Life"

This makes me think of Kurt Cobain, and more than a few other fascinating, tortured people, whom many in the world have failed to see the glory of, on account of their faults and weaknesses. Who, perceiving the presence and nature of evil so acutely, and so close by, could withstand its assaults even half as well? And, again, I think of people whom I have judged in the recent past for their tempers and failure to remain steadfast in the wisdom of the heart, and I remember the various afflictions they face, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, in the course of this life, and I am brought to a genuine sense of compassion and forgiveness for them. Who, having so much to bear, would not occassionally unburden themselves by dumping their own cross on the shoulder of another, rather than succumb into the dust entirely? So, I hereby renew my pledge to seek the deeper truth, and look more deeply into the lives and hearts of those whom I feel angered by and fit to judge. It may be that no mortal has eyes penetrating enough for such a task, who can see all the weight of past karma which hangs on another person's soul, and causes their human form to stumble in the soul's assent towards the Light.

posted June 16, 2007 06:49 PM         

Yeah, its great.
I'm sad to be almost finished with it.