Causes

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Are you for Animal Rights and Ecology? I am against people who insist on posing irrelevant questions. Please do not try to engage me in discussions that are irrelevant to the spiritual path or to the doctrine that I teach. Do you address this kind of question to car-park attendants, hair-dressers, doctors or murderers? No you do not, because how they feel about this or that issue has no bearing on their ability to perform the service you require of them. Why not ask me what colour my hair is, or whether I have false teeth? (I probably wear a wig and my teeth could be gold.)

If your willingness to accept truth is conditional upon some other factor, if you will only accept truth provided that it endorses your current opinions - then either you are blind or so extremely short-sighted as to be a danger to yourself.

Are these issues so trivial then? I am simply telling you to re-think your priorities. Matters to do with eternity ought to come before matters to do with train times, and so on. If a person rejects truth because it is not convenient right now or because he does not like the flavour, then no one can ever teach him. What he really wants is someone to lick his boots, pat his back, and tell him how clever he is to have found the truth already by his own efforts. Such people are looking for something that will flatter their ego and make them feel good.

Ah well, they had better not address God, or the gods, in that tone of voice. They had better not summon demons or perform magic. The truth is .. whatever it is. Our duty is to discover what that may be and it is utterly pointless to then say that we do not like it. It is not our place to manipulate the truth, or to scrabble for facts that will prop up our prejudice. A Seeker must be ready for some surprises and a few shocks.

Are you against all 'causes'? Many good causes are both worthwhile and noble, and it is not my place to tell people what they do with their lives or how they spend their free time. At the same time though, a cause is not a religion, and the aims of a cause cannot be a substitute for the tenets of religious faith. It is therefore part of my duty to point out what is reasonable and what is unreasonable. To this I must add that when support for a cause becomes so vehement as to amount to militancy or fanaticism then people can be every bit as emotionally embroiled as extremists in the religious field. All the evidence suggests that there is a tendency among human beings to misuse a cause, to distort it, and to divert energies from other areas into it. We exaggerate, we enlarge and inflate - we overdo it.

I therefore ask the simple question: is there any entity that could make use of such causes and find that they come in handy for other purposes?

Aren't we all looking for a 'cause'? Many people are, and it is often the case with prospective students too, which is why I always put them to the test before agreeing to take them on. I have nothing against causes except that they are often worn like a pair of blinkers and make people narrow-minded. In any case, Occultism has its own aims that are every bit as noble and as worthwhile as anything else, and if a man strives to achieve them he will become a hero soon enough. Most people are looking for something to lend meaning to their lives and to give them a sense of purpose. They need a bit of confidence, hope, and self-esteem. Well, Occultism can supply all that and much more besides.

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