me them not, shrink
not from them, but try to lift a little of the
heavy Karma of the world; give your aid to
the few strong hands that hold back the
powers of darkness from obtaining complete
victory. Then do you enter into a partnership
of joy, which brings indeed terrible toil and
profound sadness, but also a great and ever-increasing
delight.

_Note on Rule 21._--The opening of the
bloom is the glorious moment when perception
awakes: with it comes confidence, knowledge,
certainty. The pause of the soul is the moment
of wonder, and the next moment of satisfaction,
that is the silence.

Know, O disciple, that those who have
passed through the silence, and felt its peace
and retained its strength, they long that you
shall pass through it also. Therefore, in the
Hall of Learning, when he is capable of entering
there, the disciple will always find his
master.

Those that ask shall have. But though the
ordinary man asks perpetually, his voice is not
heard. For he asks with his mind only; and
the voice of the mind is only heard on that
plane on which the mind acts. Therefore, not
until the first twenty-one rules are past do I
say those that ask shall have.

To read, in the occult sense, is to read with
the eyes of the spirit. To ask is to feel the
hunger within--the yearning of spiritual
aspiration. To be able to read means having
obtained the power in a small degree of gratifying
that hunger. When the disciple is ready
to learn, then he is accepted, acknowledged,
recognised. It must be so, for he has lit his
lamp, and it cannot be hidden. But to learn
is impossible until the first great battle has
been won. The mind may recognise truth, but
the spirit cannot receive it. Once having passed
through the storm and attained the peace, it is
then always possible to learn, even though the
disciple waver, hesitate, and turn aside. The
voice of the silence remains within him, and
though he leave the path utterly, yet one day
it will resound and rend him asunder and
separate his passions from his divine possibilities.
Then with pain and desperate cries
from the deserted lower self he will return.

Therefore I say, Peace be with you. My
peace I give unto you can only be said by the
Master to the beloved disciples who are as
himself. There are even some amongst those
who are ignorant of the Eastern wisdom to
whom this can be said, and to whom it can
daily be said with more completeness.

Regard the three tru