Tag: Synthesis

Musings, personal, Poetic Prose

Das Glasperlenspiel and Knecht’s Three Lives

It is raining hard and therefore it is appropriate that I mention “the rainmaker” one of Knecht’s three lives appended to “The Glass Bead Game”. This life in particular struck a resonance and like Hesse I too have made my own journey to the East if only in meditation and thought.

Though one could say that I have had more Eastern lives than Western ones.

 At one stage of my life, I was aware that I was becoming a “One Trick Pony” perhaps caught as a particle in a one dimensional box where my wavefunction did not penetrate beyond the quasi-infinite barrier. There was a world outside academia and science, perhaps.

As such I started to read around.

In Hesse I found someone as complex and as synthetically joined up as me. “The Glass Bead Game” made so very much sense against the backdrop of separative, rigid, and definitional science. Everything is connected had we but eyes to see. Like Knecht I too resigned and left the ivory tower only to tutor young individuals far away from the cloning sardine can.

I sensed in Hesse past life recall in his three lives, and not the pseudo-intellectual psychoanalytical interpretations of academic literature. In Narziss and Goldmund I felt the dichotomy of sterile intellect against the livingness of pure feeling and expression, the urgent now perturbing the aeons of monastic precedent.

This blog is in some respects also a Glass Bead Game, a Glasperlenspiel, an alchemical cauldron or a Tibetan sand mandala, constructed with care to be wiped away at the flick of a brush or the click of a mouse.

I see myself by my deeds. I am gardener and decorator, cook and carer. Perhaps there is some residual intellectualism but that shall remain a secret between you and I, far away from the mad, crazy, and hectic hegemony of modern existence.

I have no fear of missing out…

The rain is welcome and it is the overture, the prelude, for spring. Today the earth drinks, and the plants will yawn and stretch, easing off the sleepy mantle of darkness…

The cycle begins anew…

Esoteric, Poetic Prose, Poetry, Quotations, Synthesis

Das Glasperlenspiel

von Hermann Hesse

—

Musik des Weltalls und Musik der Meister

Sind wir bereit in Ehrfurcht anzuhören,

Zu reiner Feier die verehrten Geister

Begnadeter Zeiten zu beschwören.

—

Wir lassen vom Geheimnis uns erheben

Der magischen Formelschrift, in deren Bann

Das Uferlose, Stürmende, das Leben

Zu klaren Gleichnissen gerann.

—

Sternbildern gleich ertönen sie kristallen,

In ihrem Dienst ward unserm Leben Sinn,

Und keiner kann aus ihren Kreisen fallen

Als nach der heiligen Mitte hin.

—–

ॐ, Cause & Effect, Climate Change, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Karma, Magic, Musings, New Age, Quotations, Rāja yoga, Vision, Yoga

Training for the Incoming Ray: Ceremonial Order or Magic – Synthesis

—————

“The Seventh Ray of Ceremonial Order or Magic

Special Virtues:

Strength, perseverance, courage, courtesy, extreme care in details, self-reliance.

Vices of Ray:

Formalism, bigotry, pride, narrowness, superficial judgments, self-opinion over-indulged.

Virtues to be acquired:

Realization of unity, wide-mindedness, tolerance, humility, gentleness and love.

This is the ceremonial ray, the ray which makes a man delight in “all things done decently and in order,” and according to rule and precedent. It is the ray of the high priest and the court chamberlain, of the soldier who is a born genius in organization, of the ideal commissary general who will dress and feed the troops in the best possible way. It is the ray of the perfect nurse for the sick, careful in the smallest detail, though sometimes too much inclined to disregard the patients idiosyncrasies and to try and grind them in the iron mill of routine.

It is the ray of form, of the perfect sculptor, who sees and produces ideal beauty, of the designer of beautiful forms and patterns of any sort; but such a man would not be successful as a painter unless his influencing ray were the fourth. The combination of four with seven would make the very highest type of artist, form and color being both in excelsis. The literary work of the seventh ray man would be remarkable for its ultra-polished style, and such a writer would think far more of the manner than of the matter in his work but would always be fluent both in writing and speech. The seventh ray man will often be sectarian. He will delight in fixed ceremonials and observances, in great processions and shows, in reviews of troops and warships, in genealogical trees, and in rules of precedence.”

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As I may have mentioned before my personality ray is ray seven. If you look closely you will be able to see the influence in the blog content.

The incoming ray is this ray ceremonial order or magic. Inherent in this is a major challenge for humanity, which so often is disorganised and in disarray. Winging it, is not seventh ray. The seventh ray may be précised as “the ray of having your shit together”. This is a long way from higgledy-piggledy and in some ways anti-hippie but in other ways it is the ray, par excellence, of natural rhythm. Everything should be in synch and on time with natural law and rhythm.

Yes, ritual traditional magic, craft, and mantra are a part, but only a small one.

Organisation, vivification, and energising are what proper order brings. An organism needs to organise and carry out its given physical plane learning. Karma can be thought of as residual “shit” that you have to deal with. Hence in working off your shit you get your shit together, less new karma, debt paid off.

Many people resist being organised and have never experienced the slick and the smooth of all cogs working in unison. People who are self-obsessed are separative and do not view themselves as part of the holistic whole. ME is a luddite spanner in the works. It causes discordance and discord, dis-chord, the sound jars.

The challenge of the incoming ray is to eradicate this notion of self and alchemize it into the holistic-whole, or ONE. The one humanity.

To say to a sloppy ill disciplined person, who is fond of the weird and the whacky, that they need to have their shit together is to ask for resistance.

“Hey man, that is not New Age!”

“Yes, it is! Get a haircut and pull up your trousers. You need to focus and stop being so dissipated!”

If one meanders and only cherry picks the easy fruit off the tree of teaching, then one will not taste the golden apples higher up the tree, which need more and continued effort to attain. Many choose only those teachings that are strap-on to normal life. Few want radical change. One could say people want to keep their cherry pie and eat it.

The seventh ray is also the ray of constant evolution and application. This is because Synthesis takes new learning and incorporates it with the knowledge heretofore garnered. Knowledge is never complete, because of constant synthesis one could say that knowing is a present participle synonym of evolving, knowledge relates to evolution. True knowledge cannot ever be concrete and finished.

Synthesis is an antithesis of Idealism and Devotion, the departing sixth ray. Sixth ray separates, cleaves and divides, seventh ray heals, stitches the rent wounds of division and stirs its synthetic pot of alchemy in search of the new.   

The seventh ray is unlike the division with which our current world is so very badly scarred!!

It is time to synthesise and not cleave, the synthetic cauldron of inspiration must overcome the axe of cleavage.

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

Discipleship in the New Age – Selected Letters to Disciples

To R.R.R.

May 1939

BROTHER OF MINE:

You may here rightly ask me: In what way do I hinder? I am not ambitious. I do not make trouble of a group kind; I only make trouble for myself. I try to be loving and kind. I work as hard as I think I should. I love the truth and I endeavor to meet requirements.

All of this may be true, my brother, but these statements do not constitute an alibi for what is wrong. The thing that can wreck the building work, which your group is intended to do, is the violence of your reactions and vibrations when you are emotionally upset (and this is of frequent occurrence) and the furious self-assertion whereby you endeavor to justify such violence, and your dramatic self-pity. Unless you can learn to decentralize yourself, and cease this constant self-thought and self-commiseration under all circumstances, and stop visualizing yourself at all times as in the center – yourself as the worker, yourself as the group member, yourself as the sufferer from others’ misunderstandings and mistakes, yourself as of importance – and learn to see yourself as you truly are, you can and do hinder the work and imperil the future constructive work of the group. This you know.

You love no one truly but yourself. If you loved truly and impersonally, you would not cause the pain you do to those who love and believe in your capacity; you would be more magnetic and this on a wider scale, for, as yet, you are only magnetic to those who recognize your personality and love your personality. It is from this lack that your work suffers. Yet it could so easily all be changed, if you learnt that divine indifference which you need – indifference to yourself and to your personality interests, likes and dislikes, indifference to your cares, anxieties and successes. You would then be in a position, really, to sense the importance of the work, the uniqueness of your opportunities at this time, and your really strategic position. But you are too full of fear and of self-interest and so fail to make the needed impact upon those who need your help. They get the impact of your cares and fears and your demand to be liked. Can you change this? I am telling you nothing new. Among the chelas in my Ashram, you are in the position of the naughty, wilful child, for your errors and faults are those of a child and are not adult faults at all. You dream in a child’s dream world.

You must grow up, my brother, for the world needs adult workers at this time and you can meet the need; you can do great and good work; you can make a soul impact upon those around you; you can cease from being a destructive agent and become a constructive worker. But this will only be possible if your likes and dislikes, your personality determinations and affections, your feeling and your physical ailments fade out of the picture and only the world’s need remains and the longing to meet it – as you can. As, I repeat, you can. I and the group need you.

I offer you neither suspension nor the opportunity to resign. I ask you to face the issue and make good. Fight this matter out and fight it out alone. Learn to keep the things which concern yourself to yourself – a thing you have never yet learnt. Do not let your group brothers down by resigning or by a violent explosion – the repercussions of which must hurt and damage. Face life steadily, like an adult who has learnt in the school of wisdom, that the trend of all things is good. Handle life with love as a member of the New Group of World Servers.

NOTE: This disciple is still fighting out the battle but no indication has yet come from the Tibetan that the victory is sufficiently gained to warrant more active work in the Ashram. R. R. R. is still outwardly inactive in relation to the group.

———————————————————

To P.G.C.

September 1943

BROTHER OF MINE:

It seems to me that so oft I have to say this year to hard-pressed chelas: The way has been difficult. But so it is, and your way in life has been no exception. Great waves of karmic impact have beaten upon our Earth – that little ship adrift in time and space and sailing the great ocean of the cosmos. The Lords of Karma have looked towards our planet. Energy follows thought and that, my brother, is all that karma is – the impact of directed energy upon the Earth, upon the kingdoms in nature, upon man and upon the individual disciple. Much of this karma, especially now, is not individual in purpose, nor is it generated in any way by the individuals affected by it, be it an individual disciple, or an ordinary human being. It is largely incident at this time to the karma of the One in whom we live and move and have our being. It is primarily also in the sphere of Shamballa, and has small relation in the first instance to humanity at all. This means but little to you, I realize. This karma working out in Shamballa has, however, led to the vitalizing of the activities of certain “wilful” men; they have loosed great evil upon the Earth. But this karma will also produce the stimulation of goodwill, and thus lasting good will offset temporary evil. This must not be forgotten.

The problems which have confronted you as an individual, as a disciple and as a member of the New Group of World Servers have been difficult, but you are weathering the storm and your little ship will live through the gale. All is preparatory to an increased output in service – service which will develop normally without undue planning, and which will be accessory to your life task of meeting your home and your healing responsibilities.

