124
Many of the entries
in this " ledger " are for the ordinary
man neces-
sarily illegible;
the method
of reading
them is given in that
important
instruction
of the A. '.A.', called
"Thisharb,"
Liber CMXIII.
Now consider
that this
Karma is all that
a man
has or is.
His
ulti-
mate object
is to
get rid of it completely —when it comes to the point
of surrendering^
the Self to
the
Beloved;
but
in
the
beginning
the
Magician is not that Self, he is only the heap of refuse
from which
that
Self is to be built up.
The
Magical
instruments
must be made
before
they are destroyed.
This idea of Karma has been
confused
by many
who
ought
to have
known
better,
including
the
Buddha,
with
the
ideas of poetic
justice
and of retribution.
We have the story of one of the Buddha's Arahats,
who
being blind,
in walking
up and
down
unwittingly
killed
a number
of insects.
[The
Buddhist regards
the
destruction
of life
as the
most
shocking
crime.]
His brother
Arahats
inquired
as
to how this
was, and Buddha
spun
them a long yarn as to how, in a previous
incarnation,
he had maliciously
deprived
a woman
of her
sight.
This
is
only
a fairy
tale, a bogey to
frighten
the
children,
and
probably
the worst
way of influencing
the
young
yet devised
by human
stupidity.
^ To surrender all, one must give up not only the bad but the good ; not only weak-
ness but strength.
How can the mystic surrender
all, while
he clings
to his virtues?