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THE NEW AGE GROUPS AND TRAINING

To those of us who are working on the inner side, the workers in the world fall into three groups:

1. Those, few and far between, who are true Aquarians.  These work under real difficulties, for their vision is beyond the grasp of the majority, and they meet often lack of understanding, frequent disappointment in their fellow workers, and much loneliness.

2. Those who are straight Pisceans.  These work with much greater facility and find a more rapid response from those around them.  Their work is more doctrinal, less inclusive and coloured by the spirit of separation.  They include the mass of [633] world workers in all the various departments of human thought and welfare.

3. Those Pisceans who are enough developed to respond to the Aquarian message, but who—as yet—cannot trust themselves to employ the real Aquarian methods of work and message.

For instance, they have in the political field, a sense of internationalism, but they cannot apply it when it comes to the understanding of others.  They think they have a universal consciousness, but when it comes to a test, they discriminate and eliminate.  They constitute a much smaller group than the true Pisceans and are doing good work and filling a much needed place.  The problem they present however to the Aquarian worker lies in the fact that though they respond to the ideal and regard themselves as of the new age, they are not truly so.  They see a bit of the vision and have grasped the theory but cannot express it in action.

Thus we have these three groups doing much needed work and reaching through their united undertakings the mass of people and fulfilling thus their dharma.  One group works necessarily under the glamour of public opinion.  The intermediate group has a most difficult task to perform, for where there is no clear vision the voice of their chosen environment and the voice of the inner group of world Knowers are often in conflict and they are pulled hither and thither as they respond first to one and then to the other.  The group of those who respond more fully to the incoming Aquarian vibration register the voices of the leaders of the other two groups, but the voice of the guiding Masters and the voice of the group of world Masters serve to guide them unerringly forward.

I have sought to explain the above modes and methods [634] of work, for the times are hard and clarity of thought is needed if the work is to go forward as desired.  Even such triple distinctions as exist between the groups are themselves of a separative tincture, and it is yet impossible to preserve any idea in its true and synthetic relation.  It is a gain when the many thousands of separative groups can be grouped into three comprehensive ones and the mind of the disciple be thus freed from the detailed analysis of the world situation among the workers with the Plan.

The second great test of the sensitive disciple is fear of failure.  This is based on past experience (for all have failed), on a realisation of the immediate need and opportunity, and on an acute appreciation of individual limitation and deficiency.  It is the result oft times of a response to the lowered spiritual and physical vitality of the race today.  Never before has there been a time when fear of failure has more widely haunted the human family.  Another cause of this reaction is to be found in the fact that mankind as a whole and for the first time in the history of the race, senses the vision and has therefore a truer sense of relative values than ever before.  Men know themselves to be divine, and this is becoming increasingly a universal realisation.  Hence the present unrest and revolt from tramelling conditions.  It is however a serious waste of time for a disciple to ponder upon a failure or to fear failing.  There is no such thing as failure; there can only be loss of time.  That in itself is serious in these days of dire world need, but the disciple must inevitably some day make good and retrieve his past failures.  I need not point out that we learn by failure, for that is a well known truth, and is known as such by all who are attempting to live as souls.  Nor need the disciple sorrow over the failures, apparent or real, of his fellow disciples.  The sense of time produces glamour and disappointment, whereas the work goes truly [635] forward, and a lesson learnt by failure acts as a safeguard for the future.  Thus it leads to rapid growth.  An honest disciple may be momentarily glamoured, but in the long run nothing can really deter him.  What are a few brief years in a comparative cycle of aeons?  What is a second of time in a span of man's allotted seventy years?  To the individual disciple they appear most important; to the onlooking soul, they seem as nothing at all.  For the world perhaps, a temporary failure may connote delay in expected help, but that again is brief, and help will come from other sources, for the Plan goes unerringly forward.

May I in all earnest offer to you the paradoxical injunction to work with utter earnestness, and yet at the same time to refuse to work with such earnestness, and not to take yourself so earnestly?  Those who stand on the inner side and study the work of the world aspirants today see an almost pitiful distress of individual deficiency, a sustained and strenuous effort on their part to "make themselves what they ought to be", and yet at the same time a distressing lack of proportion, and no sense of humour whatsoever.  I urge upon you to cultivate both these qualities.  Do not take yourself so seriously, and you will find that you will release yourself for freer and more potent work.  Take the Plan seriously and the call to serve, but waste not time in constant self-analysis.

Therefore the immediate goal for all aspiring disciples at this time can be seen to be as follows:

1. An achievement of clarity of thought as to their own personal and immediate problems and primarily the problem as to their objective in service.  This is to be done through meditation.

2. The development of sensitivity to the new impulses which are flooding the world at this time.  This is [636] to be brought about by loving all men more and through love and understanding contacting them with greater facility.  Love reveals.

3. The rendering of service with complete impersonality.  This is done by eliminating personal ambition and love of power.

4. The refusal to pay attention to public opinion or to failure.  This is done by the application of strict attention to the voice of the soul, and by an endeavour to dwell ever in the secret place of the Most High.

