DIALOGUE BETWEEN ADEPT AND PUPIL
Part 5
PUPIL: I was writing an article
about events in my life and I remember two occasions in particular when I
clairvoyantly saw an accident. In one instance, I did not warn the victim, and
the accident took place, in the other instance I did warn the victim, she was
impressed by my warning and she promised to be careful, but the accident still
happened.
MASTER: To change the course of
events, which included the accident you had foreseen, you would have had to
change thousands of events before that, and such action cannot be justified.
You must always justify what you do, not to anyone else but to yourself and the
overall balance of things.
PUPIL:
So a clairvoyant does not have a duty to warn people?
MASTER: No. You should not
frighten people unnecessarily. As I told you, I have to guard against receiving
clairvoyant information, but occasionally my guard slips and, some time ago, I
inadvertently realised that one of my employees would die within an unnaturally
short space of time. Naturally I said nothing, but, as she was a useful member
of staff, I hired an assistant for her. This pleased her, as it increased her
status within the company, and the assistant was able to take over her job when
the woman died. Generally you should never tell anyone of your insights unless
they have asked you to use your clairvoyant abilities on their behalf, and,
even then, be careful what you say. People ask advice and then blame the
advisor for their failure. You do not have a duty to tell the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, and remember that a clairvoyant’s warning has never
enabled anyone to avoid disaster.
In
olden times, when, on the eve of a battle, the king asked his magician who is
going to win, the sensible magician would reply ‘that is up to you’. If he said
‘you will win’, his side would probably lose though overconfidence, if he said
‘the enemy will win’, the battle would be lost before it started.
For a
clairvoyant to tell people anything serves absolutely no useful purpose.
PUPIL:
Another question about this matter of responsibility. When I moved house
recently. I remarked to you that I hoped I wasn’t leaving an atmosphere to
trouble the next owners. Because I went through hell in that house: I took my
first steps on the Path, I experienced the Dark Night of the Soul. I didn’t
want any spooks of my creation bothering the couple who bought the house. But
you said it didn’t matter. Why?
MASTER: It is not your problem.
Why burden yourself with other people? A house gains experience as it gets
older, like people. That house had a task to perform and you had outgrown it.
PUPIL: I
didn’t know those people, so why should I wish them any harm?
MASTER: They are not your
responsibility.
PUPIL: I
know that they are not, but surely any disturbance – for want of a
better word – that I may have caused to be in that house is my responsibility.
MASTER: It should not concern
you. You cannot, at your present stage, elect to care for others, any more than
you can try to change the policies of the world. Mankind’s present actions,
such as its kindergarten reasons for going to war, tell you much about its
potential or lack of it for the future. I am not saying that war should never
take place, sometimes it is necessary. But men invented machine guns and bombs
so they didn’t have to think any harder about it. By those inventions they
chose crudity and everyone has got to pay for that and will go on paying, far
into the future.
PUPIL:
Do you mean that some weapons of war are crude and some are not? Is this
because they kill indiscriminately? But that is the way that the science of war
would inevitably go. Larger and more powerful weapons. The crudity is killing
at all, for the sort of reasons wars are about. The people on the battlefield are
not concerned about ideologies or territories, they are only there because they
are too stupid to do otherwise. And, when there has been sufficient
bloodletting, one side wins and the other side loses.
The
crudity is war, not the weapons that are used in it. A wasteful and impractical
means of settling a dispute. They should have chosen more intelligent means of
settling their differences.
MASTER: You are looking at the
specifics, at the machine-guns and bombs. The science of war is going to invent
machine guns, but who is going to use them? People went to war before such
weapons existed. The decision to use them reflects only on man, not on any of
his sciences.
At
the turn of the century, a Japanese asked an American why, if they were a
peaceful nation, were their warship bigger than their fishing vessels. Crudity
is choosing to use machine guns, assuming that war is inevitable, and the
inevitability of war comes down to the inadequacies of the leaders of the
warring factions. The important thing is not the fact that they used machine
guns, it is that they chose crudity.
Nowadays, for the first time,
there is the possibility of our getting involved in war because of electronic
failure, but, by and large, it is the people who bring out the machine guns and
choose crudity. It does not say a lot for that war, but it says a lot for
mankind. Mankind is still thinking crude but effective. He find himself in the
position of using weapons which he has already invented because weapons are
still invented in times of peace. Ideally, when people were at a stage when
they invented weapons, someone must have thought why should I invent this, I
can’t see us needing it, so he went on to invent something else. It was
possible, at one stage, to have nuclear energy without bombs, but they couldn’t
leave it alone. A right-thinking mankind would have realised that nuclear
energy was very useful, but bombs would not have come into their heads. Now
warheads outnumber power stations by thousands to one. Most of the world is
preoccupied with the business of living, but they spend a lot of time devising
methods of shortening someone else’s life, partly because they are taught that
this is the only life they have, but in reality life is very cheap. How can it
be other when people invent machine guns, weapons that will kill more than one
at a time. Previously skill was needed; the victorious army had more skilled
men in it. Now, more people than necessary get killed.
