SECTION TWO - PERSONAL INSTRUCTIONS TO DISCIPLES - PART 10
My brother, I ask you to persevere without discouragement and with no undue pondering upon results achieved. You are not in a position rightly to gauge your own progress. Continue to serve and to work and leave realisation with its results and effects to take place naturally without any forcing of the process. Your soul is active and just now its attention is turned in power towards its instrument; your vibratory rate, your power in service, can increase; and your opportunity at this time is real. The physical brain is not yet in a condition wherein the inner activities can be accurately registered but that is no indication that that activity is not great and right. Comply with my suggestions and keep in close touch, subjectively and objectively if possible, with your group brothers.
August 1936
MY FRIEND OF OLD:
The past six months have seen you making many re-adjustments in your life. As you have fulfilled your outer obligations in the various fields of life expression, there has been a simultaneous freeing of yourself from the "pulling hands" of associated friends and people. The necessity for an inner freedom, preserved inviolate, is for you an urgent one, but you are learning fast the lesson that freedom is a state of mind and not a condition of being. The fear of an isolated loneliness has oft beset you, yet you have realised at the same time that that type of loneliness is oft the setting of the disciple. The increased sensitivity of a disciple's vehicles causes him gradually to become aware of the true world of subtler values.
For what you are being prepared you have been told and know. You know also that a deeper attachment to humanity, paralleling a finer and more clear-cut and clearly realised detachment is for you, therefore, a major objective. I have in this last sentence summed up for you your immediate problem, and I tell you also for your encouragement that you are making real progress towards your goal.
One thing, my brother, I feel you need to realise more definitely; that is that a life of fuller expression in outer service on the physical plane is required and would further aid you towards your goal. Your problems are, however, known to me and this extension of your outer influence (radiating from an inner controlled centre) and the developing of a wider range of contacts must come slowly. But it must surely come and will, if your intention and thought are directed towards these ends. As you grow older, there is much that you have to give. The wisdom which you have necessarily wrought out in the furnace of pain and of suffering must be available and used as the Way of Light and of Joy opens up before you. I hold out before you no illusions of a great work to be performed for which you are divinely predestined. The eventual great work, successfully carried forward, which falls to the lot of all who achieve the Great Initiations, grows out of a steadily expanding consciousness, a steady decentralisation, demonstrating in a constant outgoing in compassion and understanding to the needs of the little ones upon life's way, and a greater realisation of the nature of the whole. Learn, therefore, to include more people within the range of your daily thought. It is good exercise for the disciple in training. Let your influence, welling forth from a steady and radiant centre, make itself felt in ever widening ranges of contact. Seize each opportunity for a more expanded interplay with other lives, touching them wherever you possibly can, and achieve in that way that fluidity of response which will carry you forth upon the tide of an ever richer service.
You are at the point where you can—if you so will—achieve a higher and more potent rhythm. Its potency and its vibration must be felt outside the home circle and contacts or your relationships with your group brothers. In what manner that extension of service must demonstrate is for you gradually to find out. I but indicate to you possibility. One thing I can, however, tell you and that is that it will come through a deepening of your meditation life, and not through an outer search for such contacts; it will come through the development of a true spiritual understanding which will make the "magnetic beat" (as it is esoterically called) of such potency in your life that you will not need to move from where you are because those whom you can aid will come to you increasingly. For you, the consecrated pen, the dedicated hour, the quickness to seize an opportunity for a carefully chosen word, and the sense of reticent security which you can convey to others will be the chief methods which you will employ. Can you grasp the value to the troubled aspirant of finding in a brother that power to aid which is based on a trained reticence and a sure knowledge?
I am inclined to leave your meditation as it is at present, changing only the theme of your meditation. These themes I leave you to find for yourself, choosing them out of this personal word which I have given to you. Use those six sentences which seem to you the most helpful, and regard them as the thoughts around which you will build your mental and emotional life during the next six months.
February 1937
MY BROTHER:
You are learning the lesson of detachment with rapidity, and you are gradually standing free from the clinging hands of others. Just as the Great Renunciation of the fourth initiation is made possible by the many lesser renunciations of many lives, consciously undertaken, so the many acts of spiritual detachment lead eventually to the severing of that final thread which involves the death of all personality attachments. Then only those relationships are left which are upon soul levels. Your task is to learn to differentiate between such spiritual detachments and those enforced detachments which are undertaken on higher levels of astral awareness. The problem of the disciple is to reach a point where he is not hindered or held back by any human being and yet so to handle himself as far as attitude is concerned that he hurts no one in the process of withdrawal. The outer personality claims of attachment are oft so powerful that their clatter and their rattle prevent awareness of the golden thread which links us with another soul. Likewise, overestimation of another person can act as a real hindrance. The chains must break, leaving only a golden thread between each soul—a golden thread which cannot break.
