The Causes of Glamor

We shall now employ the word "glamor" to cover all the aspects of those deceptions, illusions, misunderstandings and misinterpretations which confront the aspirant at every step of his way until he achieves unity. I would have you note that word "unity," for it holds the secret of disillusionment, as this process of release from glamor has been occultly called. It will be apparent to you (if you have studied these instructions with care) that the cause of glamor is primarily based upon the sense of duality. If such a duality did not exist, there would be no glamor, and this perception of the dual nature of all manifestation lies at the very root of the trouble or troubles with which humanity is - in time and space - faced. This perception passes through various stages and constitutes the great problem of the conscious entity. This condition is a difficulty in the realm of consciousness itself and is not really inherent in the substance or matter. The dweller in the body perceives wrongly: he interprets incorrectly that which is perceived; he proceeds to identify himself with that which is not himself; he shifts his consciousness into a realm of phenomena which engulfs him, deludes him and imprisons him until such time as he becomes restless and unhappy under the sense that something is wrong. Then he comes finally to the recognition that he is not what he seems to be and that the phenomenal world of appearances is not identical with [95] reality as he had hitherto supposed it to be. From that moment on he comes to the sense of duality, to the recognition of "otherness" and to the perception that his sense of dualism should be ended and that a process of unification and an attempt to achieve at-one-ment should be undertaken. From that moment, the troubles of the evolving man begin to be observed by him and consciously encountered, and he faces a long period of "extrication from glamor and the entering into that world wherein only unity is known." The stages from then on might be enumerated as follows:

First:

1. That wherein satisfaction is sought in the almost automatic response to the physical instincts, to sex, food and warmth. These loom large in man's consciousness. The animal nature in man is made the center of the attempt to produce some sense of unity. Because the inner and subtle man is as yet "weak in impact" (as it is esoterically called), a physical unification temporarily takes place which serves to deepen the glamor and to delay progress into freedom.
2. The stage wherein satisfaction and sense of oneness is sought in the realm of material possessions, and in the establishing of a center of beauty and comfort in life on the physical plane. Therein the man can be at home and oblivious of a growing sense of dualism which, day by day, gets steadily stronger. This stage only takes place [96] ages later when the aspirant is about to reorient himself to truth and to take the first steps towards the Probationary Path. It is a correspondence towards the end of the Path of Evolution to the stage above mentioned, but the man experiencing it is a very different person to the one who now seeks synthesis in the materialization of beauty upon the outer plane. The subtle man is now becoming dominant.