The Cycles Of The New Group Of World Servers
By Foster Bailey
The activities of the New Group of World Servers follow a rhythmic pattern which is based upon successive three-year periods, each building upon the last and maintaining all that has been gained.
The first year of each three years includes a process of inner re-integration and subjective conditioning and recharging. A subjective stocktaking, so to speak, goes on while the outer work also goes forward. This is the time of spiritual maturing and of essential decisions and subjective choices, which take place according to the quality aspect of the group life. It is also the time of precipitation of the next bit of the vision for which the group life is ready.
The second year of each three-year period sees the unfolding of the results of this inner vision and the inner choice. Action is taken in the perfecting and adjusting of the organised projects already under way and for the required expansion which must be initiated in order that the incoming life can find expression without its potency causing disruption. In this period personnel problems are resolved and financing must be planned. It is during this period that the outer organisation is given renewed attention.
Then in the third year all this must bear its fruit in action, sustained, strong, well balanced and effective. It has been said this is the time when the New Group of World Servers “strikes a spiritual blow upon the consciousness of humanity”. The outer action must carry the newly contacted forces into human consciousness and opportunity thereby be extended to the sons of men. The response to humanity's invocative appeal must flow in and it becomes the business of world disciples to use every channel or inlet into human consciousness which has been created.
During this period the group itself is more directly used by the Hierarchy than at any other time. If the vision in the first period has been received without distortion and if the preparation for service in the second period has been wise and the blockages and the leaks in the spiritual organism removed or remedied, the third period will be the smoothest of the three, in outer operation. The relationships of the executive personnel must be harmonious and utterly free from criticism and controversy. The machine created for the work can and should function almost automatically. The pattern has been set and everybody is hard at work.
There are many other time cycles in the expression of the life of our planetary Logos as it functions through the human family, but this basic pattern of threes is found reflected everywhere. Time factors as they manifest in our consciousness are not exact and may overlap. It is to be remembered that our calendar is not a completely accurate measure of the sequence of human events in relation to planetary and solar cycles.
Also we know that it is possible to accomplish more both in growth and in service in any one cycle than the normal pattern would require. Just as an individual aspirant can hasten his progress on the Path and accomplish much more in any given incarnation than even his own soul expected, so also a group can deepen its spiritual consciousness and purify its expression and be more expertly and practically useful than seemed likely at the beginning of any given period. This is true of the New Group of World Servers and it is also true of humanity as a whole. Nevertheless the fundamental rhythms persist and we do well to take advantage of them.
As the individual accepted disciple finds his field of service and consciously joins the ranks of the senior members of the New Group of World Servers he finds inevitably that his life begins to conform to the time cycle of that larger group. His personality struggles and worries and fears, and the problems of controlling his outer plane affairs, all become increasingly secondary and automatic until, finally, he stands free. His life merges in the group life in a way quite inexplicable to him as he looked forward to such a release into spiritual freedom.
An examination of the events of the first thirty years of our group life demonstrates that it has fallen into ten-year periods which, if on schedule, would naturally coincide with the three-year periods of the New Group of World Servers. This synchronisation was almost startlingly demonstrated in the year 1952. That circumstance was brought home with clarity to us because humanity as a whole in that year was undergoing the same basic process of inner esoteric choosing, which characterises the first cycle of each three-year period in the smaller group of world servers. It was the year 1923, the second year of the first three-year cycle, that saw the outer action taking place, which was in preparation for a new spiritual impact on the entire esoteric field in the world. This was the result of the decision taken by Alice A. Bailey and those who were cooperating with her, which had been focused in the previous year. As a result, esotericism in the Western world is today a very different thing to what it was at that time.
In 1931 the decision was made to expand the work abroad and it was the year 1933 that saw the precipitation into outer action of the New Group of World Servers. The worldwide group which had been created in the preceding ten years was the vehicle successfully used for that launching. 1933 was also the year which marked the expansion of our own group, which resulted in the taking on progressively of world service projects. Each one of these projects has in fact been the precipitation of some aspect of the developing potency of the New Group of World Servers.
The third year of the next three-year cycle, 1936, again saw an outer expression in action by our group with relation to the first stanza of the Great Invocation, and it was a definite year of Hierarchical effort in preparation for the coming crisis of humanity. 1939 saw us engulfed in that great initiatory struggle which we called World War II, and it was in 1942 that the inner spiritual victory was gained and the ultimate result assured. This demonstration of the uncrushable spiritual integrity of humanity itself resulted in the great year of 1945 when it was possible for the Christ to make His great pronouncement of return and for the issuing of the Great Invocation, which we now have as our chief spiritual weapon. 1948 was the year of precipitating energies of the new spiritual potencies so rapidly becoming available for the salvaging of humanity with which we as a group had two years before chosen to keep pace, and 1951 found us, as a group, struggling rather more desperately than we knew against the accumulating pressures that were opposing the expansion of spiritual consciousness in the human family in the post war period.
Then we came to the significant year of 1952, the first year of the recurring three-year cycle of the life of the New Group of World Servers. A year of inner decision and choices, a year when the essential quality of the disciples of the world, grouped together for the undertaking of the future planned cooperation with the Hierarchy, was tested. We as a group participated more consciously in the significance of that time than we have ever done heretofore, and as a result we have in 1953 been able to take certain consolidating action and succeeded in initiating certain steps which are the foundation of great usefulness in the future. The testing of our group has been sustained and the essential group integrity preserved, blockages in the channel and inner conflicts have been taken care of, plans have been well laid for the carrying forward of the necessary outer impact on human consciousness in 1954, which is the third year of the present three-year cycle. This impact we have all recognised is the launching of the second phase of the precipitation of the New Group of World Servers into the consciousness of humanity itself, thereby increasing its numbers and supporting strength.
It was 1952 that saw us making the decision to establish a practical working centre at Geneva and this project was successfully brought to its outer expression in 1953. That it was possible to do this and that we have become conscious of the reality of its inner rightfulness and of certain spiritual recognitions, is the guarantee to us that our group has successfully entered its second major thirty-year period. If we had not made good in 1952 and had not succeeded in implementing the results of that year's choices we could not now be sure that we have ahead of us a second thirty-year cycle of increased world usefulness. As is true of the individual disciple, so also it was true of our group that to a large extent we hardly realised the deeper significance of the events that were moving forward or the potencies of the forces that were flowing in to us and to which we were responding as best we could.
1954 must therefore see for our group a strong and effective worldwide action. 1955 will again bring tension and choices. The group action of 1957 and 1960 will lead to a climaxing worldwide spiritual impact upon human consciousness in 1963 in which we are destined to play our appropriate part.
December 1953
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