Reflections by Arcane School students on the Life of Discipleship

The Dance of Will

Will is the first dynamic ray informing all life, from particle to galaxies, while dancing with love, which is the second magnetic ray that binds the universe in an ever-evolving coherent whole. In this unbroken universal dance, Will directs the world toward the mastery of beauty.

All forms exist in order to express truth. Will is the revealer of the flaming truth within each form.

Will is active intelligent purpose lovingly applied. Intelligence and love are inherent qualities of the will; they make the manifestation of the will possible. They guarantee its intelligent application and its magnetic power to draw to itself what is needed for the expression of the divine purpose.

The Creativity of the Soul

It is the soul of man that creates, through the creative imagination. It creates its outer form and in fact, the desire nature of the soul has created our 'now', limited by form. It creates through the agency of the mind, building thoughtforms on the mental plane and objectifying desire on the astral plane. The soul externalises thoughts and desires upon the physical plane. The soul, which knows no separation on its own plane, is not only occupied with the form of its visionary objectives but also with the qualities or the meaning of that which is hidden behind the veils of such visions. It reaches out to both the divine and to man and it therefore occupies the midway point between the world of ideas and the world of form. The soul is true "creativeness".

The disciple is the outer form of the creativity of the soul and our sense of awareness is occupied with subjective contact and not outer sense perceptions. We are responsible to our soul and we learn to work on the inner planes of meaning and it is our duty to assist in the bringing into the brain consciousness of man that the world of meaning is reality for humanity. When one considers and understands this, we realise that disciples have a huge responsibility both to divinity and to man. We must therefore be scrupulously vigilant in ensuring that any creativeness is purified by love and that it has passed through the fires of our beautifully shaped, strong and cleansed hearts. There can be no warpage. The healthy heart will reveal to us that which is true; that which is false will lose form. It is the only way to know the power and purity of any created thoughtform, either given or received.

The human condition prior to the integration of the personality

In considering the human condition prior to the integration of the personality, and because the majority of humanity at the present time demonstrates emotional polarisation there is an understandable yet unworthily patronising tendency in certain esoteric circles to associate this proclivity with an innate evolutionary immaturity which would disqualify the emotionally polarised from meaningful “active involvement” as students or servers upon the Path.

In this connection we should be unwise indeed to lose sight of the fact that mental polarisation per se is no qualification for a “free ticket to the Mysteries”.It is, however, a signal landmark upon a stretch of the Path upon which such polarisation has been achieved, not only as a result of an irrevocable evolutionary current, but also at the price of an immense effort to change the imbalance of a personality dominated by the emotional body to one directed by the mind.

Nevertheless, even in the case of achieved mental polarisation, we must recognise that true equilibration is still a relatively distant goal, for an integral imbalance will ever remain for so long as any one personality vehicle “dominates” another.In the case of the mental and emotional natures a union, rather than a see-saw of polarisations, is what is required.

“There must be a uniting of the mental and emotional natures before there can be a wedding of the illumined mind and the love-wisdom nature of the soul.”(Discipleship in the New Age, Vol.1)

Accordingly, having suggested that both emotional and mental polarisation essentially constitutes a state of imbalance and a lack of integration, we can proceed to an observation of the typical relationship between the emotional and mental bodies when one dominates (rather than moderates) the other.

Characteristically a dominant emotional nature will enslave the mental faculties.Here it is of interest to note the Encarta English Dictionary’s definition of “enslave”, viz. “to take somebody prisoner and claim … ownership of that person and his labour.”This is indeed the case when the mind is in servitude of the form-directed desire of the emotional body.We might even go further and suggest that under such circumstance the mind functions to all intents and purposes as a mere subservient chattel of the emotional nature, having, like Yudhishthira in the dice game of The Mahabharata, lost its own self-hood.