This, as I hinted in your six seed thoughts last year, is summed up in the words there found: “Your duty and your goal go hand in hand.” This condition is apt to present more difficulties than a definitely clear-cut distinction. Relationships have to be more carefully adjusted and the time equation most carefully organized and planned. Your second ray nature makes the first possible, your first ray attributes aid in the second. Your major emphasis this year should be the establishing of the most loving “right relations” with all in your immediate environment.

What I am referring to, my brother, is deepening, and this deepening must be consciously carried forward. One of the things which I desire to see in all the members of this group in my Ashram is a process of deepening, carried forward through realization, silence, loving understanding and inner synthesis. That is why it is essential that all of you read and study each other’s papers and instructions, so as to arrive at this depth of insight, vision and source of activity. All the outer relations will then – both of the individual disciple and of the group – be implemented from this inner center, and will therefore be lasting, sound and constructive.

Your particular work in my Ashram is (as well you know) connected with the Network of Light which must be created in the world, and with the furthering of the Triangles of Light… I would ask three of you… to form the inner central triangle, and together and in constant consultation establish some uniformity and continuity of work. Continue with the work you are now doing and in the way you are doing it, but deepen (again that thought) the content of what you give to the people who read the notes you send out.

I feel no need to give you any set meditation. The group meditation, your own reflective work upon your task as a disciple (and this should be intensified), and your subjective meditation upon the Network of Light with your two Triangle members will provide you with adequate focal points for soul emphasis. Here I have given you a definition of meditation given by a Master to a group of disciples. He is not one of the Masters known to you or the outer world, for he only takes into his Ashram those who are in preparation for the third initiation, and then only those who are pledged to undertake certain definite activities for which he trains them. These “focal points of emphasis” are of many differing kinds and should distinguish your type of meditation throughout the coming year. Such focal points are brief, dynamic, potent and emphatic and are only possible when the antahkarana is in process of definite construction, as is the case with your work along this line.

I find little more to say to you, my brother. The reason for this is that we work in a peculiarly close manner at all times and you are very active in the work of my Ashram. You do not require, therefore, to hold lengthy discussions and to receive long instructions from me at various annual points. We talk at times throughout the year, and this again you know. Hence the brevity of this communication.

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To  L. T. S-K.

September 1943

BROTHER OF MINE:

Our association together has existed for many years. It also began many lives ago. You should have advanced to a more intimate stage of discipleship had it not been for your always ready and still persistent response to the unreal, the unnecessary, and to that which comes in between you and the clear, steady enlightened progress upon the Path which should be yours. You will note that I use not the word glamor here. The reason is that it is apparently an entirely meaningless word to you, and I felt that I should emphasize the fact that glamor (as far as you are concerned) means that which sidesteps you from the desired service, that which engrosses your attention and prevents you from concentrating on the realities of life and circumstance, that which places you always at the center of some big scheme as the master-mind making some discovery, as the architect of some building which is intended to house humanity, and that which comes between you and the simple duty of a pledged disciple – for that you unchangeably are.

You have, my brother, a good illustration of what I mean in the two plans which you have evolved during the past six months for world salvage and unity. One of them was supposed to be in response to my request for a paper, but another paper which I asked you to write is still unwritten and that paper was more important than the other. These plans were drawn; time was taken in submitting them to various people, and to what end? There was in them nothing new. The minds and some of the best minds in every country in the world are formulating them. Your plans were simply compilations of familiar suggestions which have already been presented in better form to the public. What end, therefore, did they serve? Only to sidetrack you from the simple duty of today; only to feed that inclination on your part to do something great; only to prevent you from a true and practical cooperation in my plans which you know well and which the disciples in my Ashram are pledged to materialize. It is their group duty, not from the angle of authoritative demand, or in a spirit of blind obedience but because from free choice and identity of purpose (as far as they can realize it) they are in my Ashram; they have willingly responded to my planned intentions and in a spirit of dedication to the good of humanity.

All this indicates to me that you are still prone to slip into the thralldom of the vague vision, the grandiose formulations of something and are negatively responsive to the collective ideas of forward-thinking men, for you do no positive or original thinking of your own. Glamor still holds you.

You might well ask, my brother: Why then keep me in your group? Why not wait until I have learnt better and have dropped this tendency? Because you need the protection of the Ashram and you need – from the center of protection – to learn then to accept the duty of obedience to the ashramic intent and to work under the direction of the loving intentions of those whom you do recognize as more experienced disciples than yourself. You are in my Ashram also from old association and because you earned the reward of this recognition and opportunity by being the first to appreciate the significance of my books and the teaching that they convey, and to aid the effort of A.A.B. For that reason you earned the right to my appreciation and hers, and have had them both. That was the one clear bit of spiritual thinking you have done in this incarnation. Therefore, the Ashram protects you, and your brothers stand around you, and for this brief incarnation you are a liability – but a liability which can, with your cooperation, be changed in your next incarnation into a group asset.

There is consequently no need for the slightest discouragement and I say that with definite purpose and truth. There is only room for the acceptance of facts. What facts, brother of mine? Let me (with my usual frankness) tell you. Let me point out to you what I feel and those who know you best feel should be your attitude for the remainder of this life. If you accept these ideas and cooperate willingly, you will do much to free yourself; if you refuse to see the light, you will but delay the process and continue to exact the protecting care of the Ashram for a longer period. Let me first highlight your career of glamor so as to prove to you, intelligently, the points I seek to make.

I shall not deal with your life, prior to the recognition period which enabled you to render me and the world outstanding service. Your recognition and aid of the work I was doing has released certain energies which will have much to do with the changing of the consciousness of humanity. Remember that the Hierarchy has this service of yours in mind.

There was the glamor of the wonderful discovery you were going to make, covering several years of experimentation and leading nowhere. Why? Because you had neither the training nor the capacity to do the work. It will be better done and in other ways and by better minds than yours. Your equipment was not adequate.

There was the glamor of spiritual power which led some of your group brothers astray for months. There has always been a glamorous response to personalities who have misled and glamored you in the business world and led you into devious and difficult situations, and which forced you, eventually, to recognize that they were not the least what you had thought. What is this but the glamor of personalities? Until you have learnt to see people as they truly are, you cannot do the exoteric work of a disciple.

Then came an interlude. I asked for your resignation from the group, and the door of the inner Ashram closed upon you. That was very good for you and you endeavored in that period to attend to the business of life, watching yourself with care. Then the door of the Ashram reopened and you were readmitted to the group life. For a year all seemed well, but the dual stimulation of the Ashram and the active work in my group proved too much, and glamor again enveloped you.

You started by formulating large schemes for world regeneration and for a super-organization, and yet all that time the work that I wanted done and the outlines of the work as indicated by me, and to which your group brothers and my Ashram are pledged, played no part in your planning. You have been unhappy and bewildered because of the lack of sympathy, yet what would you have your brothers do? Would you have them aid me in helping you to free yourself from wild schemes and planning, or would you have them back you up and strengthen the hold that glamor has upon you?

Here are my suggestions, brother of mine, given in all love and understanding, and with a real appreciation of your sincerity of devotion, your great and beautiful staying-power, your essential humility and your very real need for protection.

  • Accept the fact that you need protection, and be grateful.
  • Accept the fact that in this life you have neither the mental equipment nor the clear vision to enable you to be a leader, an organizer or a drawer of blueprints for the Hierarchy.
  • Accept the fact that you are not young enough to make many basic personality changes, for the sixth ray crystallizes too rapidly.
  • Accept the fact that in the performance of your home and business duties and in the effort to bring happiness to those in your environment lies for you the immediate solution of your problem. A simple, humble life of service and of self-forgetfulness will do more to free you than any violent endeavor to understand and combat glamor. You do not yet even comprehend what it is; it can only be overcome by the illumined mind, and there is therefore, for you, nothing else to be done but to strengthen your soul contact by practical spiritual living upon the physical plane, and by a complete refraining from all thought anent the future world, future scientific discoveries, future world orders, and the manner whereby they can be instituted.

The moment your mind becomes preoccupied with the universal aspects of life it is thrown into confusion; its thought-form-making proclivities become violent, and the illumination of the soul is then unable to penetrate. You need to learn to bring that illumination into your personality daily life upon the physical plane. What measure of it you have received has been retained upon the mental plane and dedicated to matters far too big for you in this incarnation and with your present equipment. This has led to a chronic state of glamor. Live practically, sweetly, humbly and lovingly for the remainder of this life, and demonstrate beauty in personality relations. You will thus release your mind from pressures too great for it, and so begin to tread the way of liberation.

Can you do this, my brother? Can you bring spirituality into business and live in the business world as a disciple? If you cannot do this, you will have to learn to do it, because discipleship leaves no aspect of life unlived, and business is an aspect of human living. Can you bring naught but peace, happiness and confidence into your home and into your association at the Headquarters of my work in the world? Can you begin to be one to whom the enquirer can turn for help, knowing that he will get enough practical assistance to enable him to see the next step ahead? You can do and be all these things, my brother. Your task is to demonstrate discipleship in the daily life, and not to duplicate the discipleship of those more advanced than yourself.

Do the group work and meditation as indicated. I assign you no special work. I seek to see you more closely integrated into the group in my Ashram of which you are a part. Have no doubts and questionings. You are a part of my Ashram, and that brings the needed protection, as well as certain risks of over-stimulation. The love and understanding and gratitude of your group brothers stands with warmth around you. I have no need to assure you of my protecting care and constant interest. The years must have proved it to you.

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To D.E.I.

September 1943

MY BROTHER AND MY FRIEND:

Since you entered the cycle beginning with your forty-second year, life has held for you constant change, many and drastic adjustments and much responsibility. To this must be added the turmoil and the chaos of the war. This has made great demands upon your strength and your judgment. You have responded well. You have helped many and have grown in wisdom. You have shouldered responsibility for some phase of the work initiated in my Ashram or by my co-disciple, A.A.B. She is not a member of my Ashram. You have my understanding and her unfailing support.

Inevitably, my brother, this situation which you have had to handle in relation to the work for which you are responsible, in relation to your personal and family life and to the future which lies open before you, has entailed much strain. To these factors must be added another one which is that you are essentially alone. This basic loneliness is due to several things: First, that you are in training for leadership, and leaders have to learn to stand alone, and can ever do so if they love enough. Secondly, the force of circumstance and the need to work off certain karmic relations has increased your daily contacts, and at the same time has left you far more alone than you were six years ago. Thirdly, because the greater can always include the less is a lesson which all leaders in training have to grasp; the reverse, my brother, is not true, and the result is loneliness. Ponder on all this and accept it; stand free and move forward on your chosen path, refusing to be limited by those who cannot go your pace. This again means loneliness. And finally, a need for a more loving understanding at times isolates you from your fellowmen, particularly from your co-workers, and you need to beware of a growing critical spirit.

The lessons of leadership are hard to learn, and with these lessons you will be confronted as the years slip away – if you so wish and can face the music. The music is there and will emerge in full tonal quality once you have resolved the discords and established the theme and the rhythm.

What are the lessons which all true leaders have to learn? It might be of service to you if I put one or two before you – very briefly, so that you can (if truly in earnest to serve your fellowmen, as I believe you are) begin to master them, to understand their need and to apply them to yourself with a view to fuller and more useful service.

