SECTION TWO - PERSONAL INSTRUCTIONS TO DISCIPLES - PART 7
This testing glamour can serve the entire group of my disciples as an illustration of much that you will later study. Hence good is being wrested from seeming evil. Evil itself is but an illusion, for it is the use that is made of motive and opportunity by personality separativeness and selfishness which constitutes evil. From right motive and the same circumstances good may emerge. If no other result eventuates, this past experience will serve to make you and your co-disciples far more cautious in the future and less prone to leap to conclusions. Glamour, when it is of such a definite kind, is most convincing and of a seeming reality. This is a definition of the word "glamour," and the word "seeming" gives the clue.
I have said that it is my intention to deal with each of you with utter frankness. We can, as a group of disciples, begin now our real work and can regard the past cycles as simply preparatory in nature. The objectives before each of you are to submit to such a discipline and to unfold your spiritual natures with such purpose that you can contribute much to the work of my Ashram. Each of you must work towards such a relative perfection so that your contribution may be of value and in no department of your nature can you cause hindrance. We are working towards a matured and synthesised group activity—as are all the Ashrams of all the teachers—and shall some day achieve it, but in this particular affiliated group the conditions for such work are not yet present. Work steadfastly, therefore, at self-improvement and at the elimination of those personality faults which stand in the way of the general usefulness.
My brother, for long you have occupied the centre of the stage in your own thought. You are not jealous in the ordinary sense of the word because your pride refuses to permit the usual form of jealousy. But you are ever conscious of being in the centre of your circle of human contacts and have a feeling of resentment—oft unrecognised—when this is not the case. This was one of the main factors in your humiliation last year. Such an attitude is easy of achievement and simple to hold; it is the line of least resistance for your personality. My word to you today is decentralisation. You must struggle to shift your mind away from yourself as teacher, friend, wife, worker, or disciple of the Tibetan; you must cultivate that understanding heart which will make you more aware of others than of yourself. A hard saying and one not easy to express in thought and life! In the last analysis, your problem is the subjection of your sixth ray personality to your first ray soul impulse. A study of the sixth ray characteristics will help you here, particularly if you remember that (being a disciple) it will be your sixth ray vibration which will cause you the most trouble and along which glamour will easily enter. It is, for instance, your personality fanaticism and your personality devotions (both to people and to ideas) which need tempering if your first ray power is to manifest. Your fanatical devotee will must be superseded by the purpose, ordered and steadfast, of your first ray soul. In this last sentence is for you the key to your future unfoldment. The steely, brittle, determined, dynamic will of the devoted aspirant must change into the steadfast, powerful, calm purpose of the soul, working through the disciple. The soul is fluid in adjustment but undeviating in aim. Likewise, the brilliant fanatical devotion to this, that or the other person or ideal must give place to the gentle unchanging love of the soul—the love of your soul for the soul of others. In this lies for you a hint and your future success. I think you will realise whereof I speak. In conformity to soul impulse mould your life and shift out of the realm of high desire and aspiration into that of settled purpose and an undeviating attachment to reality.
You can resume your active study work and your meditation work as outlined by me below.... When you are meditating see to it that you are relaxed and sit not so fiercely erect as is your usual custom. Rest back somewhat, achieving comfort and self-forgetfulness.
The meditation given will produce a needed reorganisation of your inner bodies and this will give fruitful results in your other contacts as well. The above is all that I have to say to you for the present, my brother. May the peace of your soul, the love of your co-disciples and the benediction of your Master rest upon you. Give to all the best that you have to give and fret not over results.
November 1935
MY BROTHER:
The past year of effort should have prepared you for changes and for increased usefulness in service. That your will is directed to service is well known to me and to your fellow disciples but your field of service should be greater at this time than it is. Wherein lies the difficulty? Why are you not more potent in helping others than you are? Shall I tell you why, my brother?
The reason is to be found in the difficult combination caused by your two rays in expression—the sixth ray and the first. When your sixth ray personality can work, free from the influence of your soul ray and be one-pointedly directed towards some determined programme, there is no hindrance in your physical plane expression. When your first ray ego can likewise so work, then much will be accomplished by you. But, at the present time, your first ray expression in conjunction with your sixth ray personality produces more destructive work than a manifestation of the divine purpose of your soul. In your efforts, for instance, to help people, your sixth ray devotion is apt to frighten them away from you and your first ray power oft shatters that particular inner body which is for them their weakest point; you are then left as ever the "one who stands alone." This is characteristic of the beginner in the conscious life of a first ray soul. Is this not oft the case with you, my brother? It is not that people do not love you, for they do; it is not that you do not love them, for you do. It is that you are too dynamic in your approach and the force that flows through you destroys as quickly as it builds and drives away by its "blast of out-going power" that which you sought to attract and which has been temporarily attracted. You lose so many people out of your range of influence, and this you well know and it bewilders you. The fault lies primarily in you and not in them.
