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  • Wisdom for practice
  • Wisdom is applied knowledge
  • Wisdom spreads itself

Wisdom for practice

Wisdom is for practice, not for continuous speaking. If we keep on speaking about the Masters, the Rays, and the Hierarchies, we are only missing our duties for the present.

Wisdom is applied knowledge

Knowledge, when applied becomes wisdom. We gain a lot of knowledge, but it has to be applied in daily life, then it transforms itself into wisdom. Through wisdom we will experience the existence.

Wisdom spreads itself

We need not be anxious to spread the wisdom without working it with ourselves. It is a wrong understanding if one thinks that he can spread wisdom. Wisdom knows how to spread itself. It only needs channels.

The Power of Motives

PLANTS AND WEEDS

Motives - N. Roerich: Archer If we spread a manure to a garden in which plants and weeds are growing, the weeds grow quicker and profit from the fertile soil. To enable plants to grow we have to pull out the weeds. In our inner garden the seeds are our motives; they make our thought, speech and action sprout, they produce the patterns of our strengths and weaknesses. Wrong motives are the weeds, right motives the good seed. Both of them receive power, when we probe into the more subtle planes of existence. Therefore it is dangerous to do spiritual exercises, if our motives are not pure and our attitudes are self-centred. Thus with some people meditation causes stronger sexual impulses or an inner confusion, with others it gives rise to excessive ambition, pride and urge for power. That’s why the field has to be clean before we give the fertilizer of meditation into the soil. With all we do right motives are the best way, and the ultimate motive is service.

A right motive is a motive of good will, for the welfare of life. Nothing of what we propose to do should bring harm to any life. The motives of our actions shouldn’t be centred on ourselves. Normal human thinking is that all we do should yield something for us. The actions are result-oriented and aim at a personal profit. Result-oriented actions belong to the personality. Actions oriented to the general well-being and not bearing a motive for one’s own benefit belong to the will of the soul. Therefore the wise men recommend human kindness and charity in all motives.

Self-centredness and selflessness cannot co-exist, neither can emotion and love nor intellectual thinking and intuition. A spiritual activity is intrinsically an intelligent activity with a selfless motive. To do business with it comes from a self-centred attitude.

For all we do we have motives, good or other ones. All our motives are stored in the causal body, the temple of our soul, through which it can manifest. It is the storeroom of our motives. Built over aeons it lays the foundation for the structures of our character. The motives are the causes by which we are urged to our actions. They determine the quality of our activity. Thus there is a difference of whether a doctor or a criminal is approaching us with a knife, of whether a medicine is used for healing or for killing.

To an untrained eye the motives often aren’t obvious. In our actions we may make the people think that we have a good motive and act selflessly, however we are out for our own interests. A businessman knows where to do business and how he can get a profit for himself. He helps others if there is something in it for him. The big business companies want to expand all over the globe. Certainly they say that it is for the welfare of the less developed countries, but really they only want to win greater markets. But even if the motives of their actions are of an egoistic kind, the Plan of Nature intends that it is again of benefit for men. Even the business-world slowly realises that they cannot survive any longer without really turning towards the people. Their intelligence makes them work for the people in order to ensure their own survival.

Getting Caught on the Hook

We have to check the motives of our work regularly in order to find out what makes us act. Even if we start something with a good motive it can be that on the way we distort it. Often we start something with a right motive, but while working it out ambition, envy or jealousy creep in. Then the motive gets coloured. Even if we serve because it is hold in high regard, we connect ourselves more with the result of service than with the service itself and get caught by it like on a hook. Pure motives are rare, mostly mixed motives prevail. We should work to distil the impure motives by turning the mind to more noble motives and by dedicating our activity to the greater whole.

If for example we want to earn more and more money, we should think at the same time that we do it to be able to help more and more people. If we acquire knowledge or develop inner powers, we should do it to use it for the benefit and well-being of others. To acquire knowledge for ourselves remains fruitless, a bundle of concepts. Wisdom doesn’t reveal if we don’t apply it and pass it on again. Studying is for being able to serve better in the future and not for being able to gain some advantage for ourselves in society.

The right motive for speaking is that we express a constructive thought. The right motive for eating is nourishing and not the activity of eating. We should eat with the awareness that we give food to the intelligences in our body, and they hand on the energy received to the different parts of the body. All that comes to us is meant for distributing it again to others. If we have healing energies, they are not meant for us, but that we pass them on to people who are in need of healing. We shouldn’t reach for things and abilities and hold on to them, otherwise we block the movement of the energies: If money comes to us and we don’t use it in the right way, we are blocked by it on our path. We should deeply ponder on these things, so that they manifest in our attitude and our activity.

Good deeds have consequences and draw us to further good deeds. Bad deeds have their consequences and draw us further to bad deeds. On both sides we get limited. One is a limitation by golden chains, the other is by iron chains. Chain remains chain, whether it is of gold or of iron. All day long we are urged to act by the motivating force. So many people are busily running on the street all the time, as if there is a crisis in the city, it is like in a nightmare.

Non-Action in Action

Once we are awakened the motives of the dream state do no longer exist for us. The awakened one knows that he has nothing to achieve, that the action doesn’t belong to him, that there is neither motive nor the binding chain of action. He knows that he isn’t the actor, but that all actions are done through him, without him being dragged into the actions. He acts and carries out his duty, but he remains detached from the action and its fruits. This is the highest stage in action, it is also called non-action in action. It is a skill and ease in action. Initiates remain playful with all actions happening through them and around them in life. They have destroyed the temple of good thoughts, the causal body, and remain in the state of Nirvana. Nirvana means death for all that has been built, and the soul relates to the Absolute, to the “That I am”. In the actions they do there can be found no motive, no cause. If you ask them: “Why do you do this?” their answer is: “Because I do it.” There is no other cause. There are no justifications, because it is the Plan happening through them. They live in the Truth and allow the Plan to work through them. Whenever it is needed, according to time and space, they can manifest the temple, work through it and afterwards return again into the state of Nirvana. This is the inner meaning of the statement of Jesus: “I can destroy the temple and rebuild it within three days and nights.” This is the highest knowledge of action.

Sources used: K. Parvathi Kumar: Seminar notes. The World Teacher Trust - Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India. Alice A. Bailey: White Magic. Lucis-Trust, Genf. ( www.netnews.org / www.lucistrust.org ).