The first lesson is the lesson of vision. What are your goals? What is the spiritual incentive which will be and is strong enough to hold you steady to the purpose and true to the objective? No one can formulate the vision for you; it is your own personality problem, and upon the strength of the vision and the beauty of the picture which you paint with your imagination will depend much that you do and become.

The second lesson is the development of a right sense of proportion. This, when truly developed and correctly applied, will enable you to walk humbly on the Way. No true leader can be anything but humble, for he realizes the magnitude of his task; he appreciates the limitations of his contribution (in the light of the vision) and the need for constant self-development and the cultivation of the spirit of steady inner spiritual learning, if he is ever to make his proper contribution. Therefore, keep learning; keep dissatisfied with yourself and your attainment, not in any morbid sense, but so that the principle of growth and of pushing forward and onward may be fostered in you. We help others through our own effort to attain; this means clear thinking, humility and constant adjustment.

The third lesson is the development of the spirit of synthesis. This enables you to include all within the range of your influence and also to be included within the range of influence of those greater than yourself. Thus is the chain of Hierarchy established. You still hold a somewhat isolated position, and this with the best intent in the world; but you need to love more deeply and more understandingly. The hindrance here lies in your personality, which is more wise than loving. Let your soul control your first ray personality more, and many of your present difficulties would disappear.

Another lesson which in reality grows out of the above is the avoidance of the spirit of criticism, for criticism leads to barriers and loss of time. Learn to distinguish the spirit of criticism from the ability to analyze and make practical application of the analysis. Learn to analyze life, circumstances and people from the angle of the work, and not from the angle of your personality point of view; analyze also from the angle of the Ashram, and not from the angle of the executive or the schoolmaster upon the physical plane.

In the six statements which I gave you a year ago were three sentences to which I would call your further and close attention. They are:

    “Let not the doing intervene between the loving.”

    This has much to do with the distribution of time.

    Study the value of the heart at leisure from itself and its problems.

    “Lift up the weak, for you are strong, and strength from many comes to you.”

    This has to do with recognition. Be not entirely occupied with helping, but be willing to be helped.

    Study the value of the imagination in this connection.

    “You move through life with all the power which comes from out my Ashram.”

    This has to do with the handling of energy – and with energy of great potency which will not only invoke the best that is in you but will also evoke the latent seeds of difficulty, which must perforce be removed.

    Study the task of living ever consciously in the Ashram and working from that point of power and peace – going without, yet ever staying within.

I am speaking thus directly to you, my co-worker, because the future holds much of useful service for you, if you continue to be a learner. It takes time, humility and certain recognitions, within yourself, of place and position in the chain of Hierarchy. I cannot too strongly emphasize that to you. Let not the pressures of family life (and no family life is devoid of pressures) and the exigencies of the work plus the activities of an active mind, interfere with the inner learning process which is so essential to all teaching-leaders. That, my brother, is what you can be.

A.A.B. has spoken to me of you from the standpoint of your place in the work of the School. She has not touched upon the personality angles or the need for special developments and growth, for no trained disciple, such as she is, ever interferes with the relation between a Master and his chela. She knows that your relation to me is that. But she has spoken to me about you from the angle of the future. I asked her what she felt was your major need and one that you must meet as you prepare for a larger field of service when she passes over. She made an unexpected reply. She said: “The need for a more fertile imagination.” She is entirely right.

The imagination is a creative faculty. Wherein are you thus creative? Can you picture to yourself by any flight of imagination the task ahead of the Arcane School, for instance, in the postwar world, and your approach to the problem from the angle of what you would like to change or see altered? Changes mean nothing unless they are the result of new vision, for if they emerge out of a criticism of the past and of what has been done, they will prove useless from the angle of the spiritual life, no matter how useful they may be from the angle of the organization.

Have you the perception to realize what an esoteric school essentially has to be? It is not an organized method of meeting world problems, of organizing new orders and ways of living, or of underwriting the efforts of the men and women of goodwill. It goes far deeper than that. All the above are only effects of the esoteric life. Can you imagine your position when – from the teaching angle, the esoteric angle – you may have to be a source of inspiration, and not A.A.B.? From whence will you draw inspiration, and how will you make the world of meaning and the spiritual realities real and provocative to the neophyte?

Can your imagination picture to you your reaction when – because you are the leader – you have to shoulder all the blame for any failure, even when not personally responsible; you have to accept without retaliation the attacks of those you are trying to help, who expect too much from you and who force you to live in the blaze of public opinion; what will you do when your chosen workers fail to understand or prove disloyal or criticize without warrant or pit their ambitions against you, and willfully refuse to see your point of view, and talk about you among other people and whip up resentments against you – resentments which are probably without foundation? These are not the kind of things that your personality easily accepts, and your creative imagination had better begin dealing with these problems so that the emerging principles of conduct may stand clear before you. Have you the inner grace of heart to admit error and weakness or to say that you made a mistake in technique or method or approach, in judgment or in speech, should need arise to heal a breach and in the interests of the work? That has never come easily to you either, my brother. It is a thing, you seldom do.

And having said all this, let me point out your assets and the valuable gifts which you can bring to the work and have for years contributed; they are the qualities which make A.A.B. your loyal friend and ambitious for your progress. You have a recognition of principles which is vital and somewhat rare, and on principles all true work is securely founded. You have a gift of impersonality, as a general rule, which is a great safeguard; and in those times when your personality impulses have controlled, the phase has not been lasting. You have a gift of teaching, clear insight and executive ability and a loving heart when it is sparked into compassion. You have a steadfastness of purpose and an unswerving adherence to duty and dharma and a capacity to shoulder responsibility which has, in the past, and will in the future, prove invaluable to the work required. You have the gift of the written word and an increasing ability to speak, and these are valuable assets indeed when wielded by the soul on behalf of others. You are impulsive, and this at times creates temporary difficulties, but the general trend and tendency of your impulses is right and truly oriented. This is a major asset in your life. You are a pledged and accepted disciple, with the power of your Master’s Ashram behind you and the love of your co-disciples with you.

You have the understanding and loyal affection of A.A.B., and will – from life to life. Against her wishes, I ask you to give her in some small measure what she has so largely given you. At times you fail to grasp the strength of her belief in you. Her health is precarious and she counts much on you. Fail her not, and seek to understand the problems with which she is faced.

You have also my belief and trust, my confidence that you will carry on – learning and living and loving – and again I repeat, on the strength coming from my Ashram you can count, but it reaches you through your soul, and therefore a closer soul contact is increasingly needed by you as the work grows and develops.

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Excerpted from “Discipleship in the New Age I – Personal Instructions to Disciples”

By Alice Bailey and Djwhal Kuhl

ॐ, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Quotations, Rāja yoga

Initiation VII – The Resurrection

There is no idea more cultivated subjectively by humanity than that of the resurrection; when life seems hard and circumstances carry in them no grounds for happiness, and when nothing calls to one of such a nature that one goes forth happily to the day’s enterprises, and when the nights of sleep are haunted nights, the thought of rising up and out of all these circumstances, of leaving all behind and of entering into a new life, carries with it strength and hope. In the West, the Festival of the year which is regarded as of the most importance is that of Easter Day – the Day of Resurrection. Yet two thousand years ago the Christ did not rise out of a rocky sepulchre and reassume His discarded body. He passed through the great seventh initiation which we will consider today, and knew the secret of life, of which immortality is only one of its many attributes. Humanity lays emphasis so frequently upon attribute, quality and reactions, and not upon that which is the basic underlying reality; men deal with effects and not with causes; for instance, mankind is concerned with war and with horrified preparations for more war, and is not primarily occupied with that which causes war and which, if rightly handled, would prevent war. Let us consider some few aspects of the seventh initiation.

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The word “resurrection” has deep significance latent in its derivation and one that is not often emphasized. The usual interpretation has been that the word comes from “re,” again, and “surgere,” to rise, therefore to rise again. Yet a consultation with the dictionary shows that the prefix means “back to an original state” by rising. This return to an original state is pictured for us in The New Testament under the story of the Prodigal Son, who said “I will arise and go to my Father,” and by the story of the resurrection in which the Master Jesus arose out of the tomb; the chains of death could not hold Him. At that time of His “rising,” a far more important event took place and the Christ passed through the seventh Initiation of Resurrection and returned back to His original state of Being – to remain there throughout all the eternities. This is the true and final resurrection. The Son of God has found His way back to the Father and to His originating Source, that state of Existence to which we have given the name Shamballa. The consciousness of the Universal Life is His; this is far more than simply the consciousness of immortality, because the idea or concept of mortality is not contained within it at all. There have been many deaths within the aeonial life cycle of the initiate:

  • The familiar and constantly recurring death of the physical body, incarnation after incarnation.
  • The deaths of the astral and the mental vehicles, as the undying soul discards them life after life – only to create new ones until mastery is attained.
  • Then – as a result of the incarnating process and its evolutionary effects – there comes the death of desire and its replacing by a growing spiritual aspiration.
  • Then, through right use of the mind, comes the “death” of the personality or, rather, its repudiation and renouncing of all that is material.
  • This is followed by the death or destruction of the causal or soul body at the great Initiation of Renunciation.

This process of death and resurrection goes on ceaselessly in all the kingdoms of nature; each death prepares the way for a greater loveliness and livingness, and each death (if you analyze it with care) prefaces resurrection in some form or another until we come to this final resurrection and into the position of final attainment.

I will not here elaborate upon this process of constant death followed by constant resurrection, but it is the evolutionary keynote and the evolutionary technique, and only because men love unduly that which is material and hate to lose contact with the form aspect of nature do they fear death. It is wise to remember that immortality is an aspect of the living spiritual being, and is not an end in itself, as men seek to make it. To the Knowers of Life such a phrase as “I am an immortal Soul” is not even true. To say “I am Life Itself and, therefore, am immortal” approaches closer to the truth, but even that sentence is (from the angle of the initiate) only a part of a larger truth. Symbolically, nature is ever portraying to us the essential facts in the annual progress of the four seasons, in the cycles of light and dark and in the wonder of the emergence of beauty or color or useful function out of a seed which has struggled – because of its inherent life – into the light of the sun.

The fear of death is one of the great abnormalities or distortions of divine truth for which the Lords of Cosmic Evil are responsible. When in early Atlantean times they emerged from the place where they had been confined, and forced temporarily the retirement of the Great White Lodge to subjective levels, their first great act of distortion was to implant in human beings fear, beginning with the fear of death. From that time on, men have laid the emphasis upon death and not life, and have been ridden by fear all their days.

One of the initial acts of the reappearing Christ and of the Hierarchy will be to erase this particular fear and to confirm in peoples’ minds the idea that incarnation and the taking of a form is the true place of darkness to the divine spirit which is man; it is death to the spirit temporarily, and imprisonment. Evolution, men will be taught, is in itself an initiatory process leading from one living experience to another, culminating in the fifth Initiation of Revelation and in the seventh Initiation of Resurrection.

