How “Light on the Path” Was Written

Mabel Collins, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, William Quan Judge, Archibald Keightley, Bertram Keightley, Boris de Zirkoff · Higher Ethics and Devotion Series · 65 pages

A sixty-five page compilation giving Light on the Path complete — two parts of twenty-one rules each, the author's comments, and her essay on karma — together with the material on how the book came to be written, drawn from Mabel Collins, Blavatsky, W.Q. Judge, Archibald and Bertram Keightley and Boris de Zirkoff. The dispute recounted in its second half is the same one set out at length in “The sparkle of Light on the Path has been dimmed,” held in the Down to Earth series; a reader following the affair may want both.

The compilation opens with a warning from Boris de Zirkoff that using the physical senses as a stepping-stone to spirituality is fraught with danger and disappointment. The book itself is then described as a treatise written for the personal use of those ignorant of the Eastern Wisdom who desire to enter within its influence, authored by Mabel Collins — recorded here as the nom de plume of Kenningale R. Cook. The forty-two rules follow in their two parts, with the author's own commentary on the four that are best known and hardest: that before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears; before the ear can hear it must have lost its sensitiveness; before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters it must have lost the power to wound; and before the soul can stand in the presence of the Masters its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart. Her essay on karma closes the text proper. The second half of the file takes up the dispute over the book's origin, beginning with the correction that Mabel Collins may have been studying Madame Blavatsky for a time but never studied under her as she claimed, and setting against her account the position that Blavatsky was the origin and fountainhead of the esoteric knowledge in question.

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