Rāja yoga – Traou an Dour

Quotations, ॐ, Esoteric Psychology, Rāja yoga, Esoteric

Initiation V – Revelation – Ray I

The Energy of the Will-to-Good. Power.

This initiation has always been called in the Christian church by the name of the Resurrection, whereas it is the seventh initiation which is the true resurrection. The correct name for the fifth initiation is the Initiation of Revelation; this signifies the power to wield light as the carrier of life to all in the three worlds, and to know likewise the next step to be taken upon the Way of the Higher Evolution. This Way is revealed to the initiate in a new light and with an entirely different significance when the fifth initiation is taken. It is the true time of emergence from the tomb of darkness and constitutes an entrance into a light of an entirely different nature to any hitherto experienced.

Development and revelation or (if you so prefer it) a developing revelation, form essentially the entire theme and objective of all activity upon our planet. This gives us a clue to the goal of the planetary Logos. All life, from the first descent of the soul into incarnation, is only a series of revelations, all of which lead up to the revelation accorded at the fifth initiation. The relation between the fifth and the seventh initiations is exceedingly deep and mysterious. It is the revelation accorded in the fifth initiation which makes the seventh initiation possible. The Master, as He emerges at the fifth initiation into the light of day, realizes in that light:

The true and hitherto unknown significance of the three worlds which he has viewed almost entirely from the angle of meaning. Now its significance is apparent, and the revelation is so tremendous that “he withdraws into the world of light and joins his brothers. He gathers all his forces and seeks new light upon the Plan. That light shines forth and with the force of its revealing power, new loyalties arise, new goals are seen, and that which shall be and the thing which is, both become lost in the radiant light of revelation.”
That the first vibration or influencing energy of the cosmic ray of prevailing energy in its highest aspect is the Ray of Love-Wisdom, and this is now contacted; this is made possible by the Master’s response to the first Ray of Power or of the Will-to-Good, experienced in its second aspect at the fifth initiation. Forget not that all rays have three aspects, and that all three can be contacted by the human consciousness of the spiritual man, thus placing at his disposal the energies of the seven rays and of the twenty-one forces. It is this synthesis which is revealed at the fifth initiation and – as I said above – the combination of these forces produces the Ascension; this is an exceeding great mystery and one which cannot as yet be grasped by you. From the height of the Mount of Ascension light is thrown upon the hierarchical Plan in such a manner that the purpose in the mind of the planetary Logos is (for the first time) truly grasped.
From that height also, the mystery of the human soul is revealed and a great triangular pattern will be seen, relating the human spirit to the world of forms, to the united Hierarchy and to the Council Chamber of the Lord. Upon this I may not here enlarge, for we must not diverge too far from our study. One thing only can be said: from that high place, atma-buddhi-manas (will, love and intelligent action) can be seen in united activity and the theory of an existing Plan and the belief in the three divine aspects, or in the Trinity of Energies, is factually demonstrated.

The first Ray of Will or Power is distinguished by the highest known divine quality (there are others still higher). In the word, Goodwill, the secret purpose of the planetary Logos is hidden. It is being slowly brought to the attention of humanity by means of the three phrases: God is Love. Goodwill. The Will-to-Good. These three phrases, in reality concern the three aspects of the first ray.

When a Master takes the fifth initiation He already knows the significance of the first two aspects, and must become consciously aware of the highest aspect: the Will-to-Good. He has developed in Himself “the love necessary to salvation, His own and that of those He loves, His fellowmen;” all His actions and His thinking are qualified by goodwill, in its esoteric sense, and the significance of the Will-to-Good lies ahead of Him and will be later revealed.

As this first ray is not in incarnation at this time, and therefore souls who can fully express it are absent, the entire theme anent this type of energy, and its influence and quality when related to the energies and the forces, is most difficult to express. Each great ray, as it comes into incarnation, transforms the speech of the cycle, enriches the existent vocabulary, and brings new knowledge to humanity; the many civilizations – past and present – are the result of this.

I would ask you to consider the relation of the fifth initiation, the fifth Ray of Science and the first Ray of Will, for there lies the key to the revelation accorded to the initiate-Master.

As you can see, we are venturing into realms far beyond your comprehension; but the effort to grasp the unattainable and to exercise the mind along the line of abstract thought is ever of value.

It must be remembered therefore (and I reiterate) that the revelation accorded to the disciple-initiate is along the line of the first Ray of Will or Power, and that is a ray which is as yet a long way from full manifestation. From one angle, it is of course always in manifestation for it is the ray which holds the planet and all that is upon it in one coherent manifesting whole; the reason for this coherent synthesis is the evolutionary effort to work out divine purpose. The first ray ever implements that purpose. From another angle, it is cyclic in its manifestation; here I mean from the angle of recognized manifestation – and such is the case at this time.

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The Effect of Ray I on Humanity Today

Owing to extra-planetary stimulation, to the immediate planetary crisis and to the present invocative cry of humanity, energy from Shamballa has been permitted to play upon the “center which is called the race of men” and has produced two potent results: first, the world war was precipitated and, secondly, the fission of the atom, resulting in the atomic bomb, was brought about. Both these events were made possible by the pouring-in of the energy and power of the third aspect of the first Ray of Power or Will. This is the lowest aspect, and definite material effects were produced. The destroyer aspect was therefore the first aspect to take effect. It split the thought-form of materialistic living (which was governing and controlling humanity everywhere) upon the mental plane and, at the same time, it produced a great agent of destruction upon the physical plane.

Thus was the new era ushered in; thus was the stage set for a better future. This was the intent and the purpose of Those Who compose the Council Chamber of the Lord. It rests with humanity itself to take advantage of the proffered opportunity which this destructive manifestation made possible.

Shamballa having acted in this manner, it is nevertheless the Hierarchy which will bring into expression a measure of the second aspect of the first Ray of Will or Power, and it is for this that the Hierarchy is preparing; it is for this event that the Christ is fitting Himself to be the distributing Agent and the directing Factor, with the concentrated assistance of the united Hierarchy; it is this that will begin to manifest when He appears. You have here the true reason for His proclaimed Coming or Reappearance. The distinction between material living and spiritual living will be clearly demonstrated. This is made possible by the cleavage of the ancient materialistic thought-form on mental levels; the reorientation of human thinking, as this fact is grasped, will have its first results upon emotional levels through the focused expression of human goodwill; this is the lowest aspect of the second Ray of Love-Wisdom, implemented and strengthened by the second aspect of the first Ray of Will.

On the physical plane, the great scientific discovery, called colloquially the “splitting of the atom,” will be turned eventually to the production of those conditions which will enable mankind to follow the good, the beautiful and the true. This men will then be able to do, freed from the dread presence of purely materialistic thinking. This is no idle vision or vague dream. Many scientists today (and particularly those who love their fellowmen) are not only visioning the non-destructive aspect of atomic energy but are already engaged in harnessing – for the good of humanity – some of its products and its radioactive properties.

Curiously enough, it is the wise, controlled use of the results of this scientific adventure in connection with the atomic bomb which will eventually bring about a specific revelation of the nature of certain forces in relation to light; this event will transform world thinking and lead to a new type of transmutative process, as far as man is concerned.

It must not be inferred from the above that humanity, as a whole, will be taking the fifth initiation, for such is not the case. Many advanced souls (perhaps amounting to many thousands) may and will take this initiation, but the masses of men everywhere, constituting the sum total of the world disciple, will eventually take either the first or the second initiation. The effect however of hierarchical happenings, in conjunction with Shamballa, will lead finally to the great stimulation of the fifth Principle of manas, the intelligence principle in man. A revelation which is not perceived, which remains unrelated and unexpressed, is of no true service to mankind, except from a purely subjective standpoint; nevertheless, through the proposed stimulation, through the efforts of those who have taken or who will take the fifth initiation, and through the new direction of first ray energy from Shamballa, the mental plane will receive such an inflow of energy that the thinking principle, the reasoning factor within humanity, will reach new heights. Thus will the “light stream forth into the minds of men,” and the first stanza of the Invocation prove that it can and does receive an answer to its invocative appeal.

It would be good to let your spiritual imagination look forward into the future, and then vision – if you can – what is the true significance of the tremendous activity of the Hierarchy. One of the signs of the coming of this new light and energy inflow is a definitely curious one; it is to be found in the instability of the human mental mechanism and the human thinking processes at this time. This is due to their premature response to the new incoming potency. It is a mass reaction, and therefore the statistical returns are somewhat misleading. It is the unready who thus react, and this entails no possible reflection upon those thus distressed (and they are to be found today in all classes and nations). The Law of Rebirth will take care of this reaction, and in the next incarnation these same people will enter a physical body with a better equipment. In reality, it is this energy from Shamballa in its third and destructive aspect which is acting upon certain members of the human family and unfortunately evoking a ready response. I tell you this for your encouragement; destruction always evokes questioning in minds attuned to human welfare and in those thinkers who are apprehensive of the suffering to which their fellowmen are subjected.

One of the most difficult things for the average thinking man to understand and to interpret is the destructive processes of what he (for lack of a better name) calls “the will of God.” This is one of the results (and only one) of a purely materialistic civilization which has laid all its emphasis upon the form side of experience and thus regards physical well-being and physical comfort, plus material possessions, as the true goal of all human effort. It is upon this widespread attitude and reaction that the new incoming light will concentrate itself; as the light reveals reality, the world of phenomena and the world of spiritual values will enter into a better, directed relation.

From all the above, you will note that some of the effects upon humanity as a whole and the skeleton structure of the new and beautiful future will take place as a result of the new incoming first ray activity. No details can yet be given, but enough has been written down anent the basic, predisposing cause to enable you who read to ponder upon the possible effect, spiritually speaking. What is coming is a civilization of a different yet still material nature, but animated by a growing registration by the masses everywhere of an emerging spiritual objective which will transform all life and give new value and purpose to that which is material.

Next we must consider what will be the effect of this first ray energy upon the individual disciple as he prepares for and undergoes the fifth initiation, and keys himself up for the promised revelation, thus laying himself open to an entirely new inflow of force. This he must do consciously. It is conscious absorption of energy and its conscious assimilation, plus its conscious use which distinguishes the initiate from the rest of mankind; there are of course many degrees of this desired consciousness. What the initiate will receive as a result of first ray energy will be an inflow of the second aspect of this ray – a blazing forth of the light which will focus clearly for him, and in a flash of time, the significance of that which is slowly being revealed on Earth; he sees this vision in toto for the first time. At the fourth initiation, he responds to the third aspect of this ray, the aspect of destruction; this divested him of everything, and finally and eternally destroyed all that which held him in the three worlds of human endeavor. Thus was harmony produced through conflict, and the success of the individual initiate is the guarantee of the final success of the world disciple.

