OCCULT POWER – THE FIRST STEPS
“Know
Yourself” is an ancient maxim which will remain valid as long as any form of
being possesses an individual brain. It is not the only achievement necessary
but it is the first and one of the most difficult.
At an
early stage, the pupil is asked to draw up a page with two columns: on one
column he/she is to list faults or character defects, in the other column good
qualities. And when the pupil looks back at this early effort, months or years
later, how much will have changed? Or how much will he think has changed?
The ego is one of the first
problems to be encountered and defined. The ego has nothing to do with taking
normal care of one’s appearance, standard of work or performance in other
respects. The ego does not relate to what you think of yourself; it is
concerned about what other people think of you and the ego is what makes you
concerned with other people’s opinions. This is the reason for the widely-known
(and true) saying “an Adept has no ego”. An Adept cannot waste his time
pleasing other people; he has advanced beyond the rules of convention. This
does not imply that he deliberately sets out to offend. Anyone who has to live
and work in the world must, to some extent, conform or appear to conform.
Neither should that enforced conformity prove irksome to him. Nothing has the
power to affect him. He does not need followers to reassure him that he is the
greatest. He knows what he is, and he can only spare time for those who are
useful to him and/or those who have the potential for real achievement.
The ego is a dangerous thing to
an Occultist. It can lead him astray from his purpose, so the understanding and
control of the ego is a task which must be accomplished in the early stages of
Occult endeavour. The obliteration of the ego will take place at a much later
stage in one’s development.
Another
aspect of self is the subconscious. This too, is often misunderstood and
misrepresented as an almost automatic gateway to enlightenment. In fact, the
uncontrolled subconscious is a fraud, a phoney which will give you false
information. It is a separate entity, an atavistic and undeveloped section of
the brain which does not wish to be aroused from its lethargy. As long as it
remains in charge, it will feed you false information, use your basic emotions
and desires to control you, anything to delude you into leaving it alone. It
must be recognised and exposed. The subconscious must be mastered, for it has
mastered you since the beginning of your life.
The
control of the subconscious is, like the control of the ego, not a task to be
accomplished in one effort, but is a continuing endeavour throughout one’s
Occult development. Start by recognising it; evaluate its communications and
realise how much of a disadvantage to the host body the subconscious in its
present for is.
The
enterprise is far from easy, yet seekers for wisdom have always existed. Those
who attempt to break out from the comfortable lethargy of the subconscious
mind’s rule. Describing the situation of those who have not comprehended their
thraldom, the cliché is “blissful ignorance”. Blissful because one is never
aware of the ignorance. To win the war against the subconscious means that you
will never be blissful again.
From the Dark Lily Journal No 2, Society of Dark Lily
(London 1987).