Hatred and love on the human level are forms of cosmic repulsion and attraction.

The attraction reintegrates what the repulsion has disintegrated. We can imagine the
Cosmos as a double spiral cone, with a double current of monads descending from the
primordial "I" as the summit towards the material form as the base and then rising from
the base of the material form to the spiritual summit.

It is only an image, because in fact it is about actions which, taken in themselves, are
neither spatial nor temporal. But as our material personality cannot conceive anything
outside Time and Space, this comparison is what seems to me to give the most
accurate idea of the double aspect of cosmic life.

In fact, there is no difference in nature between these two currents. Both attraction and
repulsion are the manifestation of the absolute "I" which passes from the power to act to
action by personifying itself, and which then reintegrates itself. It may be said that it is
one and the same force, sometimes considered positively, sometimes negatively.
Attraction and repulsion represent a unique dynamism, but with opposite signs.

It would also be incorrect to consider these two currents as forming two distinct
universes in the Cosmos. They form a whole, they fit into each other, and they react
perpetually to one another. It is a reaction that forms the Cosmos. Finally, in yet another
aspect, these two currents are Good and Evil, Ormuzd and Ahriman in Zoroastrianism.

That being said, it should be understood that at any given moment of our evolution on
the ascending spiral, there is, on the descending spiral, a being symmetrical to us. I say
symmetrical, because of the inversion of the signs of the two spirals. It must be
considered that for such a being Time and Space are signs contrary to our Time and
Space.

This being is both ourselves and the opposite of ourselves. It is us, if we can say so, but
seen in reverse, with a total transposition of values.

It is understandable that the reaction of such an entity to ours is perpetual, as is our own
reaction to it. For us, it is the eternal tempter, the entity whose constant tendency is to
stop us in our ascent and drag us into its downfall. Such is the esotericism of the myth
of Satan in Christianity and in many other religions.
For us, Good is attraction, it is Love; for the symmetrical entity, it is repulsion, it is
hatred. Our personality is composed only of our representations. By hating some of
these representations, we hate a part of ourselves, we reject it. Hatred thus tends to
provoke a disintegration of the soul, whereas the law of our spiral is the law of love, that
is, of reintegration into the Absolute. This repulsion drags us along on the descending
spiral with the double satanic current that provokes it.

In some extreme cases, the fall does not stop and a human changes his spiral
definitively. This is one of the dangers of magic, known as black magic, and witchcraft,
which appeal, more or less consciously, to the entities of the abyss.

The inverse is also true. There are cases where entities on the descending spiral are
dragged into ours and move from the realm of Evil to the realm of Good. But this would
lead us off topic. The essential fact to remember for the purpose we propose is that
Hatred is the greatest obstacle to our spiritual progress: it not only stops us, it sets us
back.

The space between Hatred and Love is stagnation, which is the prevailing state of
humanity today. If a break in equilibrium occurs, the man is immediately pulled in one
direction or the other, as the case may be.

The student will have to bring about this imbalance in favor of Love by
completely eliminating Hatred from his emotional life. He must not only suppress
his particular hatreds, but truly cause to atrophy in himself the faculty of hating.
Any progress on the Mystical Way exacts this price.

As for the faculty of loving, it goes without saying that it is a matter of exalting it instead
of destroying it. But the task before the student is to purify him in his subjective life, that
is, to give him a content that is independent of our material life as Adam. It is necessary
that this new content be sustained while all links with Adam are broken. This is an
essential part of the work of creating an immortal personality. Any emotional content
linked with Adam will automatically retain us in our life as Adam.
This purification of our affectivity translates practically into an incessant and pitiless
struggle against selfishness and all its manifestations. Selfishness is not, in fact, as is
generally believed, the love of the "l", it is the love of the rags in which we dress it, it is
the love of the representations which form our apparent personality. It is this false
aggregate that we call "l" and cherish.

There is a patent selfishness which is relatively easy to detect and to fight: it is the one
whose object is our physical body and the representations related to it. But there is a
camouflaged selfishness, when we believe we love beings other than ourselves when it
is actually ourselves, and us alone, that we love. Our pretended love is only a feeling of
ownership, of possession, which in no way differs from that which is evoked by the
possession of a desired material object, such as money, an object of art, etc. It is this
false love that will be difficult to fight.

The student will have to make an incessant criticism of his emotional life, without
leaving any ground untouched, mercilessly sacrificing all those feelings which are only a
camouflaged form of selfishness.

You will soon understand that by loving your apparent personality, by a selfishness that
is patent or camouflaged, you enslave yourself to the affective world, you act as your
worst enemy. You will not begin to truly love yourself, to love your self until you have
triumphed over egoism. This purified love is Charity, in the theological sense of the
word. For, if the theologians, who were familiar with these distinctions, mercilessly
condemned egoism, they put the Charity for the "I", as they should have, in the
foreground: "Caritas bene ordonata incipit a semetipso" "Well-ordered charity starts with
oneself (Charity begins at home)".

This will be the first spark of divine love, of the mystical love of the Absolute.

Charity for all other beings will be only an expansion, a further blossoming of this divine
love.

The disintegration of the affective part of the earthly personality, pursued in parallel with
the disintegration of the intellectual part, may contribute to increasing the student's
distress. He would then almost inevitably fall into despair if he did not resort at this
moment to an artificial process which, without exception, the occultists of all times and
all countries have resorted to: he must lean on a religion for support.
Religions, in their apparent diversity, are veiled and incomplete revelations of a unique
Truth, adaptable to the conditions of time and place of each stage of human evolution.

[...]

However, the true object of religions is not to give us in their esoteric form a partial and
disguised revelation of transcendental truths, but to nourish divine love, which is the
greatest driving force for the mystic's pilgrimage.

DIVINE LOVE IS A CHARIOT Of FIRE WHICH TRANSPORTS THE ADEPT TO THE

ABSOLUTE.

This is why the student, while considering the dogmas of religions as mere symbols,
and their morals as precepts dictated by Masters to lead Humanity in its earthly
evolution, will have to temporarily adopt a religion to help and support him during the
duration of his psychic training.

[...]

You will probably say to me: "But I cannot believe at will."

For the moment, you do not have to believe, but to behave as though you believed.

Whatever religion you may have adopted, do not be afraid to descend into a somewhat
primitive anthropomorphism. Represent the gods, the saints, the geniuses as objectively
real beings. Materialise as far as possible the ideas you have formed of them. Tell
yourself that if they are illusions, they are no more illusions than that what you falsely
consider as an external reality. Gradually, they will become as real to you as the
apparent human entities with which you spend your daily life.

Then they will become more real and will serve as lifelines when your belief in the
objective reality of the world breaks down.