When it comes to a consideration of the effect of this ray at the time of the fifth initiation, you must bear in mind that the disciple has passed, in a previous incarnation, through the Initiation of Renunciation, and has established within himself a condition of complete harmony as a result of conflict – a conflict which has been raging for millennia of years and whose goal has ever been revelation. Just as a camera has to be correctly focused in order to register correctly that which is visioned, so this harmony, once finally achieved, can be regarded as a form of focused orientation. Throughout the many lives the disciple has lived, there have been many such moments, but they were brief and passing, serving only to stir the aspiration into activity. With the disciple of the fourth initiation, submitting himself to the fifth initiation, the orientation and the focus attained remains a permanent condition. This prefaces an entirely new cycle of spiritual experience – the experience of the higher evolution – leading to that great moment when the revelation of the seven Paths is accorded to him at the following or sixth Initiation of Decision.

Where the ordinary everyday man is concerned, the propelling aspiration (if I may use such an unusual phrase) is of a material nature and concerns his successful progress in the world of everyday physical plane life. It might be wise to consider ambition as the lower expression of aspiration; this ambition covers all the many phases of the Path of Evolution, from the ambition of the raw savage in primeval times to gain food and shelter for himself and family to the ambition of the modern businessman to reach the height of financial gain or power. Having achieved that goal, it frequently happens that, on the way to the higher octave of ambition (aspiration), there may come a cycle of lives where the ambition is directed to the creative arts. Next comes gradually the transmutation of all these ambitions into a steadily growing and consciously spiritual aspiration. The man treads then the Probationary Path and eventually the Path of Discipleship, and as his spiritual ambition grows and is paralleled by an equally steady growth in mental realization, he passes from initiation to initiation, until there comes the culminating fifth initiation.

All his past realizations – both his material and also his spiritual realization – have been renounced. He stands entirely free from every aspect of desire. The spiritual will has been substituted for desire. Then, reinforced by the inflow of the first ray Shamballic energy, and offering no obstructions or hindrances from within himself, as a personality, he is in a position to receive the stimulation which will enable him “to see that which is to be revealed and to accept revelation,” transmuting it into that definite realization which will enable him to live by means of its light. You have, therefore, certain words which are concerned with the method whereby the vision is accorded and revelation given:

Ambition, implemented by determination.
Aspiration, implemented by devotion or one-pointed attention.
Revelation, implemented by the will in its two lower aspects.
Realization, implemented by the will in its highest aspect.

That, briefly, is the evolutionary story of the “initiate in good standing” and it is basically the story of the will to self-betterment, the will to human service, goodwill, and finally, the will-to-good. You can see, therefore, how the great first aspect of divinity, through its three aspects, is the hidden, basic, motivating potency of life and of evolution, from the very dawn of the evolutionary cycle.

The initiate in good standing looks into the heart of things; he has forced his way to the very “Heart of the Sun” (using those words in a “planetary” and not in a “solar” sense) and – from that vantage point – he becomes aware of the “Central Spiritual Sun” and the Way of the Higher Evolution which leads inevitably to that assured center of the Most High. The three worlds of material living and the inner world of meaning which the soul has revealed to him are now left behind; he is suddenly confronted with the world of significances, with the true world of causes and of origination, and by the realm of the universal. He discovers that all he had thought anent the Law of Cause and Effect was so limited that – in the light of this Higher Evolution – it has practically become meaningless, except as the ABC whereby he can teach the children of men. He realizes, through the revelation accorded, more clearly than has hitherto been possible, the Purpose of the planetary Logos. From the time of the third initiation, this purpose has been gradually revealing itself; he sees it expressing itself through Sanat Kumara, Who is the Personality expression of the planetary Logos. During the coming interval and cycle of preparation for the sixth initiation, that purpose will burst upon him in blazing and synthetic glory.

The way to the Central Spiritual Sun is therefore revealed to him, and he knows that he faces a period of intense preparation (not training, as that word is usually understood) for a length of time determined by world need, the nature of his service and certain undefinable ray conditions.

He has to fulfil the magnetic condition which will enable him to form his own Ashram; he has to unfold a new phase of selective spiritual discrimination. The word discrimination is, however, misleading, because the form of it which he can now express carries no quality of rejection or of separation. It is a right knowledge and understanding of those karmically linked to him, a right use of an impelling attractive force which will, occultly speaking, attract the attention of those who should enter his Ashram, plus an esoteric process of blending himself and his Ashram into the full body of the Hierarchy. New Ashrams within the Hierarchy present much the same type of difficulty and problems as the entrance of a new disciple into an Ashram.

It might be said that that which holds the Hierarchy together, and that which produces a coherent Ashram, is the revelation, received in the light which that revelation produced and which leads to realization. Ashramic responsibility, constant service within the planetary Life and the subjection of Himself and of His Ashram to cyclic stimulation from Shamballa, plus certain mysterious processes which have naught to do with form or consciousness, but with the “sensitivity of the universe,” occupy the interim between the fifth and the sixth initiations.

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Initiation V – The Revelation

As we undertake the consideration of the next initiation, you will find that three factors will emerge in a new light in your consciousness. That they are factors related to past experiences, and yet which have reference to experiences which lie far ahead of you upon the Path, will also be inferred from what I say; these will not necessarily meet with your real understanding. These factors are:

The factor of Blindness, leading to revelation.
The factor of the Will, producing synthesis.
The factor of the Purpose, externalizing itself through the Plan.

These are all implicit in this new initiatory experience, but they should be approached by you with as much use of the intuition as you can employ; your effort will have to be that you endeavor to think as if you had taken the higher initiations. You have to bear in mind that each initiation enables the initiate to “see ahead” a little further, for revelation is always a constant factor in human experience. The whole of life is revelation; the evolutionary process is, in relation to consciousness, a process of leading the blind out of darkened areas of consciousness into greater light, and therefore into a vaster vision.

As you know, this particular initiation has been called the “Resurrection” by the Christian world, emphasizing that aspect in the experience of the initiate which leads to revelation; i.e., his “rising out of the ocean of matter into the clear light of day.” The thought of revelation can be seen also in the Christian teaching anent the “Ascension” – an initiation which has no factual existence and should not be called an initiation. You have, therefore, the following sequence, connected with the fourth and fifth initiations:

Renunciation, producing crucifixion and leading to
Ascension, or a complete “rising out of,” or “mounting higher,” leading to
Revelation, giving vision, the reward of the two above stages.

Christian theologians have made three distinct episodes out of these two initiations, but this has in no way mattered (as the initiate in the West soon learns); he now knows that the whole series of initiations, with their causes, their effects and their resultant intentions are only a sequence of processes, leading from the one to the other. A corresponding sequence can be seen in the unfoldment of the consciousness of the human being from infancy to full maturity; each unfoldment is part of a series of revelations, as his vision of life and his capacity to experience develops. This is true of all men from the most primitive to the advanced initiate, the difference consisting in that which each brings to the experience as the result of past effort, his point in consciousness and the quality of the vehicles through which that consciousness is developing. With the initiate-disciple this is also the case; he enters consciously into each experience; they are integral parts of his intention.

Having renounced the three worlds, and having returned – back from a contact of great importance and interest – to those three worlds and with all that is familiar in them, the initiate suddenly realizes that he has indeed been liberated, that he is indeed free, that he has been raised out of darkness and is now free in a new world of experiences. He knows that he has climbed to the mountain-top or has “ascended” to the buddhic plane, from which plane he must permanently work and not just occasionally, as has been the method hitherto.

He can work through a physical body (with its subtler sheaths) or not, as he sees fit. He realizes that he, as an individual, no longer needs a physical body or an astral consciousness, and that the mind is only a service instrument. The body in which he now functions is a body of light which has its own type of substance. The Master, however, can build a body through which He can approach His incoming disciples and those who have not taken the higher initiations; He will normally build this body in semblance of the human form, doing so instantaneously and by an act of the will, when required. The majority of the Masters who are definitely working with humanity either preserve the old body in which They took the fifth initiation or else They build the “mayavirupa” or body of maya, of physical substance. This body will appear in the original form in which They took initiation. This I personally did in reference to the first case; i.e., preserving the body in which I took initiation. This the Master K.H. did in creating a body which was made in the form in which He took the fifth initiation.

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Excerpted from “The Rays and the Initiations – Part Two – Section Two – The Aspirant and the Major Initiations”.

By Alice Bailey and Djwhal Kuhl

Cause & Effect, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Karma, Musings, New Age, Personal Development, Rāja yoga, Yoga

Soul, Conscience and Temptation

In all the “manuals” of religion there is more about the “rules” than the implications thereof. They do not contain a “how to” or a “how not to” guide. This is a terse yet in my view accurate statement.

If one is attempting to adhere to the contents of any such “manual” one is bound to experience some kind of conflict between ideal and socially conditioned behaviour. It says do not steal, but many people do steal. One could argue that in the previous post I have infringed copyright. Yet I am in no way depriving these people of a significant income. People watch pirate videos and justify that this is not theft. They can be economical with the truth in insurance claims and tax returns.

{Theft and fraud which is a subset of theft.}

In esoteric terms the journey of evolution is to seek full integration of the personality, complete Soul infusion thereof and then blowing off the causal vehicle in order to remove the requirement for reincarnation – the fourth initiation.

That nutshell summary has vastness behind it.

I will speculate that every being on the planet has been tempted. The extent to which we succumb is varied.

As I have mentioned previously temptation is a thin end of the wedge phenomenon and it is via temptation that the door is prised open to allow darkness and evil to enter.

Some people are so greedy, gluttonous, and insatiable, that the wedge needs little lubrication. Those who want power and the thrill of “getting one over” another being, are easily tempted. The seeker of short cuts and advantage does not see virtue in level playing fields.

I’ll wager that most people have had pangs of conscience. The extent of these pangs varies and how they are acted upon / supressed is a personal choice.

I could suggest that the conscience can be the still small voice of the Soul trying to make itself heard above the cacophony of terrestrial and societal living. That is the true “self” attempting to take over the steering wheel and drive the car of incarnate existence in a less destructive way.

I am not a prude and have few corporeal hang ups. Less than most I speculate.

I have attempted in this life to listen to the real me, my Soul. One of the ways which this manifests for me is dreaming.

Possibly the biggest temptation for me came when I had to extricate myself from a prestigious and very well paid job. I was warned in a dream in no uncertain terms to “get off that road”. There were other “omens” too.

When things were financially tight and we were in the act of moving house, I got a ‘phone message in effect offering me a > € 8000 per month job, tax free, with loads of other “allowances” and diplomatic plates for my car. The ex-wife was seeing € and $ signs rolling in her eyes like in a Disney cartoon. That job would have acted as a way back into the science mainstream. I would be looking into satellite based LIDAR measurements using lasers, not exactly a giant leap for me. I had misgivings when I read the 350 Mb CD-ROM containing the regulations many of which were anti-corruption. I managed to extract myself and there was subsequent fallout from the greedy.

