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Glamor - A World Problem - The Causes of Glamor |
Third: This stage of glamor is oft called the Arjuna Experience. Today the world Arjuna is facing the pairs of opposites, just as does the individual disciple, ready - when these pairs have been resolved into a unity - to tread the Path of Discipleship. It might be pointed out that: 1. The masses in all lands are wrestling with the first pair of opposites, that upon the physical plane. When "resolution" has taken place, these masses will step on to the Path of Purification. This is rapidly taking place. It might be added that this is a long and slow process because the consciousness is - in this stage - not the intelligent awareness of the thinking man but the blind consciousness of the physical man, plus the forces of nature themselves. 2.
The average educated citizen in all lands is facing today the Arjuna experience and the
pairs of opposites upon the astral plane. Hence the intense feeling abroad in the world;
hence also the search for illumination, through education, through religion, and through
the many agencies of mental instruction, with the consequent [100] growth of knowledge,
wisdom and right relationships. These people fall normally into two classes: With this stage you are all familiar, and aspirants such as are found in this group of
students need no instruction from me as to the treading of the path out of glamor into
light. The rules are well known: the glamors to which you are susceptible are equally
familiar; the glamors to which humanity is prone are well recognized by you. It remains
but for you to follow the ancient way of Raja Yoga and bring in the mind as a dispelling
agency and thus learn to stand in the "light" between the pairs of opposites,
and through that "light" achieve freedom by treading the noble middle way.
Sometimes, my brothers, I feel that you know so much theoretically but have worked out
[101] relatively so little. I ask myself whether I do not shoulder an unreasonable
responsibility by giving you any more instructions. But I remind myself that I write for
others as well as for you and that my time is short for this particular service. The resolution of these dualities takes place when the soul, the true spiritual man, no longer identifies itself with either of the opposites, but stands free upon this middle way; the disciple then sees the "lighted Way ahead," along which he learns to go without being drawn into the glamorous worlds which stretch on either hand. He travels straight towards his goal. 3. The stage wherein the intelligent thinking man, whether disciple or well-meaning aspirant, or an initiate of the first and second degrees, has to learn to distinguish between the truth and the truths, between knowledge and wisdom, between reality and illusion. When this stage has been passed through it leads to the third initiation, wherein the personality (which is prone to maya, glamor and illusion) stands free. It again experiences a sense of at-one-ment. This is due to the development of the sense of the intuition which puts into the disciple's hand an infallible instrument whereby to discriminate and to discern. His perception is becoming accurate and he stands relatively free from deception and wrong identifications and interpretations. You will have noted how the career of the man has, therefore, proceeded from a crisis of duality to one of a relative unity, only to have that sense of unification disturbed by a renewed recognition of a higher and deeper duality. This duality temporarily produces another cleavage in a man's life, and thus reinitiates a torturing process of bridging or of "occultly healing" [102] this break in the continuity of the spiritual consciousness. I would here remind you that this sense of peace or perception of cleavage is in itself an illusion and of the nature of glamor, and is based upon the illusory sense of identification with that which is not the self, or soul. The entire problem can be solved if the shift of the consciousness is away from identification with the lower forms of experience into that of identification, with the real and true man. |
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