GLAMOUR, A World Problem by Alice A. Bailey Excerpt 4
Pages 60-64
The sin of the mental type of par excellence is PRIDE. It colors all activities in the early stages. The CURE is the development of a cautious spirit.
Illusion can demonstrate in many ways.
THROUGH THE WRONG APPROPRIATION OF IDEAS.
Misappropriation of an idea is based upon the personality's drama-making faculty to the little self's self-assertion. These lead a man to appropriate an idea as his own to credit himself with its formulation. He proceeds to build his life around his idea and make HIS aims and objectives of major importance. He forgets that no one idea belongs to anyone. Still, coming as ideas do, from the plane of the intuition, they are a universal gift and the property of no one mind. His life as a personality also becomes subordinated to his idea of an idea and his ideal of an idea. This leads to illusion through misappropriation.
The CAUSE is the over-estimation of personality upon the sensed idea and upon all who attempt to contact the same idea.
The CURE is a steady attempt to decentralize life from the personality and center it in the soul.
Ideas seldom come into the world consciousness direct from the intuitional levels. The stage of human development today does not yet permit this. They can come from the intuitional levels only when there is a very highly developed soul contact, a potent mind control, a trained intelligence, a purified emotional body, and good glandular equipment. Ponder on this thought.
Most ideas are stepped down into the consciousness of a disciple by his Master and are imparted to him through mental telepathy. Ideas are also sensed in the interplay between disciples. Again, certain great ideas are to be found existing as currents of energy on the mental plane. These currents of mental energy, colored by a basic idea, are placed there by the Hierarchy.
THROUGH THE WRONG DIRECTION OF IDEAS.
This is because the disciple does not see the picture as it is. A fragment of the basic idea impinges upon his consciousness. He interprets I as belonging to a range of activities with which it may have absolutely no relation at all. He, therefore, starts to work with the idea of distributing it in directions where it is entirely useless. He begins to clothe it in form from an utterly wrong angle, embodying it in such a way that its usefulness is negated. Thus, from the first contact, the disciple has been suffering from an illusion. This is one of the most ordinary forms of illusion and is one of the first ways in which the mental pride of the disciple can be broken. It is an illusion through an initial misapplication, leading to the wrong use or wrong direction of the idea.
Its CAUSE is a small and non-inclusive mind.
Its CURE is the training of the mind to be inclusive, well-stocked, and well-developed from the angle of modern intelligence.
THROUGH WRONG INTEGRATION OF AN IDEA
Every disciple has a life plan and some chosen field of service. If he has not such a field, he is not a disciple. It may be the home, or the school, or a larger field, but it is a definite place wherein he expresses that which is in him. In his meditation life and through his contact with his fellow disciples, he touches some idea of importance, perhaps, to the world. Immediately he seizes upon it and seeks to integrate it into his life purpose and life plan. It may have for him no definite use. The overactivity of his mind is probably responsible for his so seizing upon this idea.
All ideas contacted need not necessarily be ideas with which every disciple should work. This the disciple does not always realize. Instead, he imposes an energy current upon his mental body, which he cannot cope with, and disaster follows. Many good disciples demonstrate this over-fertile, over-active mind and arrive at no good constructive objectives or life activity. This is an illusion through acquisitiveness.
Its CAUSE is selfish grasping for the little self, even if this is unrealized and the disciple is glamoured by the idea of his own selfless interests.
Its CURE is a humble spirit.
THROUGH WRONG EMBODIMENT OF IDEAS.
This refers primarily to the difficulties encountered by those developed souls who touch the world of intuition and whose responsibility it is to embody them in some form, automatically and spontaneously, through a trained activity of the soul and mind, always working in the closest collaboration. The idea IS contacted but is wrongly clothed in mental matter. It finds itself integrated into a group thought form of coloring, keynote, and substance, which is entirely unsuited to its right expression. This happens far more often than you might think. This is an illusion through wrong discrimination where the substance is concerned.
Its CAUSE is a lack of esoteric training in creative activity.
Its CURE is the application of fifth ray methods, which are the methods of the mental plane.
This form of error seldom applies to the average aspirant. It concerns an illusion of the testing applied to many initiates of a fairly high degree.
THROUGH WRONG APPLICATION OF IDEAS.
