Probation
Probation is a technical term for the first stage of personal relationship between a Master of Wisdom and a would-be disciple. It is said to normally last about seven years, although the period may be shortened or lengthened. During this period the pupil is tested so that the Master is sure he or she is ready to become an accepted disciple.
Master K.H. wrote:
To be accepted as a chela on probation—is an easy thing. To become an accepted chela—is to court the miseries of “probation”. Life in the ordinary run is not entirely made up of heavy trials and mental misery: the life of a chela who offers himself voluntarily is one long sacrifice. He, who would control hereafter the events of his life here and beyond, has first of all to submit himself to be controlled, yet triumph over every temptation, every woe of flesh and mind. The Chela “on probation” is like the wayfarer in the old fable of the sphinx; only the one question becomes a long series of every day riddles propounded by the Sphinx of Life, who sits by the wayside, and who, unless her ever changing and perplexing puzzles are successfully answered one after the other, impedes the progress of the traveller and finally destroys him.[1]
Regarding the necessity for probation, Mme. Blavatsky explained:
Moreover, there is one important fact with which the student should be made acquainted. Namely, the enormous, almost limitless, responsibility assumed by the teacher for the sake of the pupil. From the Gurus of the East who teach openly or secretly, down to the few Kabalists in Western lands who undertake to teach the rudiments of the Sacred Science to their disciples--those western Hierophants being often themselves ignorant of the danger they incur--one and all of these "Teachers" are subject to the same inviolable law. From the moment they begin really to teach, from the instant they confer any power--whether psychic, mental or physical--on their pupils, they take upon themselves all the sins of that pupil, in connection with the Occult Sciences, whether of omission or commission, until the moment when initiation makes the pupil a Master and responsible in his turn. . . . Thus it is clear why the "Teachers" are so reticent, and why "Chelas" are required to serve a seven years probation to prove their fitness, and develop the qualities necessary to the security of both Master and pupil.[2]
Online resources
Articles
- Probation at Theosopedia