We
are talking about warfare and weapons. We are talking about the psychological
and emotional development or lack of it that still pushes man towards the
crude. Guns are just a manifestation of the personality and psychological failings.
If two leaders decide that war is
inevitable, they should fight each other, but they will not do that, as long as
they can kill others. That is asking people to be more responsible than they
are capable of. A few hundred years ago, champions were used, and that also is
passing the buck, but better than using armies and getting thousands killed. As
time goes on, whenever there is a conflict, more and more non-combatants get
killed. Centuries ago, when two armies met on the battlefield, only soldiers
were killed. There might have been a spin-off if one of the armies had to
winter nearby, but that cannot be compared with an air-raid on a civilian
population. Now we talk of acceptable and unacceptable numbers of civilian
casualties, we expect civilians to die in warfare.
PUPIL:
You mentioned earlier that asking questions reduces the risk of taking a
stance. Can you explain further why is it so important to avoid taking a stance
on anything?
MASTER: To an Adept, all is one.
Adopting any stance means that you are entering into a war that you do not
need. Let other people expend their energy in taking stances, that is how you
can manipulate them if, for some reason, it is necessary to do so.
You cannot alter your feelings;
they are a part of your personality. You must not suppress them, because
without feelings, you cannot experience. You must recognise your feelings,
evaluate them, and ensure that they have no effect on you. The feelings still
exist, but they must not compel you to behave in a certain way.
One
stance is enough, but, in a court of law, there are two. There are enough rules
built into the system to protect them. They need this protection; both sides
are vulnerable because of their stance.
PUPIL: I
can see how taking a stance affects the reasoning. As you pointed out, in an
article which I was writing for another mag, I was writing about something that
is important to me and on that basis I had assumed that it was important to
everyone else. I didn’t realise until you pointed it out, that I had taken a
stance. I thought I was aware of stances and why one should avoid them, but I
had done it in this case without realising.
MASTER:
Why do you write? You write so that someone reads it. In our sphere, the mind
of the person who reads your article must go into the same gear as yours when
you wrote it. You are writing to show people that there is another way of
looking at things. Failure is guaranteed if you write from a stance. Make
people question their values, their judgements, their stances, their reasons
for their stance. When you pick up a pen or switch on a word-processor, you are
taking on a responsibility. People will read what you write; you are showing
them a bit of your mind.
And
you, with your talent for iconoclasm, the exposing of Occult myths: why do you
enjoy that type of writing?
PUPIL:
To show people how silly they are in accepting the old legends at face value;
to show how clever I am in discovering the falsity. I used to get very
disappointed when no-one disagreed with me. But I haven’t done much of that
kind of writing recently. It was amusing at the time, but I seem to have gone
beyond that now. You talk of isolation from the world – I never thought I would
feel isolated from other Occultists, but I see everything so differently now.
So many of the standard Occult beliefs are incorrect, but I can’t tell them
that. Even if they believed me – which they probably wouldn’t – they would need
some other belief to put in its place. They wouldn’t be able to accept that
it’s all within themselves, they couldn’t comprehend such vast potential, they
would see it as a kind of nothingness because they need the crutch of
externalised gods and goddesses, the thought that something is organising the
world in its neat little rotations of reincarnation and karma and spiritual
progress.
I can
usually put things coherently; people may disagree with me, but at least they
understand what I’m saying. But if I try to discuss reality with anyone, there
is a cut-off point – it varies with the individual, but it comes within the
first few minutes – and beyond that point I might as well say nothing. I’m
talking in a language they don’t understand. So I say nothing. If a friend
tells me about her previous incarnations or her spell-casting, I’ll listen
politely, maybe make suggestions, but I feel completely detached from it. This
has only happened recently. It doesn’t worry me – and maybe this is another
symptom – because it wouldn’t matter if I never saw or heard from those people
again. I like them, I certainly don’t wish them any harm, but they are not of
any importance to me.
Because
you have taught me things which are far beyond ordinary Occultism, that
knowledge has isolated me. I don’t feel any regrets about this, I certainly
don’t feel lonely. I accept that I’m different.
MASTER: It sounds as thought you
have reached the point of no return.
At this the Pupil said “good!”,
then burst into tears, proving that she has a long way to go yet.
From the Dark Lily Journal No 5, Society of Dark Lily
(London 1988).