AAB: Having finished Rule II, we begin with Rule III. The Tibetan starts off with the Wesak Festival because [the Rule] was written just before one of these festivals. Then he goes on to say that the new rule deals with the new and significant program or ritual of invocation and evocation. The note behind the Wesak is involution and evolution by humanity, carried on by the Hierarchy, producing response from Shamballa [Reading from The Rays and the Initiations, pp.67-68]: 

This program is, in reality, an expression or a human formulation of the Science of Sound, just in so far � as yet � as Sound affects humanity and human affairs.  Forget not my earlier teaching upon the Word. [pp. 51-56] The Sound is related to the first aspect, the Father aspect, and that is the note of Life Itself, embodying its dynamic impulse, its creative power, and its responsive sensitivity to all contacts. [This is the quote as given in the typescript and does not exactly correspond to the text in the published version of the book. SES]

You have here exemplification of the fact that there is no basic difference between the three persons of the trinity. You can take life, sensitivity and creativity and make them apply to all three. Therefore there is nothing but the One, and, as I see it, the thing that the disciple has to express is just to be the three things with increasing potency.

Life � most of us are half dead. We are not working at full pressure; we are not living at our highest; we are not doing everything possible within our range of vision and imagination. I read the work that comes into the School, and so many students are so pleased with themselves. The older students may not be doing their best work, but at least they are not pleased with themselves.

Sensitivity � that is the keynote of the disciple. I would ask, how impressionable are you to the higher contacts or how engrossed are you with the hackwork that most of us have to do? After all, the problem of the disciple is to do the hackwork of the world and at the same time preserve the acute impressionability to whatever may come from that which is the highest for us. The highest varies for us.

R: That is the most important thing.

AAB: For disciples, but not for the students. The most important thing is to make them come alive so that they live fully. A prostitute who is living fully up to the utmost of her capacity is very often more alive and vital than the Arcane School students. One of the most amazing people I ever met, who was so alive, kind and understanding that I still remember her after forty years, was a prostitute I made friends with in India. I went down to the Rd Light District to look for a soldier in whom I was interested and for whom I felt responsible. I was only 22 and had lived a completely sheltered life, and I found him with this woman. We talked for a while, and she asked if she might come up and see me. I said she could, and she came and we talked together. I would like to see the AS students as alive as that woman. I am talking about quality. It�s inclusiveness, it�s understanding, it�s kindness, it�s living up to the fullness of life all the time.

R: You want to have the students come alive? How are you going to do it?

AAB: That is their business. Our problem is not to teach them � I am tired of teaching � but to have something in us that radiates so that they want to move on.

N: You said students should keep sensitive to high contacts. I believe that is the very profound key of solving how each one of us becomes alive. It seems to me that that is essential if we want to be energetic 24 hours a day. I do not as a rule know what it is to be tired. High contact has been a very real thing to me.

AAB: Certain temperaments have the high contacts, and then there is the reaction that plays them up.

Creativity � if you are really living, if you are really conscious, you will create something. It may be a home. The Third Rule states [Reading further on pp. 68-69]:

Dual the moving forward. The Door is left behind. That is a happening of the past. Let the cry of invocation issue forth from the deep center of the group�s clear cold light. Let it evoke response from the bright center, lying far ahead. When the demand and the response are lost in one great Sound, move outward from the desert, leave the seas behind, and know that God is Fire.

There shall be no more sea; there shall be no more astral plane reactions, no more emotional slumps. [Reading further on p. 68:]

This is perhaps one of the two most occult rules that the initiate has to master, whether as an individual or in conjunction with his group. The group recognizes and works under the pervasive influence of the Purpose; the individual initiate works with the Plan.

Why does the group work differently? Because there are greater possibilities for a group as a group than for an individual as an individual. The Hierarchy as a whole can secure greater results than the individual Masters working alone. No initiate works alone. The group always works under the Purpose. It may not know that Purpose clearly.  The initiate has a clear-cut idea of what he as an individual has to do, and then he has to find the group that is working in relation to the Purpose, and then individual and group and Plan will be synchronized. [Reading further on p. 68:]

The group expression, as far as in it lies at any given moment in time and space, is in line with the will of the One in Whom we live and move and have our being, the Life of all that is. The individual initiate uses the attractive force (to which we give the oft misleading name of love) of that fundamental Life to gather together that which will give body to form and so manifest the will. The group can be, and frequently is, responsive to the �bright center,� Shamballa, where the initiate by himself and in his own essential identity cannot so respond. The individual must be protected by the group from the terrific potencies that emanate from Shamballa. These must be stepped down for him by the process of distribution, so that their impact is not focused in any one or all of his centers but is shared by all the group members.

