A SUPREMELY IMPERATIVE CLAIM

 
Since the Master is, for the aspirant, a symbol of the supreme Self in all, the problem of true adjustment to the Master appears to him to be the same as realizing his own inner divinity and arriving at true adjustment with all other forms of the supreme Self. Through his allegiance to the Master, the aspirant achieves conscious appreciation of the fundamental unity of all these problems.

From the psychological point of view, he is in a position to tackle them not as separate problems but as aspects of one problem. Thus he can arrive at true integration, which is different from a temporary compromise between conflicting claims. In order to help the disciple achieve this difficult task, the Master has to become the nucleus of all the spiritual idealism of the aspirant, because intensive concentration of mental energy is necessary if the aspirant is to break through the many barriers that lie between him and his goal.

The supreme claim of the Master cannot be challenged or limited even by the spontaneous reverence that the disciple is bound to feel for Masters other than the one who has accepted him. All Perfect Masters are one in their consciousness, and it is absurd to imagine any grades between them.

Though one Master is not greater than another, the disciple must, for his own purposes, place the claim of his own Master over and above the claims of other Masters — until he transcends the domain of duality and realizes the unity of all life. Mental energy would be dissipated unless there arose a supremely imperative claim among the many conflicting claims of life.