You see, my brother, I am seeking to begin your training as a worker; hence my emphasis upon this first ray characteristic of your soul (as it vitalises your sixth ray nature). You must begin to handle it wisely if you are ever to be of use.
In an earlier teaching, I endeavoured to awaken you to the risk of constantly assuming the position of the "one in the centre." That attitude, as well as the one to which I today refer, is also distinctive of a first ray soul and the presence of these two attitudes (of the one in the centre and the one who stands alone) are indicative of the fact that your first ray soul is beginning to assume some control over your personality. Is this not a real encouragement? You are on the verge of seeing the results of your work with your own nature. If you can accept that which I have to say in connection with the destructive aspects of your soul contact, you can save yourself much difficulty and trouble and save other people too. You might rightly ask me how and in what manner you can offset these tendencies. I can but reply to you with simple and ordinary truths—so simple and so ordinary that their scientific value is easily overlooked. I say to you: Lose interest in your personality life, in its contacts and affairs by substituting a dynamic interest in world work. Do not arrive at this detachment through an intensification of your sixth ray personality attitudes; we do not desire to have fanatics in association with us. Arrive at it through a deepening of your love nature as it includes others and excludes your own lower nature. I say to you: Work with detachment and, because you are demanding nothing for the separated self, all things will, therefore, come to you. You will not then stand alone but will function as an attractive magnetic unit in group service. Here, therefore, lies your immediate problem. You have to learn to be decentralised and to step out of the centre of your own picture. You have to learn to be magnetic and to build and not destroy. Ponder on these suggestions and work simply, quietly and happily at your problem.
You are facing strange and new contacts and hence you can, if you so choose, expand your field of service. Forget not, however, that every expansion of consciousness, resulting in increased scope for service, is to be taken at a cost and for this you will have to be prepared. But you are a strong and steadfast soul, provided you can keep a poised and steadfast attitude of mind and emotion and preserve yourself free from personal ambition. Then you can win through to your goal.
Leave people free and seek not to influence them or to impose your ideas upon them. Your interpretation of them and of their need (no matter how close they may be to you) is not necessarily correct. Leave people free in all respects—with the freedom that you demand and expect for yourself. May I, in all love and tenderness, suggest that the ideas, methods, formulas and ways of living which seem right to you (and are right for you) may be entirely undesirable for others and that, if you force them on those others, their souls may remove them from your influence in the cause of freedom to expand. In this suggestion lies for you the clue to much that is destructive in your best effort and this should convey to you the method for your and their deliverance.
You may now resume your full quota of work and I suggest for your consideration the following breathing exercise. Please continue with the same meditation. Do a simple breathing exercise each morning and as you work at it, regard it as your meditation process, and so run a dual line of thought and work. Proceed as follows:
1. Inhale on 8 counts, and as you do so, say to yourself, retaining the entire process in the head and on mental levels: "With self-forgetfulness I gather what I need for the helping of my fellowmen."
2. Then follows an interlude of 12 slow counts, during which you ponder on the strength, the wisdom and the love which must be shown to your fellowmen.
3. Exhale on 10 counts, saying: "With self-forgetfulness, I breathe out love upon my fellowmen."
4. Then comes an interlude of 12 counts in which you ponder upon love to all beings.
Then repeat the process, only this time carry on the work entirely in the heart instead of in the head.
February 1936
I was correct, was I not, my brother, in telling you in an earlier instruction that changes were to take place in your life and environment and circumstances. You have seen much and travelled much since that time. What has been the gain up to this moment? Do you feel your inner life enriched? Are you less introverted and more self-forgetfully outgoing? Always you went forth to the helping of others but never did you forget your position as the helper; therefore, there was always the unconscious drawing of the one to be helped to you yourself, in a personal sense and frequently a subsequent rebound away from you. Do you lead them now to lose sight of you in the vision of their own souls?
