March 2007

The disciple, when he becomes an accepted disciple (and this through the Lodge's recognition of his pledge to his own soul), arrives at a definite and factual recognition of the Hierarchy. His suppositions, his desires, his aspirational wish-life, his theories, or whatever you may choose to call his reaching out and up towards divinity, give place to clear knowledge of the liberated group of souls. This happens not through the occurrence of convincing phenomena, but through an inflow of the intuition. He undergoes, therefore, an expansion of consciousness which may or may not be registered in the brain. Every step of the way from that point of recognition onward has to be consciously achieved and must involve a conscious recognition of a series of expansions. These expansions are not initiation. Have that clearly in your mind. The initiation lying immediately ahead is simply the effect of the recognition. They might be called "stabilising points of crisis," in which the "occasional becomes the constant and the intended becomes the intentional." Ponder on these words." (Discipleship in the New Age Vol.II, p. 247)