In general temptation for me has not been pecuniary. I have never made a false or exaggerated insurance claim and I am fairly meticulous with my income tax returns. I could easily have made shit up and gotten away with it, but I have not.

Because I am not interested in bossing people about and lording it over, I have had fewer troubles with the temptations of power.

Once the conscience has been drowned out or stifled by putting a pillow over its face and pressing down, the doorway to temptation is wide open. Then the “justifications” which allow and oil the way for the being to succumb, multiply and exponentially so. The slope downwards becomes slippery. Evil finds the particular furrow, the path of least resistance, inherent in each of us.

In my opinion, humans are very clever at finding ways to justify not listening to their conscience. It can be very inconvenient and many have ridden roughly over it. They have temporarily silenced it, yet the little blighter can be tenacious and it can continue to whisper in our ears.

A while back a paranoid man I once knew, who was a nasty piece of work called Terry, said to me that he slept well at night. It was something smug and clever to say. I saw that it was completely untrue and that this man was a liar. In my view this man cared nothing for others and was only in it for himself. He had evil in him. He was fearful, defensive, insecure, and punitive. He tried to bring others down to big himself up. But he earned a lot of money as a CEO. I did not get to see his Soul it was occluded.

He was a very bad and unpleasant influence on many, some aped him and copied his techniques of manipulation into their “play book”. I was relatively immune, not so others. When you come across a petty tyrant like this there is a wealth of learning to be had. This kind of manipulative power is salacious and attractive to some, glamorous even. To others it is fetid and malodorous.

In the news a tory-sleaze barrister is allegedly trying to “get out of” a speeding fine. Entitlement and invincibility, the delusory opium of power, has deranged her senses perhaps. Once the wedge, the burr under the skin, has found purchase it is difficult to extract. The rules are for the plebs and not us on Mt. Olympus.

Let me be clear I am in no way claiming to be an Angel or perfect. I have made mistakes and learned therefrom. I am not immune but I am less susceptible than I once was.

If you hear that still small voice, your conscience, whispering in your ear, listen with discrimination and discernment.

Is it saying to succumb to temptation?

Or is it suggesting that you can rise above this?

There may be a social cost of taking the more helpful and uplifting “guidance”. It may be less convenient and offer fewer apparent “advantages” but in the long run it will probably work out better. There will be less conniving, entanglement, secrecy, and shadow.

Your conscience might just be your Soul starting to ask for the steering wheel.

Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Musings, Rāja yoga

Some Comments Pertaining to Esoterica and Rāja-Yoga

In my interpretation of the books on Esoteric Psychology from the “Blue Books” opus, this blog has strong second ray and seventh ray influences. If my understanding is correct then my personality vehicle has a seventh ray make up and my soul or causal vehicle second ray. This suggests that if one looks one might find the odd hint or two of love-wisdom and of synthesis herein.

Although many might imagine I am joking about a move to Coober Pedy, I did in all seriousness apply for a job in Tristan da Cunha. Because of the medical situation that is no longer viable.

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The blue books suggest that there are five planetary centres, London, New York, Darjeeling, Tokyo, and Coober Pedy. Sorry I meant Geneva.

I have visited four out of five. I spent a lot of time in London, a week or so in Tokyo, I lived close to Geneva and visited it and I had a fleeting visit to New York very soon after 9/11. The airport was deserted.

I have moved from an anglophone country to a francophone one. As a consequence, I am kind of showing my allegiance with the francophone centre, Geneva. I have dropped London.

Whatever I do Genf, Geneva, Genève, keeps cropping up. I applied for a quantum optics job there and got a very nice “no” letter back. It was the best refusal I have ever had, almost worth framing, very polite and flowery. I got automated “Skynet” responses from CERN on a number of occasions.

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For some reason Geneva and the proximity has something of a pull. It is possible to afford a house in French as opposed to Swiss Jura. I have been working on and off at the French language and my textual understanding continues to grow.

I am shifting towards the ray three/five of France from the ray one/two of England.

My mental apparatus, mind, is fifth ray…hence the geek and science thang.

I felt ultra at home in Tokyo. This due to, perhaps, martial arts training and a prior Japanese incarnation.

So, I have started having a look at properties in the general ‘hood around Genève just to scope out what may / may not be possible.

Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Quotations, Rāja yoga, Yoga

The Second Purpose of Deity -Ray II. Love-Wisdom

The Word is issuing from the heart of God, emerging from a central point of love. That Word is love itself. Divine desire colors all that life of love. Within the human hierarchy, the affirmation gathers power and sound.

The Word in the beginning was. The Word hath dwelt and dwells with God. In Him was light. In Him was life. Within His light we walk.

His symbol is the thunder, the Word that cycles down the ages.

Some of the names of this ray Lord which convey his purpose are as follows:

The Displayer of Glory
The Lord of Eternal Love
The Cosmic Magnet
The Giver of Wisdom
The Radiance in the Form
The Master Builder
The Conferrer of Names
The Great Geometrician
The One Who hides the Life
The Cosmic Mystery
The Light Bringer
The Son of God Incarnate
The Cosmic Christ

The legend tells us that the six Brothers summarize His qualities in the following aphorisms:

Send forth the Word and speak the radiant love of God. Make all men hear.

Quality – love divine.

Let the glory of the Lord shine forth. Let there be radiant light as well as radiant love.

Quality – radiance.

Draw to thyself the object of thy search. Pull forth into the light of day from out the night of time the one thou lovest.

Quality – attraction.

When light and love are shewn forth then let the power within produce the perfect flower. Let the word that heals the form go forth. That secret word that then must be revealed.

Quality – the power to save.

Salvation, light, and love, with the magnetic power of God, produce the word of wisdom. Send forth that word, and lead the sons of men from off the path of knowledge on to the path of understanding.

Quality – wisdom.

Within the radius of the love of God, within the circle of the solar system, all forms, all souls, all lives revolve. Let each son of God enter into this wisdom. Reveal to each the oneness of the many lives.

Quality – expansion or inclusiveness.

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The Second Ray of Love-Wisdom

Special Virtues:

Calm, strength, patience and endurance, love of truth, faithfulness, intuition, clear intelligence, and serene temper.

Vices of Ray:

Over-absorption in study, coldness, indifference to others, contempt of mental limitations in others.

Virtues to be acquired:

Love, compassion, unselfishness, energy.

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This is called the ray of wisdom from its characteristic desire for pure knowledge and for absolute truth – cold and selfish, if without love, and inactive without power. When both power and love are present, then you have the ray of the Buddhas and of all great teachers of humanity, – those who, having attained wisdom for the sake of others, spend themselves in giving it forth. The student on this ray is ever unsatisfied with his highest attainments; no matter how great his knowledge, his mind is still fixed on the unknown, the beyond, and on the heights as yet unscaled.

The second ray man will have tact and foresight; he will make an excellent ambassador, and a first-rate teacher or head of a college; as a man of affairs, he will have clear intelligence and wisdom in dealing with matters which come before him, and he will have the capacity of impressing true views of things on others and of making them see things as he does. He will make a good businessman, if modified by the fourth, fifth and seventh rays. The soldier on this ray would plan wisely and foresee possibilities; he would have an intuition as to the best course to pursue, and he would never lead his men into danger through rashness. He might be deficient in rapidity of action and energy. The artist on this ray would always seek to teach through his art, and his pictures would have a meaning. His literary work would always be instructive.

The method of healing, for the second ray man, would be to learn thoroughly the temperament of the patient as well as to be thoroughly conversant with the nature of the disease, so as to use his will power on the case to the best advantage.

The characteristic method of approaching the Path would be by close and earnest study of the teachings till they become so much a part of the man’s consciousness as no longer to be merely intellectual knowledge, but a spiritual rule of living, thus bringing in intuition and true wisdom.

A bad type of the second ray would be bent on acquiring knowledge for himself alone, absolutely indifferent to the human needs of others. The foresight of such a man would degenerate into suspicion, his calmness into coldness and hardness of nature.

—————–

Ray II

Servers on this ray ponder, meditate upon and assimilate the new ideas associated with the Plan, and by the power of their attractive love, they gather together those who are at that point in their evolution where they can respond to the measure and rhythm of that Plan. They can select, and train those who can “carry” the idea deeper into the mass of humanity. We should not forget that the work of the Hierarchy at this time, and the task of the New Group of World Servers is primarily associated with ideas. The disciples and servers on the second Ray are “busy building habitations for those dynamic entities whose function it has ever been to charge the thoughts of men and so to usher in that new and better age which will permit the fostering of the souls of men.” So runs the Old Commentary, if I thus modernize its ancient wording. By magnetic, attractive, sympathetic understanding, and the wise use of slow action, based on love, do the servers on this ray work. Today their power is becoming dominant.

—————

The Direction of Ray II

“The Scholar knows the truth. All is revealed to him. Surrounded by his books, and sheltered in the world of thought, he burrows like a mole, and finds his way into the darkness; he arrives at knowledge of the world of natural things. His eye is closed. His eyes are opened wide. He dwells within his world in deep content.

Detail on detail enter into the content of his world of thought. He stores the nuggets of the knowledge of the world, as a squirrel stores its nuts. The storehouse now is adequately full… Sudden a spade descends, for the thinker tends the garden of his thought, and thus destroys the passages of mind. Ruin arrives, destroying fast the storehouse of the mind, the safe security, the darkness and the warmth of a satisfied enquiry. All is removed. The light of summer enters in and the darkened crannies of the mind see light… Naught is left but light, and that cannot be used. The eyes are blinded and the one eye seeth not as yet…

Slowly the eye of wisdom must be opened. Slowly the love of that which is the true, the beautiful and good must enter the dark passages of worldly thought. Slowly the torch of light, the fire of right must burn the garnered treasures of the past, yet show their basic usefulness…

The seven ways of light must wean away the attention of the Scholar from all that has been found and stored and used. This he repulses and finds his way into that Hall of Wisdom which is built upon a hill, and not deep under ground. Only the opened eye can find this way.”

————–

Ray Two

” ‘Again I stand; a point within a circle and yet myself.’ The love of love must dominate, not love of being loved. The power to draw unto oneself must dominate, but into the worlds of form that power must some day fail to penetrate. This is the first step towards a deeper search.

The word goes forth from soul to form: ‘Release thyself from all that stands around, for it has naught for thee, so look to me. I am the One who builds, sustains and draws thee on and up. Look unto me with eyes of love, and seek the path which leads from the outer circle to the point.

I, at the point, sustain. I, at the point, attract. I, at the point, direct and choose and dominate. I, at the point, love all, drawing them to the center and moving forward with the travelling points towards that great Center where the One Point stands.’ What mean you by that Word? “

—

In reference to this second ray, it is advisable to recollect that all the rays are but the subrays of the second Ray of Love-Wisdom. The One in the center, Who is the “point within the circle” of manifestation, has three major qualities: life or activity in form, love and the power of abstraction. It is these last two qualities of Deity with which we are concerned in these formulas and (in connection with the second ray) the dualities of attraction and abstraction emerge, both latent and both capable of perfected activity in their own field.