These are questions which you alone can answer and they still hold for you indication of a needed task. Liberation for you lies in submergence in your group of fellow disciples and in the elimination—as I have earlier told you—of your sixth ray fanaticism. Along this latter line you have made much progress and are much to be commended. Now the life of the first Ray of Will or Power must sweep increasingly into prominence. For you, it is not so much the imposition of the will aspect which is needed but the understanding of the Plan and your consequent intelligent cooperation with that Plan. But it is the plan for humanity and not the plan for you as a partner and cooperator with the greater Plan. In your personal reading and study for the coming months, I suggest that you search out all references to the Plan in my books, noting the aspects which are of immediate import and dealing not with the plan for the coming race and for the distant future. Then list briefly and concisely the salient points in the Plan; be not prolix and train yourself to a brevity which in no way negates lucidity.
Proceed with the breathing exercises I assigned you for they are producing in you much needed changes. Adhere closely to my instructions and carry forward the work; it should now be automatic. Note how, in doing so, you are carrying forward three lines of activity simultaneously:
1. A physical activity....
2. An imaginative activity which sees the above moving of energy in an ordered rhythm and which visualises it as being raised.
3. A thought activity which is subjectively and steadily aware of the dual process and of its objectives. The objectives are to organise the energy body and so order the forces of the body that a mental effect is achieved.
To all these, a fourth activity might be added—that of the Observer, of the soul on its own plane, perceiving or looking on at the development of this triple functioning. Forget not, my brother, that all disciples must learn to be conscious simultaneously on all three planes and to carry on consciously several activities. This exercise should train you in this facility. I would remind you that there is often a deeply scientific raison d'être for the exercises and suggestions which I may give. They may not be apparent to you at first but your ignorance in no way negates the efficacy of that suggested; the inner work of organisation can proceed easily e'en when there is no understanding of the reasons for which it is done.
As to your meditation work, I seek at this time to change it. You have followed for a long time that which I gave you earlier. I now suggest meditation work to be most carefully followed and attempted with due watching of the effects. This entire meditation is to be carried forward in the heart—not in the physical heart but in the heart centre between the shoulder blades and in the etheric body. Thought must be kept off this location, however, after the first definite focussing of the consciousness in the etheric body. Here is the meditation:
1. Alignment with the soul, to be carried forward as rapidly as possible until it becomes eventually almost instantaneous. Then say with deliberation: I am the soul. The soul am I.
2. Then centre your consciousness in the love aspect of your nature, the energy which flows through the heart centre and endeavour to keep it steadily there. However, forget about the fact of the heart centre and keep the mind predominantly upon the love aspect of the soul. Say then: I pour out love upon the sons of men.
3. Then for fifteen minutes ponder upon the nature and significance of love.
4. After pondering the subject of love for three weeks each month, you can (during the fourth week) study with care the thoughts that have come into your mind in connection with this theme. This you can do from the following three angles:
a. Of right or of wrong action in the expression of love.
b. Of motive, high or low, in the expression of love.
c. Of soul activity in the expression of love.
The sixth ray expression of love is usually idealistic and fanatically applied; frequently, true love itself is lacking and there is the imposition upon others of what the person himself thinks is love. It was the second ray energy of love which, in the case of Christ, dominated His sixth ray Personality. Slowly and gradually, this domination must begin to take place in you.
The rest of the meditation you know, and it need not be recorded here.
August 1936
MY BROTHER OF OLD:
I am anxious that you should realise that at the time of the full moon this year one cycle of training and of integration closed and a new one started. The keynote of the cycle which passed was discovery—discovery of weakness, not a negative discovery but one which was fraught with responsibility; discovery of your fellow disciples and of your brothers, as pilgrims on the Path; discovery of the goal and a consequent pledging of yourself to that goal; discovery of the work to be done and discovery of the Plan. All these discoveries have come to you and have unfolded in your consciousness during the past few years. You have learnt and known much. Now a new cycle begins and the keynote of that must be integration with a view to its essential nature, its dominant need, and the work to be carried forward during the next few years. How shall this integration be achieved?
As I study the disciples in this particular group, affiliated with my Ashram, I ask myself if it is possible that they can swing into the needed rhythm and so learn to work together as a unit. You are all so intensely individual and not only so, but you are proud of it. You are deeply and subconsciously satisfied with this separative attitude. The group rhythm, the group unity, the group integrity and the group synthesis are secondary in the consciousness of several of you to your own individual development, to your own attitudes, and to your own personal points of view.
