Navigate the Chapters of this Book

THE RETURN OF THE CHRIST - Part 4

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 [665] of industry, and the goal of all the thinking, all the planning and all the work of impressing receptive minds is directed towards spiritualising the concepts of the labour 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 labour and its methods. All the great labour organisations, 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 labour group in every land lies the foundation of the new civilisation.

[666]

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 labour 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 recognised, first of all, as being: Selfless Service.

The time has come when men everywhere must realise that entry into a Master's Ashram is dependent upon Intelligence, plus right 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 [667] 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 galvanise 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 Civilisation, 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 Civilisation and His is the task of bringing in the new civilisation 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 [668] 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.

The task is further complicated by the fact that in the substitution of order for chaos, national cultures must be preserved and the outline of the new civilisation presented to the people. This major Ashram is therefore confronted with two elements in every land and nation: those people who hold on to the bad old things of the past, and those who work for the extreme opposite of this point of view and for that which is new. Under the influence of this seventh ray energy balance has to be brought about and preserved, so that the "noble middle way" of right action and of right human relations can be safely trodden. The task of the Master R. is, however, lightened by the fact that the seventh ray is now coming into activity and its potency is increasing year by year. His task is also aided by the intelligent work done by the Ashram of the English Master Who works consistently with the awakening and the arising masses.

Every October and every March, the Master R. gathers [669] together His council of helpers, the Masters and the senior initiates in the Ashrams of the third, the fifth and the seventh rays. Though He is the Head of the third Ray of Aspect and is in control, therefore, of the two Rays of Attribute mentioned above, He does not Himself wield these forces, because He is One of the three Heads of the Hierarchy and His work cannot be confined to the activity of any one ray. He works through the Ashrams of these rays, but He Himself works primarily in cooperation with the Christ and the Manu.

Now we come to the work which I (D.K.), a second ray Master, am attempting to do. With what energies am I working? What is the goal towards which I am striving under the direction of the three great Lords of the Hierarchy? I am working with the energy of right human relations; this is a definite and integral part of the energy of the second ray. It is a magnetic type of energy and draws men together for betterment and for right understanding. It is also related in a peculiar way to the energy of the first Ray of Will or Power. Perhaps this will be clearer to you if I point out that the will-to-good is an aspect of the Ray of Will, but that goodwill is an attribute of the second Ray of Love-Wisdom, thus relating that ray to the first ray.

There is no need for me to enlarge upon the work which I am doing in and through my Ashram; you know it well, for I have frequently outlined it, and my books present the goal adequately for this generation.

In this particular though relatively short cycle, my Ashram is in a key position. It is closely linked to the first ray Ashram of the Master Morya, through the work of Men of Goodwill and through all goodwill movements in the world at this time. Goodwill is essentially an expression of the second Ray of Love-Wisdom, and is therefore an aspect of all the Ashrams in that great second ray Ashram, the Hierarchy. But all goodwill work is today being galvanised also into violent activity through the dynamic energy of the first ray, expressing the will-to-good.

You have, therefore, this dynamic type of energy channelled [670] through the Ashram for which I am responsible. This Ashram works also in close cooperation with that of the Master R. because the intelligent activity of the energy of goodwill is our objective, and its expression through intelligence, applied with wisdom and with skill in action, is the task demanded of all men and women of goodwill throughout the world. When the Labour Movement is swept by the energy of goodwill, basic changes in world affairs will take place. I would ask all workers for goodwill to attempt to reach labour in all countries with these ideas, correctly presented.

I have tried here to give you some idea of the synthesis of this hierarchical work for humanity, and thereby give to all men and women of goodwill the needed courage to go forward.

You ask me (and rightly) of what use is all this information to men and to the aspirant who is trying to serve? The one thing which humanity needs today is the realisation that there IS a Plan which is definitely working out through all world happenings, and that all that has occurred in man's historical past, and all that has happened lately, is assuredly in line with that Plan. Necessarily also, if such a Plan exists, it pre-supposes Those Who are responsible for the originating of the Plan and for its successful carrying forward. From the standpoint of average humanity, who think in terms of earthly happiness, the Plan should be something joyful and something which would make material life easier. To the spiritual Hierarchy, the Plan involves those arrangements or circumstances which will raise and expand the consciousness of mankind and enable men, therefore, to discover the spiritual values for themselves and to make the needed changes of their own free will, and thus produce the demanded betterment of the environment, consistent with the unfolding spiritual recognition.