At the fifth initiation it is revealed to the initiate that life in form is indeed death, and he then knows this truth in a manner which my few short words cannot convey. Form dies for him and he knows a new expansion of life and undergoes (if I may so express it) a new understanding of living. The seventh initiation is divorced from all considerations of form, and the initiate becomes a concentrated point of living light; he knows in a manner indescribable that life is all that Is, and that it is this life and its real fullness which makes him a part of That which lies outside of our planetary Life; he may now share in that extra-planetary Existence in which our planetary Logos lives and moves and has His being. This is the “life more abundantly” of which Christ spoke and which only an initiate of the seventh degree can understand or convey.

After the fifth initiation, the initiate has slowly been sensing the nature of this greater Life, the Life of “The  Unknown God,” as it has been called, which enfolds all livingness and all forms upon and within our planet and yet remains – greater than our planetary Life, more all-encompassing than is our planetary Logos, and Whose greatness, beauty, goodness and knowledge are to our planetary Logos what His life is to the lowest form of life in the third or animal kingdom. It is only by such inadequate comparisons that one can arrive at some faint comprehension of that great Whole in which our planet and our planetary Logos are but a part. It is this revelation which is accorded to the initiate at this seventh Initiation of Resurrection. He takes this initiation upon what (for lack of a better phrase) we call the “logoic plane,” or on the level of consciousness of the Lord of the World.

At this initiation the Initiator is attended by two groups of Beings; one is a small group of the “Knowers of the Purpose, the Custodians of the Will,” and the other is a much larger group, the personnel of which are known as “The Wise Ones and the Attractive Energies of Shamballa.” I am of course endeavoring to translate certain brief words and intricate symbols into phrases which you can understand and which only dimly convey the true significance of Those Who function on this highest level of the cosmic physical plane. On this level, dynamic electricity is held as in a great reservoir of potency and is directed by these two groups which embody the will and the quality of the will of Deity, called by us the Will-to-Good. They are the directing Agents and are a correspondence to the ajna center of mankind, only here it is the ajna center of the planetary Logos, in the same sense as Shamballa is His head center, the Hierarchy His heart center and Humanity His creative throat center. Motion, planned activity and the seven great creative ray energies are directed into action by Them under the influence of the seven Ray Lords; the Ray Lords are embodied livingness qualified by the seven aspects of Love, but Who are Themselves of so high an order that They cannot function as directing creative Agents but work through Their trained and developed Representatives.

Just as there is a group of Contemplative Initiates, called in the Eastern phraseology “Nirmanakayas,” Who function in deep meditation at a point midway between the Hierarchy and Shamballa, so this much higher group of Ray Lords function in the deepest cosmic meditation between our planet, the Earth, and our sister planet, Venus. You would find it useful to read with care The Secret Doctrine and A Treatise on Cosmic Fire and refresh your minds as to this relationship. A lower correspondence to these two important groups has been forming midway between the Hierarchy and Humanity, and to it we give the name of the New Group of World Servers. All these three groups are fundamentally “transmitters of energy”; the two highest are exceedingly susceptible to cosmic impression and to the vibratory quality of the extra-planetary body of Avatars Who hold Themselves in readiness to function as destroying or building Energies in any part of our solar system and are under the direction of the Solar Logos.

The Avatar of Synthesis, Who is working in cooperation with the Christ, is one of Them. Bear in mind that these extra-planetary Avatars have not arrived at Their high state of spiritual unfoldment on our planet or even in our solar system. Their origin, source and spiritual relationships are a great mystery even to the planetary Logoi – to Whose help They go when the invocative appeal of any planet is adequate. Think not that They come to put wrong right or to arrest evil. A few, a very few, may do so, but They work along the line of the seven ray energies in the solar system and produce certain energy effects desired at any particular time; the constructive work of the Avatar of Synthesis will be apparent to you in the name He is known by; He is coming to the Earth in order to further the manifestation of unity, of oneness and of interrelation, and He comes, therefore, to wield and apply first ray energy. He will charge or galvanize the three groups – the directing Agents in Shamballa, the Nirmanakayas and the New Group of World Servers – with dynamic energy and, in a mysterious way, relate them to each other so that a new synthesis and alignment will be present upon the Earth. All these Avatars embody energy to the extent that any particular planet is capable of receiving it.

These are interesting items of information but are only of value in so far as they convey to you a sense of planetary integrity and of solar synthesis, and present to you a closer spiritual interrelation in which you, as individuals, can share if you are linking your fate and service to that of the New Group of World Servers. Then you will be in the direct line of spiritual descent, of divine energy; in this thought you have the clue to the doctrine (so travestied and misused) of the Apostolic Succession. The details, the personnel and the techniques of the two higher groups lie beyond your ken; They work in cooperation with the planetary Logos Himself, and Those Who compose these groups are all initiates of degrees higher than the fifth. Most of the Nirmanakayas have taken the sixth and the seventh initiations, whilst the group which functions midway between the Earth and Venus have all taken the eighth and ninth initiations. Some of Them, as I mentioned earlier, aid the initiate of the seventh degree; a still larger group of them participate in the activities of the two final initiations.

This seventh initiation gives the initiate the right to “come and go in the courts of Shamballa” as Their work may dictate and Their service may require. It is there also that he goes for the needed periodic or cyclic rechargings which enable him to work.

There is one aspect of initiation which is apt to be overlooked. Every initiation is a process of energy transmission from a higher center of energy to a lower; every initiation charges the initiate with electrical force, and this charging and recharging is related to what H.P.B. calls “the mystery of electricity.” These transmissions of energy enhance the magnetic-attractive force of the initiate, and at the same time are eliminative in their effects. In this fact lies a great planetary truth and the key to the science of planetary redemption. When the spiritual and the electrical charging of the three major centers on the planet – Shamballa, the Hierarchy and Humanity – has reached a high stage of receptive efficiency, a certain cosmic Avatar will “become conscious of the vibratory quality of the little point of light within the solar sphere” and will then “turn His gaze and send His force unto that point of light, and cosmic evil will be driven out and find no more a place on Earth.”

Two more initiations remain to be considered, but so high is their potency and so mysterious their working that I find myself unable to deal with them in any way.

Dreams

Battenburg – Synthesis – Configuration Dream 13-11-2011

Here is as excerpt from a much longer dream a so-called four pager.

There is a steep incline / cliff. I climb over the fence with my laptop and start to descend the cliff. The cliff starts to give way and I surf with it to the bottom. I am now in a dry riverbed. There is only a small amount of water. I follow the river under the motorway to a place where two rivers join. The is a black forest style house there. I go into the house. There is a fire burning on the hearth.

There is a small wooden chair. It has a solid back with two cut out shapes. I sit on the chair. It is someone else’s chair. I get up and sit on another chair. I put the other person’s chair up on a bed so that I can get a better look at it. As I do so I bang heads with whoever is on the chair. Slowly a cat materializes on the chair, and we start to have a conversation. There are a series of puzzles for me to solve in the house.

Out of the ceiling a construction comprising wooden squares suspended by string materializes forming a tunnel. I am to go up this tunnel. I start but because of the breadth of my shoulders I get temporarily stuck. At this point I can see a seminar where people are looking at a screen and there is an overhead projector projecting transparencies on the wall. People are sat around the table trying to understand the codes in the transparencies. I make my way to the back of the room and ask if the projector is in focus. The guy projecting adjusts the focus in and out. Those watching can’t solve the first riddle. I note that the first clue suddenly resolves into:

” SYNTHESIS”

We move on and a piece of Battenburg cake comprising four squares of yellow and pink appears.

It cuts itself into three equal sections roughly centred at the middle. I know that I am like the cake cut into three equal sections. This is my configuration.

I continue on, cognizant of the theme “needing to solve puzzles.

Dream ends.

Decision Making, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Quotations, Rāja yoga

The Sixth Initiation of Decision.

I would like to enlarge somewhat upon an earlier remark. I stated that the “seven Ashrams are ‘proving grounds’ for all the Masters confronted with the sixth Initiation of Decision.”

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This constitutes part of the problem facing the Masters Who are thus to move forward; it is particularly crucial for Those Who have chosen the first Path, the Path of Earth Service, and for all in preparation for the sixth initiation. This process of changing for a final, conditioning decision – in line, consciously realized, with divine Purpose and entailing responsiveness to Shamballa – is a major undertaking; it is related to the development of understanding the Will, and concerns the spirit or life aspect; it involves an increasing revelation of the purpose and the “fixed intention” of the planetary Logos but (even more than that) it has relation to extra-planetary sources and energies and to those cosmic conditions which are responsible for the Presence of Sanat Kumara upon the Earth. It is will which has brought Him here, and the unfoldment of the will nature of the Masters and still higher Initiates admits Them into His inner deliberations by means of the highest form of telepathic rapport or impression to be found upon our planet. This impression is, however, made possible by the development of the intuition, and has no relation to the mind nature.

This training in decision is given by forcing the Master to make basic decisions within His Ashram affecting world work and involving all within the Ashram. It is given by His admission to the conclave of the Masters, meeting every seven years. At that conclave They make decisions which concern all forms of life in all the kingdoms in the three worlds and their evolutionary progress; it is put to the test in group form when the entire Hierarchy meets at Its centennial conference and – at that time – decides what form of crisis, on what level of consciousness, and involving what group of lives, must be implemented and presented to humanity, though the other kingdoms of nature will be necessarily implicated. The reason for this is that the meeting of such a planned crisis will hasten certain realizations. Forget not that humanity grows through the presentation of moments of crisis. These moments of crisis, based on past karma, conditioned by the point in evolution already achieved, and on the presence in the three worlds of certain appropriate ray forces, are brought to the point of precipitation by united decision in the conclave of the Masters.

These decisions do not affect man’s free will, for the Hierarchy does nothing to condition man’s approach to the crisis and, occultly speaking, Their “attitude is deliberately turned to other things” during the period of man’s decision; thus the potency of Their thinking does not affect the human mind. Once the precipitation of the crisis is complete, and humanity has begun to take action of some kind, then the full attention of the Masters, working through Their Ashrams, is committed to the giving of full assistance to all those who are seeking to guide humanity along correct lines – a relative few among the countless millions of the ignorant.

While these centennial conclaves are being held at the close of the first twenty-five years of every century, the Lord of the World with the Members of His Council watch the process of decision in order to see how far the will of the Hierarchy conforms to that aspect of the divine will which should be expressed in the three worlds as the result of Their decision. They watch also Those particular Masters Who should in a short time be ready for the sixth initiation, in order to see how much of that divine will They register and what is the nature and quality of Their use of it. By recording that quality, the Council at Shamballa is able to determine with great accuracy which of the seven Paths a certain Initiate will choose. In this manner They become aware of how many senior disciples will be needed to take over the headship of an Ashram, with a consequent admittance of many disciples to the initiation next in order for them. At the same time, aspirants on the periphery of an Ashram are enabled to move forward into full ashramic participation.

