Eight Lectures on Yoga

22. The question for each one of us is then: first of all, to ascertain our present positions; secondly, to determine our proper directions; and, thirdly, to govern ourselves accordingly. The question for me is also to describe a method of procedure which will be sufficiently elastic to be useful to every human being. I have tried to do this by combining the two paths of Magick and Yoga. If we perform the preliminary practices, each according to his capacity, the result will surely be the acquisition of a certain technique. And this will become much easier as we advance, especially if we bear it well in mind not to attempt to discriminate between the two methods as if they were opposing schools, but to use the one to help out the other in an emergency. 23. Of course, nobody understands better than I do that, although nobody can do your work for you, it is possible to make use—to a certain very limited extent—of other people's experience, and the Great Order which I have the honour to serve has appointed what I think you will agree is a very satisfactory and practical curriculum. 24. You are expected to spend three months at least on the study of some of the classics on the subject. The chief object of this is not to instruct you, but to familiarise you with the ground work, and in particular to prevent you getting the idea that there is any right or wrong in matters of opinion. You pass an examination intended to make sure that your mind is well grounded in this matter, and you become a Probationer. Your reading will have given you some indication as to the sort of thing you are likely to be good at, and you select such practices as seem to you to promise well. You go ahead with these, and keep a careful record of what you do, and what results occur. After eleven months you submit a record to your superior; it is his duty to put you right where you have gone wrong, and particularly to encourage you where you think you have failed. 25. I say this because one of the most frequent troubles is that people who are doing excellent work throw it up because they find that Nature is not what they thought it was going to be. But this is the best test of the reality of any experience. All those which conform with your idea, which flatter you, are likely to be illusions. So you become a Neophyte; and attack the Task of a Zelator. There are further grades in this system, but the general principles are always the same—the principles of scientific study and research. 26. We end where we began. 'The wheel has come full circle.' We are to use the experience of the past to determine the experience of the future, and as that experience increases in quantity it also improves in quality. And the Path is sure. And the End is sure. For the End is the Path. Love is the law, love under will.