An Exerpt from Confessions of Aleister Crowley on
Obedience
In mysticism he [Neuburg] was fatally handicapped by his
congenital dislike of discipline, order, punctuality and every
moral quality that goes with science. I
started him on Yoga about this time. One incident is
instructive. His daily hour for practising Asana
arrived one day when we were crossing to Europe on the steamer.
He refused to do his work; he
could not bear to attract the attention of the other people on
board and appear ridiculous.
(Neuburg! Ridiculous! O all ye gods and little fishes!) I,
being responsible for him as his holy guru,
performed the practice in his stead. He experienced remorse and
shame, which did him good; but
several other incidents determined me to impose on him a Vow of
Holy Obedience.
I must point out the virtue of this practice. Technically it is
identical with that in vogue in the
Society of Jesus. The pupil must obey his teacher, perinde ac
cadaver. But the moral implication
is wholly antagonistic. The Jesuit is taught that obedience to
his superior and humility before him
are virtues in themselves pleasing to God. In the A.'. A.'. the
superior is, so to speak, the sparring
partner of the pupil. His function is to discover the
prejudices, fears and other manifestations of
tendency which limit the pupil, by observing the instinctive
reactions which may follow any order.
The pupil discovers his own weaknesses, which he then proceeds
to destroy by analysing them,
somewhat as Freud has recently suggested --- science is always
discovering odd scraps of
magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its
cleverness! --- as well as to master them
by habitually ignoring their inhibition. If the superior is
anything of a psychologist, he should be able
to teach the average weakling fairly perfect self-control in
three months at the outside.