Nothing of true value is to be gained by any arbitrary or autocratic activity on the part of the spiritual Hierarchy. That is one of the lessons to be learnt, as the work of the totalitarian powers—in the past and today—and its effects [671] are noted. Under the totalitarian system, freedom is curtailed or abolished, the free will of the individual is denied and prevented expression, the individual is regarded as the appurtenance of the all-powerful State and held in that position by police regimentation; individual development is of value only in so far as the interests of the State are served, but the individual himself—as an independent divine unit of humanity—is non-existent, from the totalitarian point of view. Would you, therefore, have the spiritual Hierarchy of our planet work along totalitarian lines, enforcing peace and comfort, taking steps to arrest evil by force and working for the material well-being of men? Or would you have the Masters lead humanity itself, through right understanding, to take the needed action, even if it involves trial and error and a much slower process? Would you have mankind standing on its own feet as intelligent agents of the divine Plan? Or would you have them treated as irresponsible children who must be energetically protected against themselves? Is it not better for the rapidly awakening intelligence and activity of men (in every land) to be trained to recognise the essential unity of all human beings, and so be led to take the action needed which will endorse that unity, which will work for the entire group of human beings in all lands everywhere, and which will also and at the same time preserve the individual and the national cultures, alongside a universal civilisation and a world-wide system of divine recognition? It is toward this general freedom and the intelligent activity of the free individual that the Hierarchy is steadily and successfully working; the concept of unity and of united activity for the good of all is far more widely grasped and understood than you perhaps realise. The totalitarian approach works toward an imposed unity and one which will include all peoples and bind them down to a uniformity of belief—politically, economically and socially—and which will and does basically ignore the spiritual values, putting the State in the place of that divine spiritual centre where spiritual reality is to be found.

The method of the Hierarchy is to work through individuals [672] and through groups for the production of such a widespread spiritual recognition that men everywhere will accept as factual the inner government of the planet, and will work together for the founding of the Kingdom of God in objective manifestation on Earth—and not in some distant time and some vague heaven. This is no mystical or impossible dream, but is simply the recognition and the externalisation of that which has been for ever present, which definitely took objective form when Christ was with us two thousand years ago, and which will proceed to universal recognition when He is with us again in the immediate future.

Therefore, all who work and struggle for the good of humanity and under the direction of the Hierarchy, take heart and renew your courage. The Hierarchy not only stands (as oft I have told you), but It is approaching daily and yearly closer to humanity. The power of the focussed, spiritual unity of the Hierarchy can be felt today in many ways; it is largely responsible for the patient effort of all humanitarian workers and of all who vision unity in the face of great odds, and in spite of the fatigued lethargy and the pessimism which conditions, too hard for human endurance, have imposed upon men's minds. The Hierarchy stands and works. The Masters are working according to Plan—a Plan which is founded in the past history of the race and can there be traced; a Plan which necessitated because of human selfishness, the drastic horror of the war (1914-1945); a Plan which today can and will bridge the gulf which now exists between the unsatisfactory, selfish and material past and that new future which will demonstrate a large measure of world unity, and which will steadily and with skill in action substitute the spiritual values for those which have hitherto held sway.

The guarantee of this is the developing intelligence of men everywhere fighting blindly for freedom and for understanding, and receiving ever the inner assurance, knowledge [673] and aid of Those Who are working out (as always) those situations and conditions wherein mankind can best arrive at divine expression.

THE EFFECTS OF THE EXTERNALISATION

September 1949

In my previous instruction upon this theme I dealt with the various energies which would be brought into activity or utilised when the Masters emerged from the silence in which They have guarded Themselves for so many thousands of years. The point to be grasped is that the energies with which I dealt will be used in a new and more vital manner. These energies are ever present and ever active, but they swing into activity sequentially and under law and order, and some are more prominent at one time than others; they act vitally and energetically in the needed programme which the plans of the Hierarchy may entail in any particular cycle.