All this should give you some idea of the synthesis which expresses itself through the three planetary centers: Shamballa, the Hierarchy and Humanity. These are responsible for the conditioning of the other planetary centers and the consequent demonstration of divine intention. The basic purpose of Sanat Kumara is to bring about right relations in every field of His manifested life. {our world, our planet} The encouraging factor is today that the activity of humanity itself is, for the first time, concerned with the entire subject of right human relations and how to bring it about. I would have you reflect on this, for it means that, again for the first time, humanity is consciously responding to the will and intention of Shamballa, even though without realizing the esoteric implications. This is of far greater importance than you can imagine, for it signifies a new relationship of a spiritual nature and deeply spiritual results.

The preparation of the Masters for this sixth initiation is exceedingly strenuous. They find it as difficult to achieve Their goal as does the average disciple as he looks ahead at the initiation which immediately confronts him. They have to master the technique of handling the most potent energy and influence in the world, that of the intelligence. They have to penetrate into the mystery of electricity and implement its expression in the creative process under the directive of Shamballa; They have to learn to work with electric fire in the same way as – much earlier – They worked with fire by friction as personalities, and with solar fire as disciples and lesser initiates. In this way, They become familiarized with what is meant by the words the “Central Spiritual Sun,” just as They were familiar with the appearance of the physical Sun when members of the human family, and with the “Heart of the Sun” as Members of the Hierarchy. Again you can see the same unfolding synthesis – a synthesis which originates in that focal point of attractive dynamic energy, known to us as the Sun and its planets.

Thus within His Ashram the Master learns “occultly to decide” and to condition the creative center for which He is responsible. He has to do this with the Ashram, surrounded by all those who are in training and who are the agents of His will. Through them He must act, and they thereby limit necessarily the vision to which He reacts, and step down the rate and quality of the energy of which He is the focal point. This energy constitutes the animating life of the Ashram as well as the force which the disciples and initiates must use in their work in the world, this of course in cooperation with the energy which each disciple within himself “occultly generates” and for which he – in his lesser degree – is responsible.

More anent this subject will be given when we study specifically the nine initiations wherein another synthesis, interlocking with the synthesis of the Will, will appear.

The Seven Paths confronting the Master

It will be apparent to you now that the Master confronts two crises:

  • The crisis of the will, as it demonstrates in unalterable decision.
  • The crisis of the new step which will probably “cast Him adrift upon the shore of some distant sphere wherein His will must be expressed in love.” These ambiguous words of the Old Commentary mean that His decision will (with one exception) take Him away from all that He has hitherto known.

The majority of the Masters then enter into realms wherein They are needed “to impart, strengthen and enlighten that which is already fused, already strong and already full of light, but which needs that which He brings in order to express the all-encompassing whole.”

I have to leave you with these words as food for reflection as there is little further that I may say upon this point. In any case and for all deciding groups of Masters, the work with the Hierarchy is over, except for the few Who choose Path I. Part of the mistake which the Buddha made was connected with this subject of decision. He loved humanity so much that He felt He could not and did not choose the Path which He was in reality ordained to follow; He chose instead the Path of Earth Service – which was not His Path at all. This He knows and will in due time pass on to His rightful Path. This little incident will demonstrate the complete freedom of choice which distinguishes the sixth initiation.

The seven Paths are, as you know from your study of Initiation, Human and Solar the following:

  1. The Path of Earth Service.
  2. The Path of Magnetic Work.
  3. The Path of Training for Planetary Logoi.
  4. The Path to Sirius.
  5. The Ray Path.
  6. The Path on which our Logos is found.
  7. The Path of Absolute Sonship.

In that first book which I wrote for the world, I gave a simple definition of the exoteric significance of these Paths – so simple as to convey but little. I wrote then for the general public. I will now endeavor to convey some of the deeper meanings, writing as I do for advanced disciples and for initiates who – reading between the lines and understanding the symbolism involved – will comprehend according to their point in evolution.

As we approach the subject of the seven Paths, I would point out that the only basic point which can be presented to you is that of relationship. All these seven Paths lead to some objective which is thereby put in touch with our planetary life; these objectives – with the life and conditions they represent – present to the Master a vision of possibility. This vision is adequate to the task of drawing Him forth from the hierarchical Ashram, except in one case where vacancies in Shamballa need to be filled. The progressive experience of the greater Lives Who work in the Council Chamber of Sanat Kumara form no part of our studies. Many of these supreme Workers, as you have read in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, found Their way to our planet from our sister planet, Venus, thereby in Their turn establishing relationship. Remember also that all the seven rays are the subrays of the great cosmic Ray of Love-Wisdom, which is ever expressive of relationship, implemented under the Law of Attraction; it is this form of esoteric attraction which draws the Master forth from His Ashram, conditions His decision and eventually leads to His passing through the door which opens on to other spheres and planes of activity.

Let us now consider – very briefly and necessarily inadequately – these seven Paths, taking them one by one:

1. The Path of Earth Service

This is the only Path which the Lord of the World regards as within the field of His spiritual interference. He reserves the right to retain in the service of the Hierarchy, and consequently of Humanity and the subsidiary evolutions, Those Masters Whom He regards at any one time as essential to the work to be done. This He does by asking Them to record Their decision when taking the sixth initiation, but to postpone moving on to one or other of the Paths until He gives the word. This word He has lately given in the case of the Buddha, Who has expiated His most understandable mistake and will now move forward – in His own good time – on to the Path which will lead Him to His rightful field of expression. In due time also, though not for some time, the Christ will move forward “to the place which calls Him,” and the Master K.H. will assume the role of World Teacher. All these moves present their unique problems; they produce vacancies in the ranks of the Hierarchy which must be filled; they lead constantly to the inflow of new and powerful energies, for it must be recognized that these energies reach us along Paths leading to our planet as well as away from it. The invocative note of our united evolution at stated times and cycles sounds out and reaches Those Who are waiting for spiritual opportunity and service. They then follow the Path to our planet. From other spheres and planes They emerge along the lines of Their destiny and intention; we then call Them Avatars or Great Enlighteners or Planetary Saviors or Spiritual Regents; They act at the request of Sanat Kumara, given on higher cosmic levels.

It is nevertheless a statement of fact that in due time even Those Who choose the Path of Earth Service and remain in hierarchical work are eventually given the right to follow Their decision and pass to extra-planetary service. The Hierarchy, as we have seen, gives the needed training for that wider service, and the theme of what I might call the educational process to which the Masters submit is the unfoldment of the consciousness of the relationships which lie beyond the aura of our planet; this is, in reality, a higher and most abstruse branch of the Science of Impression, which disciples upon their lower level have to master. This aspect of impression is, however, concerned with the formless worlds, whereas all the impressions to which the disciple has to learn to react emanate from and within the cosmic physical plane, of which all our seven planes are an integral part; our highest spiritual world is a part of the substantial world. The Masters, therefore, are working at a conscious receptivity or sensitivity to the cosmic astral plane, the source of the spirit or energy of love. There is a fundamental connection between the Hierarchy (the source of expression of love on Earth) and the cosmic astral plane, and it is towards this objective that the Masters work Who choose the Path of Earth Service. The major ray of our solar system is that of love-wisdom, and there is no better field on which to master the preliminary stages of that divine unfoldment and receive the needed development and education than on the Earth.

On the Earth, the Masters have overcome glamor and illusion, and for Them no astral plane exists. Now ahead of Them, and owing to Their freedom from these “bewilderments,” will come the opportunity to enter into the Heart of God, the center of pure love, and from that center to tread the way of love. All these seven Paths lead either to the cosmic astral plane or to the cosmic mental plane, according to the decision made at the sixth initiation. Upon the cosmic astral plane there is no glamor, but instead a great vortex of energy – the energy of pure love – under the domination of the Law of Attraction. It might be stated that:

  • Path 1. The Path of Earth Service leads to the cosmic astral plane.
  • Path 2. The Path of Magnetic Work leads to the cosmic astral plane.
  • Path 3. The Path for Training for Planetary Logoi leads to the higher levels of the cosmic mental plane.
  • Path 4. The Path to Sirius leads to the cosmic astral plane.
  • Path 5. The Ray Path leads to the cosmic mental plane.
  • Path 6. The Path the Logos Himself is on leads to the cosmic buddhic plane.
  • Path 7. The Path of Absolute Sonship leads to the cosmic mental plane.

Three Paths, therefore, lead to the realm of loving attractive energy; one Path leads to its higher correspondence, the cosmic level of pure reason; three lead to the realm of divine Mind. Four of the Paths relate the advancing Master to the Heart of the Great Life Who functions through this solar system, and three to His Mind nature. All of them lead the initiate eventually to the Central Spiritual Sun. All Who work in Shamballa find Their way to this supreme center by the three most arduous ways, whilst the remainder reach the same goal via the way of love.

The unfoldment of the will has much to do with Their decision. It must not be thought that Those Masters Who are on the first, third and fifth rays, for instance, follow the Path numerically the same; such is not the case; nor that Those Who are predominantly on the second line of energy find the cosmic astral plane Their goal. Such again is not the case. Their response and decision is based on a realization of cosmic need – a need of which you can know nothing, any more than it is possible for you to comprehend the nature of cosmic evil.

As to the detail of the work of Those Who choose – until released – to stay on Earth and work in or with the Hierarchy, is there more that I can tell you? You know much anent this subject for I have given much – far more than has ever been given before. I have not dealt with the work of the Hierarchy in relation to evolutions other than the human, for two reasons:

  • Your unfoldment is still such that you do not and cannot yet include or register the consciousness or nature of the subhuman kingdoms.
  • The work done by the Hierarchy in those kingdoms is largely carried forward via humanity and modern scientific development.

There are many Masters Who do not work with the human kingdom at all, but are fully occupied with carrying out the divine Will in other kingdoms. With this work we have, at present, no concern. When any one takes the sixth initiation and makes his decision to follow the Path of Earth Service (either temporarily at the request of Sanat Kumara, or until the end – of the world cycle), he will find himself faced with a secondary decision as to which of the four kingdoms will profitably provide the field of his sacrifice and service. We will now consider:

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Excerpted from

The Rays and the Initiations – Part Two – Section One – The Aspirant and the Mysteries of Initiation

By Alice Bailey and Djwhal Kuhl

ॐ, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Quotations, Rāja yoga, Yoga

Initiation III – The Transfiguration and the Fifth Ray

There is no need for me to enter into the symbolic details anent this initiation. The whole theme is adequately dealt with in a book written by A.A.B. entitled From Bethlehem to Calvary – a book to which I gave my approval and endorsement as presenting the subject of the five initiations in a form suitable for the Christian West. I would like to recall to you the fact that this third initiation is in reality the first of the major initiations and is so regarded by the emanating Source of our planetary Logos, Sanat Kumara, and in the two great planetary centers, Shamballa and the Hierarchy. I refer to that stupendous Source of our entire planetary life, the sun Sirius, and to the Lodge of Divine Beings Who work from this heavenly Center.

