Theos-Talk Archives (February 2005 Message tt00444)

Here's something that might interest 
some students of Theosophy (quoting from 
Dion Fortune's WHAT IS OCCULTISM?, p26):

<<There comes a time in the experience 
of every student of occult subjects, 
provided he is sufficiently interested 
in them, when the ideas that occupy his 
mind begin to affect him ; and the 
Unseen World of which he has read is 
slowly rising above the horizon of 
consciousness and the subtle is becoming 
tangible. He will find himself in a 
veritable No Man's Land of the mind, and 
he must do one of two things, and do it 
quickly. He must either bolt back into 
his body like a rabbit down its hole, or 
he must press on and open up the higher 
consciousness. But one thing he must not 
do, he must not linger in the land of 
phantasms that is the frontier between 
sub-consciousness and 
superconsciousness, for that way lies 
madness.
When he comes to the gate of the 
higher conscious­ness, however, he will 
be met by the Angel of the Threshold who 
will ask him the age-old question that 
he must answer before he can pass on, 
and the answer to this question is not 
any Shibboleth that admits to a secret 
society, but the very reasonable query 
to be addressed to the stranger who 
knocks at any door, " What is it you 
want ? " and the answer to that question 
will depend, not on the knowledge, but 
on the character of the applicant. If 
rightly answered, the way will be made 
plain for his advancement, and if 
wrongly answered, he will be left to 
find his way back to the earth-plane as 
best he may, and that is neither a very 
pleasant nor a very safe experience.>>

Inasmuchasif such a "Treshold" encounter 
relates to "higher-self involvement," 
then seems to me that the question "What 
is it you want?" might be seen as 
redundant inasmuchasif "higher self" is 
seen as being familiar enough with 
"lower self." I don't know how that 
works, but I'm speculating that that 
question might be seen as symbolic of a 
scenerio where self is seen to become, 
in some sense, "more answerable to 
Self," when some form of 
self-questioning or soul searching might 
be an ongoing/daily process in various 
ways, for better or worse.

Speculatively,
Mauri