I have only three disciples in this particular group who are free from this weakness and who are primarily concerned with group life in contradistinction to the individual unfolding life. The remainder are individualistic still, but not group members, integrated into the group. In saying this, I state to you your problem. I realise that you love your co-disciples and that you have a real devotion to me, your teacher; you love the path which leads to light but you and the others are still the dramatic centres of your own lives and you are too much the forceful actors upon your own stage, on which you each seek to play a leading part; subordination to group life, so necessary a factor in the work to be done, is as yet unappreciated. The reason for this is that you are dwelling as yet upon the astral plane; there is the focus of your consciousness. It is a high level of the astral plane but until you can shift to mental levels and there learn to hold the mind steady in the light, your sense of proportion must inevitably be wrong and the first and necessary things will not hold the first and necessary place.
I seek to do two things with each disciple in this particular group:
1. Point out the particular predisposition to the group life which exists in you and on what it is based.
2. Indicate wherein you can integrate more closely into the group and thus feed the group life, not simply drawing sustenance for yourself from the group.
As I make this statement, I ask myself how frank I can dare to be and how far I can go with my instructions to you. Is it possible that you would all accept my point of view, for I cannot call it criticism? Criticism is always destructive, no matter by whom it is given. The indications of a needed change in attitude, proffered to you in love and from a deep-seated desire to see you all freed for fuller service is surely in a different category. May I, therefore, speak to all of you in freedom? And will you give as much attention to my words as you would to an older, loved and trusted friend? I ask for no more than that. I have no intention to coerce you. I only desire to help, to aid you in a liberating process and to see you walking with joy in the light.
What, therefore, is the note of my specific message to you, my brother? What is the thing which you primarily need to learn which would govern your attitude to the group and which, when learnt, will integrate you more closely into my group? Simply this:
You can serve my group most and yourself best by achieving impersonality where your personality is concerned. When you are free from the glamour of personality, then you will integrate into your group in a new and effective way. You will be of value to my group and will feed its life because you will be a channel through which hierarchical life can flow and not simply be a recipient of that life as you now are. In the above sentences your whole life problem is summed up. It is I.B.S. who loves and serves; it is I.B.S. who speaks wisely and who works for me. The focus of your attention on your training and your life demonstration is: How far am I, I.B.S., complying with requests? What use am I, I.B.S., making of this information? What results am I, I.B.S., getting from my meditation practice? What phenomena do I, I.B.S., register at the time of the full moon? Always I. Always I.B.S. Read back, brother of mine, over all the reports you have written about your work during the past two years. Gather them together and run with rapidity through them so as to get their general trend and note if my words are not warranted.
Here lies the crisis for you. Here is indicated to you what your next step forward into the light should be. The question now arises as to what you should do, how you should proceed and how work towards liberation from the "I complex." Let me, for the sake of clarity and in order to be concise, list the stages through which you must go:
1. Refuse to dramatise I.B.S. Go on with your work, plan, teach and study, but do it in self-forgetfulness, being urged thereto by group needs, by world need and by my need of help in the work I plan.
2. Learn to do this by pondering upon the soul, by strengthening your soul contact and by bringing about a more stable alignment. Learn to think always in terms of the group and not in terms of I.B.S. This is bound to take time for a rhythm which has been thus established over a period of years is not easily broken and dissipated. Old rhythms take some displacing.
3. Pay closer attention to the evening review and change from the one which you are now doing to one on impersonality....
If you will with faithfulness carry forward this work, you will free yourself from the grip of personality and there will not then exist in you those barriers to group integration which are now found. Having pointed this out to you, my brother, let me add that you have no real cause for discouragement for you have made real progress. You have much, as a soul, to give. Once you have freed the channel from that which today clogs and hinders, you can greatly enrich the group life and give much to your fellow disciples. Go forward, therefore, with joy into a richer service and a more true self-forgetfulness. The breaking of the influence of sixth ray energy, as it expresses itself in your personality life, is not an easy task but it is one to which you are equal. Earlier I definitely laid the foundation for what I have here said to you for you will remember that I referred to the sublimination of your personality.
February 1937
MY BROTHER:
Your replies to the questions which I asked were honest. It is not wise, however, for you to continue the process of introspection too closely for your analytical mind is functioning adequately these days and the danger of over-functioning is ever present. In a life given to teaching (such as yours is), whether it is teaching physical plane matters or giving esoteric instruction, the teacher has ever to practise the divine art of decentralisation. Being by force of circumstances placed at the centre, the inner attitude cultivated must be that of a planned, peripheral attention, an identification with those to be instructed and loss of the constant sense of the little self. The practising of detachment from self-concern and self-conceit which the onlooking soul evinces is no easy task, particularly for one of your temperament. How can it be achieved.
