Extract From a Private Letter
P. G. N.
The amaryllis - here shown
in three of its
phases - gives us an
illustration to the process of spiritual help
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Editorial Note:
The following text was first published at “The
Theosophist” magazine, India,
September
1884 edition, pages 299-300. At the time, “The
Theosophist” was edited by H.P.
Blavatsky.
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For all men one rule holds good - live the purest and most unselfish life
you possibly can - cultivate alike your mind and heart - detach your mind as
far as possible from worldly pleasures, worldly desires, worldly objects, and
set your heart as undividedly as your strength permits on doing good to all
living things.
If you thus reach, or have in past lives by similar
exertions, reached, a certain stage of spiritual awakenment, you will find
others more advanced from whom you will receive encouragement and some little
help (though in the main each soul has to work out its own road); if you meet
none such, then you know that you have not reached the stage at which such
encouragement is desirable, and you have only to persevere in the right path, quite
sure that in the inexorable sequence of cause and effect that dominates the
universe, you will, if not in this, at least in the next life, reach the
gateway that leads to the higher life. The way may seem long and weary - but
never despair; it
leads to the everlasting condition, and to this sooner or later according to
your own exertions and deserts you will attain - as all men - not utterly destroyed
on the way, and these are few (the time of trial comes later) - do likewise
attain.
Of what I have said before,
let me try to give you an illustration. I am very fond of flowers - to those
who have worked in certain lines, their beauty and fragrance have higher meanings.
I receive a parcel of amaryllis bulbs, destined later to produce some of the
loveliest and most gorgeous blooms known, but when received they look like a set
of dry, brown, scaled coarse onions, not worthy of a second look. Knowing,
however, their innate capacities, I place them carefully in dry earth in pots
and leave them to themselves.
I do not water them, for
the vital principle in them is still dormant and were I to try water out of
season, to endeavour to stimulate them into premature growth, they would rot. So
I leave them to themselves - and weeks and weeks and sometimes months
and months pass thus and no change, no progress, is discernible, though all the
while in their inner tissues, action and reaction are preparing the way for
higher development.
But one day, in one of
them, I discern a tiny green point, pushing its way between the brown scaly
skins that cover the sides of the bulb, and then I know that the period of rest
is over, and that of activity is commencing, and that I may now begin to
water without danger, very sparingly at first, but, as the flower stem rises
and the great buds begin to show out, with generous hands.
So it is with the soul; its
inner actions and reactions must have triumphed over its dormancy, and its
spiritual aspirations must have pushed their way out of the dry earth of
material associations into the clear air of spirituality before the watchers
over the progress of their less advanced brethren, can dare to water them,
however sparingly, with the water of life.
P. G. N.
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On the role
of the esoteric movement in the ethical awakening of mankind during the 21st
century, see the book “The Fire and Light of Theosophical
Literature”, by Carlos Cardoso Aveline.
Published in 2013 by The Aquarian Theosophist, the volume has 255 pages and can be
obtained through Amazon Books.
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