These energies bring about what we idly call the "events" of the day; they condition our passing civilisations and are so much a part of the world in which we live and move and have our being that events, as expressions of directed energies, mean little to us, except in so far as they may affect adversely our personalities. They connote simply a way of life in any specific time. These energies were started on their activities in the very night of time; they established—each of them—their needed cyclic rhythm; they are responsible for the activity of substance on matter or of the action of the vital or etheric body upon matter; they are the lowest formulated expression of the creative Intelligence, embodying the principle of life or livingness because they essentially are life itself and life in action. Forget not that dense matter is not a principle; it is only that which is responsive to the creative principle.

When, however, the externalisation of the Hierarchy begins to take place (and it will be spread over quite a long [674] period of time), the impact of these substantial energies on matter will be radically altered because they will be—for the first time in history—directed from etheric levels, from the etheric body of the planet in the three worlds; hitherto, these energies have been directed from the buddhic plane which is the lowest of the cosmic etheric levels. Fundamentally, direction will still be from the buddhic plane, but the detailed and focussed direction will be given from within the three worlds and upon the physical plane; this will be the task of the externalised Ashrams, organised to function openly.

It was the knowledge that this important development was imminent which made the Hierarchy in the last century widen the area or the scope of its teaching activity and thus bring to the consciousness of modern man the knowledge of what occultism essentially means. The keynotes upon which the occult philosophy is built are:

1. There is naught in manifestation except organised energy

2. Energy follows or conforms itself to thought

3. The occultist works in energy and with energies.

The thought of God brought the universe of energies into organised form upon the highest of the seven planes, or upon the first cosmic etheric level. These energies have for untold aeons been directed from the fourth or lowest of the cosmic etheric planes, the plane which we call the buddhic and regard as the first definitely spiritual plane, in our usually erroneous thought; this direction has been under impression from Shamballa, and the Masters have "manipulated these energies in conformity with the Plan, which is the blueprint of the Purpose."

In the great Approach of the Hierarchy to humanity and its imminent appearance upon the physical plane, the centre of direction will also necessarily approach still nearer, and—as a result of the future hierarchical manifestation—centres of energy direction will be found wherever the Ashram of a Master is located in any part of the world. This is a statement [675] of profound significance; it is an indication of hierarchical policy and a mode whereby modern science (working as it does with energies) can be brought into cooperative association and relation with an Ashram upon the physical plane, knowing it for what it is—an entirely new departure.

Earlier I stated that the physical plane areas or localities which constitute the present modern exits for energies, through which directed energies can pass to carry out the creative process, are five in number: New York, London, Geneva, Darjeeling and Tokyo. These five form a five-pointed star of interlocking energies, symbolic of the major divisions of our modern civilisation. I would have you bear in mind that all that I am here giving you anent energy is in relation to the human kingdom and to nothing else; I am not relating these energies to the other kingdoms in nature; I am here concerned with physical plane utilisation of energy through the power of directed thinking and on behalf of the evolution and well-being of mankind. At each one of these five centres one of the Masters will be found present, with His Ashram, and a vortex of spiritual forces will there be organised to hasten and materialise the plans of the Christ for the new and coming world cycle.

The organising of these five centres will be done slowly and gradually. A senior disciple will appear and will work quietly at the foundation work, gathering around him the needed agents, aspirants and assistants. All these workers at any particular centre will be trained to think, and the effort now present in the educational and social world to force men to think for themselves is a general part of this training process. Until a man can do his own thinking and deciding, he cannot be an intelligent, willing and understanding cooperator, working with an ashram and controlling and directing the creative process. If the new heavens and the new earth are to be a fact in manifestation and in reality, it means a great re-creating process must get under way, and this is the concept lying behind the teaching anent the five centres on Earth and the part which they will play in rebuilding and reorganising the world.

[676]

As the next few years bring into focus the hierarchical intention, disciples and aspirants must look for those men and those few women who will be working as a group along spiritual lines in or near one or other of these five localities.

Initial opposition to the founding of these centres of clear thinking men and women, working freely and understandingly with one of the Masters or senior initiates, is already unhappily present; it is to be found in the narrowness, the biassed information and the lack of freedom of the totalitarian schools of thought. This was inevitable, for the Black Lodge ever endeavours to parallel, offset and undo the work of the White Lodge, and hitherto quite successfully. But the cycle of success is slowly closing because the energy of goodwill, emanated by the Will-to-Good, is rapidly becoming effective.

