divine light which penetrates through and
through his being. Then he has come into his
inheritance and can claim his kinship with the
teachers of men; he is upright, he has raised
his head, he breathes the same air that they do.

But before it is in any way possible for him
to do this, the feet of the soul must be washed
in the blood of the heart.

The sacrifice, or surrender of the heart of
man, and its emotions, is the first of the rules;
it involves the "attaining of an equilibrium
which cannot be shaken by personal emotion."
This is done by the stoic philosopher; he, too,
stands aside and looks equably upon his own
sufferings, as well as on those of others.

In the same way that "tears" in the language
of occultists expresses the soul of
emotion, not its material appearance, so blood
expresses, not that blood which is an essential
of physical life, but the vital creative principle
in man's nature, which drives him into human
life in order to experience pain and pleasure,
joy and sorrow. When he has let the blood
flow from the heart he stands before the Masters
as a pure spirit which no longer
to incarnate for the sake of emotion and
experience. Through great cycles of time successive