AAB: I want to continue on with this writing of the Tibetan that we took up two weeks ago [see Talk of February 4, 1944]. It is all about the Christ. The high points of our last meeting are:

• His staying with His people as head of the Hierarchy until His second opportunity comes. 

• He will then relate humanity and the Hierarchy, and Hierarchy and Shamballa. He has had to have the help of the Buddha, but now His particular work can be carried on by Him alone without other aid. 

• His work is threefold:

1   He tends the fire, which is really the fire of will, and He initiated that work in the Garden of Gethsemane.

2   He nourishes the lesser lives. This refers to His activity as initiator and his responsibility as head of the Hierarchy. “Little one” is His name for the initiate.

3   He keeps the wheel revolving. Human beings, as they revolve upon that wheel, are aided by the Hierarchy and thus arrive at perfection. This entire process is under the control of the Christ.

Reincarnation, initiation, the leader of the Hierarchy and humanity – this teaching is all so new, so totally different. [Reading from The Rays and the Initiations, p. 93]:

His work as Preserver and as Head of the Hierarchy had not then begun. It was at that time dependent upon the experience in the Garden of Gethsemane and upon the Resurrection initiation. Some day the gold and the silver threads of the Gospel story will be disentangled, and people will know the two interpretations that can be put upon the events and episodes in the career of Jesus the Christ. The underlying true events give us great steps and developments in the work of the Christ as He “enveloped humanity in the mantle of love, grasped the rod of initiation on behalf of His brothers, and faced the Lord of Life Himself, unattended, unafraid and in His Own right.” 

AAB: In Daniel the son of man is brought before the Ancient of Days and is presented to Him with two supporting people, one on each side. Christ, by the warrant of what He had done and later in the resurrection, could face the Lord of the World unattended. [Reading further on p. 93]:

At the present time, and at the immediate point of tension, Christ has added to His two immediate and constant tasks that of hastening the coming of the Avatar Who waits for the perfected work of the Hierarchy, focused in the Christ, and the powerful work of Shamballa, focused in the Lord of the World. When the exact moment has arrived, the work of the Buddha, representing Shamballa, and of the Christ, representing the Hierarchy, plus the sincere demand of Humanity, will bring about an arrangement or an alignment that will release an evocative Sound that will be extraplanetary, and then the Avatar will come.

AAB: I often ask myself just how much these statements mean to me as an individual. [Reading further on pp. 93-94]:

Ask me not for the date or the hour, for I know it not. It is dependent upon the appeal – the voiceless appeal – of all who stand with massed intent; it is dependent also upon the hour of exact alignment and upon certain aspects of work being done at this time by the senior Members of the Hierarchy, and also upon the steadfastness of the disciples in the world and the initiates – working in their various Ashrams. To this must be added what Christians call the “inscrutable Will of God,” the unrecognized purpose of the Lord of the World Who “knows His Own Mind, radiates the highest quality of Love, and focuses His Will in His Own high Place outside the Council Chamber of Shamballa.”

That the Avatar will come is a predictable certainty. That His forerunner will be the Christ is equally sure. When Christ comes it will be for the advanced units of the human family; they will recognize Him because He has always been with us, while His advent will evoke a responsive vibration from the masses, but not straight recognition. In connection with the Avatar, it will be a process of Hierarchical recognition of an overshadowing Presence within Whose aura the planetary Logos will take His stand as the planetary Representative. Then from Shamballa will descend a stream of spiritual potency, qualified by the Will-to-Good, and this will reach the attentive Hierarchy. The Members of this Group will, through the medium of the Christ, pour light and healing energy upon the Earth and peculiarly into the consciousness of humanity. I am not able to express the effect of the outpouring from Shamballa in clearer terms. We are told in the Bible that Christ will come in the air, and that He will bring the “healing of the nations” in his wings.