The terms of release are so simple, my brother; the art of conformity is so hard. What are these terms? I will list them with brevity, for you need not, after all your training, that I should elucidate:
1. The focussing of attention in the head.
2. Alignment of the bodies through correct and supervised breathing and eventual abstraction. Ponder on these two requirements for you can use them now and study also the ancient words of Patanjali who deals fully with the subject.
3. Identification with others and then the final losing sight of the little self. See, however, that in this case, right motive controls.
4. Intense dynamic interest in the theme of the moment, free from fanaticism and boundaries, realising that—rightly handled—all themes are of spiritual moment.
You should only evidence interest in the self during the hour of the evening review which I would ask you still carefully to continue. It is of real profit to you.... Life for you at this time holds much of service. See to it that you crystallise not. As one gets older in the physical sense (a thought which you ever evade, my brother) there is always the tendency to become set in one's life rhythms and objectives; the life theme is steady and the danger of rigidity is very real. See to it that you keep flexible and fluid and learning all the time. Teach, my brother, from the living experiences which you undergo and not from an accumulated series of life episodes. This thought warrants your careful consideration. Only thus can your words and your life influence carry to others that living fire which can set their lives ablaze with divinity. Choose not the subjects of your service but serve all who seek your aid. Seek them not yourself. In that last thought lies for you much of future understanding.
One thing I seek to say to you, but I can only convey my thought in words that are necessarily vague. It is not my task to cast too much light into the future. This I will say, however: Mould your life upon the pattern of the sannyasin and hold on to no physical plane attachments. If you do, they will fail you and the pain in thus holding will hinder your feet as they stumble upon the Path. Walk free, my brother, and hold to nobody and hold no person to you in the bonds of attachment. Can you be a true sannyasin and stand in life alone or with only your brother disciples as comrades and friends? In the developments of the next two years see that these words of mine constantly recur to your mind, for thus will you handle the eventualities of life relationships in a spiritual manner. Should you be able to see life's circumstances rebuilt around you or see them crumble to nothingness with equal equanimity, then your field of service can enlarge. You will have no interest in the affairs of the little self. Seeing this, the many little selves will come to you for help.
September 1937
MY BROTHER:
What I have to say to you can be adequately covered as I consider with you the five rays which govern you in this particular life. Since I last communicated with you, your life has opened out increasingly along the lines of service to your fellowmen and to us. One word I would say to you in this connection: Let not that service take the place of your soul in your waking consciousness nor let the satisfactions—which inevitably come—supersede the longing for the bliss which the soul experiences and which produces a magnetic rapport with the world of souls. Live ever in the secret place of the soul and keep always silent.
You have for many years reflected upon the relationship existing between your first ray soul and your sixth ray personality. You have realised that for you (in this incarnation) only love and service must govern your life expression, if the ambition and pride of the first ray, and the fanaticism of the sixth ray with its glamour-producing characteristics are to be offset and balance achieved. This relationship is your major problem. Let us further complicate that problem by the recognition of the ray qualities of the three bodies! Perhaps, however, complication will be simplified and a study of the more detailed personality tendencies may reveal to you sources of strength and produce clarification. It is of value to know the lines of least resistance.
Your mental body is on the fourth ray and this can definitely be a help to you if the energy involved is rightly used, because—though it means the achievement of harmony through conflict—it also swings into action another second ray attribute, thus aiding in the work of "sweetening" your nature, if I may use such a banal word. As this ray controls your mental body, it places you, symbolically speaking, in the warrior caste and leads you to fight, e'en if it be purely idealistically, or at times under the influence of glamour.
Your astral body is a real problem because it emphasises the ray of the personality; it too is on the sixth ray. It should be remembered that the rays themselves have their secondary attributes and just as the sixth ray—expressed in your personality—can lead to the fanatical following of the ideal (whatever that may connote to you) so the same ray in the astral body produces the expression of devotion. In your case, this devotion constitutes for you the seed of selflessness. This devotion where you are concerned is not devotion to your own selfish interests but it is for you a great extroverting factor. It leads you along the way of service. When, however, two instruments or vehicles and the soul are on the same ray, then the problems of the right balancing of forces emerges and this has been very real in your case, has it not?
You have a third ray physical body. This gives you contact and brings you down to earth, a thing that a sixth ray person predominantly needs, particularly when highly developed. It aids you in expression upon the physical plane; it makes a focal point for the manifestation of the soul, for it is peculiarly the ray through which the third aspect of divinity sweeps into expression; it can produce the potency of personality expression but it can also prove a definite hindrance.
