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Insights from the Masters

A Compilation

John Hunt Publishing Ltd

Adepts and Masters

(1) The adept is the rare efflorescence of a generation of enquirers; and to become one, he must obey the inward impulse of his soul, irrespective of the prudential considerations of worldly science and sagacity. ML 2, p. 6

(2) But my first duty is to my Master. And duty, let me tell you, is for us stronger than friendship, or even love; as without this abiding principle, which is the indestructible cement that has held together, for so many millennium, the scattered custodians of nature's grand secrets – our Brotherhood, nay, our doctrine itself – would have crumbled long ago into unrecognizable atoms. ML 62, p. 351

(3) Nothing, my friend – even apparently absurd and reprehensible actions – is ever done by us without a purpose. ML 57, p. 332

(4) Both if you labor under the strange impression that we can, and even do care for anything that may be said or thought of us. Disabuse your minds, and remember that the first requisite in even a simple fakir, is that he should have trained himself to remain as indifferent to moral pain as to physical suffering. Nothing can give US personal pain or pleasure. And what I say is rather to bring you to understand US than yourselves, which is the most difficult science to learn. ML 29, p. 224

(5) We never whine over the inevitable but try to make the best of the worst. And though we neither push nor draw into the mysterious domain of occult nature those who are unwilling, we never shrink from expressing our opinions freely and fearlessly, yet we are ever ready to assist those who come to us even to – agnostics who assume the negative position of "knowing nothing but phenomena and refuse to believe in anything else."ML 4 pp. 16-17

(6) Realize my friend that the social affections have little, if any, control over any true adept in the performance of his duty. L 43, p. 259

(7) And to begin with let him rid himself of the maya that any man living can set up "claims" upon adepts. He may create irresistible attractions and compel their attention, but they will be spiritual, not mental or intellectual. And this bit of advice applies and is directed to several British theosophists, and it may be well for them to know it. Once separated from the common influence of Society, nothing draws us to any outsider save his evolving spirituality. ML 59, p. 341

(8) I can come nearer to you, but you must draw me by a purified heart and a gradually developing will. Like the needle the adept follows his attractions. ML 45, p. 266

(9) I hope that at least you will understand that we (or most of us) are far from being the heartless, morally dried up mummies some would fancy us to be. "Mejnour" (the adept hero of Bulwer Lytton's occult novel, Zanoni) is very well where he is – as an ideal character of a thrilling – in many respects truthful story. Yet, believe me, few of us would care to play the part in life of a desiccated pansy between the leaves of solemn poetry.

We may not be quite the "boys" – to quote Olcott's irreverent expression when speaking of us – yet none of our degree are like the stern hero of Bulwar's romance. While the facilities of observation secured to some of us by our condition certainly give a greater breadth of view, a more pronounced and impartial, as a more widely humaneness ... we might justly maintain that it is the business of "magic" to humanize our natures with compassion, for the whole of mankind as all living beings, instead of concentrating and limiting our affections to one predilected race – yet few of us (except such as have attained the final negation of Moksha) can so far enfranchise ourselves from the influence of our earthly connection as to be insusceptible in various degrees to the higher pleasures, emotions, and interests of the common run of humanity. ML 8, p. 32

(10) Even an adept, when acting in his body, is not beyond mistakes due to human carelessness. L 55, p. 324

(11) Believe me, there comes a time in the life of an adept, when the hardships he has passed through are a thousand fold rewarded. In order to acquire further knowledge, he has no more to go through a minute and slow process of investigation and comparison of various objects, but is accorded an instantaneous, implicit insight into every first truth. ... the adept sees and feels and lives in the very source of all fundamental truths – the Universal Spiritual Essence of Nature, Shiva the Creator, the Destroyer, and the Regenerator. ML 31, p. 241

(12) And I wish I could impress upon your minds the deep conviction that we do not wish Mr. Hume or you to prove conclusively to the public that we really exist. Please realize the fact that so long as men doubt, there will be curiosity and enquiry, and that enquiry stimulates reflection, which begets effort; but let our secret be once thoroughly vulgarized and not only will skeptical society derive no great good but our privacy would be constantly endangered and have to be continually guarded at an unreasonable cost of power. ML 29, p. 227

(13) Realize, my friend that the social affections have little, if any control over any true adept in the performance of his duty. In proportion as he rises towards perfect adeptship the fancies and antipathies of his former self are weakened: as K.H., in substance, has explained to you, he takes all mankind into his heart and regards them in the mass. ML43, p. 259

