AAB: Our meditation meetings have been very encouraging. After months of very few people showing up, we now have from 15 to 20 people at every meeting. At those meetings I have emphasized two things: the work the Arcane School has to do in standing steady in this world period, and the main job we must do at present to help the Christ construct the great defending wall considering that He constructs that wall out of will and love and active aid.

Tonight we come to more of the Tibetan’s unpublished work. It has to do with the Christ. [Reading from The Rays and the Initiations, pp. 88-90]:

At the time of the June Full Moon each year, the love of God, the spiritual essence of solar fire, reaches its highest point of expression. This it achieves through the instrumentality of the Hierarchy, that great group of Souls that has ever been the custodian of the principle of light, of enlightened love, and that always – down the ages – focuses its attention upon the race of humanity when the spiritual influence is at its height. This it does through one of the great Sons of God. The Full Moon of June 1943 saw this outpouring of divine love reach its highest expression for all time, and at the point of attainment that is, for that particular Son of God, His highest also. Such is the Law. When an embodied Christ in time and space reaches His goal of achievement, recognition of this comes to Him at the time of the June Full Moon, for in that sign of Gemini the complete victory of life over form, and of spirit over matter, is consummated and celebrated.

The love of God, focused in the Christ, seeks to express itself in some act of peculiarly useful service to humanity. This service has taken different forms down through the ages, but it has always expressed itself through two episodes: One of them, the first, reveals the Christ in His capacity of the God-Savior, sacrificing Himself through pure love for His fellowmen. The annals of the Hierarchy contain many such histories of sacrifice and service, dating far back into the very night of time. The saving principle of pure love finds its expression at the hour of humanity’s greatest need in the work of a World Savior and “for the salvation of His people, He comes forth.” He thus meets the need, and at the same time strengthens the link that relates the Hierarchy to Humanity. The task of the Christ (as the expression in time and space of the second divine aspect) is to establish relationships. Every cyclic Representative of Deity furthers the approach of the Hierarchy to humanity, and seals this service by some final act that becomes the historical nucleus whereby later generations remember Him.

That accomplished, He stays with His people as Head of the Hierarchy until His second opportunity comes, in which as Representative both of Humanity and the Hierarchy, He can relate them both to Shamballa. This He does through a great act of evocation, seeking to bring about a closer relationship between all the three great planetary centers: Shamballa, the Hierarchy, and Humanity. He can do this because the development of the Wisdom aspect in His nature makes it possible. The major linking agent in the universe is the energy of Love-Wisdom. Love relates the Hierarchy to Humanity, and Wisdom relates the Hierarchy to Shamballa. Only when Humanity and the Hierarchy are working together in a practical synthesis, can the Shamballa energy be permitted complete inflow through the medium of the two other centers.

To aid in this process of gradual perfecting and an eventual bringing about of a complete alignment, the help of the Buddha must be invoked and accepted. The work of the Christ as God-Savior can be carried forward by Him alone and unaided. The work of the Christ as God the Preserver needs the united work, as yet, of the two highest Representatives of the second divine aspect when present together upon the Earth, as is the case today of both the Buddha and the Christ. This is the first cycle in the history of humanity when this has been the case. One or the other has been present down the ages, but not the two simultaneously. The reason for this is that the time has now been reached when Shamballa can be contacted and its energy evoked. Hence we have the activity of the Buddha at the May Full Moon and that of the Christ at the following June Full Moon. Their united activity serves to bring about a much closer approach between the Lord of the World and the Hierarchy, via His four Representatives: the Buddha, the Christ, the Manu, and the Mahachohan. 

B: Wisdom is the higher link, and love is the lower link.

AAB: I don’t think it is a question of higher and lower. You will find that all Second Ray people are on one or the other branches of this ray. On the Second Ray there are people who embody the wisdom aspect and those who embody the love aspect, and in the great cycle of divine manifestation the Buddha embodied in himself the wisdom aspect and the Christ the love aspect, but they are perfectly equal. In this particular cycle the Buddha links the Hierarchy with Shamballa and the Christ links the Hierarchy with humanity. It is one work carried out by two people on the same ray. The love of God in the universe and the love of God as it expresses itself through our Planetary Logos is a twofold thing because duality is the keynote of our solar system and of our planet. Those who work with students would do well to study which of those aspects govern people who are on the Second Ray.

M: I wish it weren’t so difficult. How can you tell? You read the different characteristics and you have them all in you.

AAB: There are usually some dominant traits. You can usually gauge the rays by the physical appearance.

AP: The easier way is to study the faults under each ray.

AAB: Students write in their faults and want to know about their rays. I think that is a negative thing. I think they should recognize their assets and gauge their rays by their assets.