In summing up, therefore, it might be stated that your rays are as follows:
1. The ray of the soul—the first Ray of Will or Power.
2. The ray of the personality—the sixth Ray of Devotion or Idealism.
3. The ray of the mind—the fourth Ray of Harmony through Conflict.
4. The ray of the astral body—the sixth Ray of Devotion.
5. The ray of the physical body—the third Ray of Active Intelligence.
This will make apparent to you the lines of energy which are coloured by the two major rays of our solar system: In your case they find their expression through rays 4 and 6, and through rays 1 and 3. This is helpful to know, is it not?
One hint I will give you, brother of mine, at this time. Guard your health during the coming years and thus make increased service possible and also keep fluid in intent, in purpose, and in activity. As time goes on, you will comprehend to what I am referring.
February 1938
MY BROTHER:
The coming year will see you facing two basic decisions. What they will be is not for me to indicate. Through recognition of the decisive crises in life, the disciple gains the strength to stand alone and detached, and, through the ability to stand detached, comes the power which the divine Observer can wield if he does not identify himself with circumstance. One of the things which will emerge during the coming century will be a better understanding of the Law of Cycles. There will then eventuate a comprehension of the life rhythm with its high moments, its dark and depressed hours (I speak not in terms of emotional reaction but of the alternates to the moments of altitude) and its difficult interludes wherein understanding is wrought out through the action of applied reason. It is particularly wise for sixth ray people to master the Law of Cycles and of rhythmic growth, for their predisposition to fanatical and violent activity can be offset by wise handling of the life rhythm.
You have passed through a period of expanded service; it has carried you far from the life intent of earlier years and new relations and new forces motivate your days. See to it that enough of the old conditions and the old relations are preserved in order to guarantee continuity and stability. I seek to word the teaching which I give to you and your co-disciples in this group in such a way that perception may come to those for whom the specific teaching is intended, yet nothing need be said which would foment curiosity in the minds of the other disciples in the group.
You have travelled far during the past six years and your life trend (and by this I mean your spiritual life trend) is now definitely established. I use these words in order to express the idea of the soul's intention. Can you cast your mind back to the year in which that orientation became definite? Such retrospects have real value, my brother.
I seek today to deal with the mental problems of the disciples in this group. I told you earlier that your mental body was conditioned by the fourth Ray of Harmony through Conflict. This ray has been a factor which has resolved many of the difficulties set in motion by your sixth ray personality, focussed and made more powerful by a sixth ray astral body. The personality is always predominantly allied with or focussed in one of its three aspects. I will endeavour to show you now the vehicles through which the soul ray also outstandingly expresses itself:
1. Soul energy, in your case, seeks expression through the vital or etheric body.
2. Personality force is focussed in the astral body.
A little reflection upon these two facts will make clear to you wherein your life problem consists. It has been the problem of fusing and blending the personality so that the energy of the soul may control from mental levels, and so employ your fourth ray mental body that the over-activity of the vital and the astral bodies may be overcome. It is helpful to know this, is it not? There are certain great aligning qualities which are brought into play when the soul can grip and control the vital body, but they demonstrate more as physical vitality than as qualities in consciousness. This I think you know. During the remainder of your life, if you will work with and control (as a soul) your mental body, you will enter into your next incarnation with the control of the personality centred in the mind. That means a greatly expanded consciousness and far more power to serve—power adjusted to the need which is faced.
What, my brother, are the characteristics of a fourth ray mental body? Let me list a few of them for you, leaving you to make your own application, in truthfulness and understanding.
Destructive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . Constructive
An inner mental battle.......................... The resolution of the pairs of opposites.
Many antagonisms............................... Non-partisanship. The Middle Way.
Prejudice............................................. Tolerant understanding.
Personality unity and synthesis.............. Group unity and synthesis.
Discord, interior and exterior................ Harmony within and without.
Environal problems.............................. Environal peace.
Imposition of the personal will — Expression of the will-to-love.
There are, of course, many other qualities and tendencies but I have enumerated those of the greatest usefulness to you. I would remind you that the fourth ray is, when a part of the personality force equipment, the expression of the will-to-love (either in the material sense or in the spiritual). It is, therefore, allied to the first ray, through its will emphasis. It should not be so difficult for you, consequently, to shift your soul emphasis into the "mind area" andfrom there control the physical body instead of controlling it (as is now the case) by a great effort of soul control from soul levels. This is a hint to the way of release for you.