We have merged our first point as to the immediate goal and the steps to be taken to reach it with our second point as to conduct and the factors which must be eliminated.  It only remains therefore to point out the penalties which will overtake the probationary disciple and the trained worker should he give way to the glamour and to the faults inherent in his nature and permit them to hinder his work and come between him and the visioned goal.

It might be pointed out that there are three main points of danger in the life of service.  I am not here dealing with the individual training of the disciple but with his life of service, and with the activities in which he is engaged as a worker.  His temperament, equipment of characteristics (physical, emotional, and mental) do have a potent effect on his environment and on the people he seeks to help, and also his family background, his world training and his speech.

The first point of danger is his physical condition.  On this I cannot enlarge beyond begging all disciples to act with wisdom to give themselves sufficient sleep, right food (which must vary for each individual), and those surroundings, if possible, which will enable them to work with the greatest facility.  The penalty for the infringing [637] of these suggestions works out in lack of power in service and in the growing thralldom of the physical body.  Where the physical body is in poor condition, the disciple has to add the liabilities incident upon the bringing in of force which he finds himself unable to handle.

The second point of danger is to be found in the astral illusion in which all humanity lives, and its power to glamour even experienced workers.  I have considered this at length in this treatise, which is, as you know, a treatise on the control of the astral body and a right understanding of its laws.  Only mental control, plus true spiritual perception, will suffice to pierce this illusory astral miasma, and reveal to the man that he is a spiritual entity in incarnation and in touch—through his mind—with the Universal Mind.  The penalty which overtakes the disciple who persistently permits himself to be glamoured is obvious.  His vision becomes fogged and misty and he "loses the sense of touch" as it is called in the old commentaries.  He wanders "down the lanes of life and misses that straight highway which will lead him to his goal."

The third danger (and one that is very prevalent at this time) is that of mental pride and consequent inability to work in group formation.  The penalty for this is often a temporary success and an enforced working with a group, which has been devitalised of its best elements and which has in it only those people who feed the personality of the head of the group.  Because of the emphasis upon his own ideas and his own methods of working, a disciple finds that his group lacks those factors and those people who would have rounded it out, who would have balanced his endeavour, and given to his undertaking those qualities which he himself lacks.  This is, in itself, a sufficient punishment, and quickly brings the honest disciple to his senses.  Let a disciple who is [638] intelligent, honest and basically true so err, and in time he will awaken to the fact that the group he has gathered around him are moulded by him or he is moulded by them; they are oft embodiments of himself and repeat him.  The law works rapidly in the case of a disciple, and thus adjustments are speedily made.

I would like to point out to the student that, having with steadfastness gone forward he will discover that the exoteric and esoteric linking of the outer schools and inner school or rank of knowers of truth is so close that not one earnest student goes totally unrecognised.  In the press of the work and in the burden and toil of the day's labours it is an encouragement to know that there are those who watch, and that every loving deed, every aspiring thought and every unselfish reaction is noted and known.  Bear in mind, however, that it comes to the recognition of the Helpers through the increased vibration of the aspirant and not through a specific knowledge of the deed accomplished or the thought sent out.  Those who teach are occupied with principles of truth, with vibratory rates and with the quality of the light to be seen.  They are not aware of, nor have they the time to consider, specific deeds, words and conditions, and the sooner students grasp this and put out of their minds any hope of contacting a phenomenal individual whom they call a Master, with so much leisure, of such developed powers that he can occupy himself with their trivial affairs in time and space, the more rapidly will they progress.

Where, however, there is steady growth, an application to occult principles so that definite changes are produced in the bodies used, and an increasing radiatory light, it is known and recorded, and the aspirant is rewarded by increased opportunity to serve his fellowmen.  They do not reward by commendation, by patting on the [639] head, or by expressing their pleasure in words.  They are occupied in making knowers and masters out of everyday men and women by:

1. Teaching them to know themselves.

2. Setting them free from authority by awakening interest and enquiry in their minds, and then indicating (not more than that) the direction in which the answer should be sought.

3. Giving them those conditions which will force them to stand on their own feet and rely on their own souls and not on any human being, be he a beloved friend, teacher, or a Master of the Wisdom.

I seek not to repeat myself.  Most of the points that concern the work of the aspirant today I have considered earlier in this treatise.  It remains now for all of you to study it with care.  I close with an appeal to all who read these instructions to rally their forces, to renew their vows of dedication to the service of humanity, to subordinate their own ideas and wishes to the group good, to take their eyes off themselves and fix them anew upon the vision, to guard their tongues from idle speech and criticism, from gossip and inuendo, and to read and study so that the work may go intelligently forward.  Let all students make up their minds in this day of emergency and of rapid unfolding opportunity to sacrifice all they have to the helping of humanity.  Now is the need and the demand.  The urgency of the hour is upon us, and I call upon all of you whom I am seeking to help, to join the strenuous effort of the Great Ones.  They are working day and night in an effort to relieve humanity and to offset those evils and disasters which are immanent in the present situation.  I offer to you opportunity and I tell you that you are needed—even the very least of you.  I assure you that groups of students, working in [640] unison and with deep and unfaltering love for each other, can achieve significant results.

That each of you may so work, and that each of you may lose sight of self in the realisation of world need, is the earnest prayer and deepest aspiration of your brother, THE TIBETAN.