have already decided to take the right at all costs. But the body and the man are two, and the man's will is not always what the body wishes. When your body wishes something, stop and think whether you
really wish it. For you are God, and you will only what God wills; but you must dig deep down into
yourself to find the God within you, and listen to His voice, which is your voice. Do not mistake your
bodies for yourself-neither the physical body, nor the astral, nor the mental. Each one of them will
pretend to be the Self, in order to gain what it wants. But you must know them all, and know yourself as
their master.
When there is work that must be done, the physical body wants to rest, to go out walking, to eat and
drink; and the man who does not know says to himself: " I want to do these things, and I must do them."
But the man who knows says: "This that wants is not I, and it must wait awhile." Often when there is an
opportunity to help some one, the body feels: "How much trouble it will be for me; let some one else do
it." But the man replies to his body: "You shall not hinder me in doing good work."
The body is your animal- the horse upon which you ride. Therefore you must treat it well, and take good
care of it; you must not overwork it, you must feed it properly on pure food and drink only, and keep it
strictly clean always, even from the minutest speck of dirt. For without a perfectly clean and healthy body
you cannot do the arduous work of preparation, you cannot bear its ceaseless strain. But it must always
be you who controls that body, not it that controls you.
The astral body has its desires- dozens of them; it wants you to be angry, to say sharp words, to feel
jealous, to be greedy for money, to envy other people their possessions, to yield yourself to depression.
All these things it wants, and many more, not because it wishes to harm you, but because it likes violent
vibrations, and likes to change them constantly. But you want none of these things, and therefore you
must discriminate between your wants and your body's.
Your mental body wishes to think itself proudly separate, to think much of itself and little of others. Even
when you have turned it away from worldly things, it still tries to calculate for self, to make you think of
your own progress, instead of thinking of the Master's work and of helping others. When you meditate, it
will try to make you think of the many different things which it wants instead of the one thing which you
want. You are not this mind, but it is yours to use; so here again discrimination is necessary. You must
watch unceasingly, or you will fail.
Between right and wrong, Occultism knows no compromise. At whatever apparent cost, that which is
right you must do, that which is wrong you must not do, no matter what the ignorant may think or say.
You must study deeply the hidden laws of Nature, and when you know them arrange your life according
to them, using always reason and common sense.
You must discriminate between the important and the unimportant. Firm as a rock where right and wrong
are concerned, yield always to others in things which do not matter. For you must be always gentle and
kindly, reasonable and accommodating, leaving to others the same full liberty which you need for
yourself.
Try to see what is worth doing: and remember that you must not judge by the size of the thing. A small thing which is directly useful in the Master's work is far better worth doing than a large thing which the
world would call good. You must distinguish not only the useful from the useless, but the more useful
from the less useful. To feed the poor is a good and noble and useful work; yet to feed their souls is
nobler and more useful than to feed their bodies. Any rich man can feed the body, but only those who
know can feed the soul. If you know, it is your duty to help others to know.
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