There comes ever the moment in the life of the aspirant when he begins to consider with wonder the significance of that familiar reaction of finding no satisfaction in the familiar things; the old life of desire for well known forms of existence and expression ceases to attract his interest. The pull or attractive power of the One at the center (Who is his true self) also fails. It is not yet a familiar “call.” The aspirant is left, unsatisfied and with a deepening sense of futility and emptiness, “pendent upon the periphery” of the divine “ring-pass-not” which he has himself established. It is at this point and in this situation that he must reflect upon and use this formula.

The question might here be interjected: What should now be the procedure and right use? Upon this it is not possible here to enlarge, beyond pointing out that all the meditation processes connected with the Raja-Yoga system are intended to bring the aspirant to a point of such intense inner focusing and alert mental detachment that he will be in a position to use these formulas with understanding, according to his ray type, and to use them with efficacy and power. His meditation has produced the needed alignment. There is therefore a direct way or line (speaking symbolically) between the thinking, meditative, reflective man upon the periphery of the soul’s influence and the soul itself, the One Who is at the center. The crisis of evocation succeeds, once this line of contact, this antahkarana, has been established and recognized, and a crisis of intense activity ensues, wherein the man occultly “detaches himself from the furthest point upon the outer rim of life, and sweeps with purpose towards the central Point.” Thus speaks the Old Commentary, which is so oft quoted in these pages.

It is not possible to do more than put these ideas into symbolic form, leaving these mysteries of the soul to be grasped by those whose soul’s influence reaches to that periphery, and is there recognized for what it is. This crisis usually persists for a long time, a far longer one than is the case with the aspirant upon the first ray line of activity. However, when the second ray aspirant has understood and has availed himself of the opportunity and can see ahead the line between himself and the center, then the “light breaks in.”

It is this period of crisis which presents the major problem to the advanced aspirants of today and evokes consequently the concern of the psychiatrist and psychologist. Instead of treating the difficulty as a sign of progress and as indicating a relatively high point in the evolutionary scale and therefore a reason for a sense of encouragement, it is treated as a disease of the mind and of the personality. Instead of regarding the condition as one warranting explanation and understanding but no real concern, the attempt is made to arrest the difficulty by elimination and not by solution, and though the personality may be temporarily relieved, the work of the soul is for that particular life cycle arrested, and delay ensues. With this problem we will later deal.

———————————–

Excerpted from Esoteric Psychology 1 and 2 by Alice Bailey and Djwhal Kuhl

ॐ, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Quotations, Rāja yoga

The Effects of the Externalization

September 1949

In my previous instruction upon this theme I dealt with the various energies which would be brought into activity or utilized when the Masters emerged from the silence in which They have guarded Themselves for so many thousands of years. The point to be grasped is that the energies with which I dealt will be used in a new and more vital manner. These energies are ever present and ever active, but they swing into activity sequentially and under law and order, and some are more prominent at one time than others; they act vitally and energetically in the needed program which the plans of the Hierarchy may entail in any particular cycle.

These energies bring about what we idly call the “events” of the day; they condition our passing civilizations and are so much a part of the world in which we live and move and have our being that events, as expressions of directed energies, mean little to us, except in so far as they may affect adversely our personalities. They connote simply a way of life in any specific time. These energies were started on their activities in the very night of time; they established – each of them – their needed cyclic rhythm; they are responsible for the activity of substance on matter or of the action of the vital or etheric body upon matter; they are the lowest formulated expression of the creative Intelligence, embodying the principle of life or livingness because they essentially are life itself and life in action. Forget not that dense matter is not a principle; it is only that which is responsive to the creative principle.

When, however, the externalization of the Hierarchy begins to take place (and it will be spread over quite a long period of time), the impact of these substantial energies on matter will be radically altered because they will be – for the first time in history – directed from etheric levels, from the etheric body of the planet in the three worlds; hitherto, these energies have been directed from the buddhic plane which is the lowest of the cosmic etheric levels. Fundamentally, direction will still be from the buddhic plane, but the detailed and focused direction will be given from within the three worlds and upon the physical plane; this will be the task of the externalized Ashrams, organized to function openly.

It was the knowledge that this important development was imminent which made the Hierarchy in the last century widen the area or the scope of its teaching activity and thus bring to the consciousness of modern man the knowledge of what occultism essentially means. The keynotes upon which the occult philosophy is built are:

There is naught in manifestation except organized energy
Energy follows or conforms itself to thought
The occultist works in energy and with energies.

The thought of God brought the universe of energies into organized form upon the highest of the seven planes, or upon the first cosmic etheric level. These energies have for untold aeons been directed from the fourth or lowest of the cosmic etheric planes, the plane which we call the buddhic and regard as the first definitely spiritual plane, in our usually erroneous thought; this direction has been under impression from Shamballa, and the Masters have “manipulated these energies in conformity with the Plan, which is the blueprint of the Purpose.”

In the great Approach of the Hierarchy to humanity and its imminent appearance upon the physical plane, the center of direction will also necessarily approach still nearer, and – as a result of the future hierarchical manifestation – centers of energy direction will be found wherever the ashram of a Master is located in any part of the world. This is a statement of profound significance; it is an indication of hierarchical policy and a mode whereby modern science (working as it does with energies) can be brought into cooperative association and relation with an ashram upon the physical plane knowing it for what it is – an entirely new departure.

Earlier I stated that the physical plane areas or localities which constitute the present modern exits for energies, through which directed energies can pass to carry out the creative process, are five in number: New York, London, Geneva, Darjeeling and Tokyo. These five form a five-pointed star of interlocking energies, symbolic of the major divisions of our modern civilization. I would have you bear in mind that all that I am here giving you anent energy is in relation to the human kingdom and to nothing else; I am not relating these energies to the other kingdoms in nature; I am here concerned with physical plane utilization of energy through the power of directed thinking and on behalf of the evolution and well-being of mankind. At each one of these five centers one of the Masters will be found present, with His ashram, and a vortex of spiritual forces will there be organized to hasten and materialize the plans of the Christ for the new and coming world cycle.

The organizing of these five centers will be done slowly and gradually. A senior disciple will appear and will work quietly at the foundation work, gathering around him the needed agents, aspirants and assistants. All these workers at any particular center will be trained to think, and the effort now present in the educational and social world to force men to think for themselves is a general part of this training process. Until a man can do his own thinking and deciding, he cannot be an intelligent, willing and understanding cooperator, working with an ashram and controlling and directing the creative process. If the new heavens and the new earth are to be a fact in manifestation and in reality, it means a great recreating process must get under way, and this is the concept lying behind the teaching anent the five centers on Earth and the part which they will play in rebuilding and reorganizing the world.

As the next few years bring into focus the hierarchical intention, disciples and aspirants must look for those men and those few women who will be working as a group along spiritual lines in or near one or other of these five localities.

Initial opposition to the founding of these centers of clear thinking men and women, working freely and understandingly with one of the Masters or senior initiates, is already unhappily present; it is to be found in the narrowness, the biassed information and the lack of freedom of the totalitarian schools of thought. This was inevitable, for the Black Lodge ever endeavors to parallel, offset and undo the work of the White Lodge, and hitherto quite successfully. But the cycle of success is slowly closing because the energy of goodwill, emanated by the Will-to-Good, is rapidly becoming effective.

In London, in New York, in Geneva and Darjeeling, and in Tokyo, a Master will eventually be found, organizing a major energy center; at the same time His Ashram will continue to function upon buddhic levels, for the entire personnel has not been alerted for externalization. The Ashram will therefore be working on two levels – and yet that is not a correct statement of fact, as there are no levels, as well you know, but only states of consciousness. Ask me not how this can be; ponder on the relation of this dual and simultaneous appearance by attempting to grasp the nature of the manifested form of the planetary Logos in the Person of Sanat Kumara. Sanat Kumara is not the personality of the planetary Logos, for personality as you understand it is not existent in His case. It is not the soul of the planetary Logos, because that soul is the anima mundi and the soul of all forms in all kingdoms. Sanat Kumara, the Eternal Youth, can be seen by Those Who have the right, presiding, for instance, over the Council in Shamballa, yet at the same time He is present as the life and the informing intelligence upon and within our planet.

You have therefore five points where the externalization of the Ashrams will take place and eventually be focused. From these points, as time elapses, other Ashrams, subsidiary in nature, will be found emerging, sponsored and founded by disciples and initiates from these five Ashrams, and representing the three major rays and two minor rays. To start with, they will be founded through the presence in these localities of some senior or world disciple; it must be remembered that the forerunner of all movements which appear upon the physical plane is an educational propaganda, therefore some disciple upon the second ray will come into action, first of all, in all these five points; he will be followed by a disciple upon the seventh ray. All world movements are, as well you know, externalizations of subjective ideas and concepts and of phases of formulated thinking; and the appearance of the Hierarchy upon earth in tangible form is no exception to this rule.

Disciples in these ashrams have been in training for nearly one hundred and fifty years to do this work; some have managed to keep the originating idea and impulse clear and untainted by their own thinking, and have adhered – even in their own intimate thoughts – to the hierarchical program, as presented to them by their Masters or the senior initiates. Others have not possessed so clear a reasoning faculty or so active an intuitive perception and – whilst grasping certain major concepts such as world unity or hierarchical gradations and control – have distorted the truth and produced the many ideologies which have wracked the world during the past century; even this distortion is, however, being turned to good, for it produced a redoubled effort on the part of the Hierarchy to offset it; it led to an increased forcing process by means of which many earnest and willing aspirants reached the grade of accepted disciple; it produced also a ferment of thought in the world which has served to awaken the mentality of the masses to possibilities and to horizons hitherto only visioned by advanced and initiate thinkers. The man in the street today has absorbed ideologies to an unforeseen extent, and the attempt to make him an active factor in our modern civilization is not too harmful in view of the time element, as divinely conceived, and from the point of view of the staunch and basic integrity of the divine human being. Time and divinity, events and instinctual goodness, will in the long run triumph. The intermediate agonies are distressing but not final, and they are not triumphant from the angle of the dark Forces. These Forces face (as a result of the war and of the resurrecting human spirit) a vista of nearing and inevitable defeat.

Already the centers in London and in New York are showing signs of life, and disciples are active in both places and along all lines of human expression. The center in Geneva is also active, but not so thoroughly and inclusively; it waits for a greater calm and a firmer sense of security in Europe.

The center in Darjeeling is what is termed occultly “vibrating”, but this is in response to the relative nearness and propinquity of the Himalayan Brotherhood; whilst in Tokyo there is small activity as yet, and what there is is of no great moment. The work at this center will actually be brought into being through the work of the Triangles. By that I do not mean that it will be a center of the Triangle work, but that the concentrated meditative activity of the people engaged in the Triangle activities will magnetically draw out that which must appear when a center is organized. They are in fact creating the needed atmosphere, and that is ever a preliminary step. Once the atmosphere or the air in which to breathe and move is existent, then the living form can appear.