However, as you seek to bring about this emphasis, remember always, my brother of old, that it must be the will-to-love which is essential to you; it is to this end that I suggest the assigned meditation. I would suggest that you concentrate upon this fourth ray, with its keynote of the will-to-love, expressed in harmony whilst in the midst of conflict. In your next incarnation, you should function through a second ray personality but this will depend upon the success of your present effort and upon your ability to grasp the outlines of your task. You have, therefore, to transmute your sixth ray devotional and fanatical tendencies into spiritual love and strength; your one-pointedness must be based on an inclusive orientation. It has, hitherto, been based on sixth ray aspiration. In the future, it must be founded on intelligent conviction—a very different thing, my brother, and mental in nature.
I would ask you to make a careful study of all that you can find anent the fourth ray in A Treatise on the Seven Raysand make definite application to your own mental unfoldment and a practical interpretation of its desired effects in terms of your own life. You should ask yourself the following question: What will be the effect, in the personality life upon the physical plane, of an established alignment between my first ray soul, my fourth ray mentality and my physical brain?
I assign, therefore, the following meditation:
1. Achieve alignment, conscious fusion and stability.
2. Then definitely and consciously shift your attention into the mental body....
3. Next, consider the pairs of opposites with which your personality must deal in this life. Do this by the aid of your fourth ray mental body.
4. Visualise these pairs of opposites as two high mountains, separated by a narrow pass between them; this is, for you, the symbol of "the narrow way."
5. See these mountains, standing on either hand, one in the shade and the other in the light. See the narrow way between as a golden pathway. Then picture yourself as "passing between." As you do this remember that your soul is observing you, the personality, progressing on this Middle Way.
6. Then take the following seed thoughts for careful reflection:
1st month—I stand in light, the One Who can observe.
2nd month—The distant, wandering one, who is my little self, I call to me.
3rd month—Between the Pillars of the Way, I pass. I leave these twain on either hand.
4th month—The Middle Way leads to a bridge and on that bridge I stand.
5th month—And on that bridge I meet my Self.
6th month—And thus the two are one and harmony is now established.
February 1939
MY BROTHER:
In my last communication to you, I dealt very thoroughly with the problem of your "manifestation within the planetary life" (as it is esoterically called) and discussed your ray equipment at some length. You have, as sincerely and earnestly as you could, endeavoured to make the information of use in bringing about a better presentation of your soul's objective through the medium of your daily life. This I have not failed to recognise. You have found, have you not, that one at least of the decisions to which I referred is already confronting you. The issue as yet remains undecided for the task of relinquishment is not easy. I would suggest to you that that which has to be relinquished may not be that upon which you are at this time laying the emphasis. I would remind you also that the Law of Sacrifice is ever followed by the Law of Re-Appropriation in the spiritual sense. Upon this fact I would ask you to ponder.
The world today is in such a distressing condition that the major need in every country is the appearance of "steadily shining points of light" which can illumine the way for others, dispel the gloom and produce right reaction, based upon a clear seeing of the issues involved. The smaller happenings of an individual's life can aid him to gain facility in thus seeing and shining. In this task of dispelling the gloom, those of you who are working in my group of disciples can help set the way, aid in determining the pace and so swell the numbers—small as yet—of those who constitute the "lighted points." To do this adequately requires a personal and group decentralisation which few of you as yet possess but for which you are struggling and must continue to struggle.
The cultivation of a divine indifference as to where you are and what you are doing would be of peculiar value to you and you would profit much if each night you meditated for five minutes upon your capacity to demonstrate this needed spiritual detachment.
I would ask you also to follow a very brief meditation so that there may come about a more easy fusion between your soul and personality, between these two ray energies—one of which conditions you in space and the other determines you in time. The problem is not an easy one, because your first ray energy—combining with and subduing your sixth ray forces—will produce a great stimulation unless you adhere closely to my instructions. The effect will be felt in your astral body. This stimulation is not desirable and must be avoided by you at all costs. If, therefore, you find that the use of this meditation produces an increased expression of sixth ray force and that you are becoming increasingly potent astrally, increasingly "devoted" to what you are doing, increasingly critical and irritable and increasingly fanatical—then promptly discontinue its use. Work only in the heart centre when using this suggested form and be sure no thought shifts down to the solar plexus—that open door to the astral plane. Make a short, quick alignment with the soul. Know yourself to be, in truth, the One Whose nature is spiritual detachment and isolation (not separativeness or division), then pause and stabilise yourself in that consciousness. In the secret place within the heart, let the personal self meet the real Self face to face and let it there dedicate itself to the service of the soul with deep consecration, devoted love and fluidic intent. By fluidic, I mean the willingness to do what the soul requires, when registered and recognised by you as the next duty.