Two things I would impress upon you at this time, and upon them I would ask you to work until the next period comes around.
First, deepen your power of expression and begin to train others through a more definite outer service. You have always been able to work subjectively with others. This has been one of your major assets in group work. You arementally magnetic, and through a controlled astral body, you interfere not emotionally with that magnetic influence. This is, for you, an established habit and will persist; it is the result of many years of reflection and of thought control, plus (in this life) academic training. For the rest of your life seek to become magnetic through the written word, through identification with the one you seek to help, through the magnetic power of your mind, enhanced by your soul and contained and embodied in the form of written help. I am seeking your help in training aspirants to become conscious disciples. Give of that aid, and thereby achieve that magnetic usefulness which will greatly increase your power to serve.
Secondly, the following occult message will give to you, if you employ the intuition, the indication of the next spiritual achievement ahead of you—one that can be quickly accomplished if there is right understanding, or which can be learnt with pain and difficulty if such understanding lacks.
"The key is found; and with the pressure of the hands in service of the light, and with a beating heart of love, the key is turned. The door swings open wide.
"With hasty feet the one who hastens towards the light enters the door and waits. He holds the door ajar for those who follow after. He thus, in action, waits.
"A voice sounds forth: My brother, close the door, for each must turn the key with his own hand, and each must enter through that door alone.
"The blazing light within the Temple of the Lord is not for all at the same moment or hour of the day. Each knows his hour. Your hour is now. So, brother, close the door. Remember, those behind know not the door has opened, or the door has closed. They see it not. Rest on that thought, my brother, and passing through the door, close it with care, and enter upon another stage upon the Way—alone and not alone."
I would change your meditation at this time, for the group meditation is intended to supersede the individual meditation in the majority of cases. I would however give you a brief exercise to perform which may help in theexternalising of your magnetic power.... Do this exercise every day with slow and measured thought, and with no sense of haste and no looking for results. The results are inevitable if the exercise is faithfully and rightly carried forward.
Enter into a closer relationship with me, my brother. There are things which I can say to you in the moments of high meditation and at the time of the full moon approach.
This is all that I have to say to you at the present.
September 1937
BROTHER OF OLD:
There are, in my group of disciples, certain people who are outstandingly called to live the life of the sannyasin, the life of the one who—having fulfilled the duties of the scholar, of the householder, of the family man, and of the business man—is now called to that attitude of life and that orientation to other purposes and goals which we technically call that of the sannyasin, or the teaching disciple. In the olden times, such a man left his home and his business and went out into the world, following the gleam, seeking the Master, and ever teaching as he went. Today, in the life of our Western civilisation and under the dawning influence of the New Age, the call remains the same but the disciple goes not out, leaving all the familiar scenes behind and negating his outer usefulness. He remains where he is, continuing with the outer and physical fulfilment of duty, but within a great change and a definite re-orientation takes place. His attitude to life and affairs is basically altered. His whole inner life tendency becomes that of a planned withdrawing. He is passing through that stage upon the Way to which Patanjali refers inThe Yoga Sutras under the term "right abstraction." It differs somewhat from the process called "detachment," because that process or motivated activity is applied primarily to the astral-emotional nature, to the desire life, whatever those attachments or desires may happen to be. This is a mental activity; it is an attitude of mind which affects primarily the entire life-attitude of the personality. It involves not only the detachment of the desire nature from that which is familiar, desired and appropriated from long habit, but it involves also a complete readjustment of the entire lower threefold man to the world of souls.
It is here that right habits and attitudes in life to the world of business, and of family relations play their part, enabling the sannyasin to "continue on the upward way with heart detached and free," and yet to do so whilst performing right action, through right habit and right desire, to all with whom his lot is cast. To this difficult task your soul is now calling you. It constitutes your major life problem: To stand free whilst surrounded; to work in the subjective world whilst active in the exterior world of affairs; to achieve true detachment whilst rendering to all that which is due. An understanding of your ray types may greatly aid in this process of release, of relinquishment, and of final renunciation.
The ray of your mental body is the fifth, and because it is the same ray as that of your personality, you will have to guard with care against mental crystallisation, and the undue influence of the critical mind. This ray gives you ability in the field of knowledge, but it must be balanced by the unfoldment of the intuition; it gives you the power to master your chosen field of knowledge, but that power must be balanced by the simultaneous mastering of the world wherein love and wisdom control.
