The Nature of Glamor

From Bailey, Alice, Glamour

In the preceding pages we dealt with certain definitions of the words (frequently used interchangeably) dealing with illusion and glamor. We found that:

1. Illusion is primarily of a mental quality and was characteristic of the attitude of mind of those people who are more intellectual than emotional. They have outgrown glamor as usually understood. It is the misunderstanding of ideas and thought-forms of which they are guilty, and of misinterpretations.

2. Glamor is astral in character, and is far more potent at this time than illusion, owing to the enormous majority of people who function astrally always.

3. Maya is vital in character and is a quality of force. It is essentially the energy of the human being as it swings into activity through the subjective influence of the mental illusion or astral glamor or of both in combination.

4. The Dweller on the Threshold, always present, swings however into activity only on the Path of Discipleship, when the aspirant becomes occultly aware of himself, of the conditions induced within him as a result of his interior illusion, his astral glamor and the maya surrounding his entire life. Being now an integrated personality (and no one is a disciple, my brother, unless he is mental as well as emotional, which is a point the [27] devotee oft forgets) these three conditions (with the preponderance of the effect in one or other of the bodies) are seen as a whole, and to this whole the term the "Dweller on the Threshold" is applied. It is in reality a vitalized thought-form - embodying mental force, astral force and vital energy.

The problem, therefore, before all of you in this group is to learn first of all:

1. To distinguish between these three inner illusory aspects.
2. To discover what conditions in the environment or in the individual constitution induce these situations of difficulty.
3. To find out what methods are effective in inducing a cessation of the bewildering deceiving conditions.