SECTION TWO - PERSONAL INSTRUCTIONS TO DISCIPLES - PART 5
The ray of the mind, the fourth ray, is the controlling ray of your personality, and that means that the power to react to soul illumination is yours. The goal of your meditation should be light. I would point out, however, that in your case it is one of quiet reflection and inner recollection, preserved at all times. This permits you to be a channel for the inflow of light to your personality and, through your personality, to your environment.
I am not, therefore, going to give you a definite meditation upon light, but am going to ask you to make light the subject of your daily review. I call it not an evening review as I care not when you do it, as long as you do it once within each twenty-four hours, taking one or two of the questions in the review, reflecting deeply upon it during the next six months. Then each month answer one of the six questions I here set you, one question each month.
1st month—What, to me, is the practical meaning of the word, light?
2nd month—In what manner can my life be illumined?
3rd month—What is the factor producing illumination, and does this factor function normally in my life?
4th month—What effect will an illumined mind have upon my daily life?
5th month—What effect should my life as a Light-bearer have upon my environment?
6th month—Am I in touch with other Light-bearers, and in what manner?
Let your replies to these questions be brief but full. Yes, I mean exactly what I say, my brother, "brief but full" for this is largely a question of terse terminology but of concise definition. Continue also with the group meditation, but write those brief reports, not only for your own illumination but also for the enlightenment of your group brothers.
In connection with your personality rays, I would point out that the ray of your mental body is that of the fourth, which facilitates your task of responding to the light of the soul, for it gives you a mind nature which can react easily to your second ray soul, for it is on the same line of force. At the same time, it makes your mind a focal point for soul force in your fifth ray personality, which is itself a mental ray. The building of the antahkarana should constitute for you no real problem.
Your astral body is on the sixth ray. This gives you a one-pointed attitude to life and primarily, in your case, to the things of the spiritual world. You are definitely "on your way" and with a quite satisfactory simplicity are going forward. This ray also enables you to make a fairly facile soul contact, should you so desire. Your rays, therefore, are:
1. The soul ray—the second Ray of Love-Wisdom.
2. The personality ray—the fifth Ray of Concrete Science.
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 or Idealism.
5. The ray of the physical body—the third Ray of Active Intelligence.
What, therefore, constitutes your major difficulty, for you are not satisfied yourself with your progress, and rightly so?
The main reason lies in your fifth ray personality, wherein the emphasis is laid upon the critical, analytical mind. This leads you to watch and criticise and to argue with yourself and with circumstances. It also lies in your third rayphysical body which, again upon the mental line, increases the activity of your critical personality. It is yourself, however, whom you mainly criticise, but this can be as wrong and as unnecessary as criticising others. If you will let your soul influence your personality more definitely, working through your fourth ray mind and your sixth ray astral body, studying and utilising these lines of least resistance, you will make rapid progress towards that goal you have set yourself in this life—the integration of soul and personality.
Be not discouraged, my brother. If you and all your group brothers will work on these ray ideas and deal with yourselves as unified wholes and not with yourselves as composites, you will soon be ready for group work in healing. For this I am planning.
REVIEW ON LIGHT
1. What constitutes a review?
a. What, in my estimation, would constitute a reviewing of my day with the idea of Light predominating?
b. In a review, am I asked to re-do or re-experience, or should I assume the attitude of the Onlooker, who stands "steady in the light?"
2. Am I capable of learning to walk in the light and thus finally of achieving illumination?
3. Can I see myself mentally as standing in the light of my soul and do I know the meaning of steady reflection?
4. If I use this review on light as it should be used, what will be the effect in my life, and what will be the effect in the life of the group whom I serve?
5. Can I honestly say that I know how to stand aside as a personality and turn the light upon the problems of my daily life?
6. For what reason do I want to walk in the light?
a. Because I seek personal illumination?
or
b. Because I want to help in enlightening those around me?
7. If this review work is a definitely scientific method of bringing about subjective results with objective changes, what will these results and changes be?
8. What basis can I find in my study work which would indicate that I could be illumined and thus intensify my capacity for service and my increased usefulness upon the Path?
9. Is my progress upon the Path of importance? Why?
10. If it is true that the blind must advance by touching, but that those with sight move by seeing, and by keeping free and unattached, why then, having sight, do I not walk more definitely in the light?
11. Is my mind the organ of vision for the spiritual man, and am I offering this organ to the higher self to use?
12. Can I hold the mind steady in the light?
13. As I review my day, what part has illumination played?
14. How do I define the phrase "light of the Soul"?
15. Light is a quality of the soul. In that light,
a. Can I forget the fragmentary personal self?
b. Can I recognise the one self in all selves?
16. We are told that there is an archetype, a pattern, a ray, a goal and a light which shines from the Path.
Realising this, do I know anything of the freedom from worry which should enlighten my way?
17. In what manner is the light reflected in my life?
18. Do I recognise my fellow pilgrims on the way of light?
19. Can I draw consciously upon the light when others need it?
20. I am the redeemer of the lower nature. In what manner does light aid this redemption?
21. Has there been one moment this day in which the light has poured through me?
22. The nature of the soul is light. Experience of this light is achieved through mind control. What does mind control signify to me?
23. By what problems and on what occasions is the light in me most easily evoked?
24. Have I brought light to others today?
25. If I did demonstrate light, did I do it consciously or did it just pour through me?
26. What activities and qualities of my lower nature need to be eliminated if the light is to lighten my way?
27. What is the main hindrance to my enlightenment?
28. In what manner can I use the light in order to help my fellowmen?
29. In what way can I most truly serve my fellowmen?
August 1937
MY BROTHER:
During the past six months, you have made definite progress and are now far more of a strength, inner and stable, to my group than you have ever been. Preserve this stability and this freedom from criticism which you have in some real measure achieved, seeing to it that this stability does not crystallise into a static condition or this freedom from criticism does not interfere with the quality of free analysis.
This group of disciples is more aligned, and integrated, than it was and if this integration proceeds and rapport is more strongly established, we can indeed proceed to work later on. This work is, in the last analysis, dependent upon certain rightly established rapports:
1. Between the group members and myself, your Tibetan Brother.
2. Between the group, as a whole, and the Hierarchy.
3. Between this group of chelas and other groups in my Ashram.
4. Between the individual members in the group.
I would ask you to ponder on these matters.
I have said that I would deal with the rays of the personality vehicles during the coming instructions, so that you can realise your individual problem more easily and, therefore, more quickly fit yourself for service. As you know, your personality ray is the fifth and your mental ray is the fourth and the ray of your physical body is the third: 5-4-3. These are the Rays of Concrete Knowledge, of Harmony through Conflict (wrought out, therefore, in your case in the mind nature) and Active Intelligence. It will be apparent to you then, if you think clearly, why your physical vehicle is such a good response apparatus to mental impression, and why your life problem is tied in with the physical plane location or environment where your personality finds itself. Your problems come far more from your circumstances and your environment than from within yourself. Is this not so, my brother? This is not so usual a condition as might appear. You are singularly free from inner complexes but also singularly responsive to outer circumstance. Ponder on this, because it will make your way of life more clear, and will greatly facilitate your progress on the Way.
The inhibitions to the free play of the light of the soul through you in your environment are not be found in any particular mental or astral reaction but in the response your entire personality makes to your outer environing conditions. That response produces an outer swirl of forces in your aura wherein comes opportunity for your fourth ray mind to produce harmony through conflict, and skill in action, which is the true significance of the subsidiary names of this ray, called frequently the Ray of Art or Beauty. It is the ray of creative living, and not creative art. Creative living produces beauty and harmony in the outer life, so that others can see the achievement.
How can this skill in action be produced? How can this predisposition of yours to produce harmony in spite and because of conflict be facilitated? By a strongly mental meditation which will bring in the light of the soul, which, in your case, is love-wisdom, and bring it in such power that the combination of wisdom and of skill in action (in order to manifest harmony) will produce the emergence of the inner pattern into the outer theme of your daily living. I would point out to you that you are more strongly on the wisdom line than on the love line, and, under our plan of individual analysis, you would be listed as on the "Buddha Way" more than upon the "Christ Way." To work this out effectively, you should concentrate your attention upon this theme of wise and skilful living, as it expresses itself in your environment. This will tend to extrovert you very considerably, to focus you on physical plane living, and to bring your brain consciousness (and consequently your outer activities) into line with soul wisdom and soul desire.
There is no particular need for you at this time to pay much attention to your astral or emotional condition. Focus your inner attention in two aspects of your nature: the soul and the brain, through the use of the illumined mind. You will see, therefore, why I asked you the questions I did in the last instructions, and required your defined answers.
I will give you a fourth ray meditation which must be carefully followed by you until you next hear from me. Do this meditation rapidly, at a point of tension and of fusion, and do it dynamically with all the power of your illumined will behind it....
Proceed with confidence, my brother, knowing that all is well. You have two major physical plane problems which are well recognised by you and are known to me. Solve them, if possible, during the coming six months by the aid of the thoughts which I have today given you.
May 1938
BROTHER OF MINE:
It will, I know, be a source of great satisfaction to you that some in my group are starting definite group work in healing. You are on the active line and it will be of peculiar benefit to you to thus cooperate, for it will do more to integrate your personality and your soul into one functioning unit than any other one exercise. For this reason, I do not intend to do more than give you a short breathing exercise which I would ask you to carry forward regularly before doing the group meditation. This exercise will aid in swinging your various bodies into a rhythm which will facilitate the downflow of the healing force which—in this group work—must come from the soul. The group is not really working (as does the average healer), with the etheric prana....
This exercise will build up a closer group rapport and is in the nature of a special service which you are rendering to the group, and will establish a kind of rhythmic impact upon the patient, thereby weaving a path of light to him along which the healing energy can flow.
Your last instructions are full of suggestions to you which should become clearer and more helpful as you study them and bring to them a growing inspiration. I would ask you to study them in the light of your gained experience and the new assignments given to my disciples.
There will be for you several important changes during the next two years, both in your life and your environment. Be prepared to recognise them and to gain from them that inner development which the right handling of the presented situation should—and will—give.
This is all I have to say to you at this time, my brother.
NOTE: This disciple is still loosely affiliated with the Tibetan's work and is still, on occasion, in touch with the Tibetan. Of him, the Tibetan remarks that this affiliation is permitted because "he lived fully up to the light that was in him and that his failure (if so it might be called) was due to the fact that he was at the very beginning of the Path of Discipleship."
To C. A. C.
August 1937
MY BROTHER:
You have been asked to serve in my group of disciples for three reasons. It might interest you to know what they are, for then you can serve more intelligently, and that is ever your desire. I give them to you in order of their importance, beginning with the least important at the present time and yet, perchance, with one which you can most easily recognise.
1. An ancient karmic link with me, your Tibetan Teacher, and also with a co-worker, in a chosen field of service.
2. A basic and lifelong interest in the field of education. This will make our chosen theme for study to have much significance and interest for you.
3. A definite and recognised inclination towards all that concerns the New Age. It is this consciousness of the new incoming influences which has brought you into a New Age group.
I am glad, my brother, to have you associated with this group and I believe that you will benefit much, as well as bring much of benefit to others. Such work as you are now undertaking brings with it its own difficulties and problems. These are not yet particularly apparent as the group is only in process of integrating and the true group problems (to which I am here referring) can only emerge after the group brothers have worked together for some little time. They are problems of temperament and occasionally of injudicious action, problems of understanding and of interpretation, and also problems of application of the peculiar New Age teachings to the present time. This latter problem involves also the problem of right compromise, and a true sense of the time values.
The life period ahead of you is that of the sannyasin, of the one who—having tasted to the full of life experience—is now dedicated to the life of spiritual values and to their teaching to others. Ponder on this.
I am assigning you no special work. I would ask you to study the instructions I have given to this group with care and with as much speed as is consistent with careful study and understanding. You can then take up the work intelligently along with the other group members, and proceed with them to the next step and the next unit of teaching.
I know you have thought much upon the subject of which rays condition you and which forces are available for you to use. Let me tell you what are your rays and the dominant forces with which you have to work in this incarnation:
Your soul ray is the first Ray of Will or Power, as is also the ray of your physical body. Hence, if you so choose, comes the facility and ease with which your soul can impress your brain. This tends also to make you very intuitive, though not at all psychic. It gives you—again if you so choose—organising power, and the use of a dynamic, spiritual will which can carry you through and over all obstacles. Use it, my brother, with greater frequency—not on others but on yourself and in connection with anything you seek to do in the working-out of the Plan.
Your personality ray is the second Ray of Love-Wisdom and this enables you safely to evoke and use your first ray Will, for it will then be inevitably modified by your personality focus. You will note, therefore, how this tends to make you fairly well-balanced, when you act as a personality or as a soul.
Your mental body is on the fourth Ray of Harmony through Conflict and this, at times, upsets your balance and your equilibrium. Your desire for harmony sometimes produces short-sighted vision and you tend to act precipitately. When this occurs, you later discover that you initiated conflict instead of having instituted harmony, as had been your original intention. But you can learn much thereby, because, in the last analysis, the fourth ray governs humanity itself as well as this planet, the earth; your fourth ray mind can always, therefore, put you in touch with the world of men, and do it with greater safety than can your emotional nature. This fact, coupled with the wisdom and love of your personality, should aid you greatly in the task of working with people which is your chosen field of endeavour and expression.
Your astral body is, as I dare say you have suspected, upon the sixth Ray of Devotion. This gives you idealism, devotion to causes, your power to sacrifice and your determination always to produce good out of seeming evil. This latter characteristic is outstandingly yours. I would like here to call to your attention that there is a lack found in your equipment of the modifications of the first ray line of energy. You have none of the forces of the third, fifth, or seventh rays in you at all. Balance is preserved through your first ray aspects. Therefore we have:
1. Your soul ray—first Ray of Will or Power.
2. Your personality ray—second Ray of Love-Wisdom.
3. Ray of the mind—fourth Ray of Harmony through Conflict.
4. Ray of the astral body—sixth Ray of Devotion.
5. Ray of the physical body—first Ray of Will or Power.
August 1938
MY BROTHER:
I feel that if you had to define just what the past year of experience and service has given you that you would register it as a sense of greater inner certitude and assurance, particularly in service. You will find that assurance is held before you as the goal of your spiritual endeavour. You have made much progress towards this goal lately and your first ray soul can anchor itself firmly in this personality quality and can do so with safety as the grace of humility is fundamentally natural to you.
Your field of service is growing, which is ever the reward of service rendered. You have now also gained a release from much ancient responsibility; this should leave you still more free for the future. What the future can hold for any person, it is not possible these days to foretell, for planetary conditions are such that no forecast is unalterably correct—not even for a member of the Hierarchy. For you, there will be the need for decision on various points and to this end I call your attention to another quality which is Consecration. Let all changes take place in your life as the result of right decision which must, in its turn, be based on a true soul orientation and dedication. Decisions must not be made as the result of any outer influence.
You might ask me at this point upon what a right decision should be based and I would reply in the following terms:
1. On that which offers itself to you as spiritual opportunity but which can be carried out without relinquishing right and inescapable obligations. I say right obligations and not personality inclinations.
2. On that which will give you a wider field of service so that all your powers and gifts and acquired talents may be called into play and give you that rounded out development which will equip you for your next life of activity.
3. On that which can be done best by you and by no one else. Doors open and close and the disciple in training has to cultivate that spiritual, instinctual response which will enable him to know through which door his soul desires him to pass.
The only exercise I am going to give you at this time is to ask you to take five minutes, prior to the group meditation, for pondering on the familiar words, "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength."
January 1940
MY BROTHER:
The glamour which constitutes your major limitation is in a peculiar sense a time glamour and affects you in two ways. One way affects you in strict relation to yourself and of it no one is aware; and the other affects all that you do on the outer plane of appearances and of daily living. In the adjustment of these two and in the attaining, first of all, of a mental attitude towards time as immortality and, secondly, of a command of time so that it is the agent of creative beauty in your life, you will master the last lesson which this particular incarnation has been intended to teach you. I do not desire to be more explicit.
As you steadily study time from the forward looking angle and time in reference to the future, you will discover an emphasis which needs altering in your thought life; as you study time in reference to the daily task, you will bring into your output of service to humanity and for us, a directed synthesis and an enhanced potency which is at present lacking. A sense of time and of its relation to the soul is one of the most absorbing and useful studies of the disciple; an understanding of the relation of the past to the future and their united effect in the present will create one of the levers which will open for you the Door of Initiation. I believe, my brother, that if you will meditate upon this that you will conclude—as I have done whilst studying you—that control of the time factor is the main need at this time. It will be for you to give a name to the particular glamour in connection with threefold time which is your main hindrance. Work at this problem during the coming year and, as you work, clarification will come. You will note that I am not here dealing with faults. At your particular age, life habit, developed tendencies, acquired good, and unconquered faults are firmly established. Go forward with your equipment as it is in full self-forgetfulness but seek to establish a rhythm in connection with time which will eventuate in a re-organisation, a fuller service and a more effective expression of the soul. Study, if you care to do so, the significance of rhythm as it produces melody and causes harmony.
