Invocative Reflections on Purpose
Clarence Harvey
The current sign of the zodiac in which the sun is located is Sagittarius, and the reflective thoughts on purpose which I’d like to share today hold that awareness as a contextual background. At the same time, I have called these “invocative” reflections for two reasons. Firstly, because I hope that by us putting our attention on the question of purpose our interest can invoke a deepening and strengthening of our understanding and alignment with higher, spiritual purpose, and secondly, because I want to draw on the fact that the word purpose appears twice in the Great Invocation.
“Purpose” appears on the eighth line and on the ninth line of the Great Invocation, where we read:
Let purpose guide the little wills of men –
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.
These lines can be correlated with the themes, experiences and opportunities of the eighth and ninth signs of the zodiac, the signs Scorpio and Sagittarius. The glyphs or symbols for these signs each carry a barb or arrow-like point.
In Scorpio, this barbed point represents the sting of the scorpion, pointing to a potential type of death which results in self-transformation and in the emergence of the soul as the victorious higher Self which symbolically sings, “Warrior I am, and from the Battle I emerge, triumphant”. There is a suggestion here that this victory of the Soul in the affairs of humanity is linked to our ability to be guided by a sense of purpose which emanates from the highest centre of spiritual will on our planet. This centre is described (in the seventh line of the Great Invocation) as “the centre where the Will of God is known”. Following on these hints contained in the Great Invocation it would be natural that people who regularly use the Invocation would periodically consider or reflect on to what extent our own expression of will in our choices and decisions is guided by higher purpose, and to what extent this purpose supports our desire and efforts to live as Soul rather than just as personalities. The Scorpio experience of severe tests, battle, and eventual self-transformational dying of the personality is both an individual experience and a collective experience. It is easy to see the current worldwide challenges, hardships and suffering as a period in which humanity as a whole is being forced to see everything about itself that is unworthy of its higher Soul nature. It is easy to see also that humanity has not yet grasped and embraced the importance of a collective sense of noble purpose to guide it through its major decisions. Our purposes are usually still far too selfish, so that even when achieved, they tend to lead to benefit for the few rather than for the whole. We can see the issues around Covid-19, mask-wearing, social-distancing, and vaccination, as all being connected with whether our actions are motivated by purposes that lead to the victory of the Soul in human living. A major service that we can all give is to cultivate a sense of higher guiding purpose, guiding not only ourselves, but potentially all humanity when humanity is ready to choose this.
In the warrior training given in Kyokushin karate dojos all over the world, training sessions begin with a simple ritual of bowing to the teacher, to each other, and to what is described as “your God or religion”. This is a practice of spiritual alignment. In dojos of the Solfa-Do, we begin by bowing to our highest sense of purpose, reinforced by sounding the Great Invocation at the close of the training session. It’s probably worth adding that a deliberate attempt is also made in these Solfa-Do dojos to use the bow as part of a practice of stimulating a sensitivity to vibration in the top of the head, related to the etheric centre in the top of the head. It seems fair to say that if we reflect on the question of which purposes guide our thinking and feeling and actions in everyday life and over time, we are likely to gain much clarity and insight, and probably also learn things about ourselves that we might not be too proud of. Eventually, our great achievement is to learn to live lives imbued with and guided by Soul purpose. Our ‘Scorpio barb’ thus becomes freed to aim even higher, to become released from the “Me” and to fly upward towards the even higher purposes that motivate the members of the spiritual Hierarchy. This brings us to the Sagittarius line’s use of the word purpose.
The zodiacal keynote of the soul in Sagittarius relates to and contrasts with the Sagittarius line in the Great Invocation, giving us two expressions of the energy of purpose under the influence of this cosmic sign. At the personality level the human soul expresses this zodiacal energy as “I see the goal. I reach that goal and then I see another.” This is an experience of progression from goal to goal, including a sense of ambition and achievement. When the Soul emerges as the victorious Warrior from the Scorpio experience the energy of Sagittarius is now impersonal and all-conditioning, described in the words “The purpose which the Masters know and serve”.
We could reflect on this contrast and recognise that the purpose referred to in the ninth line of the Great Invocation is not only impersonal, but universal. The third stanza of the Great Invocation invites us to help let humanity be guided by the same purpose which the Masters – the Great Ones who stand as the embodied heart centre of our planetary life – collectively know and serve. There is a definitive relating of the two centres, humanity and Hierarchy, on the basis of a shared purpose that is being consciously invoked by humanity itself.
We might suppose that the practice of a culture of bowing to the highest spiritual purpose in order to cultivate sensitivity in the crown centre to that purpose, may well form part of the coming culture of the Soul. We might imagine that over time this practice helps awaken the brain cells around the pineal gland in the head, giving a steadily developing sensitivity to the vibrations of “the purpose which the Masters know and serve”. In any case, the linking of humanity and the Hierarchy by the word purpose is a subtle implication of one of the key themes and intended outcomes of human development in the Aquarian age, the theme or challenge of an achieved spirit of brotherhood and right relations. This theme is underscored rather simply through a consideration of some of the numbers involved in the placement of the word purpose in the Great Invocation. Consider the following.
In the Great Invocation, the word purpose is both the 60th word and the 68th word. As the 60th word it comes in a line referring to human wills (and the Scorpionic battle), and as the 68th word it comes in a line referring to the Masters of the Hierarchy (and their dedicated life of service). Adding these two numbers, 60 and 68 gives the number 128. This number, 128, is of particular significance because it is the raw numerical value of the word BROTHERHOOD, which is the basic keynote that underlies human learning in the Aquarian age. [2+18+15+20+8+5+18+8+15+15+4 = 128].
The Masters are also known as the Elder brothers, and it makes sense that humanity’s own development of a right spirit of brotherhood would involve coming into a condition of shared relationship to the purpose which the Elder brothers know and serve. The number 128 has also a special significance in music, both philosophically and scientifically. The production of a philosophical frequency of 128 may well be the subtle result of the right linking of humanity (the planetary throat centre) with the Hierarchy (the planetary heart centre). The Great Invocation, itself comprised of 128 syllables, suggests that this right linking of the two centres involves humanity willingly submitting (through ritualistic bowing, perhaps?) to the guiding influence of the purpose which emanates from the planetary head centre. Triangles units may be a wonderful place in which these mysteries can be explored and worked out in a balanced and healing way.