The first two initiations – regarded simply as initiations of the threshold – are experiences which have prepared the body of the initiate for the reception of the terrific voltage of this third initiation. This voltage is passed through the body of the initiate under the direction of the planetary Logos, before Whom the initiate stands for the first time. The Rod of Initiation is used as the transferring agent. The second initiation freed the initiate from the astral level of consciousness, the astral plane – the plane of glamor, of illusion and of distortion. This was an essential experience because the initiate (standing before the One Initiator for the first time at the third initiation) must be freed from any magnetic or attractive “pull” emanating from the personality.

The mechanism of the personality must be so purified and so insensitive to the material attractions of the three worlds that there is henceforth nothing in the initiate which could offset the divine initiatory activity. The physical appetites are subdued and relegated to their rightful place; the desire nature is controlled and purified; the mind is responsive primarily to ideas, intuitions and impulses coming from the soul, and begins its true task as an interpreter of divine truth and a transmitter of ashramic intention.

You will note, therefore, how this third initiation is a climaxing point and also inaugurates a new cycle of activity leading to the seventh Initiation of Resurrection. I would call your attention to the fact that the third, fifth and seventh initiations are under the control of the fifth, first and second rays. These, as you might expect, will constitute the emanating energies transmitted through the application of the Rod of Initiation.

  1. Initiation III. The fifth Ray of Science. This inflowing energy produces its major effects upon the mind, or upon manas, the fifth principle; it enables the initiate to use the mind as its major instrument in the work to be done, prior to passing through the fourth and fifth initiations.
  2. Initiation V. The first Ray of Will or Power. At this initiation the disciple appreciates for the first time the significance of the will and uses it to relate the head center and the center at the base of the spine, thus completing the integration started at the third initiation.
  3. Initiation VII. The second Ray of Love-Wisdom is here active, as the major planetary ray. The application of the Rod of Initiation by the Initiator (working this time from the highest plane, the logoic plane) produces in a mysterious way an effect on the totality of humanity and – to a lesser extent – upon the allied kingdoms. The effect is similar to that produced in the individual at the fifth initiation, wherein the head center and the center at the base of the spine became closely en rapport – through the use of the will.

Aspirants and disciples should remember that after the third initiation, the effects of the initiation which they may be undergoing are not confined simply to the individual initiate, but that henceforth at all the later initiations he becomes the transmitter of the energy which will pour through him with increasing potency at each application of the Rod. He acts primarily as an agent for the transmission, for the stepping down and for the consequent safe distribution of energy to the masses. Each time a disciple achieves an initiation and stands before the Initiator, he becomes simply an instrument whereby the planetary Logos can reach humanity and bring to men fresh life and energy. The work done prior to and at the third initiation is purely preparatory to this type of service required from an “energy transmitter.” That is why, at the seventh initiation, the dominating ray of our planet – the second Ray of Love-Wisdom – is employed. There is no energy upon our planet of equal potency, and no expression of it has so pure and constructive a quality as that to which the initiate is subjected at the seventh initiation. This seventh initiatory climax marks another culminating point in the career of the initiate, and indicates his entrance into an entirely different cycle of experience.

You will have noted, if you are comparing these instructions with the outline given by me on page 340, that in this third initiation it is the ajna center (the center between the eyebrows) which is stimulated. This is a fact of great interest, because it is at this initiation that the disciple begins consciously and creatively to direct the energies being made available to him, doing so via the ajna center and directed towards humanity as a whole. These energies are:

  1. The energy of his own soul. This has a purely group effect and though working through his personality, is consciously directed outward into the world – after the transforming process brought about as the energy received permeates his threefold mechanism.
  2. The energy of the Ashram to which he belongs. Both this energy and the one above mentioned are necessarily the energy of his soul ray and of the Ashram which is representative of that ray. The effect produced – according to his capacity of absorption and direction – will further the working out of the divine Plan.
  3. The energy of the Hierarchy Itself. The Hierarchy is primarily controlled by the energy of the second Ray of Love-Wisdom, though this dominant ray is modified and enriched through blending with the other six rays. His use of this energy will at first be largely an unconscious use and he will register at this point no definite intention. This is due to the magnitude of the great reservoir of energies; he is a recipient of the incoming energy largely because he is an initiated member of the Hierarchy and is also a pure channel for transmission.
  4. The peculiar energy which is transmitted to him by Sanat Kumara at the time of his initiation. This is a totally different energy to that transmitted to him at the earlier initiations. It comes from Shamballa and is uniquely (in a sense undefinable and hence incomprehensible to you) the energy of the planetary Logos Himself. He directs extra-planetary energy (in the initiations which follow the third initiation) from the ajna center of which He is possessed, to the head center of the initiate and from thence immediately to the ajna center of the initiate. Then this energy is directed outward into its destined field of service. This energy is of so high a quality that there is nothing of a registering mechanism in the initiate’s equipment capable of registering its admission and circulation through his three head centers. Nevertheless, this energy does pour through him and out into the world, in spite of the fact that he remains unconscious of its presence.

The ajna center is the “center of direction”; it is placed symbolically between the two eyes, signifying the twofold direction of the life energy of the initiate – outward into the world of men and upward towards the divine Life and Source of all Being. Where the direction of the energy is consciously undertaken (and there are certain energies of which the initiate is constantly aware), the ajna center is controlled and dominated by the indwelling spirit of man; this spiritual man bases all action in relation to these entering energies on the ancient premise that “energy follows thought.” His thought life becomes, therefore, the field of his major effort, for he knows that the mind is the agent of direction; he endeavors to concentrate within himself so that eventually he may consciously control and direct all the incoming divine energies. This is, in reality, the major hierarchical endeavor and the work to which the Masters are pledged and for which They are in constant training. As the evolutionary process proceeds, new and higher energies become available. This is particularly the case now, as They prepare for the reappearance of the Christ.

There are three words which are directive words for the disciple as he handles his life, his environment and his circumstances. They are: Integration, Direction, Science. His task – as he faces it after the third initiation – is to produce a greater personal integration so that he becomes increasingly a soul-infused personality, and also to integrate himself with his environment for service purposes. To this must be added the subtler task of integrating himself into the Ashram so that he becomes an integral part of the Master’s band of workers.

As the work of integration proceeds, he is striving all the time to learn the uses of the ajna center and consciously and with right understanding to work with, absorb, transmute and distribute energy as his major ashramic service. His keynote is right direction as the result of right reaction to hierarchical intention and the injunctions of his own soul. Both integration and direction, he discovers, require understanding of occult, scientific knowledge. He works then as a scientist, and for this reason all the three keynotes of his life as an initiate – before and immediately after the third initiation – are conditioned by and directed by the mind; the mental plane becomes the field of his major endeavor as a server.

Again you see that I am presenting you with no glamorous picture of the initiatory process but only one of hard work, constant effort and strenuous mental and spiritual living. There is much here for you to consider, and what I have here given warrants sound reflection and much thought. It is my earnest hope and wish that you may realize that the teaching here given can be appropriated by you and that the initiatory process is one that eventually you will understand and in which you will participate.

Ray Five

It posits an ability to function with clarity upon the mental plane, to collate information, rightly to interpret and relate that information, and to create the needed thought-forms or concepts for those interpretations.

These thought-forms fall into three major fields of thought or thought-form areas of consciousness:

  • Science. Under this word I include all that which the educational processes cover or are supposed to cover, and such a useful science as medicine.
  • Philosophy, with its presentation of great conditioning ideas.
  • Psychology, with its effort to account for humanity and to discover what man is essentially and how he functions.

You will note that I have not included religion in this analysis. The reason for this is that If the world religions were really controlled by concrete knowledge or science, they would not be the vague, speculative, mystical and glamor-controlled systems which they are at present. Some day the minds of men – illumined by the light of the soul – will formulate the one universal religion, recognizable by all. Then the Kingdom of God will be known for what it is, another kingdom in nature. Speculation, wishful thinking and hopeful aspiration will disappear. The science of occultism is the first step upon the way of true religion, and the scientific investigation of human psychology will greatly help toward this end.

Today we find this ray energy expressing itself mainly through science – a science sadly debased and corrupted by materialism and human greed, but a science which (when animated entirely by goodwill) will lift humanity on to higher levels of consciousness, thus laying the foundation for that time when humanity on a large scale can pass through the Transfiguration Initiation. Steps in this direction are already being laid and the existence of the press, the radio and the rapid means of transportation have done much to further the revelation of that unity and that Oneness which is the major characteristic of the Universal Mind.

These developments can be regarded as the initial steps of the initiatory process for the third initiation – far ahead as that initiation may lie for the mass of men. It is unification and a growing sense of oneness which is required in order to take this initiation, and it is the integrated personality which takes it. The major sin of Russia, and that which has prostituted and warped the initial divine impulse underlying the ideology of that country, is the determination she demonstrates at this time to be separate and to shut the Russian people away from world contact, using the implements of deception and the withholding of information. It is not the totalitarian nature of the Russian government which is the prime disaster; it is the refusal to develop the universal consciousness. Many governments today are totalitarian in nature, either openly or subtly, but – at the same time – their peoples have free access to press and radio and are not kept in ignorance of world events. Russia is drifting into a pronounced expression of the great heresy of separateness. There lies her problem – a problem which is refused recognition by her rulers.

The existence of a closed mind on a national scale is dangerous in the extreme, just as the individual is in a dangerous “state of mind” when he closes it to world contact, world news and world understanding, and when he refuses to admit new ideas and new modes of behavior. Fortunately, the influence of this fifth ray energy – which is always present, whether the ray is in incarnation or not – is steadily leading humanity towards illumination.

This ray energy operates always in connection with the Law of Cleavages. Today, tremendous cleavages between the past and the present are in order. The importance of this statement is to be found in the fact that – for the first time in human history – humanity is aware of cleavage at the time it is being brought about. Hitherto cleavages have been noted during an historical retrospect. Today, all men everywhere are conscious of the fact that the old order, the old cultures and civilizations are rapidly passing away, and they are universally clamoring for the new. Everywhere men are laying the foundation for the new order, the coming of which is threatened only by one country, Russia, owing to its separativeness (and not because of its ideology), and by one world group in every country, those guilty of financial greed and consequent aggressiveness.

Before humanity can pass through the Transfiguration Initiation the new world order must be functioning and the coming civilization must be at its height. It is useless for me to consider with you this third initiation in connection with humanity as a whole, or its preparatory or subsequent initiatory process. All this lies too far ahead for even advanced humanity to consider; there are, however, senior disciples who are preparing for this initiation, just as there are a few who are passing through the initiatory process, prior to taking the fourth initiation.

The outstanding expression of this fifth ray energy can be seen in the rapid formulating of the many ideologies which have taken place since the year 1900. Such words as Fascism, Communism, National Socialism, Socialism as the British accept it, and the names of many schools of psychology and philosophy, were unknown one hundred years ago; today they are the common talk and phrases of the man in the street. The inflow of this mental energy into the world of men, the attainment in consciousness of mental ability by many thousands, and the achievement of mental polarization by aspirants all the world over, are all due to the activity of this fifth ray energy; this may be regarded as preparatory work for the first and the second initiations. Some of this success is due also to a little-realized function of this fifth ray energy – that of telepathic interplay. Few people realize in the slightest degree how naturally telepathic every human being is or how impressionable are their minds; this again is an effect of fifth ray influence.