Objectively, therefore, the second ray work of teaching is the first to be organized. Subjectively, the first ray workers are already active, for the work of the first ray with its disturbing, and destroying activity prepares the way; pain and disruption ever precede birth, and the agents of the first ray have been working for nearly two hundred years. The agents of the second ray started their preparation around the year 1825 and moved outward in force soon after 1860. From that date on, great concepts and new ideas, and the modern ideologies and arguments for and against aspects of the truth, have characterized modern thought and produced the present mental chaos and the many conflicting schools and ideologies, with their attendant movements and organizations; out of all these, order and truth and the new civilization will emerge. This civilization will emerge as the result of mass thinking; it will no longer be a civilization “imposed” by an oligarchy of any kind. This will be a new phenomenon and one for which the Hierarchy has had to wait, prior to reappearing. Had the Hierarchy come before this era of thought and of massed discussion and the fight to further creative ideas, the tenets and the truths for which the Hierarchy stands could be regarded as being also “imposed” upon humanity, and therefore as infringing human freedom. This will not now be the case, and the Hierarchy will come forth into exoteric manifestation because humanity has, of its own free will, developed a quality analogous to that of the Hierarchy and therefore magnetic to that spiritual organization. Goodwill will draw forth from its holy secret hiding place the Exponents of Love, and thus the new world will come into being.

These subsidiary ashrams are already being attempted in various parts of the world. It is necessary for you to remember that the members of these ashrams will not all be on the teaching line, but will be composed of disciples upon many rays; the attempt to form coherent and integrated ashrams is based upon the recognition of the initial difficulty of the various ray aspirants to comprehend each other’s point of view and mode of working, and to think in the many differing terms and modes of thought. There are, however, three fundamental requirements which must condition and color all the ashrams, no matter what the ray:

An internal group unity, conducive to a synthesis of understanding between the various ashrams. There spring out of a unified group objective a sense of loyalty to the Hierarchy and a uniformly disciplined life. I said uniform, brother of mine, for the discipline is that of spiritual inclination and an inspired intention which produces a similarity in the livingness of the units in the ashram; this is, of course, diversified by the ray quality of the aspirants and disciples and by personality tradition. Ponder on those last two words.
Similarity of objective. By that I mean an apprehension and appreciation of the hierarchical Plan and of the contribution each ashram has to make for its materialization on earth; to this must be added an united ashramic similarity of instinctual and intuitive telepathic rapport with the senior Members of the ashram – the Masters and initiates of high degree, and through Them – with the Christ. I would here call to your attention that the mental inclination of all the esotericists in the world for the past one hundred years has been directed towards individual rapport with a Master, and this because of the necessity of discovering the ashram with which the aspirant must make contact.

This attitude has now widened in its approach mentally, by the many diversified disciples in the many different ashrams, into a group movement or a group inclination towards the Christ, the major and most important factor in the implementation of the hierarchical Plan. This mental approach is not the same thing as the constant aspirational preoccupation of the earnest Christian follower with the thought of Christ. It is something quite different.

It is a unified group endeavor, generated in each ashram and fostered by all alike, to bring the entire group – as a band of world servers – into the aura of the thought currents of the Christ, as He formulates His ideas, creates the thought-forms needed prior to manifestation, and makes His arrangements for His reappearing. This is not the same thing as establishing a telepathic rapport between an individual disciple and the Christ, for that is not needed or desirable. The unity of aim, the desire to serve, the recognition of the present focused intention of the Hierarchy (under the guidance of the Christ), become an invocative, magnetic state of group consciousness; this evokes from the Christ and His informed Masters an identification of Their united thought with the group aspiration. This is the higher spiritual correspondence of what is called in the three worlds kama-manas.

This is not, I realize, an easy thing to understand when divorced from the usual Christian concept of the relation of Christ to the individual aspirant. The idea may perhaps be clarified for you by reminding yourselves that some who read these words know me and have found your way into my ashram, under the guidance of your own soul and my ready recognition. Others all over the world, through their spiritual intuition and their desire to serve and to know, have brought into their recognized area of consciousness the teaching which is given in my books. Their relation to me is symbolic of the type of relation which disciples and aspirants can and do establish with the Christ. Though the analogy is far from perfect, it is possible to recognize the correspondence in its many gradations of reciprocal sensitivity.

A fundamental and basic similarity of sympathetic response by the units in all ashrams to the needs of humanity, to the quality of the program for their development which the objective demands, and to the nature of goodwill and understanding (intelligently applied); all these qualities are not handicapped by undue emotional sensitivity.

These three conditions will be found in all the ashrams and will unite the members within any ashram to those in other ashrams in a measure or rhythm of telepathic relation. From this unified and central position a rapidly deepening telepathic relation will inevitably be established and sustained by the group, with the ashram and with the Christ, on the one hand, and with humanity, on the other. With this as a foundational and conditioning quality, the work can proceed as required.

You will note, therefore, why I have so consistently emphasized, during the past thirty years of teaching, the necessity for the development of a truly spiritual and psychic sensitivity, plus the unfoldment of the faculty of a scientific telepathic rapport. I have thereby laid the foundation of the Science of Impression, with the illumined and rightly oriented mind as the interpreter, the analyzer and the transmitter.

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Excerpted from “The Externalization of the Hierarchy – Section IV – Stages in the Externalization”

By Alice Bailey and Djwhal Kuhl

ॐ, buddhism, Meditations, Poetry, Rāja yoga, Zen

Wide Empty Paths

beyond the point

of primal,

causal origination,

no cognition

nor perception

—

a void awakens

shimmering the nothing

into becoming

empty and yet Dao,

no re-cognition

—

before the void

no time

no place

no recollection

or, any memory

—

wide empty paths

towards the infinite

have no ending

nor any start,

the essence of being

—

a Soul alone,

sole and solar

radiates into space

a single spark

of a cosmic fire

—

beyond the point

of primal,

causal origination,

no cognition

nor perception

—

at the point before mind

bodhi svāhā

ॐ, Cause & Effect, Dreams, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Karma, New Age, Quotations, Rāja yoga, Yoga

Dramatizations by the Soul

The Tibetan on Dreams:

We will now touch upon the subject of dreams, which is assuming such importance in the minds of certain prominent psychologists and in certain schools of psychology. It is not my intention to criticize or attack their theories in any way. They have arrived at a most important and indicative fact – the fact of the interior, inner subjective life of humanity, which is based on ancient memories, on present teachings, and on contacts of various kinds. A true understanding of the dream-life of humanity would establish three facts:

The fact of reincarnation.
The fact of there being some activity during sleep or unconsciousness.
The fact of the soul, of that which persists and has continuity.

These three facts provide a definite line of approach to the problems which we are considering and they would, if analyzed, substantiate the position of the esotericists.

The origin of the word “dream” is in itself debatable and nothing really sure and proved is known. Yet what is inferred and suggested is of itself of real significance. In a great standard authority, Webster’s Dictionary, two origins of the word are given. One traces the word back to a Sanskrit root, meaning “to harm or to hurt”; the other traces it back to an old Anglo-Saxon root, signifying “joy or bliss.” Is there not a chance, that both derivations have in them a measure of truth, and that in their mutual tracing back to some most ancient origin and root we should discover a real meaning? In any case two thoughts emerge from an understanding study of these derivations.

The first is that dreams were originally regarded as undesirable, probably because they revealed or indicated, in the majority of cases, the astral life of the dreamer. In Atlantean times, when man was basically astral in his consciousness, his outer physical consciousness was largely controlled by his dreams. In those days, the guidance of the daily life, of the religious life, and of the psychological life (such as it was) was founded on a lost science of dreams, and it is this lost science (little as he may like the idea) which the modern psychologist is rapidly recovering and seeking to interpret. Most of the people (though necessarily not all of them) who find themselves needing the care and instruction of the psychologist are Atlantean in consciousness, and it is this fact which has predisposed the psychologist unconsciously to lay the present emphasis upon dreams and their interpretation.

May I point out again that the true psychology will only appear and right techniques be used when psychologists ascertain (as a first and needed measure) the rays, the astrological implications and the type of consciousness (Aryan or Atlantean) of the patient.

However, as time elapsed, the dreams of the more intelligent minds became of an increasingly forward-looking, idealistic nature; these, as they came to the surface and were remembered and recorded, began to control the brain of man so that the Anglo-Saxon emphasis on joy and bliss eventually became descriptive of many so-called dreams. We have then the emergence of the utopias, the fantasies, the idealistic presentations of future beauty and joy which distinguishes the thought life of the advanced human being, and which find their expression in such presented (and as yet unfulfiled) hopes as Plato’s Republic, Milton’s Paradise Regained and the best Utopian, idealistic creative productions of our Western poets and writers. Thus Occident and Orient together present a theory of dreams – of a lower astral or higher intuitional nature – which are a complete picture of the wish life of the race. These range all the way from the dirty ideas and the bestial filth, drawn forth at times from their patients by psychologists (thus revealing a wish life and an astral consciousness of a very low order), up to the idealistic schemes and the carefully thought-out paradises and cosmic orders of the higher types of aspirants. All, however, come into the realm of Dreams. This is true, whether such dreams are tied up with frustrated sex or unfulfiled idealism; they are all indicative of an urge, a powerful urge, either to selfish satisfaction or group betterment and group welfare.

These dreams can embody in themselves ancient astral illusions and glamors, potent and strong because of ancient origin and racial desire, or they can embody the sensitive response of advanced humanity to systems and regimes of existence which are hovering on the borderland of manifestation, awaiting future precipitation and expression.

This will indicate to you how vast is this subject, for it includes not only the past astral habits of the race, ready – when given certain pathological conditions or fostered by fretting frustrations – to assert themselves, but they also include the ability of the spiritually-minded aspirant in the world today to touch the intended plans for the race and thus see them as desirable possibilities.

Having thus indicated the scope of our theme, I would like to point out that I seek only, in the limited space at my disposal, to do two things:

Touch briefly upon the conditions which foster dreams.

Indicate the sources from which dreams can come and what produces them.

I do not expect to have these theories accepted by the average psychologist, but there may be somewhere those minds which will be open enough to accept some of the suggestions and thus benefit themselves and certainly benefit their patients.

he major cause of a distressing dream life is, in every case, a frustration or an inability of the soul to impose its wishes and designs upon its instrument, the man. These frustrations fall into three categories:

Sex frustration. This type of frustration leads in many cases, especially in the average person, to an over-emphasis of the fact of sex, to an uncontrolled sex thought-life, to sexual jealousies (oft unrecognized) and to physical underdevelopment.

Frustrated ambition. This dams back the resources of the life, produces constant inner fret, leads to envy, hatred, bitterness, intense dislike of the successful, and causes abnormalities of many kinds.

