The Training and Work of an Initiate

Every age has carried the rumour that some people know more than they let on, and pass it only to those judged worthy. Fortune takes the rumour seriously, then turns straight to the practical point: fit yourself for the knowledge, she says, and the contact comes.

That changes the question. Not "where is the secret school?" but "what can I do while I am still outside the gate?" She answers with a line borrowed from a poet: "Earn the means first, God surely will contrive use for our earning."

So the first work of the Mysteries is not mysterious at all. It is the work you can do alone, now, with no teacher and no invitation.

Fortune is blunt about why this matters. Teachers of the Mysteries lose a great deal of time, she says, teaching students what they ought to have learnt in the schoolroom, before those students can grasp anything initiation actually offers.

Her comparison is the university. A professor will not stop to drill a student in the elements; he expects him to arrive ready. The student of esoteric science should likewise come as fully equipped as outer study allows.

This is less romantic than being chosen, and more hopeful. Nobody can hand you an initiation. But nobody can stop you arriving ready for one, and that is the difference between spending years catching up and being able to use what you are given.

According to Fortune, what should a seeker do before a teacher appears?

• Trust intuition, which will supply whatever study cannot give
• Wait patiently, since real preparation only begins after initiation
• Search out a hidden school, since contact has to be chased down
• Train the mind and character through ordinary study and discipline✓Correct answer

Her whole chapter answers what a solitary student can do while still outside the gate: cultivate the mind so the teaching can be used when it comes. Waiting passively only creates the schoolroom gaps teachers later have to fill, and intuition alone, as she goes on to argue, loses most of what it glimpses.

Here is the mistake Fortune most wants to head off. Intuition, she grants, can catch glorious glimpses with no help from the intellect. But far more is lost, because the student cannot grasp what he is seeing or put it to use.

Her example is the mystic. He has his moments of ecstasy and reaches great heights, yet "he is seldom able to bring back water from the wells of life for those he has left behind."

What is missing is correlation between the vehicles of consciousness: spirit, mind, emotions and body working in step, so inspiration can pass all the way down into the physical world. Without it, she says, you can store great things in the subconscious and still be of no service to anyone in this life.

Fortune says the mystic who reaches great heights in ecstasy is seldom able to bring back anything of use to the people he has left behind.

True✓Correct answer

True. She says it plainly: intuition unaided by a trained intellect reaches high but rarely returns with anything others can use. Only when all the vehicles of consciousness work in step can inspiration be brought through into the world.

The practical starting point is a change in how you regard yourself. Fortune asks the student to think of his vehicles as tools, separate from himself: instruments he sharpens and cares for in order to do his work.

Then she sorts people by where they actually live. Few enlightened people identify with their bodies, but many live in their emotions. Some can think clearly about concrete things, only a few can reason in the abstract, and just one or two in a generation can think from spiritual intuition itself.

The ladder is not there to flatter or shame anyone. It tells you where your next piece of work lies. The higher the level you get used to working on, the better your start when the opportunity comes.