The creation (and, I should add, the over-creation) of the millions of material things which men everywhere regard as essential to their well-being is also the result of the creative activity of the fifth ray consciousness. This is, of course, as it demonstrates upon the physical plane. When it demonstrates upon the mental plane, we then talk of ideas, concepts, philosophies and ideologies. When it demonstrates upon the astral plane, we are aware of the religious impulse, of mysticism and of the emotional and conditioning desires. All these aspects are present in the consciousness of men everywhere today. Everything is crystallizing in human consciousness, and this takes place in order to make man aware of where he stands upon the ladder of evolution, and of what is wrong and what is right. All this again is due to the influence of fifth ray energy. This will begin to transform human living and human desires and also human affairs and attitudes, and will lead eventually (in the middle of the sixth root race) to the great Transfiguration Initiation in which the reality that lies behind all human phenomena will stand revealed.

Let us now consider the effect of this ray energy upon the life of the individual, as he faces the third initiation. This third initiation is, as earlier said, the first initiation, from the angle of the Hierarchy; it is the one in which the spiritual man demonstrates his complete control of the personality. The physical body has been controlled through the medium of the physical disciplines; the emotional nature has been reorganized and made receptive to spiritual impression coming from the plane of pure reason (the buddhic plane) through the transforming processes of the mind or the fifth principle. In this connection, the mind has acted as an organizer of astral reaction and as a dispeller of glamor. The disciple is now focused in his everyday consciousness upon the mental plane, and the triangular relation of the three aspects of the mind upon this plane is now dominant. In the next initiation, the Renunciation, this relationship becomes a dual one instead of a triangular one, through the destruction of the soul vehicle which is no longer needed. Soul fusion with the personality is now completed.

During the initiatory process preceding the third initiation, the mind works in a new manner. Its transmuting work with the physical body has been accomplished; its transforming work with the emotional nature has been successful, and now its transfiguring work with the personality as a whole is carried forward, making the initiation of the Transfiguration possible. It is of value to the student to consider these three activities of the mind. The transmuting agent in the first case is the lower or concrete mind; the transforming agent is the soul, whilst the transfiguring agent is the Spiritual Triad, working through the higher or abstract mind. You will here note the wonderful synthesis of the spiritual work. When this work is concluded, you have the initiation of the third degree made possible. This produces impelling and new contacts. It should here be remembered that when I use the word “new” I mean that which is new in consciousness, for the basic synthesis and fundamental relationship always exists in factual recognition, but is only progressively realized by the evolving spiritual man.

It is well nigh impossible to differentiate the results of fifth ray energy in the various aspects of the personality, for the reason that the initiate is now functioning as a soul-infused personality, and therefore the three aspects of that personality are nothing more or less than agents of the soul, and thus are progressively responsive to the inflow of triadal energy. It might therefore be said that, as a result of the Transfiguration Initiation – the culminating point of strictly human unfoldment – the three types of energy which are expressed through the Spiritual Triad can begin – only begin – to flow through the reflection of itself in the three worlds. Let me state this as follows:

  • The directing energy of the higher mind is – as a result of the Transfiguration Initiation and via the antahkarana – thrown into the brain; therefore the man upon the physical plane is guided, directed and controlled by group purpose and by the hierarchical plan.
  • The illuminating energy of pure reason, emanating from the buddhic plane, pours down into the clarified and organized body of sensitive response which is all that remains of what has been called the astral body. This produces complete freedom from glamor and the creation of “a limpid pool of such reasonable response to the love of divine relationship” that the initiate becomes a sensitive revealer of that love.
  • The dynamic energy from the atmic plane (the highest aspect of the Spiritual Triad) pours into the mind and begins slowly to reveal the will-to-good, which is essentially the will of God.

Behind these three differentiations which are all of them expressions or aspects of the divine or the universal mind, the initiate dimly senses or becomes consciously aware of what has been called the Monad or Spirit or Life. This is subtly revealed in the Transfiguration Initiation of the Master Jesus Who re-enacted all the five human initiations for the benefit of humanity. In this dramatic picturing of the third initiation, the three disciples (or the three vehicles of the personality) prostrate themselves upon the ground and the Master Himself (the glorified personality) is transfigured before them. At this climaxing point they hear that which is called “the voice of the Father” speaking to the transfigured Jesus.

The personality is now possessed of knowledge, for fifth ray energy has done its needed work; the disciple is also aware that he is in possession of the wisdom which enables him to use knowledge in the furtherance of the Plan, and therefore to work as an illuminating factor in the world of men. He knows clearly what has been accomplished and senses something of what lies ahead. The great principle of cleavage (which the fifth ray governs) is the dominating factor in his time sense; he now differentiates sharply between past and present and that which has to be ascertained in the future. Cleavage, in the sense of separateness, is finished for him and he now feels and knows something of the essential unity of all manifested life; therefore, from the angle of space, he has dominated and overcome cleavage and division; in the sense of time he has not. The great heresy of separateness no longer exists in his consciousness; the consciousness of the initiatory process is not yet over, however for that involves the recognition of time.

During the initiatory process between the second and the third initiations, the initiate has to battle with illusion in exactly the same sense as he earlier had to battle with glamor. Illusion is, in the last analysis, the control of the mental processes by great and massive thought-forms; this conflict persists from the moment that the disciple has achieved mental polarization (at a midway point between the second and the third initiations) until he stands before the Initiator at the sixth Initiation of Decision, when the last illusion disappears. You will feel and comment that the Masters are therefore subject to illusion. This They definitely are, and there are great and basic illusions governing life within the Hierarchy. Nevertheless, they are illusions of such a high order that – for advanced humanity – they would signify achievement. I may not give you more than one instance of such illusion, but that should prove clear and sufficient. It is not until the sixth Initiation of Decision that the illusion of the planetary ring-pass-not finally disappears. The Master then knows that such a limitation is non-existent. For Him, the choice between the seven Paths becomes possible. This basic illusion constitutes for mankind a great hierarchical mystery and is based upon the Principle of Privation, by means of which the planetary Logos chooses to circumscribe His freedom and to limit His activities.

This curious freedom from successive limitations is experienced at the third, the sixth and the ninth initiations; these are, all three of them, related in a mysterious manner to each other. Transfiguration leads eventually to Decision, which culminates in due time with a final refusal to accept any planetary limitations whatsoever.

It will be obvious to you that the higher the initiation, the less will any involved energy have a personality control or connection. Progressive and recognized fusions have taken place as one initiation after another is undergone; the effect of the energy involved will be noted in relation to humanity as a whole, to the work of the Ashram within the Hierarchy and to the planetary life. This must ever be borne in mind and must necessarily limit the scope of the teaching which I am able to give you.

———————-

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, Musings, Questions

The Vast Scale of Change

In the previous two posts, my second ray brother the Tibetan, outlines the truly vast scale of the planned and now in motion externalisation. He hints that the planet through huge seismic activity is going to change beyond recognition, before the sixth root race is consummated. No doubt there is some knowledge of this externalisation process in the “intelligence” community. Someone somewhere will be monitoring it; they may even try to hinder it because it is not good for a ticket to the annual kudos gig in Davos.

—

It is possible that I myself am being monitored. There is a karmic question here.

If, let’s say for example, I have more than the third degree and you are monitoring me and generally being a bit of a Gareth towards me, is that karmically wise? What will be the effects of your cause?

—

It is likely that the bulk of UK academia would find the notion of an externalising hierarchy a little fanciful, given as there is no measurable data. They may get up on their soapbox to poppycock the idea. But some of them may wake up one day and find out that they are indeed disciples or early grade initiates. That won’t help them with their research excellence metrics!! Quelle dommage!

I was amongst the first to do a big spin-out, I championed team and personal development and brought the transferrable skills courses into the graduate school of engineering and physical sciences. I have often been something of a forerunner. I did team development for doctoral training centres. I innovated the courses. I overhauled a tutorial system. I did a science and art synthesis course

But now here I am slightly distant from humanity in the wilds of rural Brittany and not at an august central London establishment of higher education. One could argue that the experiment which is me has had only partial success but it has provided observational data to my colleagues.

Or alternatively I am just a burned out disgruntled old alky…

Take your pick as to which truth you may care to assimilate…

Anyway, the pond is now finished and we have Jalfrezi for tea…

ॐ, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Quotations, Rāja yoga

Initial Stages of the Organization of the Hierarchy on Earth

I have earlier told you that the five Masters concerned with the initial stages of the organization of the Hierarchy on earth are the Master K.H., the Master Morya, the Master R., the Master Who started the labor movement in the modern world, and myself, the so-called Master D.K.

—

The division of labor is here of great interest. In my June message for 1948, I referred to the five specialized energies which were at that time released to carry forward their impersonal task. Each of these energies is concerned with the desired organization, for it must ever be remembered that though the organization which we are considering is concerned with the interior or subjective work of the Hierarchy, the repercussions and the resultant effects will take place on earth, with physical plane effects, because the old occult truism “as above, so below” will be rapidly and objectively demonstrated. This result and the effects produced will constitute one of the modes whereby the Hierarchy will prove its factual presence on earth.

The Ashram of the Master K.H. is already assuming an increased stimulating potency, but it will nevertheless be one of the last to manifest objectively on the physical plane. The mission of that Ashram is to produce the energy which will make possible and definite the reappearance of the Christ. That reappearance is the major preoccupation of the Master K.H. and His group of initiates and disciples. The first step taken by the Ashram was embodied – as far as all of you are concerned – in the pamphlet entitled The Reappearance of the Christ (Wesak Message, May 1947). To this must be added the vitalization and the stimulation of the two-thousand-year-old thought-forms which men, down the centuries, have created in anticipation of His coming or advent. The movement toward expectancy and preparation is now rapidly gaining momentum. This was the first concrete result of the combined desire of this second ray Ashram. However, the work being done in this Ashram is more definitely concerned with three lines of activity. These are:

  1. The preparation of the many combined Ashrams, leading to externalization.
  2. The formulation of the techniques and disciplines which will be of service to the initiate or disciple who is making the primary effort to function objectively, to work before the screen of life and not behind the scenes, as hitherto, and to develop that “resistant capacity” which is needed to withstand the violent impacts of physical plane living.
  3. The mental and spiritual registration of the plans of the Christ, and the consequent development of that skill in action which will permit these plans to materialize correctly.

Within the second ray Ashram of the Master K.H. and His affiliated groups (such as the Ashram for which I am responsible) it is the energy of wisdom which is being effectively used. It might be said that this dual energy, hitherto a fused and blended energy, is today working as a true duality. The energy of wisdom is active within all the Ashrams (on all rays and under all the Masters); the energy of love is directed primarily towards the third great planetary center, Humanity, stimulating the aura of that mass of living units so that their “magnetic appeal will be the outstanding quality of their divine approach.” The directing Agents for this dual activity are the Master K.H. and a chosen group of His senior initiates and disciples, of whom I am not one, because I have another task committed to me.