Let not the glamour of attainment of your service goals, brother of old, blind your eyes to the need for further and constant training. The disciple oft becomes absorbed in the work to be done to such an extent that he forgets that the outer life of service will become arid and full of personality unless it is paralleled by a growing sensitivity to the impulses of the soul. That soul is love and understanding. Cease not to work at the problem of true spiritual perception and be not so occupied with the task of service that you neglect the lessons which you yourself must learn. Live as you teach and keep your values clear. You have done good and faithful service and helped many. Take help yourself without unduly emphasising in your own consciousness your own need.
NOTE: This disciple has never wavered and is earnestly endeavouring to work for the Tibetan and to tread the Path of Discipleship under His instruction.
To L. D. N-C.
April 1939
BROTHER OF OLD:
And what shall I say to you, fiery warrior in our work? Just this: In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength and in an all-inclusive love lies your opportunity. This, I think you know. You have made real progress in swinging free from the limitations of a sixth ray personality during the past three years. I have watched you now for seven years and you have broken loose in great measure from certain very definite handicaps. That which hinders you now is mostly old habits of thought and speech and these too must go. They must go, not through a drastically imposed inhibition, but swept away through the inflowing tide of love.
You have a difficult combination of rays, my brother, and these have powerfully conditioned your life. Your egoic ray is the first ray and your personality ray is the sixth Ray of Devotion. Power, will, devotion, idealism, fanaticism—such is the combination. Fortunately for you, in your last life, your personality ray was the second ray of love and so it had been for several previous lives. This has greatly aided in off-setting the dynamic destructive effects of your sixth ray force. Of this you should be very glad.
Now you are entering slowly into a new cycle of activity. Let it be distinguished by love and by no desire for anything for the separated self. You might reply to this by saying that you believe yourself to be free from all such desire. But, brother of mine, were you so free, you would not suffer so much over people or over the frustration which always comes—and always will—until the disciple no longer cares for success or non-success, for appreciation or for non-appreciation. Ponder on this and search your heart more closely. You are on the verge of real release and I tell you this for your comforting and help.
To carry forward this new service to which you have dedicated yourself, you need the releasing power of the tide of love which is the soul. Forget not that you are on the power ray. It is the power of love intelligently to serve. Let these words be the keynote of your reflection and endeavour for the next few months. I will give you a meditation which will facilitate your effort....
I have also suggested that you do the attached review on Detachment. You will find it profitable to use for a while. Go forward in peace, and with assurance, my brother. You have much to give; much wisdom, much experience and much understanding. Often, however, you "stand in your own light," and your personality interposes itself between the real spiritual self and those whom you seek so ardently to serve.
NOTE: The pressure of life in Europe during the world war, 1939, has made it impossible for this disciple to continue at this time.
To R. V. B.
November 1931
To you, my brother, my words are as follows: You have this life stepped out into a greater measure of release than was anticipated by your soul or by Those Who watch upon the inner side of life. The day of opportunity opened for you and you took it. I have sought within your aura for that with which I should deal and my message for you is perhaps an unexpected one—the message of speed. Not hurry nor the rushing forward into experience with undue haste, but the steady, conscious quickening of the vibration which leads to power. Your outer demonstration gives not full expression to the pulsating life within; the activity of your soul is limited by your physical plane movements. More rapid coordination between the inner and the outer is needed and this at no cost to your achieved poise nor your really fine efficiency. You will know whereof I speak for, in your high moments, you annoy yourself by your slowness of response to the things which are inwardly sensed. You have poise, courage and knowledge and the "way of the disciple", which the disciple has to tread, is known to you, but the cells of the physical body need more rapid sensitising and this through the bringing in of energy and not through diets or other physical plane means. For the next six months send the energy you may contact to the throat centre—not to the physical throat, but to the centre which lies back of the physical organ up the spine and yet outside the physical body altogether. This fact should be remembered by all disciples. The seven energy centres are to be found about three inches behind their locations as usually denoted. If this is borne in mind, much physiological danger will be avoided. Rapidity of spiritual reaction in all the cells of the body is the word for you, brother of mine....
Go forward in strength (which you have) and in peace (which is yours) and in poise. For you, breathing exercises will do much.
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