The fetters which bind the acquiescent mind are not of iron, but of illusion.Likewise the halter by which the servile mind is led is fashioned from its own obeisance to that illusion.Yet paradoxically these shackles may begin to loosen as we reach our lowest ebb, on the threshold of awakening to the vacuity of form-directed desire, as self-pity bewails:

“Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.” (Mary Shelley – ‘Frankenstein’)

The quintessence of the mentally polarised person is his ‘monochrome’ rationality, his tendency cerebrally to dissect that which for lesser mortals loses its quality and meaning in dissection, his undemonstrativeness, his characteristic inability to “suffer fools gladly”, his preference for planning and preparation over impulsive activity and his wariness of that which derives from the emotional nature.Often the archetypical “cold fish”, those in his environment may frequently be inclined to wonder whether he possesses an iota of “feeling”.

Clearly this is not a description of one who has striven to equilibrate and unify the emotional and mental vehicles, but rather of one who, by dint of what might be described as a process of ‘alternating polarity’ upon the cycle of the Rays, is “serving his time” at the mental end of the see-saw.DK/AAB clearly enunciate the characteristics of one who, on the other hand, has as it were “pulled himself up by his own bootstraps” from emotional to mental polarity, and this, of course, represents an altogether different evolutionary outcome from that described above, whose “skeleton in the closet” is his inhibited emotional nature.

This ghost, yet to be laid, should not be unfamiliar, even to those who have intentionally struggled, and who struggle still, to liberate the mind from the ‘earthward’ gravitational pull of the astral, and who, with the most earnest of intentions, are inclined to view with a degree of disapproving condescension those who wallow yet in a sea of emotional reactions to that which appears to them to be the “vagaries of mortal existence”.

In the final analysis, the translation from emotional inhibition to compassion and from the disequilibrium of polarity to confluence is achieved through the union of the mental and emotional natures in order that “they may be one”.(John 17:11)

On the Points of Crisis

In the human journey one stage and period makes possible the next. To resist evolution is to oppose the inevitable. The threshold experiences between cycles are normally identified as crises, when outlived forms die away and new outlines of life come into existence. Without the strength to endure the threshold phase one will not see the opportunity within a crisis. It is within endurance that opportunity reveals itself.

"A crisis is an opportunity riding a dangerous wind" says a Chinese proverb. Often crises provide opportunities to move from comfort zones to uncharted territories of consciousness and related activity.

Starting points

Crises can spring from a macro level, from racial cycles, global trends. These contain hidden complexity codes that shape human nature, create global diversities, and drive evolutionary change. These dynamic macro forces attract and repel individuals and forge the rise and fall of nations and cultures.

Contrary to popular misconception, karma is beyond punishment and reward. It exists as part of our holographic universe's dualistic operating system to teach us responsibility for our actions and creations.

When these creations are out of tune with the Laws that inform the Universe, they often manifest in the disharmony known as diseases, war, natural disasters, calamities, crises.

This can occur not only in individuals but in entire civilizations. What is considered a crisis, simultaneously serves as a powerful stimulus for transformation and transcendence. Since the beginning of time, the human race has been called upon to meet crises of transformation, in order to develop certain manifested qualities. How the races meet those evolutionary crises determines the level of conscious appropriation of the new set of vehicles of expression.

The crises our generation is facing right now is an invitation to transcend unsustainable lifestyles. Currently humanity, on the whole, is consuming natural resources at a rate that is roughly 30% above the maximum rate of consumption that could still be considered as sustainable. Scientific evidence states that shortly we are all going to suffer from the consequences of using up natural resources at a far higher rate than they can be replenish by natural process. If we dedicate all our human creativity toward the goal of re-designing our methods of production and consumption in a way that enables us to live within the limits of nature, our quality of life will almost certainly increase. For this to happen we will have to create a new equilibrium between human desires and necessities and the actual reality of the level of consumption that the planet can sustain. This is requiring a major shift in consciousness and activity.

Crises may start from the deep values that flow beneath and inform what one believes and does. When I change the code of values, I change the way I look at the world, I outgrow from what was meaningful before, towards another set of values that will help me to understand the world in a different way, therefore haying an impact how I interact with the world.

On individual level crises can spring from within in the interplay between energy and force of varying vibrations, between soul and personality, between the Spiritual Triad and the soul-infused personality. The seed of improvement is always within us; sometimes it takes a crisis to nourish and encourage their growth, in order to produce a new field of magnetic activity.