In London, in New York, in Geneva and Darjeeling and in Tokyo, a Master will eventually be found, organising a major energy centre; at the same time His Ashram will continue to function upon buddhic levels, for the entire personnel has not been alerted for externalisation. The Ashram will therefore be working on two levels—and yet that is not a correct statement of fact, as there are no levels, as well you know, but only states of consciousness. Ask me not how this can be; ponder on the relation of this dual and simultaneous appearance by attempting to grasp the nature of the manifested form of the planetary Logos in the Person of Sanat Kumara. Sanat Kumara is not the personality of the planetary Logos, for personality as you understand it is not existent in His case. It is not the soul of the planetary Logos, because that soul is the anima mundi and the soul of all forms in all kingdoms. Sanat Kumara, the Eternal Youth, can be seen by Those Who have the right, presiding, for instance, over the Council in Shamballa, yet at the same time He is present as the life and the informing intelligence upon and within our planet.

You have therefore five points where the externalisation of the Ashrams will take place and eventually be focussed. From these points, as time elapses, other Ashrams, subsidiary [677] in nature, will be found emerging, sponsored and founded by disciples and initiates from these five Ashrams, and representing the three major rays and two minor rays. To start with, they will be founded through the presence in these localities of some senior or world disciple; it must be remembered that the forerunner of all movements which appear upon the physical plane is an educational propaganda, therefore some disciple upon the second ray will come into action, first of all, in all these five points; he will be followed by a disciple upon the seventh ray. All world movements are, as well you know, externalisations of subjective ideas and concepts and of phases of formulated thinking; and the appearance of the Hierarchy upon earth in tangible form is no exception to this rule.

Disciples in these ashrams have been in training for nearly one hundred and fifty years to do this work; some have managed to keep the originating idea and impulse clear and untainted by their own thinking, and have adhered—even in their own intimate thoughts—to the hierarchical programme, as presented to them by their Masters or the senior initiates. Others have not possessed so clear a reasoning faculty or so active an intuitive perception and—whilst grasping certain major concepts such as world unity or hierarchical gradations and control—have distorted the truth and produced the many ideologies which have wracked the world during the past century; even this distortion is, however, being turned to good, for it produced a redoubled effort on the part of the Hierarchy to offset it; it led to an increased forcing process by means of which many earnest and willing aspirants reached the grade of accepted disciple; it produced also a ferment of thought in the world which has served to awaken the mentality of the masses to possibilities and to horizons hitherto only visioned by advanced and initiate thinkers. The man in the street today has absorbed ideologies to an unforeseen extent, and the attempt to make him an active factor in our modern civilisation is not too harmful in view of the time element, as divinely conceived, and from the point of view of the staunch and basic integrity of the divine human being. [678] Time and divinity, events and instinctual goodness, will in the long run triumph. The intermediate agonies are distressing but not final, and they are not triumphant from the angle of the dark Forces. These Forces face (as a result of the war and of the resurrecting human spirit) a vista of nearing and inevitable defeat.

Already the centres in London and in New York are showing signs of life, and disciples are active in both places and along all lines of human expression. The centre in Geneva is also active, but not so thoroughly and inclusively; it waits for a greater calm and a firmer sense of security in Europe.

The centre in Darjeeling is what is termed occultly "vibrating", but this is in response to the relative nearness and propinquity of the Himalayan Brotherhood; whilst in Tokyo there is small activity as yet, and what there is is of no great moment. The work at this centre will actually be brought into being through the work of the Triangles. By that I do not mean that it will be a centre of the Triangle work, but that the concentrated meditative activity of the people engaged in the Triangle activities will magnetically draw out that which must appear when a centre is organised. They are in fact creating the needed atmosphere, and that is ever a preliminary step. Once the atmosphere or the air in which to breathe and move is existent, then the living form can appear.

Objectively, therefore, the second ray work of teaching is the first to be organised. Subjectively, the first ray workers are already active, for the work of the first ray with its disturbing and destroying activity prepares the way; pain and disruption ever precede birth, and the agents of the first ray have been working for nearly two hundred years. The agents of the second ray started their preparation around the year 1825 and moved outward in force soon after 1860. From that date on, great concepts and new ideas, and the modern ideologies and arguments for and against aspects of the truth, have characterised modern thought and produced the present [679] mental chaos and the many conflicting schools and ideologies, with their attendant movements and organisations; out of all these, order and truth and the new civilisation will emerge. This civilisation will emerge as the result of mass thinking; it will no longer be a civilisation "imposed" by an oligarchy of any kind. This will be a new phenomenon and one for which the Hierarchy has had to wait, prior to reappearing. Had the Hierarchy come before this era of thought and of massed discussion and the fight to further creative ideas, the tenets and the truths for which the Hierarchy stands could be regarded as being also "imposed" upon humanity, and therefore as infringing human freedom. This will not now be the case, and the Hierarchy will come forth into exoteric manifestation because humanity has, of its own free will, developed a quality analogous to that of the Hierarchy and therefore magnetic to that spiritual organisation. Goodwill will draw forth from its holy secret hiding place the Exponents of Love, and thus the new world will come into being.