Your astral body is on the sixth ray but, as in the case of I.B.S., its major quality is devotion and devoted persistence, and not fanaticism. This energy is of immense value to you because it is, curiously enough, your only link with the great second ray of love in this particular incarnation. But it is a strong and powerful link.
Your physical body is controlled by the seventh ray, and this, as you will note, is also along the line of 1, 3, 5, 7. This is a point upon which you should ponder and reflect, for the aggregate of your ray tendencies constitutes for you a problem, and your sixth ray energy contributes the only balancing factor. And yet, my brother, you are in many respects well balanced. One hint I would here give to you in this connection and to all of you who study these instructions. The ray of the personality in a previous life leaves definite habits of thought and of activity; it has built into the life rhythm certain unalterable tendencies for which much gratitude can sometimes be felt. This is so in your own life. In a previous incarnation, your personality was on the second ray, thus leaving you with a deeply loving and understanding nature and a power to include, which is a major asset; it serves to offset the first ray tendencies which are so dominant in this particular life. It is hard for the disciple who sees not the picture whole, and who only knows the quality of the present life and its natural tendencies (due to ray influence) to think truly about himself.
Your rays therefore are:
1. The egoic ray—the first Ray of Will or Power.
2. The personality ray—the fifth Ray of Concrete Knowledge.
3. The ray of the mental body—the fifth Ray of Concrete Knowledge.
4. The ray of the astral body—the sixth Ray of Devotion.
5. The ray of the physical body—the seventh Ray of Ceremonial Magic.
February 1938
BROTHER OF OLD:
This group is nearing the time when it should begin to work with regularity at the problem of dissipating the world glamour. This it will do successfully just in so far as the individual members have freed themselves, or are freeing themselves, from their personal glamours. In these instructions, I have pointed out that you were one of those in the group who are in a measure freer than the majority from the blinding effects of glamour. I would ask you to preserve this condition for the helping of the group and as a group service. When it becomes possible to do this world work (done naturally behind the scenes) then there will have to be a stiffening in the attitude of the group members in relation to this problem in their own lives, for it will be the existence of personal glamours in the group members which—when they approach the problem of dealing with world glamour—will let it in unless there is this "positive stiffening"—if I may use such a term.
It is dangerous work, my brother, and I am mentioning it to you in this place because your fifth ray quality of mind can serve a useful group purpose. You are in a position to build a protecting wall (but not a separating barrier) around the group as a whole; it is to this activity I call you at this time. You can begin to prepare the way for the group activity. I am, therefore, giving you a meditation which has this service intent and I would ask you to do it for the next six months. It will strengthen your fifth ray quality, which is that of knowledge, and which, when present, can produce illumination. It is that quality which permits the man who has it, to stand steady in the light, to rest in pure being, and to become the true Observer. These qualities of steadiness with the intent to reflect light, of centralisation of the self, and of right observation are essential to this group. They must be developed as group qualities, if the work planned is to be safely undertaken. The producing of these group attitudes can be greatly assisted by you and through their intensification in your own life you can foster their growth in others. In a letter written to you a year or so ago, you will find another reason why you have this special service to render along these lines. Will you re-read that letter?
One of the things which I have endeavoured to do with this group of disciples is to give them a grasp of their personality problem by telling them the rays with which they predominantly work in order to help them subordinate the lower man to the spiritual man. You would profit by making a study of the fifth ray and by assimilating, as far as you can, the information anent this ray found in my books. It would be a profitable thing if students would gather together all the information they can anent their two major rays, with the view to practical work with themselves. This is for you a peculiarly valuable thing for both your personality ray and your mind ray are on the fifth line of force. You have, consequently, a real problem in connection with yourself and at the same time a real asset in connection with the group. You can aid them in gaining the needed group poise for the work to be done.
The Old Commentary, in speaking of the work of those whose dharma it is to dissipate world glamour, uses the following expressions:
"They come and stand. Within the midst of whirling forms—some of a beauty rare and some of horror and despair—they stand. They look not here or there but, with their faces turned towards the light, they stand. Thus through their minds the pure light streams to dissipate the fogs.
"They come and rest. They cease their outer labours, pausing to do a different work. Within their hearts is rest. They run not here and there, but form a point of peace and rest. That which upon the surface veils and hides the real begins to disappear and from the heart at rest a beam of dissipating force projects, blends with the shining light and then the mists of man's creation disappear.
