TESTS
You ask how one can reconcile one's consciousness to the-idea of steadfastness and endless testing, and how to acquire that vigor of spirit which enables one to accept into the consciousness such a systematic realization day by day.
The obviousness and reality of testings, however, are inevitable in everyday life. Even inanimate objects undergo testing at all times. A house is checked frequently by the assigned architect. Every ship has to be carefully overhauled each time before it leaves port. Each machine when put into action has to be inspected to prevent the danger of accidents.
These daily examples would seem to fully confirm that man's spiritual condition should also be kept under constant testing. His physical condition is observed by a physician. People have their family doctors who explain that the condition of the organism should be watched not only during an already evident serious illness but also during a state of assumed health. It is very important for the doctor to be able to establish symptoms of illness in advance so that he can prevent the possibility of illness or infection. Prophylactic measures are taken to avoid possible infection.
"As in heaven, so on earth." As in the body, so in the spirit. The analogy of infection and reactions is a very close one, for just as a feeble and exhausted body is easily subject to infection so is a wavering spirit at once subject to a most dangerous attack. The body may by good luck avoid contagion, but the effect on the spirit is much more complicated because of unseen and inscrutable factors.
Any coarse food such as bloody meat lays one open to invisible approaches. Every coarse, furious word is a gateway admitting the dark ones, and every violent treachery is an invitation to the darkest entities. If the conduits of good are immeasurable, the dark conduits, although limited, are still quite considerable and extensive. After alt, we do not summon by the voice at far-off distances. Radio waves, in accepted hieroglyphics, create bridges and attraction. It is the same in the spiritual realm where an invisible radio calls, attracts, and broadcasts its commands.
Someone immersed in evil will tremble convulsively at such benign warnings, but if he has already given himself as a concession to evil, he will with grimacing arid trembling concede the field of action to the dark concessionaires. Thought and will are active every instant, and there is hardly a moment when man remains inactive. Some mistakenly imagine that when they are silent or motionless or mumbling outwardly unclear formulas, nothing is done by them. In their spiritual world, however, all sorts of important actions are taking place. The needle of a sensitive apparatus would probably show a continual palpitation of the spirit. It can be seen how the spirit, in its essence, is always striving upward, but dark and heavy weights and all kinds of talons get the upper hand and drag it down into darkness.
The unchanging labor of the spirit goes on amidst all our daily activities and trivial routine. If the workings of the spirit are constant, if the spirit vibrates and is atremor even at the very smallest incidents, according to human understanding, then naturally the testing of the spirit will be constant. Since it is said, "All worlds are on trial," we may consider all parts of the worlds, down to the smallest particle, to be subject to the same process of testing.
There can be nothing unfortunate or burdensome for the consciousness in such continual testing. It is said that our planet was exposed this year on May 26 to a great danger, which for the greater part of the planet's population remained unrealized and completely unknown. In a matter of seconds Earth escaped the thrust of a powerful meteor. Can there be even a moment when we are not exposed to danger? Nonetheless people continue to act, work, grieve, and make merry.
In the July number of "Twentieth Century" our friend Jagadisvarananda sketches a beautiful but justly severe outline of contemporary life. He shows that modern life is largely taken up with a search for pleasures and that these are gradually degenerating. As we have often noted, people are abandoning conscious thinking and crave some kind of narcotics which will relieve them from thinking about the fundamental questions of life.
Where there is a desire for pleasures and for gold, naturally there are also special testings. If even such coarse pursuits as money and pleasure easily dominate the human consciousness, these will likewise be intensely subjected to testings. Where coarseness and foul language dominate a man, the needle of the apparatus indicating the battle of the spirit fluctuates especially. There are many who do not like even to admit that they are undergoing testing, which they promptly consider to be a sort of inadmissible tyranny. And yet testing is nothing more than the application of one's own spirit to the measure of Truth.
If the spirit itself indicates one of the lower steps, this can hardly be taken as an extraneous intrusion or a compulsion. The spirit always indicates willingly and with absolute precision the measure to which it responds at a given moment. It has often been said that everyone is his own judge, and many times it has been repeated about the way man makes his own destiny. Hierarchy, too, has been repeatedly spoken about, and also constructiveness and co-measurement.
Self-testings definitely take place in everything. The normal-minded man knows what amount of food he requires, but he who is addicted to gluttony ignores it and thus harms himself. A healthy organism carries out its most complicated tasks naturally, but if the balance is disturbed man is warned through his senses. It is the same with the testings of the spirit. Anyone who has not ignored or rejected spiritual manifestations will sense and hear the little bell of his heart. A man will be warned provided he listens to such a warning and admits it into his consciousness. The heart moans, but not everyone will understand its urgent call.
A man whose ignorance is great can even become obdurate to the call of the heart. He may even force his heart to become silent, and this violence is one of the causes of many forms of heart disease. Let us not forget that by spiritual compulsion people can also harm those near them whose radiations are akin to them. If man has no right to harm his own nature, if any form of suicide is to be condemned, then the killing of others by a malicious consciousness must also be condemned.
If there exists the so-called deadly eye, there exists also the acutely sharpened will. Therefore, how many unintentional and pernicious glances are dispersed like arrows in space. Knowing this we will not despair, but on the contrary this realization will only reinforce the shield and create a new source of courage and vigor. Let us not fear, but even love testings, for we shall be strengthened by them. Blessed are the obstacles, and even more blessed are the testings which temper the strongest blade.
To love means that love has entered into our consciousness. To love means that we shall transmute a concept within ourselves and apply it to life. If any one notices that someone is drooping with fright in the face of testing, let him without fail invigorate the frightened one with his own joy, strengthened by the realization of a new, tested shield.
It has been said, "I shall receive all arrows in my shield, but I shall send but one." Everything is tested, all worlds are on trial. This is not a cause for terror, but a source of broadening the consciousness, a key to vigor and success.
Timur Hada
August 27, 1935