July 1940
BROTHER OF MINE:
You have had much of strain, difficulty and mental readjustment during the past year, but then who has not in these days of world strain, world difficulty and world adjustment. I would point out here that enforced adjustment(from which there is no escape) is one thing and simply involves acquiescence, the cultivation of a willingness to accept with understanding that which may not be avoided. There is another form of adjustment which grows out of conditions which are self-initiated and which are based on the effort to handle your own life and a capacity to recognise the place and time to effect changes and, ruthlessly and as a soul, bring about those conditions and situations to which the personality—under the urgency of the soul—must adjust itself. One situation, the first, is based upon the past, under the Law of Cause and Effect. The other is based upon the fore-knowledge of the soul, sensed by the intuitive personality and concerns the future. To both, you bring a certain type of equipment and this is the thing of practical import.
You will note how this fits in with my comments on time found in my instruction to you last January. I might almost call this the second lesson upon the right use of time which is so essential in your case, though not exactly in the sense that your personality would apply my words. Time has to be grasped by you in its cyclic nature and in the inevitable swing of the pendulum between past and future as they both affect the present; secondly, in the adjustment which you have to make in the present in relation to these two. Later, as you come to know yourself more wisely and to comprehend the working out in the present life of the established habits, qualities and tendencies brought into expression in past lives, you will find yourself increasingly being conditioned by emerging tendencies which are the effect of soul contact and soul impulse. These concern the future. You will then come to a fresh understanding of time and to a sense of the urgency and importance of each moment in the present. It is this process of interplay between that which has been, that which will be and that which is at any given moment which creates you, the personality, and this is for you the most needed concept. It serves to give importance to the present and also directs the future. You may perhaps wonder why I emphasise this question of time in your particular case. There is always in each disciple at any given moment of his incarnated life some one aspect of development which is of more importance than another. The right understanding and the right use of time is for you the major significant lesson. When understood and relegated to its rightful place and when wisely used, you will experience an amazing release. The implication of these words is far deeper than you might think.
These basic requirements in a disciple, expressed and understood, are conditioned by the quality of the energy pouring through the etheric body. I have given to each of you an analysis of your rays, five in number. Later, I will endeavour to show you all the state of the etheric body which is the prime conditioning factor as far as physical plane expression is concerned. This body is the aggregate manifestation of all the energies at any one moment which may be concentrated through the seven centres. It is these centres which indicate to us who watch the point in evolution, the immediate limitation, need and the inherent possibilities. The response of the physical body is purely automatic to the impression or impulses coming from the vital body. This in itself is responsive to certain sources of energy—these may be one or other of the personality vehicles, the personality note or the direction of the soul, producing impression in varying degrees.
During the coming period until such time as I give out the next group instruction, I would ask you to discipline your time, making each moment count; I would ask you to perfect each life episode and event (which is only another word for time) so that they are as constructive in expression of the group will as you can make them. This, you will never regret doing.
As regards your personal meditation, we will pursue the same theme. You have a capacity to use the will and at the same time to be inclusive (more inclusive in your consciousness than you yet are in expression) which is very real. The one calls into activity your soul; the other deepens and sweetens your personality, and I think you will be the first to admit that both these qualities are desirable.
PERSONAL MEDITATION
1. Relax and focus yourself in the soul. Then sound the O.M., breathing it out upon the world of men and saying to yourself inaudibly:
"The will of God moves the world." This is the thought lying behind your use of the O.M.
2. Then ponder upon the significance of time as an expression of the will, realising that this expression is a thought—instantaneous and effective—in the mind of the planetary Logos. Think out carefully some of the implications of this last statement.
3. Then say slowly and thoughtfully:
"The past has gone. I am that past. It makes me what I am. The future comes. I also am the coming destiny and, therefore, I am that. The present flows from out the past. The future colours that which is. I make the future also by my present knowledge of the past and the beauty of the present. And, therefore, I am that I am."