Frustrated love. This would perhaps be included under sex frustration by the average psychologist, but it is not so viewed by the esotericist. There can be full sexual satisfaction or else complete freedom from its grip and yet the outgoing magnetic love nature of the subject may meet only with frustration and lack of response.

Where these three types of frustration exist, you will frequently have a vivid, unwholesome dream life, physical liabilities of many kinds and a steadily deepening unhappiness.

You will note that all these frustrations are, as might be expected, simply expressions of frustrated desire, and it is in this particular field (tied up as it is with the Atlantean consciousness) that the work of the modern psychologist primarily and necessarily lies. In an effort to bring the patient to an understanding of his difficulty and in line with that which constitutes the way of least resistance, the psychologist endeavors to relieve the situation by teaching him to evoke and bring to the surface of his consciousness forgotten episodes and his dream life. Two important facts are sometimes forgotten and hence constitute a fruitful source of the frequent failure to bring relief.

First, the patient as he descends into the depths of his dream life, will bring to the surface not only those things which are undesirable in his unrecognized “wish-life” but also those which were present in previous lives. He is penetrating into a very ancient astral past. Not only is this the case, but also – through the open door of his own astral life – he can tap or tune in on the astral life of the race. He then succeeds in producing the emergence of racial evil which may have absolutely no personal relation to him at all. This is definitely a dangerous thing to do, for it may prove stronger than the man’s present capacity to handle.

Secondly, in his desire to be freed from the things in himself which are producing trouble, in his desire to please the psychologist (which is encouraged by certain of them under the method of “transference”) and in his desire to produce what he believes the psychologist wants him to produce, he will frequently draw upon his personal imagination, upon the collective imagination or, telepathically, tune in on the imagination of the one who is seeking to treat and help him. He, therefore, produces something which is basically untrue and misleading.

These two points warrant careful attention and the patient must be safeguarded from himself, from the environing racial thought life, and also from the psychologist whose aid he is seeking. A difficult thing to do, is it not?

I would like, at this point, to make what I feel to be a needed and suggestive interpolation. There are three main ways in which the person who seeks psychological aid can be helped and this is true of all types and cases. There is, first of all, the method with which we have been dealing. This method delves into the patient’s past; it seeks to unearth the basic determining conditions which lie hidden in the happenings of childhood or infancy. These discovered events, it is held, gave a wrong direction or twist to the desire nature or to the thought life; they initiated predisposing germ-complexes, and therefore constitute the source of all the trouble. This method (even if the psychologist does not realize it) can carry over into past lives, and thus open doors which it might be well to leave shut until they can be more safely opened.

The second method which is sometimes combined with the previous one is to fill the present moment with constructive creative occupation and so drive out the undesirable elements in the life through the dynamic expulsive power of new and paramount, engrossing interests. I would like to point out that this method could be more safely applied if the subjective dream life and the hidden difficulties were left untreated – temporarily at least. This method is (for the average ordinary person who is pure Atlantean in consciousness but is just beginning to develop mental activity) usually a sound and safe way to work, provided the psychologist can gain the understanding cooperation of the person concerned.

The third method, which has the sanction of the Hierarchy and which is the one its members employ in Their work, is to bring in consciously the power of the soul. This power then pours through the personality life, vehicles and consciousness, and thus cleanses and purifies all aspects of the lower nature. It will be apparent to you, however, that this method is of use only to those who have reached the point in their unfoldment (and there are many such today) where the mind can be reached and trained, and where the soul can consequently impress the brain, via the mind.

If these three methods are studied, you can arrive at an understanding as to the three systems which psychologists could elaborate and develop in order to handle the three types of modern consciousness – the Lemurian, which is the lowest found upon our planet at this time; the Atlantean, which is the commonest found today, and the Aryan, which is developing and unfolding with great rapidity. At present, psychologists are using the lowest type of aid for all groups and states of consciousness. This does not seem wise, does it?

The question now arises as to the source of dreams. Again, as in those cases we considered in connection with the sources of guidance, I shall simply enumerate such origins and leave the student of psychology to make adequate application of the information, when faced with a dream problem. These sources are about ten in number and could be enumerated as follows:

1. Dreams based upon Brain Activity. In these cases, the subject is sleeping too lightly. He never really leaves his body and the thread of consciousness is not completely withdrawn as it is in deep sleep or in unconsciousness. He remains, therefore, closely identified with his body, and because of the partial withdrawal of the thread of consciousness, his condition is more like a dazed, benumbed self-recognition than real sleep. This condition may persist throughout the entire night or period of sleep, but it is usually found present only in the first two hours of sleep and for about one hour prior to returning to full waking consciousness. The problems, worries, pleasures, concerns, etc., etc. of the waking hours are still agitating the brain cells, but the recognition and interpretation of these vague or agitated impressions is uncertain and of a confused nature. No importance whatever need be attached to this type of dream. They indicate physical nervousness and poor sleeping capacity but have no deep psychological significance or spiritual meaning. These dreams are the most common at this time, owing to the prevalence of the Atlantean consciousness and the stress under which people live today. It is easy to attach undue importance to the wild and stupid or jumbled vagaries of a restless brain, yet the sole trouble is that the man is not sleeping soundly enough.

The effort to make people dream and to train them to recover their dream life when they are naturally sound sleepers, and drop easily into deep and dreamless sleep is not good. The evocation of the dream life, as brought about through the methods of certain schools of psychology, should only be brought about forcibly (if one may use this word in that connection) through the determination of the will during the later stages upon the Path. To do so earlier produces frequently a kind of continuity of consciousness which adds the complexities of the astral plane to those of daily living upon the physical plane; few people are competent to handle the two and, when there is persistence in the endeavor to evoke the dream life, the brain cells get no rest and forms of sleeplessness are apt to supervene. Nature wills that all forms of life should “sleep” at times.

We now come to two forms of dreams which are related to the astral or emotional nature and which are of great frequency.

2. Dreams of Remembrance. These are dreams which are a recovery of the sights and sounds encountered in the hours of sleep upon the astral plane. It is on this plane that the man is usually found when the thread of consciousness is separated from the body. In this case, the man is either participating in certain activities, or he is in the position of the onlooker who sees actual sights, performances, people, etc., etc., just as any person can see them as he walks down a street in any large city or as he looks out of a window in any environment. These sights and sounds will often be dependent upon the wish-life and the predilections of the subject, upon his likes and dislikes and his desires and recognized attractions. He will seek for and often find those he loves; he will sometimes search for and find those he seeks to damage, and find occasion to hurt those he hates; he will favor himself by participating in the fulfilment of what he desires, which is always imaginatively possible upon the astral plane. Such desires may range all the way from desire for sexual gratification to the longing of the spiritually-minded aspirant to see the Master, the Christ or the Buddha. Thought forms, created by the similar wishes of the multitude, will be found to meet his desire and – on returning to his body in the morning – he brings with him the recollection of that satisfaction in the form of a dream. These dreams, related to astral satisfactions, are all of them in the nature of glamor or illusion; they are self-evoked and self-related; they indicate however real experience, even if only astral in accomplishment and can be of value to the interested psychologist in so far as they indicate the character trends of the patient. One difficulty can, however, be found. These thought forms (to which the man has responded and in which he has found an imaginative satisfaction) embody the expression of the wish-life of the race and exist, therefore, upon the astral plane for all to see. Many people do see and contact them and can identify themselves with them upon returning to waking consciousness. In fact, however, they have really done no more than register these thought forms in the same manner as one can register the contents of a shop window when passing by. A shocked horror can, for instance, induce a person to relate, quite innocently, a dream which is, in reality, no more than the registering of a sight or experience which was witnessed in the hours of sleep but with which the man has no real connection whatever. This experience he relates with dismay and disgust; most feelingly he tells the experience to the psychologist, and frequently receives an interpretation which reveals to him the depths of evil to which his unrealized desires apparently bear witness. His unexpressed longings are “brought to the surface” by the psychologist. He is told that these longings, when faced, will then leave him, and that the ghost of his mental and psychological disorder will then be laid. Unless the psychologist is of real enlightenment, the subject of his care is then saddled with an experience which was never his but which he simply witnessed. I give this as an example of great frequency and of much damaging value. Until psychologists recognize the actuality of the life of humanity when separated at night from the physical body, such errors will be of increasing occurrence. The implications are obvious.

3. Dreams which are Recollections of true Activity. These dreams are registrations of true activities. They are not simply witnessed, registered and related by the subject. As soon as a person has reached:

A state of real integration of the astral body and the vital or etheric body, plus the physical body, then these three aspects function harmoniously.
A capacity to pursue ordered activity at night or in the hours of sleep. Then the man can impress the physical brain with a knowledge of those activities and on returning to waking consciousness put it to actual use by the physical body.

The man’s dreams will then be, in reality, nothing more nor less than the relation of the continuance of the day’s activities, as they have been carried forward on the astral plane. They will be simply the record, registered on the physical brain, of his doings and emotions, his purposes and intentions, and his recognized experiences. They are as real and as true as any of those which have been recorded by the brain, during waking hours. They are, nevertheless, only partial records in the majority of cases, and mixed in nature, for the glamors, illusions and the perceptions of the doings of others (as recorded in the second category of dreams above) will still have some effect. This condition of mixed recording, of erroneous identifications, etc., leads to much difficulty. The psychologist has to make allowance for:

The age or soul experience of the patient. He has to determine whether the related dream is an illusory participation, a perceived or registered activity, or a real and true happening in the experience of the man during the hours of sleep.
The ability of the subject to bring through correctly the related experience. This ability is dependent upon the pre-establishing of continuity of consciousness, so that at the moment of return, the brain of the man concerned is easily impressed by the experience of the true man when out of the body.
The freedom of the patient from the desire to make an impression upon the psychologist, his innate truthfulness, his control of the imagination, and his power of verbal expression.

Where advanced aspirants and disciples are concerned, we have a somewhat different situation. The demonstrated integration has involved the mind nature and is involving the soul likewise. The activity, registered, recorded and related, is that of a server upon the astral plane. The activities which interest a world server are, therefore, quite different in nature to those earlier experienced and related. They will be concerned with deeds which are related to other people, to the fulfilment of duties involving other people, to the teaching of groups rather than individuals, etc. These differences, when carefully studied, will be recognized by the psychologist of the future (who will necessarily be also an esotericists) as most revealing because they will indicate in an interesting manner, the spiritual status and hierarchical relationship of the patient.

4. Dreams which are of a Mental Nature. These have their origin upon the mental plane and presuppose a consciousness which is, at least, becoming more sensitive mentally. At any rate, they are not recorded in the waking brain consciousness until there is some measure of mind control. I might add at this point that one of the major difficulties with which a psychologist is confronted, as he attempts to interpret the dream life of his patient, is based not only on his inability esoterically to “place” his patient as to ray type, evolutionary status, astrological indications and inherent characteristics, but also he is confronted with the inability of the patient to relate his dream correctly. What is presented to the psychologist is a confused and imaginative description of brain reactions, astral phenomena, and (where there is a measure of intellectual poise) some mental phenomena also. But there is no capacity to differentiate. This confusion is due to lack of alignment, and of true mental relation between the mind and the brain. It becomes, therefore, oft a case of the “blind leading the blind”.