These subsidiary ashrams are already being attempted in various parts of the world. It is necessary for you to remember that the members of these ashrams will not all be on the teaching line, but will be composed of disciples upon many rays; the attempt to form coherent and integrated ashrams is based upon the recognition of the initial difficulty of the various ray aspirants to comprehend each other's point of view and mode of working, and to think in the many differing terms and modes of thought. There are, however, three fundamental requirements which must condition and colour all the ashrams, no matter what the ray:

1. An internal group unity, conducive to a synthesis of understanding between the various ashrams. There springs out of a unified group objective a sense of loyalty to the Hierarchy and a uniformly disciplined life. I said uniform, brother of mine, for the discipline is that of spiritual inclination and an inspired intention which produces a similarity in the livingness [680] of the units in the ashram; this is, of course, diversified by the ray quality of the aspirants and disciples and by personality tradition. Ponder on those last two words.

2. Similarity of objective. By that I mean an apprehension and appreciation of the hierarchical Plan and of the contribution each ashram has to make for its materialisation on earth; to this must be added an united ashramic similarity of instinctual and intuitive telepathic rapport with the senior Members of the ashram—the Masters and initiates of high degree, and through Them—with the Christ. I would here call to your attention that the mental inclination of all the esotericists in the world for the past one hundred years has been directed towards individual rapport with a Master, and this because of the necessity of discovering the ashram with which the aspirant must make contact.

This attitude has now widened in its approach mentally, by the many diversified disciples in the many different ashrams, into a group movement or a group inclination towards the Christ, the major and most important factor in the implementation of the hierarchical Plan. This mental approach is not the same thing as the constant aspirational preoccupation of the earnest Christian follower with the thought of Christ. It is something quite different.

It is a unified group endeavour, generated in each ashram and fostered by all alike, to bring the entire group—as a band of world servers—into the aura of the thought currents of the Christ, as He formulates His ideas, creates the thoughtform needed prior to manifestation, and makes His arrangements for His reappearing. This is not the same thing as establishing a telepathic rapport between an individual disciple and the Christ, for that is not needed or desirable. The unity of aim, the desire to serve, the recognition of the present focussed intention of the Hierarchy (under the guidance of the Christ), become an invocative, magnetic state of group consciousness; this evokes from the Christ and His informed Masters an identification of Their united thought with the group aspiration. This is the higher spiritual correspondence of what is called in the three worlds kama-manas.

[681]

This is not, I realise, an easy thing to understand when divorced from the usual Christian concept of the relation of Christ to the individual aspirant. The idea may perhaps be clarified for you by reminding yourselves that some of you who read these words know me and have found your way into my Ashram, under the guidance of your own soul and my ready recognition. Others all over the world, through their spiritual intuition and their desire to serve and to know, have brought into their recognised area of consciousness the teaching which is given in my books. Their relation to me is symbolic of the type of relation which disciples and aspirants can and do establish with the Christ. Though the analogy is far from perfect, it is possible to recognise the correspondence in its many gradations of reciprocal sensitivity.

3. A fundamental and basic similarity of sympathetic response by the units in all ashrams to the needs of humanity, to the quality of the programme for their development which the objective demands, and to the nature of goodwill and understanding (intelligently applied); all these qualities are not handicapped by undue emotional sensitivity.

These three conditions will be found in all the ashrams and will unite the members within any ashram to those in other ashrams in a measure or rhythm of telepathic relation. From this unified and central position a rapidly deepening telepathic relation will inevitably be established and sustained by the group, with the ashram and with the Christ, on the one hand, and with humanity, on the other. With this as a foundational and conditioning quality, the work can proceed as required.

