Elizabeth Haich

From the book Initiation by Elizabeth Haich:

THE TWELVE SETS OF TWIN CHARACTERISTICS

The next evening I find myself standing before Ptahhotep again.

'The time has come,' says he, 'for you to study and practise the twelve sets of opposites as your next exercise. In your initiation you will be examined concerning them. So listen carefully and make a point of remembering what I'm telling you now:

'Just as keeping silent and talking are the two complementary manifestations of the same force, in the same way there are twelve sets of opposites which you must learn to control. From now on you will spend only your mornings in the temple and then go back to the palace. And you must seize every opportunity to be among people as much as possible, because it is far easier to master each of these sets of opposites when you are in the temple than it is in the palace. Here you only meet people like yourself, neophytes, striving to attain divine unity, as well as priests and priestesses already living in divine unity. But in the everyday world you are subject to all kinds of temptations. You meet people who are slaves of their bodies, and such people try to influence you too. The danger of falling is much greater. If you can master all the characteristics and properties applicable throughout the world, you will also be able to pass the initiation examinations.

'These twelve sets of opposite characteristics are:

keeping silent — talking
receptivity — resistance to influence
obeying — ruling
humility — self confidence
lightning-like speed — circumspection
to accept everything — to be able to differentiate
ability to fight — peace
caution — courage
to possess nothing — to command everything
to have no ties — loyalty
contempt for death — regard for life
indifference — love

[...]

'In order to be a useful co-worker in this great plan, one must first master the whole scale of the sets of opposites. And you too, for your initiation, will have to pass an examination in them.

'Mastering these attributes means that you use them at the right time and in the right place. The same attribute that is divine at the right time and in the right place is satanically evil at the wrong time and in the wrong place. This is because God creates only what is good, beautiful and true. There are no bad characteristics as such, and no bad forces, but only wrongly used characteristics and wrongly applied forces!

'You've already found out what it means to speak or to keep silent at the right time and in the right place. To keep silent is perfectly divine and brings blessings on all concerned, if we do so where and when we should. But on the other hand, if we keep silent in a place or at a time when we should speak up—as for example when we might save a person from a great danger with just a word—our keeping silence becomes satanic.

'And if we talk in the wrong place and at the wrong time, the divine gift of speech is turned into satanic chatter and gossip.

'In the next twin pair of opposites, receptivity is divine if we are receptive and open to everything that is high and beautiful, good and true, that is, if we are receptive to God's will and let Him work in us. On the other hand, the receptivity, or impressionability, is disastrous if it becomes a spineless lack of character and capitulation to influence.

'Ability to resist influence means the ability to put an unflinching resistance to all low influences. But if we also put up resistance against higher forces, we immediately turn our divine attribute of resistance to influence into a satanic kind of self-isolation.

'It is the duty of every co-worker in the great divine plan to give absolute obedience to God's will. The latter can manifest itself directly through you or through other people. You can recognize God's will when you thoroughly examine everything that is asked of you to be sure that it is in agreement with your innermost conviction. God speaks to us through our innermost conviction, and we must give him absolute obedience. On the contrary, to obey someone against our own conviction, purely for reasons of cowardice, fear, material advantage, or merely wanting to "be good"—that is for low, personal reasons, this is servility and is satanical.

'Ruling means giving ignorant and weak people some of the ruler's own willpower. Universal love, uniting all the forces active within the people, should lead the people towards a general well-being, without infringing on their right of self-determination. Any ruler who, without love, and for selfish motives, imposes his will on others and violates their right of self determination makes the divine activity of ruling into satanical tyranny.

'Humility is what we must feel towards the divine, towards the higher self which animates us. You must realize that all the good, beautiful, and true attributes belong to him, that your person is an instrument for manifesting divinity, but by itself and without divinity it represents merely an empty husk. You should recognize within yourself the same divinity, the same eternal being which manifests itself throughout the universe, and you must subject yourself humbly to this divinity. But you must never subordinate yourself to earthly or sub-earthly powers or bow before earthly forms; for this would mean turning divine humility into weak, cowardly, satanic self-humiliation, and by doing this you would violate the divinity which animates you with its own eternal being.

'If you want to be a good servant within the divine plan for salvation of the world, you must never forget that you do not live and work on your own strength. All power comes from God, and all powers you manifest come to you from your higher self—from God. Constantly remember that your person as such is an imaginary being. Your true being—the only, eternal reality within
you—is God! That's why self-confidence means having confidence in the God dwelling within your heart, but not in the phantom being of your person as such. Divine self-confidence is indispensable for every creative activity and represents an inner union with God. But when a person imagines his qualities and powers are his own and not God's, he turns divine self-confidence into satanic false pride and presumption.

'To be a co-worker within the great divine plan you must also be able to make decisions with lightning-like speed. You must learn, instantaneously, without hesitation, to choose the best of a number of different possibilities. Situations can arise in which only a moment's delay can mean missing the unique, never-recurring opportunity. When you can act in a moment, with complete concentration and with a presence of mind that stands above and beyond all concept of time, your power to decide instantly is divine. But acting quick as a flash without concentration and presence of mind turns divine lightning-like speed into satanic haste.