AAB: There is a theory running around Europe that from the Himalayas will come a zeppelin or a gigantic transport plane. It will not descend to earth, but in it will be the Christ. [Reading further on pp. 94-96]:

When the Avatar has made His appearance, then will the “Sons of men who are now the Sons of God withdraw Their faces from the shining light and radiate that light upon the sons of men who know not yet they are the Sons of God. Then shall the Coming One appear, His footsteps hastened through the valley of the shadow by the One of awful power Who stands upon the mountaintop, breathing out love eternal, light supernal and peaceful silent Will.

"Then will the sons of men respond. Then will a newer light shine forth into the dismal weary vale of Earth. Then will new life course through the veins of humanity, and then will their vision compass all the ways of what may be. So peace will come again on Earth, but a peace unlike aught known before. Then will the Will-to-Good flower forth as understanding, and understanding blossom as goodwill in humanity.”

So speaks a prophetic passage in the ancient Archives of the Hierarchy that deals with the present cycle of distress [written in June, 1943]. For this time humanity must prepare. You will know when the Avatar links up with the planetary Logos because I will then give you the final Stanza of the Great Invocation [given out in April, 1945]. Its use will serve to bring the Coming One to recognition and enable Him to draw upon the resources of the Avatar in the task of world reorganization and regeneration. He will again come as the World Savior, but owing to the stupendous nature of the work ahead, He will be fortified and buttressed by the “silent Avatar” Who (occultly speaking) will “keep His eye upon Him, His hand beneath, and His heart in unison with His.”

The work now being done by Shamballa and the Hierarchy on behalf of humanity will tend also to develop group consciousness and the formation of many groups that will be living organisms and not organizations; it will make group initiation possible and will enable certain aspects of the will to flower forth correctly and with safety. The tendency to overlook the distinction between groups and organizations is still very deep-seated; the coming of the Christ will throw much light upon this problem. A study of Rule 4 as given to disciples and initiates will also serve to clarify this matter.

RK: There is a beautiful alignment between the Will-to-Good, understanding and goodwill.

AAB: It is a practical thing. “When the Avatar has made His appearance then will the sons of men who are the Sons of God withdraw their faces.”

M: What has brought about the things that Christ has established on Earth? We decided that they were manifestations of love such as goodwill and humanitarian activities. Paul in his Epistles used the words hope and charity. The Tibetan says that the whole human family is close to the path of discipleship because in them was a desire for a better way of life, and that certainly must be founded on hope. As I go back to the Old Testament I cannot remember any time when they were ever very hopeful, but the note of hope is all through the New Testament.

AAB: Christ brought love into the world for the first time. In no ancient scriptures is there anything about love, or is it in the Old Testament?

M: No, there is nothing about a loving God in the Old Testament.

RK: The word “charity” comes from a Hebrew word, “saduca,” meaning the mastery of a perfected man, the deed of that type of man, a perfect man.

AAB: Christ brought a totally different thing into the world. The note of sacrifice is throughout the Old Testament, and Paul tried to drag it into the New Testament and link it up with animal sacrifice and blood sacrifice. That is where the test came to Christ. I often try to picture to myself how Christ feels about it. He brought a message of love that had nothing to do with animal sacrifice or blood sacrifice, and He sees the whole thing distorted down the centuries by the church. That is the great test, perhaps, of the sixth initiation – to see everything you have done absolutely smashed up.

RK: You have summarized in a fascinating way the whole evolutionary process. Reincarnation links the Soul to personality, initiation relates the Soul to Hierarchy, and Christ relates Hierarchy to Shamballa. Three great steps.

AP: I was so interested when we were talking about humility and the inferiority complex and about the difference between them.

AAB: After all, I suppose it is the structure of humility that really links humanity to the Hierarchy and Hierarchy to Shamballa, because you have to let so much go in order to become a member of the Hierarchy, and Christ reached Shamballa by saying, “Not my will, but thine be done.”

RK: The Tibetan says that humility is an adjusted sense of right proportion.

AP: It is the attitude that you must have when you contemplate the abyss between what you are, however great, and the vision.

M: Somewhere he gives this idea of sacrifice. It is really greater knowledge. If you know, then it doesn’t hurt to sacrifice.

AAB: It is selfishness in the long run.

RK: In the example of the chick giving up the shell, the egg would think it sacrifice, and the chick knows better.

M: I thought it was a grand explanation, because people have the idea that sacrifice is a hard thing.

AAB: Sacrifice is sacrifice when the wrong things matter to you. It would be a sacrifice to hold on to them in the long run.

RK: Is it not a sacrifice for the Christ to hold on to us?

M: “His feet walking through the valley of the shadow.”

AAB: “Then shall the Coming One appear. His footsteps hasten through the valley of the shadow by the One of awful power Who stands upon the mountaintop.” The valley of the shadow usually means death. To the esotericist, death means coming down into earthly life. It is when you have done that that the hastening takes place. He will only be here a little while. I do not think I know what it means.

AP: Just His passing through the earthly life and consciousness.

AAB: That would be death to the Christ.

M: I wonder if it could mean anticipation of what He might have to go through again.

RK: Isn’t it a climaxing something?

M: Remember how He suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane.

AAB: It lies ahead for the Christ. I do not think we can even speculate upon it. In Cosmic Fire p. 747, we read: “From the zenith to the nadir, from dawn to fall of night, from the emergence into being of all that is or may be to the passing into peace of all that hath achieved, gleameth the orb of blue and the inner radiant fire.” This really fits. It has the same note in it. I think I like this one better. “Love eternal, life supernal and peace….”

I personally have been so occupied with work that I haven’t thought much about the Christ. I think He is much nearer than He was. It might be my imagination, or it might be that I am responsive to a fact in nature itself.

CH: In a statement you read last week, didn’t it say that the climax of Christ’s action would be in 1945?

AAB: [Reading on pp. 91-92]:

Christ’s evocation of the fire of the will was initiated symbolically in the Garden of Gethsemane. He has twice symbolically shown His individual response to the Shamballa energy: Once in the Temple of Jerusalem as a child, and again in the Garden as a full-grown man at the close of His earthly career. His third and final response (which climaxes His work from our human angle) covers nine years, from the Full Moon of June 1936 to the Full Moon of June 1945. This period, in reality, constitutes one event to Him Who lives now free in His Own world and free from the limitations of time and space. 

RK: Is it not that contact that He perfected in 1936? The Tibetan said that the Hierarchy didn’t know how to deal with it and that is the reason for the world crisis. I think it is the working out of that terrifically successful contact that we are experiencing in the world upheaval – the linking of the head and the Heart, Hierarchically speaking.

W: In one of the Tibetan’s papers before the war broke out, he said there was to be some cataclysmic event that would take place in 1945, and we raised the question whether that event could take place in 1945 in view of the war.

RK: I remember the whole thing as an event that had its inception from the Hierarchical angle in 1936, and we are in a new cycle on a new level – so new that the old has to go. At the end of the cycle then (1945), the contact between Hierarchy and Shamballa will be completed even as it was completed between humanity and the Christ in 1936, and these three will function as a triangle:

Shamballa

Hierarchy            Humanity

There was also another statement about it. In the greater alignment, it is the alignment between Sirius, Venus and the Earth, a very fascinating and significant event. It is where the Tibetan differentiates between Purpose and Plan and Custodians of the Plan and distinguishes between will and love.

AAB: The end of a cycle is often interpreted as death, whereas it may be the severing of relationship. The same thing is true of horoscopes.

AP: In looking through the book on Discipleship I came across something the Tibetan said to one of the disciples dated 1942. He said that humanity had already completely satisfied its karmic debt of pain and suffering and that if the war went on much longer people would be too exhausted to recover. From the standpoint of reconstruction, if it goes on much longer there won’t be much to reconstruct.

AAB: I think what we need to get into our consciousness is what Christ said – that the time could be shortened by the elect. What can we do? What can the world do to shorten it? Read Matthew, Chapter 24.

AD: Isn’t it invocation that we are supposed to do?

AAB: Christ comes then. I don’t think we have thought enough about this period – the people in the churches who accept the fact of the second coming, and people like ourselves. In Matthew, Chapter 24, there is a symbolic description of all that we are going through now regarding the idea that the elect may shorten the period. It would profit us to read that because it fits right in with everything the Tibetan says here. The feeling I have is that the subject tonight is too big for us.