The Master K.H. is therefore constantly in close association with the Christ, the Head of the Hierarchy. Christ is today, with the aid of the Lord of the World and the Buddha, preparing Himself for the most difficult task with which He has ever been confronted. It is not a matter of the Christ issuing forth from the High Place where He is today to be found, and suddenly appearing among men; it is not a case of His taking infant form and growing into His work with advancing years; it is not a case of His being instantly recognized and acclaimed by millions of miserable human beings awaiting liberation. None of these ideas or hopes forms any part of His plan, nor are they possible. No Member of the Hierarchy, and certainly not its Supreme Head, attempts to bring about results which are doomed to failure; presented thus, they would be bound to fail, because the point of sensitivity of humanity makes failure inevitable – if success is expected along these most ordinary lines.

Skill in action, wise and understanding judgment, the adaptation of present affairs to the desired future, the coordination of the work to be done, and the clear enunciation of the platform upon which the new teaching must be founded, plus the survey (if I may so express it) of the foundations upon which the new structure of the coming civilization must be founded – it is with these things that the Christ is at this time concerned. You can realize, therefore, the tremendous and cooperative activity with which the Master K.H. and His Ashram are concerned. The stimulation of that activity comes from two directions: necessarily from Shamballa, from the Buddha and from the Avatar of Synthesis, and increasingly from the world of men, as expectancy, hope and demand combine to make their united appeal.

The Ashram or group center through which the Master Morya works is also exceedingly busy. It is obvious to you that as this is a first ray Ashram, the energy coming from the Avatar of Synthesis will make its primary impact upon this Ashram, which provides the line of least resistance. There, it is scientifically stepped down or broken down, prior to distribution to the Ashrams of the five Masters engaged in the work of preparation.

The highest aspect possible of assimilation by the Hierarchy is directed by the Masters towards the Christ and is used by Him in His individual and planned preparatory work. Though He demonstrated when here before that His mission or work had a group or brotherhood objective, it is well known in hierarchical circles that first ray synthesis is something higher still than unity, and that even the Christ has somewhat to grasp anent this new potency – coming both from Shamballa or from the Father (as the Christ used to call that emanating source), and also from extra-planetary sources. Above all, He has the difficult task of training or adapting His physical vehicle so that it can assimilate this extraordinary high potency and, at the same time, keep it in a condition in which He can move outward on the physical plane among men.

The Christian Church has laid so much emphasis on Christ’s unique position as the one and only Son of God that great error has crept in and has been fostered for centuries; Christ Himself foresaw the possibility of this error and tried to offset it by pointing out that we are all the “Sons of God” and that “greater things than I do shall you do” – a statement which no commentators have ever understood or adequately explained. The occult fact is that there is no being on Earth, from the very lowest form of life to the very highest, who is not moving onward towards a greater and finer expression of divinity, and Christ Himself is no exception to this universal evolutionary law. He is therefore, at this time and because He is preparing to raise the entire human family nearer to God, laying Himself open to certain powerful inflowing energies, absorbing into Himself streams of spiritual force, and undergoing a dynamic stimulation which is entirely new to Him; this constitutes His testing for the exalted initiation which now confronts Him; it constitutes also the sacrifice He is making in order to complete His work on Earth and bring a new salvation to humanity.

The Christ is working, therefore, in very close cooperation with the Master Morya, and also with the Manu (one of the three Heads of the Hierarchy), and these three – the Christ, the Manu and the Master Morya – create a triangle of energies into which (and through which) the energy of the Avatar of Synthesis can pour, finding right direction under Their combined efforts.

On the physical plane, the initiates and the disciples working in the Ashram of the Master Morya are primarily occupied with the expression of synthesis in the world of politics and of government, and with offsetting wrong approaches to synthesis, seeking to preserve freedom in unity. It is a subjective synthesis for which they work – a synthesis which will express itself in an outer differentiation. This synthesis will define the many aspects of the essential, basic unity which, working out under the stimulation of the energy of synthesis, will bring about eventual peace and understanding on earth – a peace which will preserve individual and national cultures, but which will subordinate them to the good of the whole of humanity.

We come now to the preparatory work being done by the Master Who started what is called by you “the labor movement.” This is regarded by the Hierarchy as one of the most successful attempts in all history to awaken the masses of men (in the brackets called middle class and lower class) to general betterment, and thus set up a momentum which would, occultly speaking, “swing them into light.”

Along with the development of the labor movement, mass education came into being, with the result that – from the angle of developed intelligence – the entire level of conscious awareness was universally raised. There is still much illiteracy, but the average citizen in all the western democracies and in the Soviet Union is as well educated as the intellectual man in the Middle Ages. You have, in this activity, an outstanding instance of how the Masters work, for (to the average onlooker) the labor movement arose from within the masses and the working classes; it was a spontaneous development, based upon the thinking and the teaching of a mere handful of men who were regarded primarily as agitators and trouble makers; they were in reality a group of disciples (many of them unconscious of their esoteric status) who were cooperating with the Law of Evolution and also with the hierarchical Plan. They were not particularly advanced disciples, but they were affiliated with some Ashram (according to their ray), and were therefore subject to impression. Had they been advanced disciples or initiates, their work would have been futile, for their presentation of the Plan would not have been adapted to the level of the intelligence of the then totally uneducated masses composing labor.

This Master works primarily with the intelligentsia, and He is therefore a third ray Master – upon the Ray of Active Intelligence. His Ashram is occupied with the problems of industry, and the goal of all the thinking, all the planning and all the work of impressing receptive minds is directed towards spiritualizing the concepts of the labor party in every country, and of industrialists, thus turning them towards the goal of right sharing, as a major step towards right human relations. This Master therefore cooperates with the Master R. – Who is the Head of the third ray Ashram, and Who is also one of the Triangle of Forces which controls the greater Ashram of the Hierarchy Itself. The Ashram of this Master (Who has always withheld His name from public knowledge) is a lesser Ashram within the major third ray Ashram, just as my Ashram lies within the ring-pass-not of the Ashram of the Master K.H. This Master is necessarily an Englishman, for the industrial revolution started nearly one hundred years ago in England, and the potency of the work done is related to its mass effect and to the results achieved in every land by labor and its methods. All the great labor organizations, national and international, are loosely knit together subjectively, because in each group this Master has His disciples who are working constantly to hold the movement in line with the divine Plan. It is well to bear in mind that all great movements on earth demonstrate both good and evil; the evil has to be subdued and dissipated, or relegated to its right proportional place, before that which is good and in line with hierarchical planning can find true expression. What is true of the individual is true also of groups. Before the soul can express itself through the medium of the personality, that personality has to be subdued, controlled, purified and dedicated to service. It is this controlling, subduing process which is going on now, and it is vociferously fought by the selfish and ambitious elements.

Nevertheless, the work of this Master is outstandingly successful in preparing the intellectual principle of the masses for eventual right recognition of the Christ. A right sense of values is being developed, and in the right direction of this potent labor group in every land lies the foundation of the new civilization.

The Ashram of this Master is therefore occupied with worldwide economic problems, and also with a direct attack upon the basic materialism to be found in the modern world. The problems of barter and exchange, the significance of money, the value of gold (a basic symbol of the third Ray of Active Intelligence), the production of right attitudes towards material living, and the entire process of right distribution are among the many problems dealt with in this Ashram; the work done is enormous and of great importance in preparing men’s mind for the return of the Christ and for the New Age which He will inaugurate. Capitalists and labor leaders, financial experts and thinking workers, and members of all the differing ideologies which are prevalent in the world today are to be found actively working within this Ashram. Many of them are what the orthodox religious man or the hide-bound occult student would regard as non-spiritual, yet all of them are in reality deeply spiritual in the correct sense, but they care not for labels, for schools of thought nor for academic, esoteric teaching. They exemplify within themselves a livingness which is the hallmark of discipleship.

  • The time has come when the first and major principle governing true esotericism must be grasped as conditioning all hierarchical workers: Right Motive.
  • The time has come when the quality of ashramic work is recognized, first of all, as being: Selfless Service.
  • The time has come when men everywhere must realize that entry into a Master’s Ashram is dependent upon Intelligence, plusright motive and service.

When these three factors are present in any human being, the Masters know that good material is presented to Them for training. Today the world is full of such men and women, and in them lies the dominant hope of the future.

 One more point I would like to discuss. Through the work of this Master and His Ashram the “sealing of the door where evil dwells” will come about, because it is essentially this group which (if I dare so express it) is coping with raw materialism and the false values which it engenders. The door has to be sealed by a vast mass of coordinated human forces, and not by one or two enlightened men. This fact must be grasped by you. The energy of love-wisdom, the energy of the second ray, can and will bring in the Kingdom of God; the energy of the divine will can and will galvanize with its dynamic potency the entire human family to the point where a group transition will take place from the fourth into the fifth kingdom. It is nevertheless this third ray energy, as wielded in the Ashram of this English Master, under the direction of the Mahachohan, the Lord of Civilization, which will force a right attitude toward materialism, which will bring about a balance between the material values and the spiritual, and which will eventually thrust back into futility the Forces of Evil which have for so long distracted the world of men. I am choosing my words with care.

You will note, therefore, how the three divine aspects are united in one great movement to bring in the Kingdom of God, and that the first step towards this longed-for consummation is the appearance of the Masters upon the physical plane, and then, somewhat later, the reappearance of the Christ.

We now come to a consideration of the vast Ashram controlled by the Master R. He is the Lord of Civilization and His is the task of bringing in the new civilization for which all men wait. It is a third ray Ashram, and therefore enfolds within its ring-pass-not all the Ashrams to be found upon the third Ray of Active Intelligence, upon the fifth Ray of Concrete Science and upon the seventh Ray of Ceremonial Order. All these Ashrams are working under the general direction of the Master R. He works primarily through the Masters of these three types of ray energy. He Himself at this time is occupied with seventh ray energy, which is the order-producing energy upon our planet.

This is the Ray of Ceremonial Order, and through the activity of its energy, when correctly directed and used, a right rhythm is being imposed upon all aspects of human living. An effort is being constantly made to arrest the ugly chaos of the present and to produce the ordered beauty of the future. The major weapon now being used by the combined Forces of Evil is chaos, disruption, lack of established security, and consequent fear. The potency of these evil forces is exceedingly great because they belong to no one group of people and to all the ideologies. The chaos produced by indifference, the chaos produced by uncertainty, the chaos produced by fear, by starvation, by insecurity, by watching others suffer innocently, and the chaos produced by the warring and conflicting ambitious elements in every nation (without exception)- these are the factors with which the Master R. is attempting to deal; the task is one of supreme difficulty. The entire rhythm of international thinking has to be altered, and that constitutes a slow and arduous task; the evil personalities which, in every country, are responsible for the chaos and uncertainty, have eventually to be replaced by those who can work in cooperation with the rhythm of the seventh ray, and thus produce ordered beauty.

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

By Alice Bailey and Djwhal Kuhl