"They come and they observe. They own the eye of vision; likewise they own the eye of right direction of the needed force. They see the glamour of the world, and seeing, note behind it all the true, the beautiful, the real. Thus through the eye of Buddhi comes the power to drive away the veiling swirling glamours of that glamorous world.
"They stand, they rest, and they observe. Such are their lives and such the service that they render to the world of men."
I would commend these lines to your careful thought. They convey to you, not only the field of your service, but also the desired attitude of your personal life. Most people have many glamours in their lives and link with facility with the world glamour. You have only one real point of glamour in your life and you do not tune in with facility with glamour. Could you see with clarity the one point of weakness in your astral life, based on devotion and idealistic interpretation, you would work with greater power and freedom.
In reference to your meditation work, continue as before, but when you have finished the work of building the symbols, and have sounded the O.M. three times, then take as your seed thoughts the following and meditate upon the themes indicated below:
1. The power to stand within the light, leading to right reflection of the light.
2. The power to rest in spiritual being, so as to focus the soul within the chosen field of service.
3. The power to attain right observation, so as to see correctly that which should be done.
Do this meditation with the consciousness focussed in your fifth ray mind but with your attention turned towards the astral world whereon your group is planning to work. This may at first produce an intensification of your own point of glamour and to guard against this you will have to institute watchfulness. Much good will eventuate if you make one definite and lasting gesture or act of freedom from your glamour (if you know what it is and face it with precision) and opportunity to do so may come to you in a few weeks' time. I wonder if you will recognise it, my brother, and have the spiritual independence to seize it.
I ask your assistance in this preparatory work and would ask you also to get in touch with L.U.T. who is also doing some work for me along another line. In conclusion I would point out that
1. Your soul energy normally finds expression through your fifth ray mind and it is wise for you to link this up with my earlier comments on this matter.
2. Your personality force is focussed in your seventh ray brain.
September 1938
MY BROTHER OF OLD:
You have now come back to your own group and to the one to which you were originally assigned, and for that I am glad though—with the rest of you—I deplore the cause. The glamour in which R.V.B. is involved is thick and at present impenetrable, but the primary reason for his leaving all his responsibilities and deserting his group brothers and his post, has been the need for certain personality adjustments and the righting of a serious mistake he made two lives ago. When he has worked through his karma and has achieved release from a certain thraldom, he will again proceed upon his way. In the meantime, his co-disciples will stand with silent faithfulness behind him, leaving him entirely free and yet ready, when the true freedom comes, to again recognise the outer as well as the inner relationship.
You have little to do, in order to pick up the threads of the group work, for you have for some time been interested in telepathic work and you are starting work with the group at a time when it is entering upon a new venture. There is no old technique to master but only a new one to be learnt—together.
You yourself have a ray combination very similar to that of R.S.U., but owing to your sixth ray astral body, the personality situation is saved. There is, as you know, a preponderance of the will-mind-activity in you but a powerful and well developed astral body has enabled you to express the love nature which you brought to a fairly high point of development in a previous life. This life has been for you a balancing one and [320] when you return again it should be with a second ray personality because the shift of this life expression, in combination with the last life, should bring about the evocation of a second ray personality, intelligently equilibrised.
I would point out to you, however, the problem which emerges when you have a straight line of contact between the first ray soul, the fifth ray personality, a fifth ray mind and a seventh ray brain. This leads to intelligent high grade work in your chosen profession but negates the free play of the intuition. This latter, however, is aided by the fact that at this time, your first ray soul focusses itself in the astral body and, therefore, greatly aids its expression by giving you emotional power (if you care to use it) and enabling you to release much magnetic force—again if you care to, which is seldom. The reason for this is that—through your definite soul contact—you tend to express the outstanding quality of the first ray which is loneliness, isolation (not separativeness with you, my brother, for that is not one of your faults), the ability to stand alone and unmoved. Your personality, as you have probably guessed, finds its focus of expression in the mental body. There is an easy line of fusion there.
For the rest of this life, your effort should be shifting the personality focus into the astral body, thus producing the flooding of your life expression with love, powerfully and intelligently expressed. This will also produce a closer fusion between your soul and the personality.
The only meditation exercise I will give you, at present, is one that will aid this fusion and release the magnetic quality of your life. You will have enough to do to incorporate your aspiration, life content and intelligent consciousness with your group, plus mastering the technique of the new work which they, too, are learning. Do this brief exercise in consciousness and visualisation, prior to the group work and meditation.
1. Sound the O.M. as a personality. Do so at the highest mental point, raising your aspiration at the same time, with the mind to the soul.
2. Sound the O.M. as the soul, breathing it out in the will-to-love all beings and arresting its descent at the astral body. Do this by an act of the will and the use of the creative imagination.
