La Iniciación · Año V, Nº 45 · January 1946

1The initiate can never forget what he sought on the path, nor is he to be surprised by what he must lose on it; because if his purposes are frustrated, he will have to agree that his resolution was not so firm nor so disinterested… and what is, is because it is.

2On the other hand, if nothing is conferred on the Being as a gift, and his conquests must be kneaded in effort, with privations, sacrifices and pains — how are they to be envied?

3How is one to benefit by a conquest without paying its price?

4Without sharing even its pains, without contributing to the effort, without its sacrifices and privations, we cannot be what another being is.

5The initiate cannot use a different rod to measure others arbitrarily; if he himself claims to be measured with justice, he must be just — since what is, is.

6Capacity and evolution are two distinct things.

7Although the second needs the first,

8the first can be independent of the second.

9Capacity is to be obtained in proportion to effort and comprehension; but evolution needs much more: the senses refined and attentive.

10It profits by the bad and the good; it affirms the Truth over errors and sees, through everything, the magnificence of God… because He is and always will be.

11Capacity creates multiplicity of forms within the same forms; because it is in the relative, and that is its comprehensible world; it makes use of it, but creates nothing in the original sense.

12Evolution seeks other founts to nourish itself and, inspiring itself in them, creates — and subjugates with the profundity of its conceptions and the originality of its work.

13Little will the absorbed contemplation of the Great Beings avail the initiate; but it will avail him to understand how they have scaled such great summits, and to set himself in movement to attain them — travelling their same road with the faith and devotion that animated their steps; because when equal merits have been made, the realisation must prove identical… And for that, virtues and defects will be needed — because, knowing them, the former can be valued and one can free oneself more easily from the latter.

14The Master has passed through all the inconveniences and difficulties of the road… more still — he is the Resultant. [Sic: the Spanish prints pasudo.]

15AUM ____________________ "Libraries are for the spirit of man what pharmacies are for the body.

16The one and the other are the proof of his illnesses.

17They serve, at times, to soften his ills — more often to increase them toward death — but rarely to cure him, and never to render him invulnerable.

18Only in himself can he find his health and his immortality.

19He must not use those remedies save with precaution, much reserve and much selection — never forgetting that, if at times they can be useful to him, there is no moment of his life in which he cannot do without them".

20Louis Claude de Saint-Martin.

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Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.