You will note, therefore, why I have so consistently emphasised, during the past thirty years of teaching, the necessity for the development of a truly spiritual and psychic sensitivity, plus the unfoldment of the faculty of a scientific telepathic rapport. I have thereby laid the foundation of the Science of Impression, with the illumined and rightly oriented mind as the interpreter, the analyser and the transmitter.

[682]

ASHRAMIC ADJUSTMENT TO EXOTERIC LIVING

October 1949

We now come to another point in our study of this subject: This concerns one of the most difficult problems confronting the Masters at this time; it presents also an unique problem to the Christ. The daily physical life of the Masters, of the Christ, and of those Members of the Hierarchy (initiates and accepted disciples) Who function in physical bodies, has had its orientation upon the subjective levels of life; the majority of Them, and particularly the senior Members of the Hierarchy, do not as a rule intermingle largely with the public or walk the streets of our great cities. They work as I do from my retreat in the Himalayas, and from there I have influenced and helped far more people than I could possibly have reached had I walked daily in the midst of the noise and chaos of human affairs. I lead a normal and, I believe, useful life as the senior executive in a large lamasery, but my main work has lain elsewhere—widespread in the world of men; I reach this vast number of human beings through the medium of the books which I have written, through the groups which I have started and impulsed, such as Men of Goodwill and the Triangles, and through my disciples who talk and spread the truth as I have sought to present it.

So it has been with the work of all the Masters, except two or three Who have undergone special training in order to do some special preparatory work for the externalisation of the Hierarchy. The English Master is one of these, and another Master also Who works, relatively unknown, in North America. I have referred to Him before as the Master P.—though that is not, in reality, His initial.

This rule of solitariness or of withdrawing applies to all the Masters and to the Christ, for it is in the solitude of the mind, and as far as possible in the solitude of physical location, that the various branches of the great White Lodge have chosen to work ever since Atlantean days. It is not the solitude of a separative spirit, but the solitude that comes from [683] the ability to be non-separative, and from the faculty of identification with the soul of all beings and of all forms. This can best be accomplished in the intense quiet of those "protected" areas where the Masters in the various branches of the Brotherhood have chosen to dwell. This solitude and physical isolation enables Them to work almost entirely from the level of the buddhic or intuitional plane, perfecting the Science of Impression, influencing and working through those minds which are susceptible to Their mental impression. This applies equally to Masters in physical vehicles and to Those Who have "no anchorage" in the three worlds; it applies also to disciples who are in or out of the body, according to their destiny, immediate karma or form of service. St. Paul, for instance, was in the initiate stage of learning rightly to withdraw and to work in what Patanjali calls "isolated unity" when he spoke of himself once as "being caught up into the third heaven" and there learning the untold beauties of the divine life.

The problem, therefore, before the Masters and Their disciples is to work (when the externalisation takes place) in the midst of physical plane existence, no longer withdrawn, isolated and protected, but functioning openly in the middle of events and physical realities and all the diversity of contacts which the three worlds present. It is perhaps helpful to remember that when the Christ was in physical presence on earth two thousand years ago, the population of the world was relatively small compared to that today; contact between peoples was practically nil, and where it existed was usually of a strictly military or commercial nature, with a somewhat exclusive interchange of scholastic ideas and personnel between the rare centres of learning. It was easy in those days to withdraw into the desert and to disappear into the unfrequented place and to recharge and revitalise the spirit, to touch again closely the Sources of inspiration on the higher levels of consciousness, and thus reorient the working instrument in the three worlds to the higher field of contact and inspiration. Much of this can be noted in the Gospel story of the life of Christ and of the Master Jesus.

[684]

When the Christ reappears and the Hierarchy externalises itself on earth, conditions will be totally different; there are today no empty spaces; the population of the world is enormously enlarged and is growing from year to year; no locality is isolated or unattainable; the jungles are open territory to the explorer and to the numerous commercial agents; vast cities cover the planet and oceans are traversed by multitudes of ships; the airways of the world are travelled by millions of passengers annually; the land is divided into minute sections by railroads, highways, speedways and myriads of lesser roads and streets. In fact, every living unit in the world is in touch with thousands of other units and can—through the many means of information—be in touch with millions; the news presses grind out the news from hour to hour and the eyes of millions are ceaselessly glued to the printed page at all hours of the day or night; the ears of other millions are daily and hourly attuned to the voice of the radio. Only the inner perceptive sense remains inactive, for only advanced humanity lives constantly in touch with the world of spiritual perception and intention.

