Theos-Talk Archives (September 1995 Message tl00994)

Alan:

>> We're also taught of a different "school", which any of us could approach
>> in our hearts and minds, and be admitted based upon our sincere interest
>> in the spiritual. That school does not issue membership cards, and we may
>> never meet a teacher or fellow student. Or if we meet them, we may never
>> know that they belong to it. We can read about it in "The Mahatma Letters"
>> in a general sense, as we read about the requirements of chelaship. And
>> it's something that we join *by changing ourselves*.

>Fascinating. This has been my *experience* and very
>occasionally (very very, O yes!) I have met people who "belong"
>to it. Can you give a Mahatma Letter source reference please?

I don't have "The Mahatma Letters" with me at work today, but the
first quote that comes to mind is the one where they say that if we
but approach their precincts but in thought, we are "on probabation".

Some more stray thoughts on the subject:

When we put off chelaship and the Path as something that only saints do,
and consider it not possible except in the days of Blavatsky, we doing
exactly what the Christians do with saying that the age of miracles was
when Jesus walked the earth, and that miracles cannot happen just as well
in our modern era. When we make the whole process seem too big, too far-removed
from life, too difficult to enaged, we're really saying "sour grapes" for
something we won't take the effort to achieve. And it's really, I'd think,
not that far from our ordinary lives, nor that difficult to begin. The
biggest obstacle is our own unwillingness to try. How do we try? Not by
joining a group and getting a membership card. But by looking within and
searching for what is missing in our lives. We look in ways that are
*qualitatively different* than before, it's not simply that we try harder,
intensify our devotions, study longer hours, or become more severe on ourselves
in any direction. This "membership" is attained by an awakening in our
minds and hearts, and is self-taken.

-- Eldon