AP: Sometimes when you are just feeling around, your assets aren’t so strongly expressed.

AAB: You think they are not strongly expressed because you are dwelling upon your faults. We are always wrestling with our failures and faults. I wonder what would happen to us if we were always occupied with our assets. We have the old Christian idea that if we recognize our good points then we are conceited.

W: The interesting point to me is that under the different rays it gives the faults you are supposed to have, and they all seem to have the same faults.

AAB: That’s because the Second Ray governs all the rays. It is pouring in love, wisdom in love, harmony through conflict in love, science in love, love all the way through. You always come back to the common denominator. You can always tell the rays by looking at a person. I can tell your rays by looking at you. If you take the person who is just average, then you can’t positively tell, but if you take people who are at the stage of discipleship, then you can usually tell their rays with the greatest facility if you like them enough.

ES: It would be interesting if you could illustrate and tell how you do it and why.

AAB: You would have to be personal. [Reading further on p. 90]:

Their united activity serves to bring about a much closer approach between the Lord of the World and the Hierarchy, via His four Representatives:  the Buddha, the Christ, the Manu, and the Mahachohan – the five points of energy that are creating the five-pointed star of Humanity at this time.

An ancient rule – Rule 4 for Applicants – gives us in perfect wording the nature of the urge that prompts the present activity of the Christ. He has accomplished His task as God the Savior. The fourth Rule, as it is given to all applicants and probationary disciples, gives His work the following definition:

Let the disciple tend the evocation of the fire, nourish the lesser lives and thus keep the wheel revolving.

AAB: It applies to the Christ. “As He is so are we in this world.”

It is given in this short form to all who are approaching the Path.

Here you have the proposition that the work of the Christ is over and finished, but that there are three other aspects of his work of which we as yet know nothing. “Let the disciple tend the evocation of the fire, nourish the lesser lives and thus keep the wheel revolving…. It is now possible to present His true and wider and task.” The Tibetan takes up the rule for applicants because it indicates the work of the Christ. [Reading further on p. 91]:

Only as they grasp the nature of the work of Christ, after His final act of service as God-Savior, can they understand the nature of group service and begin to pattern their lives and natures so as to meet similar requirements in group formation.

This has become possible because of the point in the evolutionary process that the Hierarchy has attained. The attitude and position of the members of the Hierarchy are not static. All are moving forward. The Christ Who came two thousand years ago embodied in Himself not only the principle of love in the planetary sense (a thing which Shri Krishna had achieved), but a cosmic principle of love also, and this for the first time in human history. His achievement was made possible by the fact that the human family had reached a point at which it could produce the perfect Man, Christ, the “eldest in a great family of brothers,” a Son of God, the Word made flesh. The future progress of humanity is also aided and hastened because of the attainment and activity of the Christ, and because He remains with us as God the Preserver.

AAB: We have been thinking of the work of the Christ as He and the Hierarchy stand behind what is going on in the world today as the Hierarchy faces the work of rebuilding the world as the new civilization begins to take shape. What therefore is it that the Christ is preserving? What is worth preserving in our world today? Because if we know what Christ is seeking to preserve in His function as Preserver, then we know with what aspects of the Plan we have to cooperate.

N: The good, the true and the beautiful.

AAB: Yes, that is true, but it is a large generalization. When the war is over and we begin to hunt out the factors with which we shall work, it won’t be the beautiful. We will have to begin with the practical. We shall be aiming at the beautiful.

W: Won’t it be with relationships?

AAB: With relationships, I think that is so, but with what relationships?

P: Cooperation with each other.

AAB: I think so, but cooperation is a tactic; it isn’t something to be preserved. I want to know what are the things that Christ is seeking to preserve.

AD: Isn’t that an expression of the will aspect, the act of preservation?

AAB: It is the love aspect, cherishing, nurturing.

AD: In the Fourth Degree papers he speaks of the will aspect. He says the work of the First Ray is the preservation of values.

AAB: God as the First Ray is the destroyer.

AD: He says that the First Ray person stands at the center and acts as a preserver of values.

AAB: What values?

AD: If it is the will aspect, maybe it is the linking of relationships, of humanity and Shamballa so that Christ and the Father become one.

AAB: You are dealing with the Christ. I am talking about what the Christ is seeking to preserve. What is the Christ seeking to preserve out of the wreckage of the whole of civilization?

AP: The forward movement of spiritual evolution, to keep the way open for the evolution of the spirit of humanity to at-one-ment with the Hierarchy and with God.

AAB: To keep an open door.

R: The will to be perfect through the will to good.

JL: To preserve every single individual and find the one lost sheep.

