Light on the Path

by Mabel Collins

Cardinal Rule 3b

"Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters,
it must have lost its power to wound"

Contents List:

Sceptics
Knowledge and Order
Personal Surrender
Abandon "Rights"
Humility

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Cover of Book 2
Ardue Library
Ardue Site Plan

Those who give a merely passing and superficial attention to the subject of Occultism — and their name is legion — constantly enquire why, if Adepts in life exist, they do not appear in the world and show their power. That the chief body of these wise ones should be understood to dwell beyond the fastnesses of the Himalayas appears to be a sufficient proof that they are only figures of straw. Otherwise why place them so far off?

Unfortunately, Nature has done this and not personal choice or arrangement. There are certain spots on the earth where the advance of "civilization" is unfelt and the nineteenth-century fever is kept at bay. In these favoured places there is always time, always opportunity, for the realities of life; they are not crowded out by the doings of an inchoate, money-loving, pleasure-seeking society. While there are Adepts upon the earth, the earth must preserve to them places of seclusion. This is a fact in Nature which is only an external expression of a profound fact in supernature.

Knowledge and Order

The demand of the neophyte remains unheard until the voice in which it is uttered has lost its power to wound. This is because the divine-astral life is a place in which order reigns, just as it does in natural life. [Note: Of course every occultist knows by reading Eliphas Lévi and other authors that the "astral" plane is a plane of unequalised forces, and that a state of confusion necessarily prevails. But this does not apply to the "divine astral" plane, which is a plane where wisdom, and therefore order, prevails. — MC] There is, of course, always the centre and the circumference as there is in Nature. Close to the central heart of life, on any plane, there is knowledge; there order reigns completely; and chaos makes dim and confused the outer margin of the circle. In fact, life in every form bears a more or less strong resemblance to a philosophic school. There are always the devotees of knowledge who forget their own lives in their pursuit of it; there are always the flippant crowd who come and go. Of such, Epictetus said that it was as easy to teach them philosophy as to eat custard with a fork.

The same state exists in the superastral life; and the Adept has an even deeper and more profound seclusion there in which to dwell. This place of retreat is so safe, so sheltered, that no sound which has discord in it can reach his ears. Why should this be, will be asked at once, if he be a being of such great powers as [claimed by — MC] those who believe in his existence?

The answer seems very apparent. He serves humanity and identifies himself with the whole world: he is ready to make vicarious sacrifice for it at any moment — by living not by dying for it.

Why should he not die for it? Because he is part of the great whole, and one of the most valuable parts of it. Because he lives under laws of order which he does not desire to break. His life is not his own, but that of the forces which work behind him. He is the flower of humanity, the bloom which contains the divine seed. He is, in his own person, a treasure of the universal Nature, which is guarded and made safe in order that the fruition shall be perfected.

It is only at definite periods of the world's history that he is allowed to go among the herd of men as their redeemer. But for those who have the power to separate themselves from this herd, he is always at hand. And for those who are strong enough to conquer the vices of the personal human nature, as set forth in these four rules, he is consciously at hand, easily recognized, ready to answer.

Personal Surrender

But this conquering of self implies a destruction of qualities which most men regard as not only indestructible but desirable. The "power to wound" includes much that men value, not only in themselves but in others. The instinct of self-preservation is part of it; the idea that one has any right or rights, either as citizen, or man, or individual; the pleasant consciousness of self-respect and virtue.

These are hard sayings to many, yet they are true. For these words that I am writing now, and those which I have written on this subject, are not in any sense my own. They are drawn from the Lodge of the Great Brotherhood, which was once the secret splendour of Egypt. These rules written in its ante-chamber were the same as those now written in the ante-chamber of existing schools.

Through all time the wise men have lived apart from the mass. And even when some temporary purpose or object induces one of them to come into the midst of human life, his seclusion and safety are preserved as completely as ever. It is part of his inheritance, part of his position. He has an actual title to it, and can no more put it aside than the Duke of Westminster can say he does not choose to be the Duke of Westminster.

In the various great cities of the world an Adept lives for a while from time to time, or perhaps only passes through; but all are occasionally aided by the actual power and presence of one of these men. Here in London, as in Paris and St Petersburg, there are men high in development. But they are known as mystics only by those who have the power to recognize: the power given by the conquering of self. Otherwise how could they exist, even for an hour, in such a mental and psychic atmosphere as is created by the confusion and disorder of a city? Unless protected and made safe, their own growth would be interfered with, their work injured.