How often does this form of illusion descend upon a disciple! He contacts an idea intuitively and also intelligently (note the distinction here expressed) and misapplies it. This is an aspect of the illusion of the whole of the mental plane, as modern man contacts it. Illusion varies from age to age, according to what the Hierarchy is attempting to do or according to the general trend of men's thoughts. Therefore, the disciple can be swept into a wrong activity because the general illusion is over-dominant in his mind.
I have given you the seven major ways of illusion. In its pure form, this illusion has to be surmounted.
It has to be isolated and dispelled by the initiate.
I hinted to you in A Treatise on White Magic that the ASTRAL BODY itself was an ILLUSION. It is the definition of the illusory mind upon the mental plane of that which we call the sum of the desires of the man in incarnation. When illusion and glamour have both been overcome, the astral body fades out in the human consciousness. There is no desire left for the separated self. Kama-Manas disappears, and man is then regarded as consisting essentially of soul-mind-brain, within the body nature.
That which dispels illusion and substitutes for it a true spiritual perception is CONTEMPLATION…a contemplation carried on by the soul.
Pages 68…71
The technique of the dispelling of illusion as used by the initiate is that of contemplation. From the angle of your evolutionary status, GLAMOUR IS YOUR PROBLEM, as it is a problem for the world at this time. Some of you whose mental bodies are in the process of organizing may suffer somewhat from illusion. Still, your major problem, as a group and as an individual, is one of glamour. As soon as you begin to master your personal glamours, I can use you as a group.
GLAMOUR ON THE ASTRAL PLANE-GLAMOUR
I have dealt with the problem of illusion or glamour on the mental plane.
You stand on the verge of accepted discipleship. This means that you will shortly have to add to your battle with glamour that of the battle with illusion. Are you strong enough for this? Forget not that a disciple who is wrestling with the problems that result from mental polarization and awareness, and with the energies which become active through soul contact, is rapidly becoming AN INTEGRATED PERSONALITY. His task is not easy.
Speaking symbolically, the planetary astral body (viewing it from soul levels) is lost in the depths of a surrounding FOG. This fog is a density that would indicate impenetrability and those conditions that are unfavorable to life. Unfortunately, some are so habituated to the fog that they remain oblivious of its existence, regarding it as right and the unchangeable place of their daily life. There are four things that you need to grasp. When it is understood, it will serve to lighten your way:
1.) Each human being stands in an environing world of glamour which is the result of:
His own past, with its wrong thinking, selfish desires, and misinterpretation of the purposes of life. There has been no comprehension of the intended life purpose as visioned by the soul, and there cannot be until the mental body is definite.
His family "desire life," both past and present. This becomes increasingly potent as evolution proceeds and the desired life of the family unit becomes emphasized, constituting then inherited psychological tendencies and characteristics.
National glamour, which is the sum total of the desired life, plus the illusions of any nation. These national characteristics are so marked that they are usually recognized as embodying national psychological traits. These are based on RAY tendencies, history, and world inter-relations but constitute in themselves a glamorous condition out of which every nation must work.
RACIAL GLAMOUR means the human race. This constitutes a series of ancient glamours of entrenched desires and potent aspirations that seek to hold humanity's consciousness upon the astral plane. Such a glamourous concept is that of MONEY and its materialistic value. This desire is like a dense, widely distributed fog, cutting off the vision of truth and distorting a very large number of human values.
This fog of glamour must be realized as a substantial thing and must be dealt with as such. The disciple seeking to dispel glamour must recognize that he is working with substance, with the dissipation of a material all-enveloping substance…material in the same sense as thoughtforms are substantial things of a less substantial nature than the forms of glamour found upon the astral plane. This is a point of importance. The forms of glamour on the astral plane are even more substantial but are less clearly defined. Thoughtforms are dynamic, clear-cut, and outlined.
Glamours are smothering, vague and enveloping. In them, a person is immersed as in a sea of fog. It might almost be said that the astral body of a person comes into being as a part of the general world glamour. It is difficult for him to differentiate between his astral body and the glamours that sway and submerge him. His problem on the mental plane is more clearly defined, even if it is equally difficult.
Page 73
The glamours which hold humanity in thrall are materiality, sentiment, devotion, the glamour of the pairs of opposites, and the glamour of the Path.
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