AN ADEPT COMPARES TWO METHODS
May 15, 2006 07:59 AM
by carlosaveline
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Two Styles, Two Paths?
A MASTER MAKES A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF METHODS
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Dear Friends,
What is the right balance between truthfulness and harmlessness?
Not everything that looks like harmless is so. Not everything that sounds aggressive is truly so.
The dangers of embellishing or “adapting” Truth -- in order to be kind to outer personalities and “social life” -- have been pointed out by an Adept-Teacher in the “Mahatma Letters”. Addressed to Mr. Allan O. Hume, the letter makes a vivid comparison between the practical methods employed by the Adepts of the Eternal Truth and the Jesuits.
The Mahatma writes:
“My dear Sir, we will hardly ever agree in our ideas of things, and even of the value of words. You have once upon a time called us ‘Jesuits’; and, viewing things as you do, perhaps, you were right to a certain extent in so regarding us, since ‘apparently’ our systems of training do not differ much. But it is only externally. As I once said before, ‘they’ know that what they teach is a lie; and ‘we’ know that what we impart is true, the only truth and nothing but the truth. ‘They’ work for the greater power and glory (!) of
‘their’ order; we – for the power and final glory of individuals, of isolated units, of humanity in general, and we are content, nay forced – to leave ‘our’ Order and its chiefs entirely in the shade. They work, and toil, and deceive, for the sake of worldly power in this life; we work and toil, and allow our chelas to be temporarily deceived, to afford them means never to be deceived hereafter, and to see the whole evil of falsity and untruth, not alone in this but in many of their after lives. (...) ‘They’ are trained to deceive; we – to undeceive...” (1)
These are the two ways before us: the easy and the difficult, the wide and the narrow road.
Yet ultimately there is no other path to go but truth. In it we will find the necessary probations and tests.
Best regards, Carlos Cardoso Aveline
NOTE:
(1) “The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett”, T.U.P., Pasadena, 1992, 493 pp., see Letter XXX, pages 231-232. In the Chronological Edition of the “Mahatma Letters” (TPH-Philippines, 1993), please see Letter 74, pp. 222-223.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Back to Top]
Theosophy World:
Dedicated to the Theosophical Philosophy and its Practical Application
