before it is in any way possible for him
to do this, the feet of the soul must be washed
in the blood of the heart.

The sacrifice, or surrender of the heart of
man, and its emotions, is the first of the rules;
it involves the "attaining of an equilibrium
which cannot be shaken by personal emotion."
This is done by the stoic philosopher; he, too,
stands aside and looks equably upon his own
sufferings, as well as on those of others.

In the same way that "tears" in the language
of occultists expresses the soul of
emotion, not its material appearance, so blood
expresses, not that blood which is an essential
of physical life, but the vital creative principle
in man's nature, which drives him into human
life in order to experience pain and pleasure,
joy and sorrow. When he has let the blood
flow from the heart he stands before the Masters
as a pure spirit which no longer
to incarnate for the sake of emotion and
experience. Through great cycles of time successive
incarnations in gross matter may yet
be his lot; but he no longer desires them, the
crude wish to live has departed from him.
When he takes upon him man's form in the
flesh he does it in the pursuit of a divine object,
to accomplish the work of "the Masters," and
for no other end. He looks neither for pleasure
nor pain, asks for no heaven, and fears
no hell; yet he has entered upon a great
inheritance which is not so much a compensation
for these things surrendered, as a state
which simply blots out the memory of them.
He lives now not in the world, but with it: his
horizon has extended itself to the width of
the whole universe.

KARMA

Consider with me that the individual existence
is a rope which stretches from the
infinite to the infinite and has no end and no
commencement, neither is it capable of being
broken. This rope is formed of innumerable
fine threads, which, lying closely together,
form its thickness. These threads are colorless,
are perfect in their qualities of straightness,
strength, and levelness. This rope, passing as
it does through all places, suffers strange
accidents. Very often a thread is caught and
becomes attached, or perhaps is only violently
pulled away from its even way. Then for a
great time it is disordered, and it disorders the
whole. Sometimes one is stained with dirt or
with color, and not only does the stain run on
further than the spot of contact, but it discolors
other of the threads. And remember th