Preparing for World Invocation Day:  The Power of Invocation

The Who, What and Why of Invocation

George Catlin

It is a real pleasure and honor to have this chance to speak with this group. I have long loved the Bailey teachings and to my eye, the Science of Invocation and Evocation is among the most important aspects of it.

So here we are, probably the primary group on the planet that is consciously working with this science. Possibly, for us, there is no need to review the essentials of it. But, given the fact that we are in the midst of what the Tibetan calls the three spring “Festivals of Invocation,” it may be appropriate to reflect on the importance of this tremendous tool that we have been given and why it makes sense to use it persistently.

I decided to split my comments into the who, what and why of invocation partly because that is such a simple way of thinking about anything. So, I will start with the “who” part, and at present, that is certainly us, but it is not only us.

The thing I think we do well to remember is that humanity has always been invoking help. The Tibetan tells us that the principle of Mind was originally given to humanity in response to our call for something greater than we were able to do at the time. I particularly like the passage in which he describes this moment, so I will read it.

“Back in the dim past of history… As the yearning urge towards an undefined and unrealized good made itself felt in the inchoate longings of unthinking man (literally unthinking at that stage), it evoked a response from Deity.” (Problems of Humanity, 150).

That moment in our history speaks volumes to me about this process of invocation and evocation. It tells us that, even before we had a mind, as a species we were yearning for something greater. So aspiration, this deep desire to move forward in consciousness, has always been a part of us, and it is always magnetic or invocative.

The other thing that this passage tells us is that even our not very articulate invocation was good enough. It was heard and drew a tremendous response. The key to invocation may not be so much the specific words we use but the depth and quality of our yearning. In that regard, I would encourage us to always say the Great Invocation with powerfully focused intention. That is registered by those who guide us, and they do respond unfailingly.

Here I think it might be helpful to digress for a moment into the kind of response we should be expecting from our use of the Invocation. What we are invoking is energy that will hopefully produce positive changes. The energy is, of course, essentially the seven rays as qualified by the lives through which they pass in coming to us. And these energies by themselves stimulate both the good and the bad, the virtues and the vices of all the rays.

In the first verse we are invoking mental illumination. But even the brightest minds do not necessarily contribute to human welfare, so in the second verse we are invoking love or the Christ energy that will hopefully guide all that mental illumination into loving service of the whole. And loving service is far more effective if it is coordinated and directed along optimal lines, so in the third verse we are invoking the will aspect, so that all that we do will be in alignment with the Plan of God. That is pretty much the formula for progress in the world: Illuminated minds, used in service motivated by love, all in alignment to the Plan.

The Invocation also specifically calls for the return of the Coming One. Steeped as we are in the promise of the externalization of the hierarchy, I’m sure many of us may think now would be a very good time for that to take place. There seems to be a longstanding absence of any great leadership on the world stage, and I sometimes imagine that a few powerful servant leaders might make a crucial difference right now.

And this is where I have a real chance to remember who is wise and who isn’t. Who sees the big picture and who doesn’t. Who understands karma and divine intervention and who doesn’t. I find these thoughts surprisingly reassuring. When I think them, I settle into trust and get refocused on what I can do, trusting others, in this case the Masters, to do what they can do.

What I, and by extension we, can do is at least twofold. Regarding the externalization, we can work to meet the criteria the Tibetan specified for that to occur. These were a world at peace, the principle of sharing beginning to govern economic affairs, and religious and political groups beginning to clean house. Surely, there is work on one or more of these three fronts for every one of us who is willing to take up the outer work. The Tibetan said the ultimate goal is to make the principle of goodwill central to world affairs. Everything we can do to embody, express and implement this divine principle lifts our world that little bit higher.

And there is also a great deal to be done in preparing humanity to make any sense of the Masters as they do emerge. So few people know anything about the evolution of consciousness and the reality of those who are further progressed on the path. Every step we can make toward advancing that knowledge has the dual effect of generating hope and increasing openness to the Masters when they do emerge. Knowing what we know, this preparation is our duty, our responsibility.

In this regard, I heartily encourage rereading the final chapter of The Reappearance of the Christ for a reminder on the importance of these efforts and the litany of excuses we are likely to employ to avoid them. The Tibetan asked that we all give at least an hour a day to this effort. We need to ask, is that possible in our busy lives? And what are we doing that is actually more important?

Getting back to invocation, what I can do, what we can do, is use the Great Invocation to call for the help humanity so clearly needs. We are not a huge group. You might say we are uniquely privileged to even know about the Great Invocation. Not a lot of people do. But those who do are a crucial part of the “who” of invocation for our planet. I believe we have a real responsibility to use what we know, and I strongly suspect this knowledge of the Great Invocation is the most important thing any of us know.

And this brings me to the “what” of invocation.

We are told that invocation takes place on two quite different levels. The first level is the astral or emotional plane. This is, of course, where most of humanity is centered. Desire rules most of our world today. And those desires range from the most selfish forms of greed and the lust for power to the most altruistic desires for a better world for all people. And it is those higher desires, our individual and collective aspiration, that form an important part of the invocative process today.

Unfortunately, it appears that the power of this emotional invocation is directly tied to the degree of world pain. Obviously, humanity suffered greatly throughout the two world wars and that suffering generated a tremendous, largely unconscious appeal for help that ultimately generated the release of the Great Invocation.

I see this principle at work all the time in my psychotherapy practice. It is the clients who are in the most pain who both seek help and work most actively with the help that is offered. Given that, perhaps much more suffering is in store for us before this astral invocation of help becomes powerful again and before humanity is truly open to whatever help is offered.

Our work is, of course, to add to that astral invocation a steady, powerfully focused element of mental invocation. As you may know, four years after he released the initial, astrally focused stanza of the Great Invocation, the Tibetan gave out a second stanza that was much more demanding and only appreciated by those with some degree of mental polarization.

The final stanza, the Great Invocation we use today, was given at the end of the war in 1945. At that time the Tibetan said it was possible that a sufficient unified invocation could be made by humanity and the spiritual hierarchy to evoke a response from lives beyond our planetary life. Again, some of his specific words here are so relevant that I want to read a short passage. Referring to these lives he wrote:

They cannot be reached by prayer or even by well formulated desire—the expression of the wish life of the masses. They lie utterly beyond the realm of feeling (as humanity understands it) and dwell ever in that high place which can only be reached by intentionally directed, selfless thought…

It is for this reason that these three stanzas from a very ancient invocation have been made available and put in your hands at this time. If you can use these phrases as voiced demands and affirmed beliefs… then there is just a chance that this type of divine activity might be set in motion along a particular line, and this might lead to changes of so auspicious a nature that a new heaven and a new earth might be rapidly precipitated. (Externalization of the Hierarchy, 261-2)

And that passage points directly to the “why” of invocation. Very simply, we do this because this is how real change happens. Yes, there's a great deal we can and must do at our own level of consciousness to improve world conditions. But to take that step into a new heaven and a new earth we need help. We very simply cannot do it alone. There's no shame in this. It is simply a statement of fact, a statement of how this world and presumably all of cosmos works.

All life from the densest mineral to the most exalted extra-planetary Life is part of a great chain of being. Depicting the chain of being on our planet, the Tibetan gives us this diagram: (Discipleship, Vol. 2, 214):