Dreams which are of mental origin are fundamentally of three kinds:

Those dreams which are based on contact with the world of thought forms. This comprises a vast realm of ancient thought forms, of modern thought forms, and those thought forms also which are nebulous and emerging. They are of purely human origin and are definitely a part of the Great Illusion. They constitute, in the bulk of cases, man’s effort at the interpretation of life and its meaning down the ages. They merge with the soul of glamor which is astral in nature. It will be obvious to you that these thought forms comprise all possible themes. They do not embody the wish-life of the race, but are concerned with men’s thoughts about the ideas and ideals which – down the ages – have controlled human life and which, therefore, form the basis of all history.

Those dreams which are geometrical in nature, and in which the subject becomes aware of those basic patterns, forms and symbols which are the blue prints of the archetypes determining the evolutionary process, and which produce eventually the materializing of God’s Plan. They are also the great symbols of man’s unfolding consciousness. For instance, the recognition of the point, the line, the triangle, the square, the Cross, the pentagon and similar symbols are simply the recognition of a connection with, and a founding upon, certain lines of force which have, to date, determined the evolutionary process. There are seven such forms, evolved and recognized in every race and, for our present purposes, there are, therefore, twenty-one basic symbols which, in geometrical form, embody the concepts which determine the Lemurian, Atlantean and Aryan civilizations. It is interesting to realize that there are fourteen more to come. The symbols which are already evolved are deeply ingrained in the human consciousness, and lead, for instance, to the constant use of the cross in its many diverse forms. Two symbols are at this time taking form as the basis of the coming civilization. These are the lotus and the flaming torch. Hence the frequent appearance of these two in the life of meditation and the dream life of the world aspirants.

Those dreams which are symbolic presentations of teaching received in the hours of sleep by aspirants and disciples in the Hall of Learning on the highest level of the astral plane, and in the Hall of Wisdom on the mental plane. In the first Hall is the best that the race has already learnt through its Atlantean experience and in the world of glamor. Through these, wise choice can be developed. The Hall of Wisdom embodies the teaching which the two coming races will develop and unfold, and thus trains the disciple and the initiate.

I cannot do more than thus indicate the nature of these three basic mental experiences which find their way into the dream life of the man on the physical plane. These are given expression by him in the form of related dreams, creative work, and the expression of the ideals which are building the human consciousness.

5. Dream which are Records of Work done. This activity the aspirant carries on at night and when absent from the body, and it is carried on

In the borderland between the astral plane and the physical plane.
In the so-called “summerland” wherein the entire wish-life of the race is centered and all racial desire takes form.
In the world of glamor which is part of the astral plane which embodies the ancient past, which fertilizes the desire life of the present, and which indicates the nature of the desire life of the immediate future.

These phases and spheres of activity are very real in nature. Aspirants who succeed in functioning with any measure of consciousness on the astral plane are all occupied, at some level or another, with some form of constructive activity or work. This activity, selfishly performed (for many aspirants are selfish) or unselfishly carried forward, constitutes much of the material of many of the so-called dreams, as related by the average intelligent citizen. They warrant no more attention or mysteriously applied interpretation or symbolic elucidation than do the current activities and events of daily life as carried on in waking consciousness upon the physical plane. They are of three kinds:

The activity of the patient himself when freed, in sleep, from the physical body.
His observation of the activities of others. These he is apt to appropriate unwillingly and quite erroneously to himself because of the egocentric tendency of the average human mind.
Instruction which is given to him by those responsible for his unfoldment and training.

This category of dreams is becoming increasingly prevalent as the alignment of the astral body and the physical body is perfected and continuity of consciousness is slowly developed. The activity involves religious activity, sexual living in its many phases (for not all of them are physical, though all of them are related to the problem of the polar opposites and the essential duality of manifestation) political activity, creative and artistic activity and the many other forms of human expression. They are as varied and as diverse as those in which humanity indulges on the physical plane; they are the source of much confusion in the mind of the psychologist and need most careful consideration and analysis.

6. Telepathic Dreams. These dreams are simply the record upon the physical brain consciousness of real events which are telepathically communicated from one person to another. Some friend or relation undergoes some experience. He seeks to communicate it to his friend or – at the moment of crisis – he thinks powerfully of his friend. This registers on the friend’s mind but is often only recovered in the hours of sleep and is brought through in the morning as a man’s own personal experience. Many of the dreams related by people are records of the experiences of other people of which a man becomes aware and which he is appropriating to himself in all sincerity.

We come now to a group of dreams which are a part of the experience of those people who have made a definite soul contact and are in process of establishing a close link with the world of souls. The “things of the kingdom of God” are opening up before them and the phenomena, the happenings, the ideas, and the life and knowledge of the soul realm are being registered with increasing accuracy in the mind. From the mind, they are being transferred to or imprinted upon the brain cells. We have therefore:

7. Dreams which are Dramatizations by the Soul. This type of dream is a symbolic performance by the soul for the purpose of giving instruction, warning or command to its instrument, man, on the physical plane. These dramatic or symbolic dreams are becoming increasingly numerous in the case of aspirants and disciples, particularly in the early stages of soul contact. They can express themselves in the hours of sleep and also during the meditation period or process. Only the man himself, from his knowledge of himself, can rightly interpret this class of dreams. It will be apparent to you also that the ray type of the soul and of the personality will largely determine the type of symbolism or the nature of the dramatization employed. This must be determined, therefore, by the psychologist before interpretation can be intelligently given and prove useful.

8. Dreams concerned with Group Work. In this type of dream, the soul trains or fits its vehicle, the lower man, for group activity. This type of dream is also the higher correspondence of the dreams dealt with under our fifth heading. The group work involved is not this time carried on in the three worlds of human expression but in the world of soul life and soul experience. Soul knowledges and purposes are involved; work in a Master’s group may be registered and regarded as a dream in spite of its reality and basically phenomenal occurrence. The realities of the kingdom of God may for a time seep through into the brain consciousness in the form of dreams. Much of the experiences recorded in the mystical writings during the past few centuries in the Occident, are in this category. This is a point worth careful consideration.

9. Dreams which are Records of Instruction. This type of dream embodies the teaching given by a Master to His accepted disciple. With these I shall not deal. When a man can receive these instructions consciously, either at night when absent from the body or in meditation, he has to learn to direct them correctly from mind to brain and to interpret them accurately. They are communicated by the Master to the man’s soul. The soul then impresses them on the mind, which has been held steady in the light, and then the mind, in its turn, formulates them into thought forms which are then thrown down into the quiescent waiting brain. According to the mental development and educational advantages of the disciple so will be his response and his correct use of the communicated teaching.

10. Dreams connected with the World Plan, the solar plan, and the cosmic scheme. These can range all the way from the insane brain and recorded experiences of the mentally unbalanced to the wise and measured teaching of the World Knowers. This teaching is communicated to the world disciples and can be regarded by them as either an inspired utterance or a dream with a deep significance. It should be remembered in both cases (the mentally unbalanced and the trained disciple) that a similar condition exists; there is a direct line from the soul to the brain. This is true of both types. These dreams or recorded instructions indicate a high stage of evolutionary advancement.

A consideration of all the above will indicate to you the complexity of the subject. The superficial student or the mystically inclined person is apt to feel that all these technicalities are of minor importance. The charge is often made that the “jargon” of occultism and its academic information is of no true importance where knowledge of the divine is concerned. It is claimed that it is not necessary to know about the planes and their various levels of consciousness, or about the Law of Rebirth and the Law of Attraction; it is an unnecessary tax upon the human mind to study the technical foundation for a belief in brotherhood, or to consider our distant origin and our possible future. It is nevertheless just possible that if the mystics down the ages had recognized these truths we might have had a better managed world. It is only today that those forces are being set in motion which will lead, to a truer understanding of the human family, a wiser comprehension of the human equipment, and, therefore, to an effort to bring human living into line with the basic spiritual truths. The sorry condition of the world today is not a result of the intellectual unfoldment of man as is often claimed, but it is the working out of the unalterable effects of causes, originated in the past of the Aryan race.

That good can come from evil, that the bad effects of man’s mental laziness can be transmuted into teaching point in the future and that humanity is now intelligent enough to learn wisdom will be the result of the widespread dissemination of the academic truths of the esoteric teaching and its correct interpretation by the trained minds in the Occident. The East has had this teaching for ages and has produced numerous commentaries upon it – the work of the finest analytical minds that the world has ever seen – but it has made no mass use of the knowledge, and the people in the Orient do not profit by it, as a whole. It will be different in the West and is already modifying and influencing human thought on a large scale; it is permeating the structure of our civilization and will eventually salvage it. Be not, therefore, afraid of the technicalities of wisdom but seek for the reason of the undesirable reaction against them in the latent inertia of the mystical mind, plus the lowered vital condition of the entire race.

—————

Excerpted from:

Esoteric Psychology II – Chapter II – The Ray of Personality – Some Problems of Psychology

Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul

Climate Change, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Musings, New Age, Rāja yoga

2025 and Millions of First-Degree Initiates

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The Tibetan suggests that by the year 2025 there will be millions of first-degree initiates in incarnation. He does not say if they will be adult or freshly born. This means by 2045 there will be millions of adult initiates, just as the planet is getting a lot hotter.

In order to be a first-degree initiate, one has to have been an accepted disciple in the ashram of some Master or other. One would have to have worked at discipleship across many lifetimes. The notion of service will run pure in their blood.

This suggestion by the Tibetan means that the externalisation is well underway and is of a truly massive scale.

We might speculate that there are 100 times fewer initiates of second degree. Which would mean 10,000 initiates of the second degree and perhaps 100 of the third degree and one of the fourth.

The Tibetan said millions plural.

This back of a fag packet speculation suggests quite a lot of initiates.

These are likely to be possessed of a good intellect and to be found therefore in appropriate employ.

You could even be working with an initiate unbeknownst to you.

It is possible even that you are yourself an initiate but that the recollection has not registered in brain consciousness. This is more likely for the first two degrees {according to the text}. If I understand it correctly at the third one knows for sure and beyond doubt.

Elsewhere the Tibetan mentions that the Council will meet at Shamballa in 2025 and decide its next actions.

If there is to be mass initiation that implies a genuine and widespread crisis. For the backdrop of crisis accompanies the initiatory process.

The world is hurtling towards an environmental crisis as Mach 3.

People do not want to let go of acquisitional materialism, air travel and funky silicon-based gadgets. Nor do they want the sea level to rise and the climate to get worse. They desire economic “growth” not spiritual growth.