The conditions, therefore, confronting the Hierarchy constitute a serious and drastic problem. As far as we can, we will attempt to consider these conditions, for some understanding of the problem is necessary if right work is to be done.

Necessarily, the problem is one of a change in the orientation of perception but not necessarily in modes of living or in any definitely physical plane adjustments. Hierarchical orientation has for some centuries been one of a very strict internal consolidation, in order that the magnetic aura of the Hierarchy may unfailingly respond to impression from Shamballa, and also be of so potent a nature that it can form a protective screen around the human family. Forget not the nature of the protective service which the Masters have assumed on behalf of mankind, standing between humanity and the emanations and influences and the magnetic aura of the Black Lodge.

This internal consolidation has been greatly strengthened [685] during the past one hundred years. Because of this, and because of the resultant clarity of impression and of the potent out-going influence, the Plan for humanity—as a Whole—was imparted with emphasis to disciples in the Ashrams, and by them was formulated clearly and presented to humanity.

H.P.B. (one of the first working disciples to go forth on the externalisation impulse and with first ray energy driving him) gave the background of the Plan, under impression from me; the more detailed structure and the sweep of the hierarchical intention have been given by me in the books which A.A.B. has introduced under her own name to the public (in so doing acting under my instructions). For the first time in human history, the purpose of past events—historical and psychological—can be clearly noted as the foundation for all present happenings, thus bringing the mysterious Law of Karma in an easy manner to public attention. The present can also be seen, indicating the way of the future and revealing clearly the Will-to-Good which is animating the entire evolutionary process—a process in which humanity (again for the first time) is intelligently participating and cooperating. It is this cooperative participation, even if unconsciously rendered, which has made it possible for the Hierarchy to grasp the opportunity to bring to an end the long silence which has persisted since Atlantean days; the Masters can now begin to undertake to renew an ancient "sharing of the secrets," and to prepare humanity for a civilisation which will be distinguished by a constant intellectual perception of truth, and which will cooperate with the externalised Ashrams in the various parts of the world.

The internal consolidation is now being somewhat loosened, if I may use such an inadequate expression, and a majority of the Members of the Hierarchy are withdrawing Their close attention from reception of impression from Shamballa and are now orienting Themselves—in an entirely new and directed manner—to the fourth kingdom in nature. At the same time, a very powerful minority of Masters are entering into a much closer association with the Council of Sanat Kumara.

[686] In this way the potent and dynamic influence of Shamballa will be strengthened instead of lessened by the reorientation of the majority of the Masters and initiates. These statements have, of course, implications which will not be understood by you and which will necessarily pass unnoticed; you will respond, however, to the realisation that the minority—in renewed and closer contact with Shamballa—have to master the technique of relationship; this will entail much use of the sacrificial will. The reason is that They are (on a higher turn of the spiral) submitting to a forcing process which will make great demands upon Them, but which will serve to release the majority to a new and more potent form of immediate Earth service. In other words: a few of the Masters and higher initiates are undergoing a special and applied stimulation and are undertaking work for which the united Ashrams, in their higher brackets, have hitherto been responsible. This subjects Them to a great strain and forces Them to use the will aspect of Their divine natures in entirely new and unknown ways. They relinquish much, in order to enable the entire Hierarchy to give far more in radiance, guidance, and magnetic invocative strength than has even before been the case.