3. Having thus vitalised the astral body and imagined the fusion of soul, personality, and astral force, then direct this triple stream of energy to the heart centre, rushing it there, if I might so express it.
If you will do this faithfully and intelligently each day, with the power of your mind behind the work, you will very soon note results and those associated with you certainly will.
My steadfast understanding and my love is yours, my brother.
NOTE: This disciple is still actively cooperating with the Tibetan.
To S. C. P.
November 1931
MY BROTHER:
I would say to you in cryptic form: Study the meaning of the flame and of the wick and realise that there needs must be a wick to demonstrate the flame. Make your meditation definite and then anchor yourself to earth by certain specific activities, carried through to completion. Let your service be group service and not so much individual work as heretofore, and remember that the gift of power in meditation and the capacity to bring through the vital energy which makes things to be (which you can do) produces increasing detachment from physical plane realities; it can produce also the severing of lower contacts unless the energy is carried through on to the plane of earth happenings and works out in paralleling action. This faculty "to bring through," you began to demonstrate last spring. It should continue.
Carry your thought in meditation to the throat centre at the back of the neck and each day vitalise that centre so that the creative work is carried forward by you and you continue to cause things to be. The lesson of Being is not your lesson at present; it must be the lesson of selfless acting upon the physical plane. Go forward with the ordinary routine work as I have outlined it for these members of my Ashram, and let your spiritual diary take for you the place of speech. Strengthen the physical body and learn to avoid the taking on of those obligations which others can as properly handle.
In your meditation work you have asked the question: What hinders that can be sacrificed? Is this not so, my brother? I answer: Over-analysis of the reactions of others to what you say and do and an over-focussing of your attention upon the results of what you say. You know your field of service; therefore, serve. You know your group relations for this life; see that you are related!
You are not clear as to the hindrances existing in your personality. This is partly because your knowledge of the mechanics of that personality is less than that of the majority of my disciples because you have less academic knowledge. Avoid the glamour which comes from realisation of pure motive—and that you have. Your brain and soul have close alliance. A high grade astral body acts oft as a distorter where your vision of character is concerned. Where the Master's work and your own field of service are in question, clearly and truly you see. Where you yourself are concerned, the vision is not so clear yet the method of close self-analysis would land you in morbidity. In utter self-forgetfulness, therefore, know yourself and serve. Be silent towards your personality. Ponder on these cryptic words or phrasing, for they hold for you the truth.
June 1933
I would say to you, my brother, that the instructions which I last gave to you still carry for you the needed teaching—a teaching which, if followed, will lead to realisation. I have today but little to add. Will you again and with a lighted heart read what I there have said? Your progress on the Way and your power to take the kingdom of Heaven by violence is very real and the keys of the entrance lie within your grasp. But this power itself carries with it its own problem and its own solution. Only one vital thing stands in the way of a life of utter usefulness and that is the sixth ray quality of your personality. It is, as you know, the ray of devotion, of a fanatical idealism, of undue emphasis and this ray, when conditioning the personality, is apt to cause much trouble. The lesser light of that minor ray (in itself, divine) can shut out the full radiance of your soul. Study all you can find out about the nature of the sixth ray. Your point in evolution necessitates a dominant personality which must be understood by you if your full usefulness in my work is to be reached. Follow instructions, brother of mine. You can be used and when the lesser light is dimmed, the first ray quality of your soul will be turned increasingly to the work of illumined building with the aid of other souls. There is much to be accomplished if the work of the Hierarchy is to go forward as desired....
Your work in my group is known to you. It is twofold and that you also know. You can stand in the group as the embodiment of dynamic energy which, as I earlier told you, causes things to be. You can also stand as a tower of strength and let the strength of love pour through you.
Say daily the following words, as oft as you feel the urge and when you choose:
"The strength I touch and am, that strength I give. The central Light I reach so oft, I pass along the lighted Way to those who need that light. I seek to walk the ways of men as light and love and power. My strength and power come from the secret place and much I know. I live for others and must learn to lose myself in them."
June 1934
BROTHER OF MINE:
For you, there come now some months of inner consolidation. You have heightened your vibration since I last instructed you and have learnt and realised much of what the inner path of reality signifies. Such cycles of realisation must inevitably be succeeded by periods of quiet unemotional growth and assimilation. During these months, the high moments may perhaps cease and the work will go on with no realised tensions and, consequently, with no moments of startling import. This is happily the case. A constant succession of spiritual enlightenments and an unabated keying-up to high contacts would eventually dull the instrument so that true recognitions would fade out. Ponder on this, my brother, and be grateful for the days of coming duty, of quiet living, of steadfast orientation towards the light, of silent communication with your soul, of study and of thought. They are of as real value and of as true usefulness as e'en those hours when the technique of the Presence entered into your consciousness. They lead towards the time when the technique is superseded by the Presence.