People want to have their cake and eat it too…

Something will have to budge…

Cause & Effect, Karma, Musings, Postulates, Questions, Rāja yoga, Yoga

Salacious Gossip

One of the perhaps most difficult things to quit, to give up, when one seeks to adopt a “spiritual” way of life is the modern addiction to salacious gossip in all its forms. One could say that gossip is a bedrock of social media and that it sells newspapers and magazines. Humanity lives vicariously through the lives of others presented for our consumption. Gossip is pushed like a wrap of fentanyl laced heroin.

Many would say, “oh no not me, I am not a gossip”. Well they may not be a pusher but they will score a wrap from time to time. This pays the pushers.

Quite a while back I was thoroughly shocked by an old acquaintance from school. We met up and he wanted to know the ins and outs of both my private life and those of anyone we knew in common. I was genuinely surprised because it was so obvious that he was almost salivating. “Really?”, I thought.

I have joked that the collective noun for a group of academics is a gossip of academics.

In principle an academic is detached and has a cool considered oversight. But that is not the case, they seemed obsessed about who got which grant, who has the higher measure of esteem and where people are in the “blessed” league tables.

Lofty pursuance of academic thought, nah. One upmanship and gossip about who is on the up and who is on the down are readily to be found. If there is any sex scandal, all the better. In the past academia had its own version of the casting couch too. Academia gets a metaphorical hard on for scandal. It likes the salacious just like anyone else.

Trungpa suggests that the Ego is forever trying to use spiritual teachings for its own benefit. Thus, gossip about whichever guru may masquerade as intelligent inquiry, when in fact it is just gossip clothed differently.

If you look at various publications you can classify a very large amount of their content as being gossip related and much of it hearsay carefully couched so as to avoid libel court action. It seems we all want to know what people are speculating as to the minds of Harry and William. There are “clairvoyant” royal “experts” who can read their minds for our “benefit”.

I know that at various stages of my life I have been a subject of gossip. The use of “a” is deliberate because I was only one topic amongst a host. It rarely occurs to people that gossip can damage even ruin careers. But people, it seems, cannot resist and love the attention from listeners which a juicy titbit might offer them

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“Have you heard about…”

“Really? Well, I never…”

I will make a postulate.

You cannot achieve liberation whilst you are a purveyor and consumer of gossip. If you are in anyway attached to gossip you are not free. You are addicted and suffer from the fear of missing out on the latest juicy and salacious titbit. You damage the web of life by your obsession.

You may be able to do the most complex asana but if gossip has you, then you are simply a bendy gossip.

In order to be free one has to reorient oneself apropos of gossip, maybe go cold turkey.

Here are some questions to help. Honesty instead of justification may help.

Do I like to hear gossip?

Do I find it a tad salacious?

Have I ever damaged anyone by gossiping about them?

Have I ever been damaged by gossip?

Am I perhaps more addicted to gossip than I would like to admit?

Is gossip in any way life enhancing?

ॐ, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, New Age, Quotations, Rāja yoga

Problems Arising From Group Mind

c. Diseases connected with Group Conditions

We can only briefly touch upon this theme, owing to the fact that group work (esoterically understood) is relatively new, and because the individual, working at this time in a group, is scarcely affected at all by these factors, owing to his relatively partial integration. I refer here to his integration in the group. People are still so insulated in their personalities that they are shut off, in many cases, from group stimulation, group effects and group impulses. It is only as they become decentralized and, therefore, more easily responsive to the group ideas, the group idealism, and to the group aura (with its outbreathing and its inbreathing and its group livingness) that they can and do succumb to those difficulties which group life imposes. Today it is the central figure in the group life, the dominant personality or soul, who is the one to whom the group life and the group thought turns, with all the consequences of such turning. It is this person, upon whom the group life pivots (if I may use such a term), who is the group victim and it is he who pays the price of any group weakness. The expression of the group attitude finds its outlet in him and he is, at times, practically “killed” by the group. No group today is a perfect group. They are in the experimental stage and are largely composed of a few Aquarians, many Pisceans and a number of people who are in a transition stage between these two. The leader or leaders of the new groups are usually of as pure a type of the new age or Aquarian character as is possible or available at this time. This accounts for the failure of the group, as a rule, either to understand the leader or to cooperate with the new ideals as is desired. The leader is a pioneer in a new field of thought and of intention and, therefore, suffers the penalties of his daring and of his spirit of enterprise.

It is not my intention to deal here with group difficulties, for that is not my theme. I am considering the difficulties (amounting often to physical disease) and the problems of the individual who is sensitive to group pressures and group life – a very different thing to the usual problems of the mystics of the past. These can only be studied and investigated today by a consideration of the lives, physical condition, problems, difficulties and deaths of group leaders. I would call this definitely to your attention. The group members – little as they may like to recognize this fact – are not as yet prone to suffer much from the group life, the group emanation and the group energy for they are not yet sufficiently integrated into the group.

The problem we are considering falls into two major categories and as I seek to deal with them I realize that there is relatively little that I can say. The next century will see the problems more defined and the difficulties more clearly delineated. They are:

Those arising as a result of the directed thought of the group. On this I can say something.
Diseases, connected with the respiratory tract. On these I can say but little.

Let us, therefore, look at these problems. We shall have to study the first from the angle of the one most affected by them – the leader or focal point of the group. These same problems may also affect the three or four people who, with the group leader and in collaboration with him, direct the group policies.

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Diseases and Problems evoked by Directed Group Thought

It will be obvious to you that the first and most important of these difficulties will be those arising from group criticism, either voiced or strongly felt. This criticism can be based on many things, but is usually rooted in jealousy, thwarted ambition, or pride of individual intellect. Each member of any group, particularly those in the immediate circle of the leader or leaders, is prone to sit in judgment. The responsibility is not theirs; they know not the problems as they truly exist and criticism is, therefore, easy. It should here be remembered that criticism is a virulent poison. It damages in every case eventually the one who criticizes – owing to the fact of voiced direction – it hurts still more the one who is criticized. Where there is purity of motive, true love and a large measure of detachment, the subtler bodies of the one who is under attack may remain immune but the physical effects will be definite and where there is any physical weakness or limitation there will be found the localization of the projected poison.

Unvoiced criticism is very dangerous for it is powerfully focused and strongly, though not individually directed; it issues continuously and as a steady stream, sent forth on the wings of jealousy, ambition, pride in a personal grasp of a supposed situation and a belief that the one who criticizes is in a position to understand correctly and could – given right opportunity – take right action. Where the criticism is voiced and expressed in words, it is consequently strengthened by the cooperation of those influenced by the criticism and the consequences of this group-directed thought may result in the physical undoing, and disruption of the physical body of the leader or leaders. This may be a new thought to some and should cause many in the New Age groups to arrest their thoughts and so release their leaders from the disastrous impact of their criticism.

I refer not here to hate, though that is often present, either consciously or unconsciously, but simply to the “sitting in judgment” and to the idle critical gossip which seems necessary to the average group member. It is like the very breath of death and it can not only kill the leader through accumulated poison and distress but it can also kill the group life and render abortive the efforts which could, if given cooperation and time to develop, prove constructive agencies through which the Hierarchy might work.

From every side and in every group there streams in on the group leader directed criticism, poisonous thoughts, untrue formulated ideas, idle gossip of a destructive kind, the imputation of motives, the unspoken jealousies and hates, the frustrated ambitions of group members, their resentments and their unsatisfied desires for prominence or for recognition by the leader or leaders, their desires to see the leader superseded by themselves or by someone else and many other forms of selfishness and mental pride. These produce results in the physical bodies of the leader or leaders and often in the emotional bodies. The responsibility of the group member is, therefore, great and it is one which they seldom recognize or shoulder. It is hard for them to appreciate the dire effects when one person is the target for group criticism and when the directed thought of a number of persons is focused on one or two individuals.

The more highly evolved the group leader, the greater the pain and suffering. First ray people who have naturally a “technique of isolation” suffer less than many for they know how to shut off these directed streams of force and how to deflect them and – when they are not deeply spiritual people – they can return them to their originators and thus wreak havoc in their lives. Second ray persons do not and cannot work this way. They are naturally absorbers and magnetically attract all that is in their environment which is directed towards them. That is why Christ paid the penalty of death. He was killed, not only by His enemies, but also by His so-called friends.

You might here ask. What can a leader or a group of leaders do in these unfortunately normal and usual circumstances? Nothing, but continue in the work; retreat within themselves; speak the truth with love when occasion occurs; refuse to become bitter over the pain which the group occasions and wait until the group members learn the lessons of cooperation, of silence, of loving appreciation and a wise realization and understanding of the problems with which all group leaders are faced in these difficult and individualistic days. That time will come.

Then there is the reverse of this problem and one that must be faced by many group leaders. In this reverse situation, the leader is overcome and (if I might use such a phrase) is “smothered” by the devotion of certain of the group members. Group leaders can be almost annihilated by the personality love of people. But this is not of such a poisonous nature as the difficulties above referred to, for – though it is handicapping and leads to many forms of difficulty, misunderstanding and group reaction – it is along the line of love and not of separation and hate. It produces what is esoterically called “the crippling of the one who seeks to serve and the binding of his hands and feet.”

One other difficulty I will touch upon for it is important in so far that it is a group activity, carried forward as a whole and is not the act of one individual or a small handful of individuals within the group. I refer to the way in which at this time a group drains the life of its leader or leaders. The umbilical cord (speaking symbolically) is seldom cut between the leader and the group. That was the major mistake of the groups in the Piscean age. Always they remained attached to the leader or – when aroused to hate or dislike – they violently disrupted the tie and severed the relationship, causing much distress and unnecessary suffering to the group as well as to the leader. In the New Age the cord will be cut early in the life of the group but the leader or group of leaders will remain for a long time (as does the mother of a child) the guiding inspiration, the loving protecting force and the source of instruction and of teaching. When this is the case, the group can proceed upon its way and live its life as a self-directing agent even when the leader passes over to the other side or there is a change in leadership for some good reason or other.

According to the general flow of group life and activity so will be the effect – emotional and physical – upon any sensitive group member; the more frequent the physical contact between the group members the more definite will be the group problems and difficulties, however. Groups in the New Age will be held together by a subjective link and not so much by the emotional reaction induced by outer contact. I would ask you to ponder carefully upon this last paragraph for it holds the clue to the successful working of the new groups. It is from group life and group atmosphere that much infection arises, leading to difficulties of a physical nature. Disease is largely of group origin and the mystics and sensitive of the world most easily succumb. In these early stages of true group work, the difficulties which arise from group contacts are frequently of a purely physiological nature and are not so deep seated as those with which we have earlier been dealing. This is a point to be remembered. Physical trouble and disease is not of so serious a nature as psychological.

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Excerpted from:

Esoteric Psychology II – Chapter II – The Ray of Personality – Problems of Disciples and Mystics

Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul