It may interest you to know that the Christ has not yet decided what type of physical vehicle He will employ should He take physical form and work definitely upon the physical plane. He waits to see what nation or group of nations do the most work, and the most convincing work, in preparation for His reappearance. He will not, however, take a Jewish body as He did before, for the Jews have forfeited that privilege. The Messiah for Whom they wait will be one of Christ's senior disciples, but it will not be, as originally intended, the Christ. Symbolically, the Jews represent (from the point of view of the Hierarchy) that from which all Masters of the Wisdom and Lords of Compassion emerge: materialism, cruelty and a spiritual conservatism, so that today they live in Old Testament times and are [706] under the domination of the separative, selfish, lower concrete mind.
But their opportunity will come again, and they may change all this when the fires of suffering at last succeed in purifying them and burning away their ancient crystallisation, thus liberating them to the extent that they can recognise their Messiah, Who will not, however, be the world Messiah. The Jews need humility more than any other nation. By humility they may learn something of value as well as a needed sense of proportion. They are dear to the heart of the Christ for—in the performance of His greatest work—He chose a Jewish body, but their materialism and their repudiation of spiritual opportunity has negated His use of their racial type again. It would provide too great a handicap. The probability is that the Master Jesus will assume (under instruction from the Christ) the part of the Messiah.
The Master, standing symbolically upon the Mount of Ascension, is equipped with a full realisation of the past, with a sound appreciation of what He has to offer to the service of humanity, and with a sense of expectancy. During the preceding cycle of lives of initiatory service to humanity, He has several times heard “the Voice of the Father.” This is a symbolical phrase, indicating contact with that aspect of himself which was responsible for the appearance of his soul and for its long long cycle of incarnation: the Monad, the Spirit, the One, the Life, the Father. Each time that that Voice spoke, it gave him recognition. It is in reality the voice of the Initiator in Whom we live and move and have our being. All of the Master's previous visions have led Him to this high point of expectancy; He knows now where His field of service lies—within the Hierarchy, working on behalf of all living beings. He knows also that He Himself has still to make progress, to move forward, and that there faces Him a great Initiation of Decision (the sixth) for which He must prepare. He knows that this entails for Him right choice, but also that right choice depends upon right understanding, right perception, right willingness and [707] right vision or revelation. So He stands again upon the mountain-top, awaiting again the Presence. He realises that something more is needed if He is to serve rightly and, simultaneously, make spiritual progress Himself.
It is not possible for me here to indicate the nature of the revelation which is accorded to the initiate of the fifth initiation. It is too closely related to Shamballa, and I have not myself done more this life than take the fifth initiation and climb the Mount of Ascension. The revelation for me is not completed and—in any case—my lips are sealed. I can, however, take up two points with you which may clarify your vision. I would remind you again that what I am here writing in this last volume of A Treatise on the Seven Rays is written for disciples and initiates. Disciples will see some of the significances behind the symbol and will make interpretations according to the point they have attained upon the Path. You need to remember that the world of men today is full of those who have taken one or other of the initiations and that there are great disciples, from all the rays, working on the physical plane as senior workers for humanity under the Hierarchy; there will be many more during the next one hundred years. (Written in 1949.) Some of these do not know their particular hierarchical status in their physical brains, having deliberately relinquished this knowledge in order to do certain work. That which I here write is intended—during the next forty years—to find its way into their hands with the deliberate intent of bringing to the surface of their brain consciousness who and what they are in truth. This is a part of the programme planned by the Hierarchy, prior to the externalisation of the Ashrams. The Masters feel that these senior disciples and initiates (being on the spot) should soon begin to work with more authority. This does not mean that they will assert their spiritual identity and claim initiate status. This they could not do on account of their point on the ladder of spiritual evolution. But—knowing who they are from the angle of the Hierarchy and what is expected of them—they will strengthen their work, bring [708] in more energy, and point the way with greater clarity. Their wisdom will be recognised as well as their compassion, but they themselves will recede into the background; they may even appear to be less active outwardly, and so be misjudged, but their spiritual influence will be growing; they care not what others think about them. They recognise also the mistaken views of all the modern religions anent the Christ; some may even be persecuted in their homes or by those they seek to help. None of this will matter to them. Their way is clear and their term of service is known to them.
The two points with which I shall now deal are as follows:
1. The part which energy plays in inducing revelation.
2. The place the Will plays in the revelatory sequence: Revelation. Interpretation. Intention. Will.
These must be looked at from the angle of discipleship and are not to be considered on their face value or in the ordinary manner. They must be approached from the angle of the world of meaning and, if possible, from the world of significances; otherwise, the teaching will be so exoteric that its occult nature will not appear.
The Part which Energy plays in inducing Revelation
You will get a hint as to what I have to say if you will refer back to an earlier statement (page 534). There you will find the inference that three energies are necessary for the initiate to employ if he seeks revelation; no matter what the revelation may be or the status of the disciple or the initiation he faces, these same three energies will be brought into play. They are:
a. The energy generated by the disciple.
b. The energy coming from the Spiritual Triad.
c. The energy of the Ashram with which he is affiliated.
These are the three essential energies and without their synthesis in the disciple's mind or in one of the three [709] higher centres, there can be no true revelation of the higher order or related to the processes of initiation.
In connection with the energy generated by the disciple, it will be obvious that this will include the energy of the soul ray, until the fifth initiation when it will be superseded by the energy of the Monad. This will reach him, first of all, as the energy of the Spiritual Triad, and later that (in its turn) will be superseded by the direct energy of the Monad itself; the initiate will then know practically (and not just theoretically) what Christ meant when He said, “I and my Father are one.”
In the earlier stages on the Path of Discipleship, the disciple works with that measure of the energy of his soul ray to which he can be receptive, plus as much of the energy of the personality ray as is responsive to that soul energy. In doing this a great measure of discrimination can be developed, and it is one of the first places where the value of the injunction, “Know thyself” can be seen. The nature of the soul ray at this time determines the nature of the revelation; the nature of the personality and its ray is, at the same time, either helpful or a hindrance.
To the energies which he has generated within himself the disciple learns to add that of the group which he has attempted to serve with love and understanding. All disciples of any standing gather around them the few or the many that they have found themselves able to aid; the purity of the energy generated by this group depends upon their selflessness, their freedom from authority or the control of the disciple, and the quality of their spiritual aspiration. As the disciple or the Master has helped them t
o generate this energy, and as all will necessarily synchronise with his, it becomes available as a pure stream of force, flowing through him at all times. This he can learn to focus and incorporate with his own energy (also focussed) in order to prepare himself for further vision, provided always that his motive is likewise selfless.
The second group of energies are those coming to the disciple from the Spiritual Triad. These are relatively new [710] to him and embody divine qualities of which he has hitherto known nothing; even theoretically he knows little, and his attitude towards them has hitherto been largely speculative. Since he first put his foot upon the Path, he has been trying to build the antahkarana. Even that has meant for him an act of faith, and he proceeds in the early stages with the work of building, yet scarcely knowing what he does. He follows blindly the ancient rules and attempts to accept as factual that which has not been proven to him to be a fact but which is testified to by countless thousands down the ages. The whole process is in the nature of a culminating triumph of that innate sense of Deity which has driven man forward from the most primitive experiences and physical adventures to this great adventure of constructing a pathway for himself from the dense material world into the spiritual. These higher spiritual energies have hitherto been recognised by him through their effects; now he has to learn to handle them, first of all, by letting them pour into and through him, via the antahkarana, and then to direct them towards the immediate objective of the divine plan.
Hitherto he has worked primarily with the thread of consciousness; this is anchored in the head, and through that consciousness his personality and his soul are linked together until he has become a soul-infused personality; he has then attained unity with his higher self. Through the building of the antahkarana another thread is added to the soul-infused personality, and the true spiritual individual is linked with and comes under the direction of the Spiritual Triad. At the fourth initiation the soul body, the causal body (so called) disappears, and the thread of consciousness is occultly snapped; neither the soul body nor the thread are any longer required; they become now only the symbols of a non-existent duality. The soul is no longer the repository of the consciousness aspect as hitherto. All that the soul has stored up of knowledge, science, wisdom and experience (garnered in the life cycle of many aeons of incarnation) are now the sole possession of the individual [711] spiritual man. He transfers them into the higher correspondence of the sensory perceptive apparatus, the instinctual nature, on the three planes of the three worlds.
Nevertheless he still possesses awareness of all past events and knows now why he is what he is; much of the information anent the past he discards; it has served its purpose, leaving him with the residue of experienced wisdom. His life takes on a new colouring, totally unrelated to the three worlds of his past experience. He, the sum total of that past, faces new spiritual adventures, and has now to tread the Path which leads him away from normal human evolution on to the Way of the Higher Evolution. This new experience he is well equipped to face.
Three major energies begin to make an impact upon his lower mind. They are:
1. The impulsive energy of ideas, coming to him from the abstract mind and travelling along the antahkarana; these make contact with his now illumined lower mind which, at this point, transforms them into ideals so that the divine ideas—implementing the divine purpose—may become the heritage of the race of men. The better trained and the more controlled the mind, the easier it will be to handle this type of energy. It is by means of this impulsive energy that the Hierarchy (upon the buddhic plane) leads humanity onwards.
2. The energy of the intuition, which is the word we use to describe a direct contact with the Mind of God at some relatively high level of experience. The effect of this energy upon the soul-infused personality is to give to the mind (already receptive to the energy of ideas) some faint glimmering and brief revelation of the purpose of the ideas which underlie all hierarchical activity on behalf of humanity. The intuition is entirely concerned with group activity; it is never interested in or directed to the revelation of anything concerned with the personality life. The growth of what we might call the buddhic vehicle (though that is a misnomer) prepares the man for the ninth or the final initiation, which enables the initiate—in a manner incomprehensible [712] to us—to “intuit” (in a blazing light) the true nature of the cosmic astral plane. Forget not, the buddhic plane is closely allied with the cosmic astral plane, and that all intuitions when regulated require the use of the creative imagination in their working out or in their presentation to the thoughts of men. Speaking generally, the Masters intuit those phases of the divine intention which are immediate; these constitute the “overshadowing cloud of knowable things.” These They transform into the Plan; then Their disciples—with their intuitional capacity developing slowly but steadily—begin themselves to intuit these ideas, to present them as ideals to the masses, and thus precipitate the needed aspects of the Plan on to the physical plane.