The fiery force of your life is now one-pointedly directed towards your goal. Naught can cause you to step aside. The dynamic quality of your aspiration towards usefulness in service indicates energies which have been directed to the wish or the will to serve. Can I make clear to you, my brother, that these energies must be now used differently, and that dynamic will must supersede dynamic longing. You oft confuse the two. It is the will of the soul which must be brought into play for group ends and not the will and the aspiration of a high grade and consecrated personality. Ponder on this, for its acceptance and realisation will open a door for you that has hitherto remained shut.
January 1935
MY BROTHER OF OLDEN TIME:
To you, I would say at this time that one of the wisest and one of the most educational things you have ever done is to start this group which you now instruct and teach. Remember that your function as a teacher in no way resembles that of those who are on the second ray of love wisdom. It is not the teaching aspect which is primarily yours but the awakening aspect. The group meets ostensibly for teaching and you give them what they need but your prime function is to charge the group members with dynamic energy. Through the power of your soul you must awaken their souls into selfless activity. You can touch them dynamically and then never again will their orientation be purely personal. The task of re-orienting people can be yours. Some people work with groups and, through the inclusiveness of their auras and the potency of their souls, they sweep large numbers of people into a higher aspirational attitude and into a deeper spiritual tide. Others have the duty of finding the advanced men and women of the world, the individuals who stand at the portal of discipleship—but blindly, knowing not where they are or why. They then, through their dynamic soul potency, call into living activity the soul imprisoned in these waiting personalities. Such is your task—to teach and vivify.
And what, my brother, shall be for you the keynote of the coming months? What shall be the word I give to you which shall govern your personality until the coming Wesak Festival in May? I am impelled to give you just two words of practical import. They are gracious loving-kindness. These qualities of graciousness and of loving-kindness mark the superficial (occultly understood) outer expression of the soul and for a first ray person they are ever difficult; their need is oft not recognised nor are they deemed necessary. The first ray person frequently does not know he lacks them. The inner, dynamic and realised goodness of a first ray disciple can be marred by a haste and an outer quickness of speech and attitude. So sure is a first ray person of his essential kindness and love (and he is rightly sure) that he judges other people as himself. The inner rectitude of attitude and the inner love matter more to him than the outer expression. But lesser people and those upon the other rays are apt to misunderstand. The potency of your work is so real and the opportunities opening before you are so great that if you add to that potency a gracious outer attitude of loving-kindness, you can be much used. Ponder on this, my brother of old.
I change not your meditation and will ask you to adhere to it until next May. This is for you a preparatory period in which the qualities of your soul must be welded into those of the personality. In 1936 and particularly in 1937, if the plans work out as desired and you go forward on the Way, the door of opportunity will stand wider open. These words are for you to interpret. Symbolically I say to you:
"The door before you has two leaves. One is now open wide. The other is ajar. Love alone can open the one that is ajar. The other opened to the force of will—this to the pull of love. Behind this door there stands a Presence, hiding another door which opens to a field of newer service."
I cannot impress upon you too strongly two matters, my brother: First that your closest work in the future lies with three people.... This you know already. Secondly, guard more your health and take not on your shoulders more than your strength can suffice to carry. Rest more. The ardent flames of inner love and aspiration oft burn too fiercely the physical vehicle. Pass on to greater work and live with joy the life of loving service.
July 1935
BROTHER OF MINE:
The note of my instruction to you this time can be best summed up in the strong injunction to practise truth at all times. My word to you in my last instruction was to ask you to inculcate in your outer expression upon the physical plane that gracious loving-kindness which first ray disciples ever need to cultivate. This you have attempted to do with marked success. The practice of these qualities will extend your sphere of usefulness for there will be nothing, eventually, in your outer impact upon people to throw them away from you. Instead, you will draw them magnetically to the centre wherein the Masters are found.