AAB: That is symbolic. We are planning as a group to work in the post-war period along with all other people. What have we got to work with? With that which the Christ has preserved. Love and will are abstract things. What from the old forms is Christ seeking to preserve?

RK: I thought that what he should preserve and strengthen is the link between the personal self and the Soul.

AAB: That always survives and doesn’t need preserving. You and I are preserving that. There are certain values that have to be kept.

N: Some people say that this war is creating a void in some part of the human mind, a form of cynicism, trying to blur the vision of the Soul. If we would be aware that, instead of having a Soul, we are Souls having a body, if we would recognize that and go forward from that angle that would be one of the things to be preserved.

AAB: I think that will always be preserved. I am trying to get it down into the time-space thing today. Would you say it is the preservation of certain great concepts of freedom? Would you say it is the preservation of certain basic laws by which people must live? Would you say it is the preservation of certain great organisms through which the human family must function? I am just wondering. I don’t know.

JL: If you are going to preserve something, isn’t your first thought that you are preserving something that is going to be lost if you don’t preserve it? Everything you mention is always going to be there.

AAB: There is only the beginning of brotherhood at this time in the human family. Maybe it is that which has to be preserved.

RK: I wonder if it is the sense of group consciousness, responsibility for each other, leading to identification with each other.

AAB: The function of the second aspect of the trinity is that of form builder. What forms of the past – because what is preserved must be something that has existed – what forms is Christ seeking to preserve?

P: Faith – humanity is actually losing faith.

HB: The true family idea.

AAB: It is more the practical aspect that I am after. We talk about will and brotherhood and love and faith; they are abstract things. But I think the things Christ is seeking to preserve are certain forms through which divinity can express itself. What are the essentials of our civilization that must be preserved?

AD: One thing is certain. Faith is being revived among the soldiers. All the religions are coming together. It is the only thing that people have to hang onto.

AAB: I think HB is right when he says the family. It is pretty nearly lost in Europe. If we could analyze our civilization we would know what we have to preserve. You have to pick out the things that have happened since Christ’s day. In the last 50 or 100 years the Hierarchy has begun to bring in certain values. Before that time there wasn’t anything in the human family like welfare work. This war could completely kill it out. Until relatively recently there wasn’t any particular action that amounted to sharing. Our whole program of economic rehabilitation is a worldwide sharing of goods, and the effort to preserve the quality in humanity that leads them to share with each other is one of the essentials that must be preserved.

AD: Another thing to be preserved – the teachings of Christ have been distorted by the churches, and the churches are breaking down, but the real teaching must be preserved even if the churches and the old forms and rituals break down.

AAB: Then you really mean that the work of the Christ is the preservation of the germ of the best thought that lies behind organized activity in the world today.

AD: The things that He intended to leave with us, the purity of the essential thing that He came to bring us.

AAB: Welfare work, economic betterment, science, everything, because I don’t see anything useful in any of these basic ideas unless we can bring them down to practical application that will be of service in the next ten years.

BG: The things to be preserved are dynamic and not static organisms, something in a state of growth. It may be imperfect, but it is something dynamic with great possibilities.

AAB: Then you would bring it around to every nation, that something that makes a nation worth preserving, if it is worth preserving.

N: One of the things worth preserving is the creative imagination by which spiritual goals are always ahead of us so that we can bring down the release of truth into everyday life.

AAB: I think, when the war is over, we can look for a tremendous upsurge of the creative imagination.

FB: One of the outstanding things about our civilization is built on the note struck by the Christ when He was here – the value of the individual, the French Revolution and the Magna Charta. That is one of the basic things threatened by the attack of the forces of evil – the integrity and dignity of the individual. That is one of the underlying reasons why we have suggested for that future that we go out and work with the individual and combine three of them to work in their own light and strength as they see goodwill, thereby bringing to life the power of goodwill in those individuals and giving them freedom from fear and futility. Salvation is going to come by the people of goodwill acting as individuals in their own right.

AAB: I think that is the major preservation – the freedom of the individual.

W: If you take up the individual as such, you do away with the thought of the nation.

AAB: No, nationalism has been a source of trouble for the last hundreds of years. The spirit of nationalism with its separative wars and competition has been responsible for this war.

FB: Science has shrunk the world to a point where there is nowhere to escape to, and our civilization is based upon interrelationship and interdependence, and if you emphasize the value of the individual you have to work at the same time at the problem of establishing right human relationships. We have learned a little bit about the brotherhood of humanity, that all races are one, all people the sons of God. That has to be preserved, and it is only the recognition of the oneness of humanity laid alongside the value of the individual, all working together for the good of the whole, that will successfully carry us into the new age.

M: Aren’t they the things Christ established here when he said, “Love your neighbor” and “Turn the other cheek,” and so forth?