'And that's why you must also learn divine circumspection. Before acting, you must control your temper and with lots of patience allow the decision to ripen within you. In order to recognize the will of God you must often allow yourself time to reach the right decision. That's what it means to act with prudence. But if you carry prudence and circumspection to the point of never reaching any decision at all, you're turning divine circumspection into satanic, doubting indecision.

'As a useful co-worker in the divine plan you must learn to accept everything that fate brings you. Your worth is not determined by external circumstances but by the degree in which you manifest God. Worldly degradations or humiliations cannot destroy, or even reduce, your inner values. By the same token, praise or glorification cannot make them greater either. For this reason, you must never be affected by the way ignorant people treat you. You remain what you are whether people vilify you or glorify you. Learn to be contented in any and all conditions and to accept the circumstances fate gives you with complete imperturbability. Whether your work within the great divine plan requires you to live in abject poverty or to hold a high position and command a great fortune, you must regard either of these merely as means to a great end. Neither of them must change your inner attitude. Learning to accept everything in this way is divine. On the other hand you must always be able to decide when you, as a representative of divine guidance, must defend yourself against humiliation or calumny. In the same way, there are times when you must be able to decide that it's the right thing to do to withdraw modestly from glorification by the crowds and masses. To accept everything must never be allowed to degenerate into apathetic indifference or cowardly lack of character.

Always choose the best and don't be satisfied with what's inferior. You must be able to differentiate and distinguish what's beautiful from what's ugly, the good from the bad, the true from the false, the divine from the satanic. Without a completely developed power to differentiate and distinguish, one can't be a useful co-worker in the great plan.

'If you want to be useful, you must also be able to fight with all your energy. With the sword of truth you must be able to fight the shadow of error in order to help bring about the victory of divinity on earth. But your noble and courageous willingness to fight must never be allowed to degenerate into stupid quarrelsomeness.

'And even though you must often fight bravely, you must not forget that you have to fight with spiritual weapons in order to bring peace to the earth. You must fight to restore unity to what has been torn apart, to restore peace to those who are fighting. But your love of peace must never be allowed to turn into a cowardly or comfortable kind of not wanting to fight.

'In order to be a useful co-worker you also have to learn caution, at the same time being able to decide the right time and right place to use this divine gift. You can save yourself and others from great dangers, harm and useless sacrifices through the proper exercise of caution. But the divine gift of caution slips over into satanic cowardice when one doesn't dare to do something because of fear or lack of self-confidence.

'You must possess unflinching courage, and you must not fear any danger. You must stride forth courageously to face any difficulty, valiantly fending off any attack against the divine when the great goal you're working for requires it of you. But divine courage must never be allowed to deteriorate into daredevil recklessness.

'As a co-worker within the great plan you must also understand what it means to possess nothing. Whether your task demands abject poverty of you or gives you the greatest wealth, you must always remember that nothing, absolutely nothing, ever or anywhere really belongs to you. On the contrary, everything is God's property, and from his property you receive something only for your actual needs, corresponding to your task. Just as it's a matter of indifference to a canal whether more or less water flows through it, because the water doesn't belong to it, you too must regard everything fate gives you as something that comes to you from God, and something you must pass on. What you will have to live on is something you don't need to worry about. You will always receive as much as you need. And no matter how rich you might be, you must always remember the fact that you really possess nothing. But this divinely positive attitude must never slide down into not caring about anything or contempt of things material. You must never expect the people about you to maintain you without work on your part!

'Matter too is a manifestation of God, and so you must respect matter as something divine. But at the same time, you must be master over it. You must master the art of being able to acquire as many material things as you need for your earthly task. And remember well that as long as you are on earth, you'll have to be dealing with matter, not without it, and certainly not against it. It's necessary for you to be able to acquire and hold matter, to master it and use it wisely; for otherwise you're completely at the mercy of earthly powers and, under their control, unable to carry out your earthly task independently and freely. But take care lest the divine ability to master matter deteriorate into a selfish, satanic craving for possessions.

'As a co-worker in the great divine plan you can't allow yourself to be attached to anyone. Learn to recognize the divine, the earthly, and the demonic characteristics in everyone. Don't love the person, but love the divine within the person, tolerate the earthly, and go around the demonic. Whenever your task demands it of you, you must be able to leave without delay the person you love the most, because you must always remember that the lovable characteristics in him are God, not the person himself. The person is only an instrument for the manifestation of God. You can find and love the same manifestations in other people too. Love God in everyone; then you will not be attached to anyone. This not having ties must never be allowed to turn into general indifference and apathy concerning the people around you.

'You should be loyal, in life and in death, toward the people in whom you have recognized God's manifestations. You love your master and your coworkers in the great divine plan because you have recognized God in them. You are loyal to God in them, because you love their person only as an instrument of God. In this way the esteem and loyalty you show towards your master and co-workers can never turn into a cult of persons or personal glorification.