The neophyte may meet an Adept in the flesh, may live in the same house with him, and yet be unable to recognize him and unable to make his own voice heard by him. For no nearness in space, no closeness of relations, no daily intimacy, can do away with the inexorable laws which give the Adept his seclusion. No voice penetrates to his inner hearing till it has become a divine voice, a voice which gives no utterance to the cries of self. Any lesser appeal would be as useless, as much a waste of energy and power, as for mere children who are learning their alphabet to be taught it by professor of philology. Until a man has become, in heart and spirit, a disciple, he has no existence for those who are teachers of disciples. And he becomes this by one method only — the surrender of his personal humanity.

For the voice to have lost the power to wound, a man must have reached that point where he sees himself only as one of the vast multitudes that live; one of the sands washed hither and thither by the sea of vibratory existence.

It is said that every grain of sand in the ocean bed does, in its turn, get washed up on the shore and lie for a moment in the sunshine. So with human beings; they are driven hither and thither by a great force and each, in his turn, finds the sun-rays on him.

When a man is able to regard his own life as part of a whole like this, he will no longer struggle in order to obtain anything for himself. This is the surrender of personal rights. The ordinary man expects, not to take equal fortunes with the rest of the world, but in some points about which he cares, to fare better than the others. The disciple does not expect this. Therefore, though he be like Epictetus, a chained slave, he has no word to say about it. He knows that the wheel of life turns ceaselessly.

Burne Jones has shown it, in his marvellous picture; the wheel turns, and on it are bound the rich and the poor, the great and the small; each has his moment of good fortune when the wheel brings him uppermost: the king rises and falls, the poet is feted and forgotten, the slave is happy and afterwards discarded. Each in his turn is crushed as the wheel turns on. The disciple knows that this is so, and though it is his duty to make the utmost of the life that is his, he neither complains of it nor is elated by it, not does he complain against the better fortune of others. All alike, as he well knows, are but learning a lesson; and he smiles at the socialist and the reformer who endeavour by sheer force to rearrange circumstances which arise out of the forces of human nature itself. This is but kicking against the pricks, a waste of life and energy.

In realising this, a man surrenders his imagined individual rights, of whatever sort. That takes away one keen sting which is common to all ordinary men.

Abandon "Rights"

When the disciple has fully recognized that the very thought of individual rights is only the outcome of the venomous quality in himself, that it is the hiss of the snake of self which poisons with its sting his own life and the lives of those about him, then he is ready to take part in a yearly ceremony which is open to all neophytes who are prepared for it. All weapons of defence and offence are given up; all weapons of mind and heart and brain and spirit. Never again can another man be regarded as a person who can be criticized or condemned; never again can the neophyte raise his voice in self-defence or excuse. From that ceremony he returns into the world as helpless, as unprotected, as a new-born child. That, indeed, is what he is. He has begun to be born again on to the higher plane of life, that breezy and well-lit plateau whence the eyes see intelligently and regard the world with a new insight.

Humility

I have said, a little way back, that after parting with the sense of individual rights, the disciple must part also with the sense of self-respect and of virtue. This may sound a terrible doctrine; yet all occultists know well that it is not a doctrine, but a fact. He who thinks himself holier than another, he who has any pride in his exemption from vice or folly, he who believes himself wise or in any way superior to his fellow-men, is incapable of discipleship. A man must become as a little child before he can enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Virtue and wisdom are sublime things; but if they create in the mind of man pride and a consciousness of separateness from the rest of humanity, then they are only the snake of self reappearing in a finer form. At any moment he may put on a grosser shape and sting as fiercely as when he inspired the actions of a murderer who kills for gain or hatred, or a politician who sacrifices the mass for his own or his party's interests.

In fact, to have lost the power to wound implies that the snake is not only scotched, but killed. When it is merely stupefied or lulled to sleep it awakens again; the disciple uses his knowledge and power for his own ends and is a pupil of the many masters of the black art, for the road to destruction is very broad and easy and the way can be found blindfold. That it is the way to destruction is evident, for when a man begins to live for self he narrows his horizon steadily till at last the fierce driving inwards leaves him but the space of a pin's head to dwell in. We have all seen this phenomenon occur in ordinary life. A man who becomes selfish isolates himself; he grows less interesting and less agreeable to others. The sight is an awful one, and people shrink from a very selfish person at last as from a beast of prey. How much more awful is it when it occurs on a more advanced plane of life with the added powers of knowledge and through the greater sweep of successive incarnations!

Therefore I say, pause and think well upon the threshold. For if the demand of the neophyte is made without the complete purification, it will not penetrate the seclusion of the divine Adept, but will evoke the terrible forces which attend upon the black side of our human nature.