4. Sound the O.M. softly three times.
I am responsible for this work and I would ask you to proceed as indicated and, my brother, to trust me, your teacher and friend.
NOTE: This disciple was given the opportunity to work but did not carry through and resigned early in the work.
To I. S. G-L.
March 1934
MY BROTHER:
There are several things which I seek to say to you today and several suggestions which I seek to make. From a work and life of much outer usefulness, you pass now for the remainder of your life to one of intenser, interior application. Your work will be increasingly subjective, and this in no way will mitigate your usefulness which should increase as the years go by. Later, I will indicate to you some work which can—with advantage—prove of usefulness to your fellowmen but the time is not yet.
You, as well as two other disciples in my group, are starting to work with me at this time with a most definite end in view. You are all of you very individual, and you have for years stood alone. To work as a unit along your chosen line of service has been your task. For all such souls, it is a problem to be faced when the time comes for their identities to be merged in a group soul and their personal isolation is thereby infringed and negated.
With you, however, this isolation is not the result of any separative tendency of the lower mind, for that is offset in you by your deep-seated love of the Masters and of humanity. It is the result of the essential loneliness which has beset your path, as it does the path of all disciples, and the development of that instinctive reticence which is an aspect of the necessary equipment of all who are struggling towards the Portal of Initiation. The vow of silence which all disciples take must still be kept, but the power to share knowledge, experience and the gains of illumination must at the same time be cultivated; in the light which streams forth from the centre of Light, all that concerns the personality and service must stand revealed. All secrets must fade away, yet the revelations which come as one progresses along the Path must be held in the secret chamber of the heart where none may see them but those who share the same secrets. The reticence to be cultivated is that of relationship with the group of Masters and the Hierarchy, plus the knowledges you share with those who walk shoulder to shoulder with you upon the Way. You withhold also, as dangerous, knowledge which you may have from those who are not yet upon the Path of Discipleship. It is skill in action and in the distribution of information which must be developed. I mention this so that you may know the rightness of your attitude but also in order that you may gather the fact that the present cycle of loneliness is still objectively true but subjectively ended. Do you understand what I mean, my brother?
You have two handicaps and they must be considered. One is your physical condition and the other is your emotional polarisation. This latter condition is largely responsible for the first one, as you yourself know. As you learn to shift the force of your soul from below the diaphragm to the higher centres (which is the problem of all disciples in training) your physical condition will be alleviated. One of the first things, therefore, which you will have to do is to close the solar plexus centre to the entrance of forces from the astral plane, and open it to the entrance of forces from soul levels, via the head centre. You must learn to function also more powerfully from the centre between the eyebrows, the ajna centre.
The heart centre and the solar plexus centre are the two centres which are the most developed in you; next comes the throat centre. How shall we bring about the change from the solar plexus centre to the ajna centre? Through right meditation, my brother, and right breathing. I will ask you, therefore, for the next few months to follow the suggested routine below for a few minutes—fifteen at least—each day. This need not interfere with any meditation which you may choose to do, provided that you see to it that you preserve always a point of focus in the head. All your work with me—at any rate for the present—must be done in the head. There must the consciousness be held steady. I would suggest that you work as follows:
1. Start your meditation work by imagining (great is the power of the creative imagination) that you are consciously carrying the forces, entering the solar plexus centre, to the ajna centre.
a. Inhale as you count six and imagine as you do so that you are gathering up the force of the solar plexus centre (through an act of inhalation) to the head. Picture it as rising there—up the spinal column.
b. Then, as you count eight, think of those forces from the astral plane as being lost and merged in an ocean of intelligent love. On their way up the spine, they have been blended with the active force of the awakening heart centre.
c. Then exhale for six counts and as you do so realise that these forces are pouring out through the centre between the eyebrows on to the world of men. The centre between the eyebrows is that of the integrated, dedicated, threefold personality. Therefore, you have:
Inhalation . . . 6 counts — Gather the forces up to the head.
Interlude . . . . 8 counts — Forces blended and fused.
Exhalation . . . 6 counts — Blessing the world.
Interlude . . . . 8 counts — Realisation of work done.