Suppose you have a large group with an initiate in it, and that group acts as a protection to the initiate because of his sensitivity. If the group were not there, the force pouring through would stimulate each one of his centers. The energy that pours down into him pours out into the group. They absorb it, and he is safe. That isn�t why he is in the group.

Here is the clue to the significance of group work. One of its major functions, esoterically speaking, is to absorb, share, circulate, and then distribute energy.

This process of protection and of distribution is one of the functions of the great meeting of all the Hierarchy, under the aegis of the three Great Lords (the Manu, the Mahachohan and the Christ) in that high and sacred valley in the Himalayas where annually � after due preparation � the Hierarchy makes contact with Shamballa and a relationship is then set up between the �bright and living center� and the �radiating and magnetic center,� in order that the �acquiescent waiting center� may be stimulated to move forward upon the ladder of evolution.

When I read that sentence I thought about Germany. In our own way we have to represent in the world the people with vision, goodwill and understanding, just those three centers. You have a group like Churchill and Roosevelt and their coworkers who have a purpose; they are like the living bright center. And then you have the radiating and magnetic center � people of goodwill � people like ourselves. And then this quiescent, negative, waiting center that corresponds to the low-grade humanity of the German nation, and there lies your line of responsibility. They have to be stimulated to move forward upon the ladder of evolution. I am interested in giving the bigger picture so that we may know where our place in the world is.

Here you have a nation that is so negative that they have no word in the German language to correspond to what we mean by �mind.� We sat around the table in Ascona with all kinds of nationalities present and spent one whole afternoon trying to find a word or phrase that would be the equivalent of �From Intellect to Intuition� and correctly translate it. They said there is no such word in the German language. There is your clue. When the rank and file of the German people begin to think and are not led emotionally, we shall have a very wonderful race, but not yet. It is a major job for the people who are trying to work out the Purpose and the Plan to bring humanity to the proper reasoning condition where it sees life as it is. [Reading further on pp. 68-69:]

Even the Hierarchy itself needs the protection of its full membership in order rightly to absorb the incoming energies, and later wisely to distribute the forces of the divine will in the three worlds where lies Their major responsibility. The focused will of God, in its immediate implications and application, constitutes the point of tension from which Shamballa works in order to bring about the eventual fruition of the divine Purpose.

There is a definite distinction between Purpose and Will; it is subtle indeed, but quite definite to the advanced initiate, and therefore the dualistic nature of our planetary manifestation and our solar Expression appear even in this. The Members of the Council at Shamballa recognize this distinction and therefore divide Themselves into two groups which are called in the ancient parlance, Registrants of the Purpose and Custodians of the Will.

Some day, not yet, maybe not for a hundred years, we shall have esoteric schools that make a distinction between their senior members, placing some in one group and some in the other. [Reading further on pp. 69-70:]

Will is active. Purpose is passive, waiting for the results of the activity of the Will. These two groups are reflected in Hierarchical circles by the Nirmanakayas or the Planetary Contemplatives, and the Custodians of the Plan. The function of the Registrants of the Purpose is to keep the channel open between our Earth, the planet Venus and the Central Spiritual Sun. The function of the Custodians of the Will is to relate the Council, the Hierarchy and Humanity, thus creating a basic triangle of force between the three major centers of the planetary Life. This is the higher expression (symbolic, if you like) of the six-pointed star, formed of two interlaced triangles. A replica of this fundamental triangle and of this symbol of energy, with its inflow and distribution, is to be found in the relation of the three higher centers in the human being � head, heart and throat � to the three lower centers � solar plexus, sacral center and the center at the base of the spine. The Science of Invocation and Evocation is also seen to be symbolically proceeding along evolutionary lines. Worship, the attitude of the mystic, must give place to Invocation in the man who knows he is divine. This symbolic revelation is to be seen in the lifting up of the three lower energies and their evocative response to the three higher, thus producing an eventual unity at the point of tension. I realize that this is a hard thing to comprehend because it embodies truths that are difficult for the disciple to grasp. But they will be grasped and mastered by each one as he proceeds along the Path of Discipleship and submits to the needed training for initiation. They will also be mastered, later in this century and in the next, by the rapidly developing humanity, thus demonstrating that the initiation of the moment becomes the past achievement of the masses eventually.