3. The dynamic energy of the will follows next, and (as the disciple perfects the antahkarana) it sweeps through the medium of contact into the mind of the soul-infused personality, and from thence it finds its way to the brain. I am of course referring here to the disciple in training and not to the Masters Themselves Who work at the centre of these energies; the Hierarchy is a great reception point for these three aspects of the Spiritual Triad—the spiritual will, the intuition or pure reason, and the abstract mind.
It is in the Ashrams of the Masters that the disciple comes into direct relation with these dynamic, revealing and impulsive energies. These three energies focus through and are directed by the three Heads of the Hierarchy: the Manu, the Christ, and the Mahachohan. The Manu is receptive to, and the agent of, the energy of the divine will for humanity; the Christ is the agent for the distribution of the energy which brings intuitive revelation; the Mahachohan is responsible for the inflow of ideas into the consciousness of the disciple, the aspirant and the intelligentsia. I would beg you to remember that the main effort of the spiritual Hierarchy is on behalf of humanity, because the fourth Kingdom in Nature is the Macrocosm of the three-fold Microcosm of the three lower kingdoms in nature.
This whole subject is too vast to be entered into here, [713] but I have given you much along these lines in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire. Much more than I can possibly give you is revealed to the initiate at the time of the fifth initiation. The clues, the thoughts, the abstract concepts, the fleeting ideas of which all disciples are aware are at this initiation resolved into certainty, and the Master can now take His place as a distributor of Triadal energy. The major problem confronting Him is not the distribution of ideas or the use of the intuition in grasping the stage of the divine Purpose at any particular time; it consists in the development of the spiritual will, in its comprehension and its use in world service. Just as the disciple has to learn to use the mind in two ways:
As a common sense, a resolver of information so that a life pattern and a life service, planned and directed, may eventuate, and a perception of relationships.
As a searchlight, bringing into the light those ideas and intuitions which are needed,
so the Master has to learn the uses of the will. A natural sequence can be seen closely related to the idea of revelation.
On the mountain-top of Ascension, following the experience of “teaching the spirits which are in prison,” the Master receives a revelation; this is His right and due and something for which the long previous cycle of initiation has prepared Him. The revelation must be followed by realisation and recognition:
1. He realises that the right interpretation of the revelation is the first essential.
2. He then comes to the understanding that the next step is for Him to formulate His intention, based upon the revelation and directed towards His world service.
3. Having received the revelation, interpreted it and determined within Himself what He intends to do, He next realises that the factor of the will mu
st now be employed if He and those He seeks to help are to profit by the revelation.
[714] This opens up the whole subject of the Will, its nature and relationships and this we must study for a while: the sequence of Revelation. Interpretation. Intention. Will.
The Place that the Will plays in inducing Revelation
There are three words connected with this initiation which are of real importance to its correct understanding. They are: Emergence. Will. Purpose. With the emergence aspect we have already dealt under the term “raising up” or the “transition” from the darkness of matter to the light of the Spirit. But of the Will, its uses and its function, as yet we know little. Knowledge as to the nature of the will in any true sense only comes after the third initiation. From that time on the initiate demonstrates increasingly and steadily the first divine aspect, that of the Will and the right use of Power. This first aspect of divinity is necessarily closely associated with the first Ray of Power or Will. I shall, however, only consider the ray angle incidentally, for I want to elucidate for you the nature of the will in some clear measure, though complete understanding is not possible.
The Lord of the World is, we are told, the sole repository of the will and the purpose of His overshadowing, cosmic soul. These two words—will and purpose—are not identical in meaning. Sanat Kumara and His Council at Shamballa are the only Beings upon our planet Who know just what is the nature of the divine purpose. It is Their function and obligation to work that purpose out into manifestation, and this They do by the use of the will. The will ever implements the purpose. The repository of the will aspect of man's innate divinity is to be found at the base of the spine; this can only function correctly and be the agent of the divine will after the third initiation. The head centre is the one which is the custodian of the purpose; the centre at the base of the spine indicates the will as it implements the purpose. The purpose is slowly, very slowly, revealed to the initiate during the final five [715] initiations and this only becomes possible after the Initiation of Renunciation. At that time the initiate says, in unison with the great head of the Hierarchy, the Christ: “Father, not my will but Thine be done.” Then comes the initiation of emergence out of matter and, from that point on, the initiate begins to glimpse the purpose of the planetary Logos; hitherto he has only seen the plan, and to the service of the plan he has been dedicated. Hitherto also, he has only sought to be an exponent of the love of God; now he must express, with increasing fullness, the will of God.
The Rays and the Initiations Page 76