AAB: Goodwill and sharing and the rest are secondary to that. You won’t always have your distinctive people. As a result of the war, there has been racial intermingling. What will be the result of it? There are going to be children everywhere with mixed fathers and mothers, and that is going to be most interesting and one of the most useful results of this war. There won’t be a single pure race left.

JL: The Tibetan says that the nations will have value in the future. You have to live in certain geographic locations, and the nations as political units will continue to exist.

AAB: I am sure of that.

JL: We need individuals who are willing to cooperate. You can take individualism and throw it back into barbarism.

AAB: Nations must go, and what is happening in the world today is a tremendous fusion so that eventually you will have a world in which there is no clear line of demarcation of nationality except geographical. Don’t you think it is awfully interesting what is happening on a large scale under the Hierarchical Plan? We say, “I am an American, a Russian, an Englishman.” Under the impulse of nature itself in this war, who will be able to say what they are?

RK: We are putting the emphasis on the life aspect, not on the form – FB’s valuing of the individual and your homogeneity of humanity.

FB: What would you say of Russia’s move in connection with the various Soviet Republics in relation to our discussion tonight?

RK: I was quite enthused over that idea. I thought it was a magnificent effort to act in accordance with the Atlantic Charter and establish the value of the individual.

W: If we are trying to have a long-range vision of what things to carry through, is it for us to say whether it is right or wrong?

AAB: It is quite right for us to speculate about the motives. I think we have to speculate about these things and think them through because the whole happiness of humanity in the future is dependent upon the motives of the great powers.

M: No matter what their motives are, whether they are good or bad, the Plan goes on just the same.

AAB: It seems to be the law of nations, as of individuals, that they start in the mud and come up into beauty. It is vital that we as a group and as a School know what the Hierarchy wants and what the Plan of Christ is. So what are the things that Christ wants preserved? Sanctity of the individual, the homogeneity of humanity, an expression of sharing as a demonstration of welfare work and the family unit. There is so much vague talk about world orders and world reconstruction, and I think we have to do some clear thinking on this.

FB: Our civilization has built something that has turned the tide of the relationship between the animal and human kingdoms. Certain of their rights have to be protected. They don’t exist just for the good of humanity.

RK: There is not just the homogeneity of humanity but of all the kingdoms.

AAB: We can’t get too big; that is His job. I am trying to get down to the things Christ is trying to preserve and to help him do it. [Reading further on pp. 91-93]:

His task today is threefold, and the Rule states in very simple language these three aspects of His divine activity or phases of His work. These are:

1.  He “tends the evocation of the fire.” His major task as Head of the Hierarchy is to evoke the electric fire of Shamballa, the energy of the divine Will, and this in such a form that the Hierarchy can be drawn nearer to the source of Life, and Humanity can consequently profit by this Hierarchical Approach and know eventually the meaning of the words “life more abundantly.” 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. Having related Humanity to the Hierarchy (which in the case of individual means relating the personality to the Soul), He now seeks to relate more closely, with the aid of the Buddha, the Hierarchy to Shamballa, love to will, electric fire to solar fire.

2.  He “nourishes the lesser lives.” This refers to the task of the Christ that proceeds day by day in His capacity of God the Preserver. He “tends the little ones.” The work here referred to concerns His activity as Initiator and His responsibility as Head of the Hierarchy. The nourishing of the little lives refers primarily to His task as World Teacher and to His responsibility to lead humanity on into the light with the aid of all the Masters, working each of Them through His Own Ashram.

3.  He “keeps the wheel revolving.” This has a specific relation to His work as the Word of God, which manifests as the Word made flesh. This refers specifically to the great Wheel of Rebirth whereby, upon that turning wheel, Souls are carried down into incarnation and then up and out of the Soul’s prison; through the turning of the wheel, human beings learn their needed lessons, create cyclically their vehicles of expression (the response apparatus of the Soul in the three worlds) and in this way, under Soul guidance, and aided by the Hierarchy and its schools of instruction, they arrive at perfection. This entire process is under the control of the Christ, assisted by the Manu and the Lord of Civilization. These three Great Lords thus represent the three divine Aspects in the Hierarchy; They, with the four Lords of Karma, form the seven Who control the whole process of incarnation. The subject is too vast and intricate to be adequately considered here. The above truth does, however, give us a clue as to why the Christ made no specific reference to the work of incarnation in His spoken utterances while on Earth. He was then occupied with His task of World Savior.

FG: That sounds as though he might be going to suggest “the mantle of love and the rungs of initiation.”

AAB: Another thing that would be interesting to compile would be the passages in which the Tibetan, in referring to something, says that for the first time in the history of humanity this or that is possible.