On the expectations of students

 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

These days I have little contact with the occult community, and don’t personally take on students. That is to say, I am not in a position to choose or allocate from a pool of prospective students. That job is left to a more capable person and I have little input in the matter, except perhaps as a sort of consultant. This is probably just as well, since I have proved incapable of holding on to students for any length of time, all of those who have signed their Probationer oaths in my presence have since resigned. Some of these I roundly accept, were probably through my own fault, although the majority simply found the work impossible for a variety of reasons. These latter I can’t do much about except to accept that for most people, the Great Work will be a passing thing, a source of diversion left to one side as soon as life gets complicated. Those for whom it really gets under the skin are relatively few and far between.

Of those who left the Order because of me, I have had a lot of time to reflect on what went wrong, a sometimes uncomfortable process but a necessary one I think. What I notice is that they usually resign because of personality clashes, they can’t help but put a supervisor on a pedestal, and when they get to know the person, and realise that he is human, has his failings and quirks of personality, and even, (the horror) disagrees with them, they feel that they can no longer work under the supervision of such a person and must therefore resign. The unvarnished truth of it is that they just don’t like or respect me enough to consider me a teacher, and so go off in search of somebody who fits the mold better, or else return to solitary practice. They are correct of course, I'm no guru, I realise that much, so I don't try to be, but instead confine myself to administering the syllabus as it was presented to me.

For me, this repeated process of aspirant post-mortem has been an exercise in humility. Nobody likes rejection, especially on the spiritual plane where one’s deepest predilections and sense of what it is to be, are exposed. It is not without some discomfort that I put this in writing, but I know it must be done for the analysis to be complete. However, I do feel that those who have resigned because of me miss an important point, that so long as the syllabus is adhered to, ones personal beliefs are of little import. 

If one’s supervisor insists on practices or activities that are not part of the core curriculum of the A\A\,, or is manipulative, then one should indeed depart. If s/he insists that you agree to a given point of view, for instance theism or atheism, or flat-eartherism, or anything else not part of the core A\A\ curriculum, then one should probably walk away. I would assert strongly though that if one's supervisor agrees with you on every point, tells you how great you are and never challenges your views then you are unlikely to grow except in your own conceit. If on the other hand, you feel compelled to walk away because of a difference of opinions that is in no way insisted upon and does not affect your path, then walking away is a sign of being influenced at a much lower level than that of the spirit, instead one is operating and basing their decision of the sphere of the personality. In such instances I feel that the Great Work devolves into a sort of tea party, a social exercise only. That is not what the A\A\ is for. For this reason it becomes clearer with every year that associations with other initiates should be relatively distant, even with those one regards as friends. Crowley said as much somewhere, that an initiate should go into fits of horror if he catches a glimpse of another initiate through a telescope, or words to that effect. In practice, I find that I need to be careful when engaging students and other initiates, not to get too involved at the level of the personality, an incredibly difficult maneuver and one that I am still learning, and a key reason why I don't associate with initiates or the occult 'scene' in general. 

As an  A\A\supervisor sometimes these things can't be easily avoided and engagement is necessary. I may challenge the opinions and viewpoints of an aspirant, if they seem to be influencing his or her path. Not so much to refute them as to expose them. The A\A\path is first and foremost a path of scepticism, and that scepticism must extend even, especially in fact, to ones deeply held beliefs. The deepest splinters are not felt, but slowly infect the flesh, and must be excised with the scalpel of analysis if the flesh is to heal. Being a solitary path, this is intensely introspective, but we must be careful that it doesn't become an exercise in naval gazing, or else caught in the mirror of self reflection, we end up worse off than we were before we started. Nor is the process over at any particular grade, but continues day after day, year after year, forever. 

When a supervisor offers sceptical response to a students expressed certainties, this is likely to be not so much a refutation, but an invitation to look more closely. While of course he may disagree with a point of view, he should be open to persuasion if presented with verifiable facts, but unprovable opinions don't deserve that sort of respect, they remain opinions only, and to insist on such without providing valid evidence is the opposite of the method of science. Immature students may receive this as a personal attack, insofar as they are incapable of separating themselves from their opinions. Our opinions are ours, we identify with them, they may come to define us, thus becoming a source of separateness, which is really alienation, yet we cling to it. I feel now that those students with whom I have clashed have largely done so on the matter of opinions when I offered a sceptical response (irrespective of my own opinions on the matter), and unwilling to compromise, or thinking that differing opinions imply fundamental incompatibility. 

In any case, I suspect I never really find out the real reasons for student departures, I can only go by what the student tells me and that may not be the whole truth of a thing.

They are probably correct as far as their needs go, so despite disappointment on my part, I have to accept that they probably made the right decision for them. I am unlikely to pat a person on the head and tell them they are a good boy. I am quite saturnine by nature, and if I see a person doing well, I am likely to expect more of them, test them further, exactly as I do myself. I don’t coddle or sooth, at least not those I consider to be adults, although I do have compassion, and challenges to ones thinking are of course optional insofar as they are not directly covered in the syllabus. Life has a way of presenting its own ordeals, there is no need for me to invent more. 

Finally, while I am genuinely sorry for those students who felt that they could not continue to work with me, I can only applaud their decision to do so and look on with a sort of grim pride at those ex-students who took True Will at face value and acted on theirs. This is the first and last lesson. After all, if you meet Buddha in the road, you must kill him.

Love is the law, love under will.