Now I call your attention to the necessity for that crystalline truthfulness and that precise accuracy which will release you increasingly from the prison of the lower self. People who work as you could work upon the distinctly abstract levels of existence frequently have a difficulty in expressing the precision of truth. They lack, if I may so express it, the capacity to bring through into form and to build the concrete shell which can precisely express the idea. This you also quite markedly lack; you have oft said, have you not, how difficult you find it to clothe in words the ideas you contact and the field of knowledge in which—at high moments—you find yourself. This inability to express spiritual ideas in the right words has necessarily its counterpart in the limitations of your personality. The ecstasy of divine knowledge which you know at times and which fails of right expression in words, finds its inevitable counterpart in the exaggerated detail of daily life when recounted. There is ever the tendency to continue the ecstasy (known on abstract levels) into the concrete life on the physical plane. As it is stepped down, it over-stimulates other and lower aspects of the nature, and, therefore, removes itself further and further from the truth.
During the coming year, brother of old, assume the task of watching with care every statement made and every attitude assumed, so as to negate all tendency to emotional misrepresentation. But be not overwhelmed or discouraged by any discoveries anent your lower nature which you may make. Should you discover lack of precision in relation to those concerns which affect the lower man, remember that this inaccuracy is due to two things: First, to your power to work on abstract levels, involving ecstatic realisation. This reacts on the lower man and inclines him to over-emphasise all details, and to exaggerate the usual and the commonplace into the unusual and the rare. Secondly, to your innate humility which induces in you a tendency to reassure yourself constantly that you are on the Way and that all you do is in line with soul purpose. The world of glamour which is the distorted reflection of the world of inspiration (the intuitive buddhic plane) then catches you and the truth, with its clarity of outline and precision of detail, disappears into the mists of illusion. Then all objects and affairs loom too large and appear too important and too interesting. With the majority, the reverse happening is the case and everything dwindles in retrospect and becomes too small. Hence the word "exaggerated" in connection with the watch that I want you to make over all words and descriptions.
This self-imposed attention to true accuracy must be your most rigid discipline during the next year and, when success is achieved, you will find yourself walking in a clearer world and discover that you will have potently increased your power to serve. This inability to produce a true picture of things as they intrinsically are and to portray facts as they really exist, has militated against your power to materialise that which is desired upon the physical plane and has caused you much concern and distress of mind. Your desire to help has been urgent and your capacity to materialise that which is needed has seemed to you inadequate and oft futile. You have ascribed this inability to the fact that probably you have needed to learn patience. But that is not a lesson that you need, brother of mine. Your weak point has been your inability to bring through the vision with accuracy. In order to do this you must learn to practise accuracy of thought and speech daily.
Each Full Moon period, prior to entering into contact with the world of spiritual realities as you have been instructed, check up your progress during the month in this respect, remembering that initial success will take the form of recognition of a hitherto unrecognised verbal inaccuracy. You have so little to do (relatively speaking) in order increasingly to become a purifying flame that I beseech you to do that which is needed.
Let your meditation take the form more and more of contemplation. In order, however, safely to increase the length of time you can spend in contemplation, you must achieve an attitude of gentle unswerving intensity and not develop any further that powerful dynamic intensity which imposes ever a strain upon the brain cells. Your work must lie along two lines:
1. Work on contemplative levels, functioning as a soul on its own abstract levels.
2. Bringing through from those levels the ideas and methods of work which must materialise upon the physical plane. Hence the need for constant right techniques in speech and the cultivation of right perception and right accuracy. Where there is the habit of accuracy, the clothing of the ideas in proper and true form will come more naturally.
January 1936
MY BROTHER OF OLD:
I have not much to say to you at this time. After the Wesak Festival, the needed changes in work may be made if you and others in my group of disciples warrant increased spiritual attention. I seek to let you know, however, that your real inner progress has been noted. You have stepped into clearer light and because of that progress you can shoulder greater responsibility in the future, provided that you hold the ground gained and lose nothing that has been revealed to you. It is no easy task which you and all disciples have set themselves these days. It means facing up to the issue which each has for himself created and this involves facing one's life with truth as well as one's environment, one's characteristics and one's responsibilities. It is an arduous undertaking to deal clear-sightedly with the lower self, to see life and the self truly and to guard the precious jewel of the vision untouched. You are evidencing increasing capacity to do this; I want you to know that I am aware of your effort and your growing success.
Definitely, I ask you to study and to do some strenuous mental work. It will greatly enrich you. If you will follow my instructions re study as indicated in the work which I assigned to my group (you amongst the rest), it will suffice to give you the needed mental stimulation. The manifestation of intuitive perception upon the physical plane is greatly aided by the effort to read, to understand and then to express that understanding in words. This is never an easy task for a natural intuitive such as you are, but it is one that will bring high reward.