The majority of the Masters and initiates, in Their turn, also relinquish much in order to work exoterically among men. They subject Themselves voluntarily to an active stimulation from the senior "contacting minority" but relinquish the "joy of Shamballic contact". Temporarily, the training which the majority have been receiving in "cosmic orientation," in the use of the will-to-be (a meaningless phrase to you), and in the "bliss of receptivity to the will-to-good of Sanat Kumara" is given up. The entire attitude of the group of Masters, initiates and disciples who are to be responsible for the externalisation of the Hierarchy and for the preparation for the reappearance of the Christ is focussed upon the expert use of the Science of Contact. This time, the science is used upon a wide and telepathic scale, with the souls of men, and upon the technique of expressing spiritually the nature of "isolated unity" in the cities, jungles and the [687] massed inhabited areas of the earth. This involves, as you can well imagine, the use of an expert ability to remain untouched by the evil rampant upon the physical plane, and yet to remain in complete sympathetic and understanding contact with all humanity and with all events that affect humanity. It was prophecy which impelled the Christ to say, when last in public appearance among men, that His disciples were "in the world and yet not of the world"; Christ depicted in simple yet profoundly revealing terms the life of the Members of His Ashrams (the entire Hierarchy) when again He would walk with Them in the plain sight of humanity. He pictured Them as one with the Father (the Council of Life in Shamballa), and yet as one with Him (as the hierarchical Head), and as one also with all that breathes and that inhabits form. I advise all disciples who seek to cooperate with the impending activity of the Hierarchy to study with care the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John; this was written by that disciple of love, under the influence of the energy emanating from the buddhic vehicle of the Christ, which is also—as you have been told—identical with the buddhic vehicle of the Buddha. The identity of the two vehicles is symbolic of the entire teaching anent "isolated unity" and divine participation, which the Masters in Their Ashrams are teaching Their disciples of all grades, these days, as the first step toward the externalisation of Their activities.

An intensive training process, therefore, is being carried out in every ashram and along identical lines, resulting in the "isolation," occultly understood, of certain Masters and initiates. They have been thus isolated in order that They may work more readily and easily with Shamballa; They can thus form a dynamic and galvanic storehouse of energy (the energy of the divine Will) and thus make it available for the use of the other Members of the Hierarchy, as They stand in "isolated unity" upon the highways of Earth, and thus are "in the world and yet not of the world". The learning of this lesson calls into activity the sacrificial will of both the hierarchical groups; this remains the binding cord between Them and that aspect of the antahkarana along which energy can [688] flow in a new and electric fashion from Shamballa, via the hierarchical minority referred to above, and into the large group of Masters and initiates and disciples to whom is committed the task of consolidation. All this constitutes—for the Members of the Hierarchy—a definite process of testing out and of trial, prior to and preparatory to some of the higher initiations.

Again, the Members of the Hierarchy are not only sensitive to impression from the two other planetary centres (Shamballa and Humanity), but They are acutely aware of the Forces of Evil which are fighting furiously against the externalisation of the spiritual work. The energy which cosmic evil generates is active along three main channels:

1. From the centre of cosmic evil upon the cosmic astral plane. Of this centre you can know nothing, and its emanations and its magnetic aura can only be understood and recognised or interpreted by the senior Masters and by initiates of still higher rank. As the potency of the astral plane (which is so familiar to us all) weakens, and glamour and illusion are negated by a rapid spiritualising of humanity, the power of cosmic evil will correspondingly weaken and the Forces of Evil will be unable to reach the planet with their present easy effort. It is against the impact of this emanating evil that the Hierarchy stands in protection of humanity. Hitherto it has been the task of Shamballa, working through the Hierarchy, to protect humanity from the "intention to destroy" of the cosmic Forces of Evil, but—in the coming cycle and as a result of the triumph of the Forces of Light in the world war—the potency of Shamballa can be combined with that of the "protecting Agents of Light."

2. From the Black Lodge which is the externalisation of the centre of cosmic evil on Earth. Just as the White Lodge is the representative or correspondence of the cosmic centre of light upon Sirius (the true Great White Lodge), so the Black Lodge is also representative of ancient and cosmic evil. The Black Lodge is also far more advanced in externalisation than is the White Lodge, because materialism and matter are, [689] for it, the line of least resistance. The Black Lodge is therefore far more firmly anchored upon the physical plane than is the Hierarchy. It requires a much greater effort for the White Lodge to "clothe itself in matter and work and walk on material levels" than for the Black Lodge. Owing, however, to the spiritual growth of mankind and to the steady, even if slow, orientation of mankind to the spiritual Hierarchy, the time has come when the Hierarchy can materialise and meet the enemy of good upon an even footing; the Hierarchy need not be further handicapped by working in substance whilst the Forces of Evil work both in substance and in matter. Once the reappearance of the Christ and of the Hierarchy is an accomplished fact, these Forces of Evil face sure defeat. The reason for this is that the trend of human living and thought is turning steadily towards the subjective spiritual values, even if these values are interpreted in terms of material well-being at present and of better living conditions for all—with peace and security also for all. The Black Lodge or the planetary centre of evil works almost entirely upon the astral plane, and is impressed directly and guided in detail from the cosmic astral plane.