HARMLESSNESS

The aspirant will eventually learn to work with forces and how to direct energy. These three Rules are given to him to memorise and to practise so that he can control his astral body through the manifestation of harmlessness during his life in the three worlds.

RULE 1      Enter thy brother’s heart and see his woe. [misery, anguish] Then speak. Let the words spoken convey to him the potent force he needs to loose his chains. Yet loose them not thyself. Thine is the work to speak with understanding. The force received by him will aid him in his work.  

RULE 2          Enter thy brother’s mind and read his thoughts, but only when thy thoughts are pure. Then think. Let the thoughts thus created enter thy brother’s mind and blend with his. Yet keep detached thyself, for none have the right to sway a brother’s mind. The only right there is, will make him say: “He loves. He stands by. He thinks with me and I am strong to do the right.” Learn thus to speak. Learn thus to think.

RULE 3             Blend  with thy brother’s soul and know him as he is. Only upon the plane of soul can this be done. Elsewhere the blending feeds the fuel of his lower life. Then focus on the plan. Thus will he see the part that he and you and all man play. Thus will he enter into life and know the work accomplished.

The above is important, because these three energies, of speech, of thought, and of purpose---- when wielded with understanding by the chela and blended with the awakening forces of his brother whom he seeks to aid, are the three energies with which all adepts work.

Harmlessness in the positive sense means the attainment of that step which leads definitely to the Portal of Initiation. It is that positive harmlessness that works out in right thought [because it is based on intelligent love], right speech [because it is governed by self-control], and right action [because it is founded on an understanding of the Law]. The chela will find that this attempt will call forth all the resources of his being and take much time to achieve.

It is the harmlessness that springs from the true understanding and control of the personality by the soul that leads inevitably to the spiritual expression in every-day life. It emanates from a capacity to enter into the consciousness and to penetrate into the realisation of one’s brother, and when this has been accomplished----all is forgiven and all is lost sight of in the desire to aid and to help.

This has to be the first step, and the discipline it entails and the constant supervision of all the activities on the three planes of human evolution and of all reactions, bring the emotional body under the dominance of the illumined mind. They also bring about the understanding of one’s fellow men. Through harmlessness he has learned to neutralise all evil emanations and acts now with a positiveness of a new kind.

According to Patanjali we have the following:

Harmlessness, truth to all beings, abstention from theft, from incontinence and avarice, constitute the five commandments.

These five commandments are simple and clear and yet, if practiced, would make a man perfect in his relationships with other men, to supermen and to the subhuman realms. The first command, harmlessness, is in reality a summation of the others, and in studying them we shall note their relation to one or other part of the lower threefold manifestation.

1.            Harmlessness, covers a man’s physical acts as they relate to all forms of divine manifestation and concerns specifically his force nature or the energy which he expresses through his physical plane activities. He hurts no one, and injures nobody.

2.            Truth, concerns primarily his use of speech. “Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Master it must have lost the power to wound.

3.            Abstention from theft, the disciple is precise and accurate in all his affairs and appropriates nothing which is not rightly his. This covers more than just others possessions.

4.            Abstention from incontinence. This is literally desirelessness and governs the out-going astral tendencies to that which is not the self, which finds physical plane expression between the sexes. There are actually many tendencies towards pleasure seeking with consequent satisfaction of the desire nature and this, to the true aspirant, is likewise regarded as incontinence.

5.            Abstention from avarice. This is literally theft on the mental plane. It is mental force   and concerns those potent longings which have their seat not only in the emotional body, but also in the mental body. 
Based on the work of AAB and DK.