AAB: We are continuing our study of Rule 3:

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.

I read it over twice today and thought, what is the good of my reading this or any of us reading this, because the Tibetan says it is only for those with the initiate consciousness.

I think there is great danger among esoteric students who are, what you might say, in the advanced group, and I think we might really say that we are advanced in relation to the esoteric students who are working in the other schools in the world. If we are not, there is something wrong with us, because there is not one of us in this group who has not been thinking and studying along this line for years. As I have watched myself and hundreds of thousands of students, from beginners up to advanced students, I notice two things about them. First, they suffer from the Christian complex that we are all miserable sinners and no good. We wouldn’t dare say we were so advanced; it would sound presumptuous. Second, it isn’t presumptuous; we have an inferiority complex respecting our status and our position on the Path. I am not dealing with the subject of whether a person is an initiate or not; I am dealing entirely with the question of discipleship. Initiates are simply disciples of some kind or another. I am using the blanket term disciple. If you are a disciple that means that the greater part of the path of evolution lies behind you; you are definitely an integrated person; you are not entirely controlled by your emotional nature; your mind does take hold quite often, and there are beautiful moments when the Soul does take control. The physical body doesn’t control except from the angle of bad health. Maybe we are sick, but we don’t understand our reserves. You will never bring through into full functioning activity on the physical plane all that you are capable of being at any particular moment until you surmount your physical disability. Of that I am convinced. Don’t have an inferiority complex about yourself. I also notice that there comes a stage in the life of a disciple when he or she is apt to get overstimulated. This disciple will then overestimate himself, thinking he amounts to something and that everyone else is looking to him. He or she is suffering from a superiority complex. That happens to every disciple.

M: Something eventually puts a pin into this balloon.

AAB: It would be better to put the pin in yourself. I think that is a very serious stage. I have seen disciples rendered useless for a whole incarnation. Humility is the keynote of the disciple. The moment you and I are occupied with the good self and the bad self or with ourselves in contrast to other disciples, in that moment we are occupied with the little self and we have shifted our consciousness off the higher plane down onto this ordinary level. Instead of functioning as a disciple, we are functioning as an ordinary person. We are harming and hindering ourselves. I think it is useful for us in these talks to deal with these problems of discipleship so that we watch ourselves and make sure that we are not occupied with the little self. It is a very subtle thing. A disciple can be serving for the sake of his own progress. This group will make its impact felt in the world only if humility and truth and recognition of where we stand are our outstanding characteristics.

CH: There is an interesting contrast between humility and inferiority.

AAB: Humility is based upon a right sense of proportion. The only truly humble person is a mental person, because he is the only person who has a true sense of proportion. He also has a sense of humor. A mental person has a sense of proportion because the mind is that factor that enables us to see relationship. The mental person has a real sense of relationship as to facts on the physical plane. If a person is really intuitive, he won’t have many problems.

AP: An inferiority complex and humility are exact opposites. We face outward when experiencing humility, whereas inferiority comes from looking inward and being self-centered.

AAB: There is no sense of proportion in inferiority because you are outraging your individual dignity.

AP: Spiritual pride is one of the worst things in the world. It is so subtle that people are unconscious of it.

AAB: It is the faults we are unconscious of that are the worst.

N: Christ said, “Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”

AAB: That refers to the humility of the initiate, because I know of no one more arrogant than a little child.

I made those preliminary remarks because I didn’t want you to be depressed by the Tibetan’s comments. [Reading from The Rays and the Initiations, p. 82]:

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.

This means more than its obvious significance. Superficially it can mean that when the initiate hears the Sound, he leaves behind the desert life of physical incarnation, the emotional life of the astral plane, seething and unstable as the sea, and functions on the plane of mind, of which the symbol is fire. That is the most elementary and obvious meaning, and as this section of “A Treatise on the Seven Rays” is written for those with initiate understanding, the obvious interpretation will not prove satisfactory. The meaning must be broader and deeper. The words “outward from the desert” have application for the entire life of the incarnated Monad in the three worlds of human endeavor and enterprise.  “Leaving the sea behind” has reference to the withdrawal of the initiate from all sensuous experience because, as I have pointed out, the state of consciousness or awareness is superseded when the higher initiations are taken and their place is filled by a state of being for which we have no word but the unsatisfactory one of identification. 