RK: Who are the elect, those who elect?

AAB: You and I – because we have elected. An accepted disciple is one who has accepted the law. We are apt to think of a disciple as one accepted by the Masters.

RK: They live at a point of tension, and they don’t live anywhere else. The idea of tension became clearer to me in that sense. It is at a level where the tension is homogeneous. Then we place our emphasis at those places of focused tension. We should always remain ourselves and just act where the tension would be if we kept our alignment with it. Emerson says you should not come down from your high estate no matter who tries to pull you down. Be yourself at the point of tension, and there should be no slackening, and you work as a radiant being. Radiation means a scientific process such as bringing electricity into this room. The wiring will remain, and I radiate that quality from the place where I really am, and that is what the group should be.

M: The elect is that group that should always stand with massed intent.

AAB: Stand with massed intent – it is the sons of men.

RK: That is the state and that is what expressed tension is to me.

AAB: It wouldn’t be so fatiguing either.

M: We carry on no matter what kind of a body we have because our focus isn’t there.

RK: The Tibetan says to keep perched on a pinnacle of love and stay there. Don’t look back, don’t look forward, but live from there by radiation.

M: It is difficult to stay there.

RK: That is what I understand by “I am the unborn.” Nothing bears me. I bear. “Undiminished Atman,” HPB calls it. “Though I am the unborn” … “undiminished Atman,” that is the creative tension that regenerates the world, the tension that Christ had.

N: In the early stages of meditation one morning, twelve symbols came to me to identify with. I am Love, Wisdom, Power, Purity, Sacrifice, Humility, Harmlessness, Selflessness, Light and Peace, etc.

GR: We make such an effort. We struggle so to attain with the intellect. We must relax and become one with the Eternal.

AAB: It is difficult to get that spiritual negativity, the right negativity.

GR: Activity through inactivity.

M: “May I act as a Soul in all my ways.”

AAB: You have the whole story there.

RK: This beautiful receptivity of which GR speaks, if we hold it too long we become negative. It is meant that the moment we get the power we become the one who pours.

GR: Positive on one plane and negative on another.

N: When we invoke we use will and love aspects in the masculine sense, and then, when we do invoke the masculine principle, spirit comes to us and we become a matrix, and the two become one and a third is produced.

AAB: When you think of what we have done in the School, the highest aim we set ourselves was to put people in touch with their own Souls. That was 21 years ago. We had no higher thought. We have a still higher aim today. We are now seeking, even though not achieving it yet, working with the idea of Soul becoming sensitive to something still higher, the Triad. Twenty years ago that would have been meaningless to you. The same thing with our conception of Christ. He was the world savior; we had no higher idea of him. Now we have a concept of Christ not only as ideal man, as savior of the world of humanity, but as having a still greater task, to bring together the three great centers because he stands at the midway point. He is the great receiver and the great distributor. You can gauge your development not by growth in character but by our increasing receptivity to expansions of truth. You can include in your consciousness concepts that once would have meant nothing to you.

RK: We understand it together.

AAB: Before we wrestled by ourselves, but now we get together and we get further. It is my idea that all of us profit not only by the things that are said but also by the group orientation.

M: Every person sees it differently yet correctly.

RK: That is why the Tibetan talks of group initiation. It is another fascinating concept. He says we will never understand reincarnation until we recognize that it is one entity that is functioning and that the cells in his body are renewing themselves, and those cells are human beings. Only together can we manifest the greatness of our true state. I belong to a great being.

M: I remember when AAB talked to us about everyone being an atom in the body of a Heavenly Man. She made it so clear.

AAB: It is all relative. A very learned astronomer came to talk to me. He had read The Soul and Its Mechanism. I mentioned either The Consciousness of the Atom or From Intellect to Intuition, and he said, “That is a very difficult and abstruse book.”

N: Everything to him is mathematical, but the knowledge in your book requires other faculties. Rudhyar once gave a lecture before the Architectural League. One of the learned people there started out skeptical and questioning, but later admitted that he had learned something.