The Extraordinary Book : LETTERS THAT HAVE HELPED ME  - William Q. Judge . Credits Art  NASA
Autor: ricardomaffia | Publicado: 2016-10-25T01:30:00-07:00






THEOSOPHICAL UNIVERSITY PRESS© ( PASADENA – US )


Dear Jasper: 


There are so many
questioners who ask about Chelaship that your letter comes quite apropos to
experiences of my own. You say that these applicants must have some answer, and
in that I agree with you. And whether they are ready or unready, we must be
able to tell them something. But generally they are not ready, nor, indeed, are
they willing to take the first simple step which is demanded. I will talk the
matter over with you for your future guidance in replying to such questions;
perhaps also to clear up my own mind. 


The first question
a man should ask himself (and by "man" we mean postulants of either
sex) is: "When and how did I get a desire to know about chelaship and to
become a chela?"; and secondly, "What is a chela, and what
chelaship?" 








There are many
sorts of chelas. There are lay chelas and probationary ones; accepted chelas
and those who are trying to fit themselves to be even lay chelas. Any person
can constitute himself a lay chela, feeling sure that he may never in this life
consciously hear from his guide. Then as to probationary chelas, there is an invariable
rule that they go upon seven years' trial. These "trials" do not
refer to fixed and stated tests, but to all the events of life and the bearing
of the probationer in them. There is no place to which applicants can
be referred where their request could be made, because these matters do not
relate to places and to officials: this is an affair of the inner nature. We become
chelas; we obtain that position in reality because our inner nature is to
that extent opened that it can and will take knowledge: we receive the guerdon
at the hands of the Law. 


In a certain sense
every sincere member of the Theosophical Society is in the way of becoming a
chela, because the Masters do some of Their work with and for humanity through
this Society, selected by Them as Their agent. And as all Their work
and aspiration are to the end of helping the race, no one of Their chelas can
hope to remain (or become) such, if any selfish desire for personal possessions
of spiritual wealth constitutes the motive for trying to be a chela. Such a
motive, in the case of one already a chela, acts instantly to throw him out of
the ranks, whether he be aware of his loss or not, and in the case of one
trying to become a chela it acts as a bar. Nor does a real chela
spread the fact that he is such. For this Lodge is not like exoteric societies
which depend upon favor or mere outward appearances. It is a real thing with
living Spirit -- men at its head, governed by laws that contain within
themselves their own executioners, and that do not require a tribunal, nor
accusations, nor verdicts, nor any notice whatever. 


As a general thing
a person of European or American birth has extreme difficulty to contend with.
He has no heredity of psychical development to call upon; no known assembly of
Masters or Their chelas within reach. His racial difficulties prevent him from
easily seeing within himself; he is not introspective by nature. But even he
can do much if he purifies his motive, and either naturally possesses or
cultivates an ardent and unshakeable faith and devotion. A faith that keeps him
a firm believer in the existence of Masters even through years of
non-intercourse. They are generous and honest debtors and always repay. How
They repay, and when, is not for us to ask. Men may say that this requires as
blind devotion as was ever asked by any Church. It does, but it is a
blind devotion to Masters who are Truth itself; to Humanity and to yourself, to
your own intuitions and ideals. This devotion to an ideal is also founded upon
another thing, and that is that a man is hardly ready to be a chela unless he
is able to stand alone and uninfluenced by other men or events, for
he must stand alone, and he might as well know this at the beginning as at
the end. 


There are also
certain qualifications which he must possess. These are to be found in Man:
Fragments of Forgotten History towards the close of the
book, so we will not dwell upon them here. 


The question of the
general fitness of applicants being disposed of, we come to the still more serious
point of the relations of Guru and Chela, or Master and Disciple. We want to
know what it really is to be a pupil of such a Teacher. 


The relation of
Guru and Chela is nothing if it is not a spiritual one. Whatever is merely
outward, or formal, as the relation established by mere asking and acceptance,
is not spiritual, but formal, and is that which arises between teacher
and pupil. Yet even this latter is not in any way despicable, because
the teacher stands to his pupil, in so far forth as the relation permits, in
the same way as the Guru to his chela. It is a difference of degree, but this
difference of degree is what constitutes the distinction between the spiritual
and the material, for, passing along the different shadings from the grossest
materiality to as far as we can go, we find at last that matter merges into
spirit. (We are now speaking, of course, about what is commonly called matter,
while we well know that in truth the thing thus designated is not really
matter, but an enormous illusion which in itself has no existence. The real
matter, called mulaprakriti by the Hindus, is an invisible thing or
substance of which our matter is a representation. The real matter is what the
Hermetists called primordial earth; a, for us, intangible phase of
matter. We can easily come to believe that what is usually called matter is
not really such, inasmuch as we find clairvoyants and nervous people seeing
through thick walls and closed doors. Were this matter, then they
could not see through it. But when an ordinary clairvoyant comes face to face
with primordial matter, he or she cannot see beyond, but is met by a
dead wall more dense than any wall ever built by human hands.) 











THEOSOPHICAL UNIVERSITY PRESS© ( PASADENA – US )