(14) You ought to have learned by this time our ways. We advise – and never order. But we do influence individuals. ML 48, p.271

(15) Alone the adepts, i.e., the embodied spirits – are forbidden by our wise and intransgressible laws, to completely subject to themselves another and a weaker will – that of freeborn man. The latter mode of proceeding is the favourite one resorted to by the "Brothers of the Shadow," the Sorcerers, the Elementary Spooks, and, as an isolated exception – by the highest Planetary Spirits, those who can no longer err. ML 9, p. 40-41

(16) It is a familiar saying that a well matched couple "grow together," so as to come to a close resemblance in features as well as in mind. But so you know that between adept and chela – master and pupil – there gradually forms a closer tie; for the psychic interchange is regulated scientifically, whereas between husband and wife, unaided nature is left to herself. As the water in a full tank runs into an empty one which it is connected with; and as the common level will be sooner or later reached, according to the capacity of the feed pipe, so does the knowledge of the adept flow to the chela; and the chela attains the adept level according to his receptive capacities.

At the same time, the chela being an individual, a separate evolution, unconsciously imparts to the master the quality of his accumulated mentality. The master absorbs his knowledge; and if it is a question of language he does not know, the master will get the chela's linguistic accumulations just as they are – idioms and all – unless he takes the trouble to sift and remodel the phrases when using. Proof M (Morya) who does not know English and has to use Olcott's or the O.L.'s language (H.P.B.'s). So you see, it is quite possible for me to catch H.P.B.'s or any other chela's ideas about you, without meaning to do any injustice; for whenever we find such ideas – unless trifling – we never proceed to judge and render our sentences merely on the testimony of such borrowed light; but always ascertain independently and for ourselves, whether the ideas so reflected in us are right or wrong.

Letter to A.O. Hume – The Theosophist, June 1907, pp. 702-706

(17) We cannot alter Karma, my "good friend" or we might lift the present cloud from your path. But we do all that is possible in such material matters. No darkness can stay forever. Have hope and faith and we may disperse it. ML 97, p. 433

(18) We are not gods, and even they, our chiefs – they hope. L 28, p. 210

(19) An adept – the highest as the lowest – is one only during the exercise of his occult powers. Whenever these powers are needed, the sovereign will unlocks the door to the inner man (the adept,) who can emerge and act freely but on condition that his jailor – the outer man – will be either completely or partially paralysed, as the case may require: viz. either (a) mentally and physically: (b) mentally – but not physically: (c) physically but not entirely mentally: (d) neither – but with an akashic film interposed between the outer and the inner man. ML 24B, p. 180

(20) We have to fight our own battles, and the familiar adage – "the adept becomes he is not made" is true to the letter. Since every one of us is the creator and producer of the causes that lead to such or some other results, we have to reap but what we have sown. Our chelas are helped but when they are innocent of the causes that lead them into trouble; when such causes are generated by foreign, outside influences. Life and the struggle for adeptship would be too easy, had we all scavengers behind us, to sweep away the effects we have generated through our own rashness and presumption. ML 54, pp. 309-310

(21) Ah, Sahibs, Sahibs! If you could only catalogue and label us and set us up in the British Museum, then indeed might your world have the absolute, the desiccated truth. ML 29, p. 227

(22) One does not cease entirely, my dear friend, to be a man nor lose one's dignity for being an adept. In the latter capacity, one no doubt remains in every case indifferent to the opinion of the outside world. The former always draws the line between ignorant surmise and – deliberate, personal insult.ML 93, p. 427

(23) The smallest exercise of occult powers then, as you will now see, requires an effort. We may compare it to the inner muscular effort of an athlete preparing to use his physical strength. As no athlete is likely to be always amusing himself at swelling his veins, in anticipation of having to lift a weight, so no adept can be supposed to keep his will in constant tension and the inner in full function, when there is no immediate necessity for it. When the inner man rests, the adept becomes an ordinary man, limited to the physical senses and the functions of his physical brain. Habit sharpens the intuition of the latter, yet is unable to make them super sensuous. The inner adept is ever ready, ever on the alert, and that suffices for our purposes.