Later we might increase these counts but this suffices for the present and for the beginner who may read your instructions. This will aid in the closing of the solar plexus centre and in stabilising the emotional body; incidentally it should improve your general physical condition.
2. Then, holding the consciousness steady in the head, at the close of the final interlude, say the following invocation:
"May the energy of the divine Self inspire me and the light of the soul direct. May I be led from darkness to Light, from the unreal to the Real, from death to Immortality."
3. Then, still holding the consciousness in the head and visualising a sphere of deep electric blue, vivid and living, say the following words, endeavouring to realise their significance as you say them:
"I stand in spiritual Being and, as a soul, I serve.
"I stand within the Light, and as the light shines throughout my form, I radiate that light.
"I stand within the love of God, and as that love streams through and from the heart, I magnetise the ones I seek to aid."
4. Ponder then for five minutes on the spiritual significance of the following four words: Stability, Serenity, Strength, Service, taking one each week for a month; for the space of six months build them into your very nature, thus aiding the work of closing the solar plexus and transmuting its force.
In a voluntary obedience to the suggested work (and not to me, my brother) will come for you increased power to live with joy and serve. This is, I know, your high and consecrated motive. Keep the link with me through the power of thought and not through love and devotion; that you already have, my friend of olden days, and you need not further unfold that aspect of your nature. Build up your physical body through relaxation, much sunshine and quiet. Read much and study primarily along the lines of international interest and those things which concern humanity as a whole. You are on the first ray where your personality is concerned, and broad general schemes and the wider plans are for you easy to grasp. See the world picture whole and shift the focus of your attention from the small, individual man to the larger Plan. Investigate the psychology of groups. You have wide knowledge as to the psychology of individuals. Study now world psychology and mass movements. Together we go forward to a wider realisation and my work with you as an individual is not so much to teach as to stimulate. My blessing rests upon you.
August 1934
MY BROTHER OF OLDEN TIME:
I am myself feeling my way with this particular group of my disciples. I find it necessary to work slowly. I seek not to change the work assigned until the group is more developed. In every small group of disciples there is always one among the members of the group who has a definite point of contact that brings in the integrating force, just as a Master, at the centre of His Ashram is the integrating, cohesive energy. You can serve in this way with this group of disciples because you have for many years followed the Way. You have, therefore, a specific responsibility to the group which you fulfil by holding yourself steadily in the light, by constantly lifting up your heart unto the Lord of your life, and by constituting yourself a channel of light and love to your co-disciples. This I ask of you. This is all that I have to say to you today.
March 1935
MY BROTHER AND MY FRIEND:
(For such you have been for many lives, e'en if your present physical brain registers not the fact.) The past year has been a hard one for you, as it has necessarily been for all who are sensitive and whose physical bodies are ill-equipped to stand the modern pressure or to carry the inner, spiritual force available. It has been particularly hard for you also to establish the inner link with your fellow disciples and this you have realised and it has troubled you. The difficulty is due to the fact that your polarisation is essentially that of the man devoted to the Hierarchy and whose link is established with that Hierarchy. Your orientation—esoterically speaking—is towards Shamballa. I use that phrase because it connotes something definitely intelligible to you. I seek not to be more explicit, for you will comprehend the significance of what I say. You serve and love your fellowmen because we, the teachers on the inner side also serve and love them; your approach to humanity and to your co-disciples is via Those Whom you serve upon "the Lighted Way of the Lord of Life."
You work with human beings and you seek to integrate into this group of mine because I, whom you know and love, have asked you so to do. This is of assistance to you but there must be for you a still greater achievement. As you realise the status of your soul, you must come to the understanding that you serve with us and not simply because you are asked to serve. Give to your group brothers of that great gift of love which is so fundamentally yours but which is as yet only in process of finding full expression. Your problem is summed up in the word which I earlier gave you. I told you that you were shifting egoically from the sixth Ray of Devotion on to the second Ray of Love-Wisdom—the ray whereon I myself am found. Your first ray personality gives you power with men and this power you know you possess, and you have endeavoured to use it wisely. Your sixth ray soul-polarisation has served to enhance the dynamic one-pointedness of your first ray force. Now that condition is beginning to change and during this transition period you suffer much. But you have the task of making this transition and of embodying the love-wisdom force before the close of this life and, my brother, it is one requirement that you can fulfil. You can also guard yourself from too much suffering over others and over general life conditions and in this wise detachment your first ray energy can aid.
