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Correspondence from Charles Stansfeld Jones to Max Schneider
[circa 25 July 1925]
Care Frater:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!
Your letter of Sol in 26 Deg. Cancer has been received. I am very glad to learn that you have already secured employment; that at least is a step in the right direction.
I must point out to you one very important thing viz: that we are not, as your letter supposes, "at odds about two fundamentally incompatible systems". In fact we are not at odds at all. According to the teaching of the A∴A∴, as you were clearly told upon your reception as a Probationer, "the Great Work is One, and the Initiation is One, and the Reward is One, however diverse are the symbols wherein the unutterable is clothed." Yet there are various systems of initiation.
It is clearly stated that "The pupil should Endeavour to discover the fundamental harmony of these varied works; for this purpose he will find it best to study the most extreme divergences side by side". Again it is written: "We require the employment of a strictly scientific method. The mind of the seeker must be unbiased: all prejudice and other sources of error must be perceived as such and extirpated."
If two systems appear to you to be mutually exclusive this implies duality in your own conception, and that you have so far failed to harmonise them, much less to perceive their identity.
It also implies that your present conception of each is partial, and that in the event of one or the other representing the whole Truth you have so far failed to appreciate and attain to a knowledge of either that will enable you to see that it includes the other. Of course at your present stage as a probationer of one system and an inactive member of the other, such a condition of mind is hardly to be wondered at. But you have shown yourself unwilling to advance by "either" path according to prescribed methods, rather preferring to judge "both" systems according to your own opinion of them without being prepared to properly to investigate either. It is right to be self-reliant and to credit nothing but that which lies within your own knowledge and experience, it is also a self-imposed limitation to refuse to extend that field under right influence, or to reject that guidance when you have merely been requested to fulfill the known rules of the Order.
However the relation between Probationer and Neophyte is purely mutual. "For we give to each inquirer a year's (or more) study; mutual, so that he may decide whether we can indeed give that which he wishes, and so that we may know exactly what training is suitable for him". I do not know that as your Neophyte it is my duty to seek another Neophyte to take charge of you merely because you do not believe in me (which you are not supposed to do anyway) and while I have been prepared to admit you into the Outer College as soon as you fulfilled the simple request of turning in your exam papers. You are still on probation, and while I should not have refused to advance you, now that you have voluntarily broken the bond which much be mutual in order to exist, that of course relieves me of my obligation to you, and leaves you free to seek entrance to the Outer College in any way which seems to you fit.
You have taken it upon yourself to forward copies of your correspondence with me to T. Mega Therion, it would have seemed more in order to have addressed the Chancellor and request that the correspondence be forwarded if necessary. However, since our relationship as Neophyte and Probationer is now terminated, and in that respect there is no obligation on either side, it is not for me to advise you further.
Wishing you every success in all your undertakings,
Love is the law, love under will,
Yours fraternally,
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