Terribly interesting statement. It means that if you and I can succeed eventually in taking initiation, we have furthered the advance of the whole human race. [Reading further on pp. 70-71:]

The Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms, formulated in the tension produced by the world agony and strain, are the reflections of this, and embody all that it is possible for average materially-minded man to grasp of the present Will of Shamballa as it conditions the plans of the Hierarchy and is impulsed by the Registrants of the Purpose. This is as far as the two groups of Custodians have been able to convey this revelation to the best human intellects � the first group dealing with the senior members of the Hierarchy and the latter with those initiates and disciples who are closely related to humanity.

Here again we come up against the fact that the Science of Invocation and Evocation, with which this Rule fundamentally deals, is primarily a great and scientific activity of which modern humanity knows practically nothing, but which is related to thought power and to thoughtform building. Only initiates of the highest degree � such as the three Great Lords � have the right to invoke alone and unaccompanied by any protective agency, such as a group, and the reason for that is that They Themselves are members of the Council at Shamballa and are individually Registrants of the Purpose. The annual appearance of the Lord Buddha is the outer demonstration or symbol of the emergence of this Science of Invocation and Evocation in the waking consciousness of humanity. Prayer is the dim, faint and inadequate expression of this; affirmation of divinity in order to gain material well being is a distortion of this truth. This needs to be remembered. The true significance of this emerging science is that, in the early or first stages, it embodies the seed concept of the new world religion.

C: I think the line, �Registrants of the Purpose and Custodians of the Plan,� is tremendous.

AAB: All the way down you have energies. What are the energies in any esoteric group � the groups that meditate and those that work with the Plan?

FB: Your esoteric triangle would probably be a reflection of that.

AAB: The meditation work of light and the meditation work on goodwill � there you have it, haven�t you?

CH: What did the Tibetan say about the continuance of the Will � the Will is active and the Purpose is passive, waiting for the results of the activity of the Will.

AAB: I wish it could wait. The Purpose is revealed to the Hierarchy, and through the Hierarchy it is dispensed to such a group as this. Nothing more can be done in connection with the Purpose until that little bit of Purpose has accomplished its objective, and then something more comes out.

RK: I think what CH means is that they must be another phase of that great group that waits. They may be active, but not in any sphere of which we can speak. They may be active in cosmic spheres.

AAB: It comes back to the freedom of humanity to use more of the knowledge that it has, and until it uses that knowledge the Hierarchy waits.

JL: Doesn�t he state that the Custodians of the Plan are engaged in evoking more plans while they wait for what happens down here? I should like to know if the Custodians of the Plan have nothing more to do than evoke more plans.

AAB: Registrants of the Purpose and Custodians of the Will � that has to do with Shamballa. It doesn�t affect us. These two groups are reflected in Hierarchical circles by the Planetary Contemplatives and Custodians of the Plan.

Registrants of the Purpose                   Planetary Contemplatives

Custodians of the Will                         Custodians of the Plan

CH: Nirmanakayas, Planetary Contemplatives � I always thought they would create reservoirs of force by which the work is carried on.

AAB: They are passive receivers. I think we could work out something in two groups after the war and so perhaps be dim shadows or dim reflectors of Shamballa.

CH: Isn�t that embodied in the group work we are doing now? On the last page we are told to stop meditation with seed and go into meditation without seed, and that is a very hard thing to do. You have to do nothing so consciously and continuously.

RK: I think that when we begin to talk about contemplatives and reflectors and pools of energy or force we are beginning to touch the real nature of electricity and fire. The Tibetan tells us that we only know the third aspect of electricity.

M: It seems to me they mean this group. We are endeavoring to apprehend immaterial things, and the more we stretch to grasp those things, I think it is grand for us. I go on like an angel in an old Persian legend. Three angels watched the Earth being spun out. One was a philosopher, one a businessman. The third one went home and said nothing and spun the world out for himself. So I think we in this group can experiment and make this a factual thing. We don�t have to wait until the end of the century. I don�t think we should put limits on ourselves if there is no such thing as time.

AAB: After all, it is on the physical plane.

M: Don�t we work on other planes?

N: I believe we are being drawn to fathom all the possibilities ahead of us, but we cannot fully or consciously touch those higher realms of which the Tibetan is teaching us at this time. But certainly we can become sensitive to them, and the possibilities are open to us to make it a reality.