From the angle of the mind, this soul activity and change of focus will force your idealistic tendencies to find expression in teaching. Idealism is the major gift of the sixth ray force. Teaching is an expression of second ray energy. This combination of idealism and of teaching is for you the way.
From the angle of the emotional body, this transition marks a vital change from personal to impersonal work. This capacity to be impersonal has been greatly developed in you by your first ray lower nature which renders you easily impersonal—if you so choose. But for you the lesson of all disciples must be learned which is to be impersonally personal. That is not easy of attainment. An attached detachment is for you the goal. It is in order to aid you in learning this lesson that you have been placed in my group of disciples, which can (for the time at least) provide the "playground" for your soul. To love your co-disciples, impersonally to identify yourself with the subjective life of the group and to work in rhythm with them is somewhat difficult for you, but most valuable. I ask you to attempt it, my brother, and to pursue this objective in spite of all personality objections. In a few years' time, you will better understand my plans for you.
From the angle of the etheric body, this soul transition or refocussing of energies from the soul plane will produce the transfer of energies, gathered up and poured through the central clearing-house of the solar plexus centre—through that midway station between the higher and the lower centres—to the head and heart. This will be carried forward as you seek to live more consciously in the soul realm and to be more definitely oriented—as a soul—to the world. This will in no way change your outer activities but will surely produce a deepened relation to your fellowmen. Increasingly will you see them in us and us [217] in them. Ponder on these ideas for I seek to see you working with even more effectiveness and liberation.
I have already indicated to you your responsibility to my group of disciples and your function in my group. The power through which this particular group will integrate must come through you. Each of my disciples has something to give to the group as a whole.... I tell you again that the force which expresses itself in loving, magnetic, coherent energy must pour to all of this group through you; upon this task I ask you to meditate.
The only meditation which I would suggest to you is along this line. Ponder deeply on group work and study carefully all I have said on group activity and the technique of the new groups. This experiment in group activity which I am attempting to initiate is of real potential value; for the furthering of its success I seek your aid. Make the idea and the ideals of group work in the New Age your major study during the next six months. You will not regret so doing.
November 1935
MY BROTHER AND MY FELLOW WORKER:
For all disciples, in the truest and the most significant sense, the past few months have constituted an intense period of trial, of testing and of suffering. From this you have naturally not been exempt. Let not this, however, sadden you and do not ponder too deeply upon your reactions to all that has happened. That you could weaken under it or that you could in any way relinquish your fiery aspiration has in no way caused me anxiety. Of this, there is no fear. But that the strain could become so heavy that all your powers would be given simply to standing steady and that you would have no strength to live joyously—that is a point which I have definitely considered.
There is no cause whatever for discouragement. Today, in this hour of world stress and need, we are looking for disciples who can live joyously and with no concern as to their individual capacity to measure up to opportunity. We look for those who are caused no bewilderment or anxiety as to their failure to measure up to opportunity or their failure to live up to their own vision of discipleship. Live up to our vision, brother of old, and know that time is of no moment and that the soul grows and expands its flower of life as it reaches towards the sun. It sends its beauty and aroma forth into the world of souls and hence into the world of men.
One hint only would I give you at this time. Your one-pointed devotion is known and the powerful vibration of your aspiration is realised. Let devotion now be transmuted into an all-embracing love to all beings, so that that love can unfold within its radiation the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown, the loved and that which needs loving. Such is the attitude of consciousness which radiates from the Lord of Life.
Watch your physical strength somewhat and live not at so high a tension. Relax a little during the coming months and foster those lighter moments of relaxation which give to your soul opportunity to attend to its own affairs upon its own high level. Then it can return in greater force and with a more potent vibration to its habitation—the threefold personality. This the disciple is apt to forget in the intensity of his longing for soul contact, for illumination and realisation and for conscious contact with his Master. That contact, remember, when once established upon the Path of Discipleship, is never broken. Stand, therefore, upon this belief and relax and play at times.
As has been my habit in relation to you, I am leaving you to handle your own meditation. I suggest, however, that you centre it around the problem of group life, in its pure, essential meaning and that you seek to work out the rules for group living which I have laid down.
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