Stand by your fellow disciples with renewed strength and inner realisation of the sources of power this year. It is the strong inner grasp of your true self to which I appeal. This, my brother, is a year of crisis and, therefore, a year of intense strain upon all the disciples in the world. They will need all the strengthening that they can get and the sense of reliant confidence which comes from the knowledge that there are those who stand steady, who love strongly and who aid untiringly. Give this kind of help, for well you can.
In silence and in confidence and in a growing inner realisation must lie your strength and the strength of every member of my group of disciples.
June 1936
BROTHER OF MINE:
A new cycle is being entered upon by you, as it is by all in my group and for this you have been prepared and this you have earned. The world itself enters upon a new cycle at the end of this year but does so unconsciously. Disciples enter upon cycles or, rather, register their effects earlier than the rest of humanity because their minds are somewhat awakened and subjective recognitions can be earlier accorded. This is a point which should be remembered and one which has a definite bearing upon the Science of Prevision.
It has been my wish to assign higher and more esoteric meditations but the time is not yet; it will be dependent upon two things:
1. The amount of group integration which this band of disciples in my Ashram can manage to achieve.
2. The power of the individual disciple to decentralise himself.
This decentralisation is for you a major task, as it is for another of my disciples who is working at the same problem as you are, but from a totally different angle of approach. It should be interesting to both of you to help each other and see in what the differences consist and the entirely different effects which the same general outlook has upon two different ray types and personalities. Let me see if I can make myself clear to you for this matter is of importance.
It would not have been possible for me earlier to have enlarged upon this matter as you would not have understood the truth of my words nor would you have been able to profit by them. Even now I can only just touch upon the problems. It is peculiarly yours and that of R.S.U. You have, however, made so much progress in overcoming hindrances that my help is warranted. Forget not, my brother, that every disciple has some major characteristic which requires transmutation. Some know what it is and are working at it and the others fall into two main groups. They are either working furiously to bring about a general change in themselves and thus succeed in bringing their faults to the surface and they do it with such potency that they temporarily handicap their service. Or, secondly, they are overwhelmed and depressed by the discovery of their weaknesses. They resent being thus handicapped and the energy which should go towards the processes of transmutation is turned towards their lower nature in disgust, self-pity or hurt pride. All this leads to loss of time and produces inevitably the over-emphasis of the personality. The problem with which you and R.S.U. have to deal and which you must eventually solve is, above everything else, the problem of decentralisation. There is in both of you an over-emphasis of the "I" at the centre of the stage. I am telling you nothing new when I say this, for you have been faithfully working at this decentralisation for some time and making real progress. This, I, your friend and brother, tell you gladly. The emphasis upon the little self is, in your case, based upon three things:
1. A realised sense of divinity, of the beauty of the life of the spirit, of truth and of the power of your ray life. It is due to the fact that you have—in past lives—achieved a fair measure of soul control. Note my words with care.
2. A desire to impose upon the personality and to make the lower self to be in factual living what you know yourself to be on the higher soul levels. This is complicated by the desire that those you love should likewise recognise your divinity, your service and your power.
3. Being primarily astral-buddhic, demonstrating as intuitional development working out in a high emotional reaction, your personality polarisation is emotional, even though you function, as a soul, on the power ray. You have, therefore, a consequent weakness in the mental polarisation. This I endeavoured to aid you in correcting last year when I suggested that you studied more and did more mental work. Did you do this, my brother?
As I said above, R.S.U. has the same problem of being too much in the centre of her own life stage, but her whole attitude and life presentation is the exact reverse of yours. You, realising a measure of divinity, impose upon your personality in speech and desire what you believe to be the effects of divinity. You over-estimate the capacity of the personality to respond to this. She, realising the same measure of divinity, is so conscious of the failure of the personality to express this, that she retires within herself and (if I may use a phrase of real ugliness) she there "wallows" in the sense of failure. This ability to see such failure and to sense at the same time the beauty of divinity is due to her mental polarisation which enables her to cast the light of the mind in two directions. She is largely an expression of the higher or abstract mind, invading the lower mind, via the soul. Yours is buddhic or intuitional reason, stimulating the astral-emotional nature, via the soul. In these two statements, you and R.S.U. have your problem clearly defined. The building of the antahkarana—more surely and more definitely—is the solution for both of you, plus a trained and cultivated self-forgetfulness. In some ways, the problem of R.S.U. is harder than yours because (through her sense of inferiority brought about by the second of the two capacities of the mind which casts its clear light upon the personality) she tunes in on the illusion of human failure—a gigantic thoughtform—and also upon her racial sense of inferiority. Her distress is deep-seated in her love nature. Yours is not so deep-seated as it is not fed so dominantly from the mental plane.
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