Introduction to Hermetic Thought, part 5 - Some Light On The Path, part 3

Dear Unknown Friend, this episode will be our conclusion of the essay “Some Light On The Path.” For those just discovering our work, please watch parts one and two of “Some Light on the Path”, which you will find on our channel as episodes three and four.

Magus Incognito reads:
The occultist is the happiest of men, for he has ceased to fear—he knows that there is nothing to be afraid of. And he has outgrown many of the superstitions of the race, which keep many people in torment. He has left Hate and Malice behind him, and has allowed Love to take their vacant places, and he must, necessarily, be happier by reason of the change.

He has outgrown the idea of an angry Deity laying traps in which to enmesh him—he has long since learned to smile at the childish tale of the devil with cloven hoofs and horns, breathing fire and brimstone, and keeping a bottomless pit into which one will be plunged if he should happen to forget to say his prayers, or if he should happen to smile at God’s beautiful earth, some fine Sunday, instead of drowsing away an hour listening to some long‑drawn‑out theological sermon.

He has learned that he is a Child of God, destined for great things, and that Deity is as a loving Father (yes, and Mother) rather than as a cruel taskmaster. He realizes that he has arrived at the age of maturity, and that his destiny rests to some extent upon himself. The occultist is necessarily an optimist—he sees that all things are working together for good—that life is on the path of attainment—and that Love is over, above, and in all. These things the occultist learns as he progresses—and he is Happy. Happier than “those who live for happiness.”

“Seek in the heart the source of evil, and expunge it. It lives fruitfully in the heart of the devoted disciple, as well as in the heart of the man of desire. Only the strong can kill it out. The weak must wait for its growth, its fruition, its death. And it is a plant that lives and increases throughout the ages. It flowers when the man has accumulated unto himself innumerable existences. He who will enter upon the path of power must tear this thing out of his heart. And then the heart will bleed, and the whole life of the man seem to be utterly dissolved.

This ordeal must be endured; it may come at the first step of the perilous ladder which leads to the path of life; it may not come until the last. But, O disciple, remember that it has to be endured, and fasten the energies of your soul upon the task. Live neither in the present nor the future, but in the eternal. This giant weed cannot flower there; this blot upon existence is wiped out by the very atmosphere of eternal thought.”

The above admonition is a summing up of the first three precepts, as explained by the fourth one. It bids the student seek out in his heart the relative idea of life and cast it from him. This relative idea of life carries with it the selfish part of our nature—that part of us which causes us to regard ourselves as better than our brother—as separate from our fellow‑beings—as having no connection with all of life. It is the idea of the lower part of our mind—our merely refined animalism.

Those who have carefully studied our former course will understand that this part of our mind is the brute side of us—the side of us which is the seat of the appetites, passions, desires of a low order, and emotions of the lower plane. These things are not evil of themselves, but they belong to the lower stages of life—the animal stage—the stage from which we have passed (or are now passing) to the stage of the Man existence. But these tendencies were long ages in forming, and are deeply embedded in our nature, and it requires the most heroic efforts to dislodge them—and the only way to dislodge them is to replace them by higher mental states. Right here, let us call your attention to a well established principle of occult training, and yet one that is seldom mentioned in teachings on the subject.

... On the plane of the eternal, there cannot be such a thing as selfish pride—understanding has forever wiped it out—“this giant weed cannot flower there; this blot upon existence is wiped out by the very atmosphere of eternal thought.”

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