At moments of rest then, his faculties are at rest also. When I sit at meals, or when I am dressing, reading or otherwise occupied, I am not thinking even of those near to me, and Djual Khool can easily break his nose to blood, by running in the dark against a beam, as he did the other night – (just because instead of throwing a "film" he had foolishly paralysed all his outer senses while talking to a distant friend) – and I remained placidly ignorant of the fact. I was not thinking of him – hence my ignorance. From the aforesaid, you may well infer that an adept is an ordinary mortal at all moments of his daily life, but those – when the inner man is acting. ML 24B, p. 180

(24) Lying is a refuge of the weak, and we are sufficiently strong, even with all the shortcomings you are pleased to discover in us, to dread truth very little; nor are we likely to lie, only because it is to our interest to appear wise concerning matters of which we are ignorant. Thus, perchance it might have been prudent to remark that you knew that we did not really possess the power of reading minds, unless we brought ourselves thoroughly en rapport with and concentrated an undivided attention on the person whose thoughts we wanted to know – since that would be an undeniable fact. ... ML 30, pp. 228-229

(25) We of the Indo-Tibetan hovels never quarrel ... Quarrels and even discussions we leave to those who, unable to take in a situation at a glance, are thereby forced before making up their final decision to anything to analyse and weigh one by one, and over and over again every detail. Whenever we – at least those of us who are dikshita (initiates) seem, therefore to a European not "quite sure of our facts" it may be often due to the following peculiarity. That which is regarded by most men as a "fact" to us may seem but a simple RESULT, an afterthought unworthy of our attention, generally attracted but to primary facts. Life, esteemed Sahibs, when even indefinitely prolonged, is too short to burden our brains with flitting details – mere shadows. When watching the progress of a storm, we fix our gaze upon the producing Cause and leave the clouds to the whims of the breeze which shapes them. Having always the means on hand – whenever absolutely needed – of bringing to our knowledge minor details, we concern ourselves but with the main facts. Hence we can hardly be absolutely wrong – as are often accused by you, for our conclusions are never drawn from secondary data but from the situation as a whole. ML 29, p. 218

(26) Guided by his Guru, the chela first discovers this world, then its laws, then their centrifugal evolutions into the world of matter. To become a perfect adept takes him long years, but at last he becomes the master. The hidden things have become patent, and mystery and miracle have fled from his sight forever. The secret chemical, electric or odic properties of plants, herbs, roots, minerals, animal tissue, are as familiar to him as the feathers of your birds are to you. No change in the etheric vibrations can escape him. He applies his knowledge, and behold a miracle! And he who started with the repudiation of the very idea that miracle is possible is straightaway classed as a miracle worker, and either worshipped by the fools as a demi-god or repudiated by still greater fools as a charlatan. ML 22, p. 144

(27) The adept does not create anything new, but only utilises and manipulates materials which nature has in store around him; a material which throughout eternities has passed through all the forms; he has but to choose the one he wants and recall it into objective existence. Would not this sound to one of your "learned" biologists like a madman's dream? K.H.'s First Letter to A.O. Hume, Combined Chronology by M. Conger, p. 31

(28) I am also of the opinion that few candidates imagine the degree of inconvenience – nay suffering and harm to himself – the said initiator submits to for the sake of his pupil. The peculiar physical, moral, and intellectual conditions of neophytes and adepts alike vary much, as anyone will easily understand; thus, in each case, the instructor has to adapt his conditions to those of the pupil and the strain is terrible, for to achieve success we have to bring ourselves into a full rapport with the subject under training. And as the greater the powers of the adept the less he is in sympathy with the natures of the profane, who often come to him saturated with the emanations of the outside world, those animal emanations of the selfish, brutal, crowd that we so dread – the longer he was separated from that world and the purer he has himself become, the more difficult the self-imposed task.

Then – knowledge can only be communicated gradually; and some of the highest secrets – if actually formulated even in your well-prepared ear – might sound to you as insane gibberish, notwithstanding all the sincerity of your present assurance that "absolute trust defies misunderstanding." This is the real cause of our reticence. This is why people so often complain, with a plausible show of reason, that no new knowledge is communicated to them, though they have toiled for it for two, three or more years. Let those who really desire to learn abandon all and come to us, instead of asking or expecting us to go to them. But how is this to be done in your world and atmosphere? ML 49, pp. 283-284

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Excerpted from Insights from the Masters by Fiona C. Odgren. Copyright © 2015 Fiona C. Odgren. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd.
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