AAB: I have tried to think that out. Where you have consciousness you always have this and that. This is conscious of that. Therefore in consciousness you are bound to have a sense of duality, because consciousness is implemented by some aspect of mind, either the concrete mind or the higher mind. Where you have identification you haven’t that duality. It is not this and that. There is only this. I think it is good for us to think these things out, because it is by thinking them out that we arrive at a degree of intuition. I think it is good for us to wrestle with these points. I think it gets us somewhere.

M: I like to think that is what Browning meant, “A man’s reach must exceed his grasp, else what were heaven for.”

AAB: That is why you have humility, because you have reached a certain stage of evolution on the final stage of the path, but you ramble all the time out ahead. When you reach Nirvana you go on into the higher evolution. [Reading further on pp. 82-83]:

This state of being is something very different to consciousness as you understand it. The phrase therefore means (if such a misleading form of words can be justifiably used) that the initiate leaves consciousness itself behind and the five worlds of life expression are transcended; at the third initiation the initiate grasps what is meant when the One in Whom we live and move and have our being (note that expression) is referred to as Fire. I elaborated this theme in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire – a book that evades understanding by all except those with initiate consciousness. Fire is the sum total of that which destroys form, produces complete purity in that which is not itself, generates the warmth that lies behind all growth, and is vitality itself.

This initiate realization is all brought about by the sudden appreciation or apprehension of sound, by the awakening of the inner ear to the significance of the Voice, just as the disciple in the earlier stage awakened to the significance of vision.

Significance of vision is something that matters to every one of us. Therefore you can place yourself. The fear that has been engendered by other occult societies has led true disciples to be awfully careful of what they say. But if the Tibetan is correct when he says that the fact of the Hierarchy is our major emphasis in the future, then we have got to be pilloried and go on and make the just claim with perfect assurance, “I am a disciple,” and not be the least afraid in making it. The moment you say that, you begin to face things, you begin to connect yourself with the group of disciples in the world, which means that you add your tiny quota of power to the reservoir of power that all disciples generate, and this reservoir is at your disposal. If you affirm it, you have to back it up with a life lived. Your hearer will inquire, “Disciple of whom? What do you mean by disciple?” and the whole thing is wide open to you. As a group we have to cultivate the technique whereby we can wisely awaken people to that which we are following. I wonder if you have any idea how much fear enters into your attitude toward this. I have no trouble because I am a teacher and have no problem now, but back in the early days there was a problem of knowing how wisely and tactfully and effectively to testify to the fact of the Hierarchy, its grades, and to where you as a disciple stand. I don’t see how else we are going to carry out the injunction of the Hierarchy that they must be made known to the public. In “My Work” by the Tibetan I was chided. I let the Hierarchy down. I was too much influenced by the Theosophical mistakes. I had to regain my confidence in the Masters because from my contact with the occult group the Masters apparently had no judgment.

I will never forget one of the lecturers of the Theosophical Society saying to some friends of mine, “You know I was so delighted when I was sitting around with the Master M to have the Master Jesus pass through the room and speak to the Master M.” That is the kind of thing we have to live down, and we have to present to the world a discipleship that is sane, intelligent and convincing. That is our problem. In these group talks we have to face up to our problems.

“This initiate realization is all brought about by the sudden appreciation or apprehension of sound, by the awakening of the inner ear to the significance of the Voice, just as the disciple in the earlier stage awakened to the significance of vision.” Just as the vision has been adequate to pull you or me on to the point we have now reached and is strong enough to entice us further and make us willing to go on, there is something that lies beyond the vision that has the same potency with the initiate – the voice, the sound.