'To play a useful role in the great divine plan, you must be able to use your own person, like an obedient instrument, in front of the public. You must be able, in front of groups of other people, to animate your talents and abilities with your spiritual forces, raise them to a climax of brilliance in such a way that you manifest your spirit in the highest degree through your person, through the posture of your body, through the movements of your hands, through the glance of your eyes and through the persuasive power of your oratory, all so that you can bring people under your influence and carry them upward with you to a higher spiritual level. In other words you must be able to appear before the public without inhibitions and without being bashful. But the art of "appearing in public" must never be allowed to awaken the devil of vanity in you; it must never be allowed to degenerate into self-complacency and the base desire to "show off" with your God-given talents. When crowds of people enthusiastically cheer and applaud you, you must constantly carry in your consciousness the awareness that the people are not enthusiastic about your person —which is only an empty garment—but about God who has manifested himself through your earthly instrument.

'If in your application of the art of "appearing in public" you avoid the beguiling temptations of the devil of vanity, you won't be the least disturbed when, in fulfilling other tasks, it becomes your duty to remain completely unknown and unnoticed by other people. In such a case you must not display your talents, but rather disappear in the crowd as it were, without wanting to stand out or be noticed. However, this modest "remaining unnoticed" must never be allowed to degenerate into personal self-underestimation or selfdestruction. In your heart you must always carry your worth as a human being. 'If you want to be a useful co-worker in the great divine plan, you must be able to achieve complete disregard for death. You must have the unshakeable conviction that there is no death at all. When your body has ceased to be usable, your self casts it off just as you cast off a worn-out piece of clothing. The self however is a branch on the tree of life, therefore life itself, and life is immortal. When you've become identical in your consciousness with life, you won't shrink back in fear of death whenever your task brings you into mortal danger. On the contrary, with complete equanimity and absolute contempt for death, you will be able to face the greatest danger. But never let contempt for death turn into disrespect for life.

'You must appreciate life above everything else. Life is God himself. The eternal being manifests itself in everything that lives. You must never carelessly or wantonly expose yourself to danger. Appreciate life in your body too and live joyously. But the joy in living must never become an end in itself and turn into sensuality.

'And last but not least you must be able to pass the most difficult test of all: The test of love and cruel love: Indifference. This last pair of twin characteristics makes up an inseparable unit right here on the earthly plane. Whenever you manifest one half of it, the other manifests itself automatically.

'You must completely give up your personal viewpoint, your personal inclinations and feelings, learning to love everything and everyone without distinction or discrimination, just as God himself loves everything and everyone! Just as the sun shines—sends its loving radiations—with perfect impartiality on the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the true and the false, you must learn to love the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the true and the false, without discrimination and with perfect impartiality. The highest kind of love of all, divine love, is the perfectly impartial love! It must be a matter of complete indifference to you whether a thing or a person is beautiful or ugly, good or bad, true or false, you must love them all with the same love. You must learn that the beautiful wouldn't even exist without the ugly. You must learn that the good wouldn't even exist without the evil, nor the true without the false. And that's why you must love them all equally. You must learn that the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the true and the false are only reflected pictures of the ineffable which we for convenience' sake call God.

'When absolutely constant and completely impartial love radiates from you to all creatures, your love will never again be mixed with personal inclinations or antipathies. You will consider everything from the standpoint of the whole, and when the interests of the whole community are at variance with those of individual persons, you will unhesitatingly defend the cause of the group with ruthless disregard for the interests of individuals. But this ruthlessness must always be rooted in universal, divine love; it must never spring from personal antipathy.

'And you must also be able to manifest your impersonal, cruelly impartial love for your fellow beings in those cases when their soul can perhaps only be saved at the expense of their earthly well-being, even when such people are very, very near to you personally. You must even be able to look on dispassionately when those nearest and dearest to you get themselves into great danger, and if they don't react to ordinary measures, you must not try to hold them back by spiritual force, hypnosis, or magic powers when the salvation of their soul is at stake. It's better for a person to suffer material or physical ruin, even death, than to lose his soul. Under all circumstances you must endeavour to save his soul. Just as God doesn't meddle in the affairs of men, but rather leaves them their free will, you too must let your fellow human beings apply their free will, and you must never compel them to do anything by force. In your helpfulness, you must always consider everything from the standpoint of spiritual well-being, not from the standpoint of the earthly and physical. But this divinely impartial love must never degenerate into indifference and apathy and you must never refuse to help a person because of personal antipathy when you can save him with earthly measures.

'These are the hardest tests of all because you must give up your personal feelings, simply turning them off as it were. Only when you have completely mastered the preceding eleven sets of opposite characteristics will you be able to recognize the voice of God so clearly as to be able to feel, even in the most difficult cases, what you should do in perfect divine love, and what you should not do!

'Then you will no longer be able to err, because you will BE love itself! And love can only act in love. You will only need to radiate your self, to be your self, and the whole universe will be able to draw from your warmth, from your light, and from your strength. Then you will have become divine yourself, and your consciousness will have become identical with God himself! You will have returned from out of the world of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, from out of the realm of the tree of death, where everything is visible in the state of separation, into the realm of divine unity. You will then be eating again of the fruit of the tree of life. And of this fruit you will also give to eat to those who come after you so that all may return to the unity of the immortal, eternal life, to the eternal being, to God.