AAB: I was talking to my doctor this morning in order to find out how they psychologically sort out the men in the military draft. He passes on 200 men a night. Their problem is this, they cannot tell the cracking point of individuals on the physical plane when subjected to the noise and speed of war. Some you can tell about at once, and others give no indication of how they will react. Others go and are back in a month owing to the fact that they cannot stand the strain. There are three groups. There is the man who appears to be entirely average; all his reactions and tests are right. He may turn out to be a hero or a complete liability. Then there are the men with the bad backgrounds who don�t want it known, so they don�t tell. The psychologist doesn�t know their weak spots, and they are passed. Then there are the malingerers who make up stories in order to escape the draft. They are cowards. Conscious mind says one thing, and yet if abstract mind could function, their weakness could be seen.

RK: I don�t think we should minimize the power of the group even if we admit that it�s not very potent. It is as though we were pooling our penny minds and getting a dollar mind, and you could get something quite nice for a dollar in the old days.

AAB: How do we minimize it?

RK: We can�t possibly tune in on the Purpose.

AAB: You can�t tune in on Shamballa. You can tune in on the Plan. Only a group of initiates, very high initiates, together, can do that. The Plan is difficult for any of us.

RK: I think there is a certain alignment where we participate.

AAB: Our alignment is with the Hierarchy, and after the Hierarchy steps down the Purpose, we get it, but not much.

R: The Plan comes to us in three aspects.

AAB: I don�t think the Will aspect is very highly developed in anybody, because if it were we would be doing better than we do. Our output in the world would be better. I think we love to talk about it and do little things to help, but it does not condition our every thought, word and deed as it would if the Will were dominating in us. I do not see it dominate us.

LM: It may not condition everything we do, but it spoils all the other things.

AAB: I think you are quite right. It stays in the line of thinking and spoils our thinking and makes us dissatisfied with our effort to bring it through to the physical plane so that we can demonstrate a life of devotion to the Plan. I think the thing one has to do with older people is to get them ready for a life of complete service in the next incarnation. An old lady came into the School this year. She will probably be dead in six months, but she will have made her link.

JL: At a very advanced age we stop working as Custodians of the Plan and become very dim and almost unconscious.

AAB: You are never Custodians of the Plan until you are advanced members of the Hierarchy, and if you are such advanced members, you cannot get dim.

C: Isn�t the function of the School for these people that of Registrants of Purpose?

AAB: Custodians of the Plan much more likely. I don�t know the Purpose. The Purpose, as far as I can guess what it is, is what God is going to demonstrate through all the kingdoms of nature. But Registrants of the Purpose, no. They know as much of the Purpose as can be worked out in the next cycle.

C: The people who do come in and form their link.

AAB: They form their link with the Hierarchy, most likely, if you mean they are working out individual purpose.

M: What would be your idea of a life given entirely to service?

AAB: With horror and dismay I say look at me. Since I was fifteen I have done nothing else but work for humanity. I have sacrificed everything and everybody, myself included. I don�t know what I have done or whether what I have done is commensurate with results or whether the results achieved have been commensurate with what my Soul wanted done. I just go on.

N: They will extend themselves into the power for accomplishment. Relatively speaking, you are way above the rest of us.

AAB: A great deal of the work I have done has been the books of the Tibetan, but I am not responsible for them beyond the physical work.

AP: The Tibetan says somewhere that communicators who can transfer on the mental plane are extremely rare and of great value.

AAB: I want to get you to see that in your next incarnation, with all the knowledge you have now, you have the responsibility of starting early.

M: So many people in this work start in after the greater part of their days is over. Why isn�t it begun earlier in life?

AAB: Because I think you have to come into incarnation as a disciple. You are already a disciple. I see no reason why you shouldn�t come into incarnation next time as a disciple, but you have to do it in this life.

AP: You attract it when you are ready and have the vibration, when you are ready to take it up and carry it out.

AAB: Look at the various disciples in the Arcane School. Before they came into the School they were already functioning as disciples with their own groups. So many people come into the School without a group. They aren�t ready. They need training. They will get it, and in their next life they will have their groups by age 35.

B: What do you mean by �disciple�?

AAB: They are so radiatory and magnetic that they have already gathered around them ten, thirty, a hundred or perhaps more. Dr. Roberto Assagioli and Mr. Eugene Cosgrove are such disciples. They came into the School after they had their groups, not because the AS will train them as disciples, but because they will strengthen the AS. People fall into several groups. Some are in training for advanced discipleship; others have to be trained to take the first steps. We have to recognize the difference.