Charles Webster Leadbeater

“ What is intended is that we should keep it completely under control, that we should have the faculty to slay the lunar form at will. Purity is necessary, but it means not only the abstinence from specified faults, but absolute selflessness. Ambition, for example, is a very common form of desire, but in it there is always a thought of self. The adept cannot be ambitious. His will is one with the will of the LOGOS, and he wills evolution. We are all parts of the LOGOS, and our wills are part of His. It is only when we do not realize this that we set up desires in our own separate lines. ”

“ We are often told that we must kill out desire; but it should be remembered that that is a gradual process. The lower and coarser desire which are meant by the Sanskrit word kama must certainly be killed out entirely before any sort of advancement can be made, but in the English sense of the word we all of us still have certain desire, and are likely to have them for a very long time to come. ”

“ We desire keenly, for example, to serve the Master; to become His pupils; to help humanity. These also are desires, but they should not be killed. What is necessary is to kill out the lower and reach up to the higher, that is to say, to purify our desires and to transmute them into aspirations.
Later on another transmutation will take place. For example, now we desire to make progress; but a time will come when we shall be so sure of it that we shall cease to desire, because we know that all the time it is going on as rapidly as is possible for us, and because we mean that it shall so go on. ”