What the Tibetan is doing in his teaching is to carry the spiritual life on a stage further than anything that has ever before been given. The emphasis up to date has been upon the treading of the path of discipleship, vision, contact with the Soul and then with the Hierarchy. Now he is beginning to give teaching that deals with the path of initiation, the building of the Antahkarana, the Spiritual Triad, the use of the Will, Shamballa. The thing is carried on another whole stage, and I believe that is something we should grasp because it has not been done anywhere else in the same sequential way. In The Secret Doctrine the general plan is given. In other occult books there have been the rules for disciples, the way in which we handle ourselves, details of the path of purification and probation. Now we are getting a good deal more, stuff for which we are not ready. When I read Mrs. Besant’s Outer Court and Path of Discipleship, I laid them down and said, “There is nothing new in this; we are all doing it, trying to cultivate the seven qualifications and following the stages of purification – so what?” It didn’t give me what I wanted; I wanted the next thing. Those books are entirely occupied with character building. The Master isn’t the least interested in your character. That is your business – what you feel it is necessary for you to do in order to have a more receptive instrument and cultivate sensitivity. The Tibetan has been giving us stuff that has to do with group relationships, with the building of the Antahkarana and not just with the Soul but that which produced the Soul, the Monad. It would be an interesting thing to pick out of the Tibetan’s books the things that are absolutely new – the New Group of World Servers, Shamballa, the Antahkarana.

RK: It occurs to me that what you have just said shows a logical and beautiful progression toward synthesis. It is identification. We are not looking for qualities but for an identity that exhibits those qualities, in whose life we partake. It is the next step.

AAB: [Reading further on p. 83-84]:

It is essential, however, that some knowledge begin to reach the public about the highest spiritual center to which (as the Gospel story intimates) Christ Himself was attentive. Frequently we read in the New Testament that “the Father spoke to Him,” that “He heard a voice,” and that the seal of affirmation (as it is occultly called) was given to Him. Only the Father, the Planetary Logos, the Lord of the World, enunciates the final affirmative sound. This has no reference – when it occurs – to the earlier initiations, but only to the final ones. There are five obvious crises of initiation that concern the Master Jesus as step by step He took or re-enacted the five initiations. But lying behind this obvious and practical teaching, lies an undercurrent or thread of higher revelation. This is concerned with the realizations of the overshadowing Christ as He registered the Voice that is heard at the third, fifth, sixth and seventh initiations. The Gospel story gives us the five initiations of the Master Jesus, beginning with the first and ending with the fifth. But it also gives the initiations of the Christ, starting from the second and ending with the seventh. The latter is left incomplete, and the Voice is not recorded, because at the Resurrection and Ascension we are not told of the hearing of the affirmative sound. That will be heard when the Christ completes His work at the time of the Second Coming. Then the great seventh initiation, which is a dual one (love-wisdom in full manifestation motivated by power and will), will be consummated, and the Buddha and the Christ will together pass before the Lord of the World, together see the glory of the Lord, and together pass to higher service of a nature and caliber unknown to us.

We are familiar with the five initiations of the Master Jesus – Baptism, Transfiguration, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension. The dual initiation of Love-Wisdom is the seventh. We have to get in some way the inner significance of the same initiations taken by the Master Jesus as they were taken by the Christ. They were totally different. I think there is a keyword there. He starts off by saying that the obvious meaning is not the real meaning, but that there are meanings behind meanings, and your spiritual status and mine is determined by the meaning at which we arrive.

N: Isn’t it always quite possible that a meaning may be reached by a disciple that can’t be put into words but that he can express through his actions, which need no explanation?

AAB: I think that is the only way at present.

RK: I think that requires spiritual living, living it out.

AAB: What Patanjali calls spiritual reading.

RK: The thought came to me while you were talking about being ready to be known as disciples, that the less said the better, and that it is the life lived. People like the fruit. The only thing one can talk about discipleship is if it is an expression of something worthwhile.

AAB: People are getting interested in the subject of discipleship, and they talk about it, and then you can talk about it. I find a great hesitancy on the part of people to do just that. I don’t think we have the faintest idea how eager people are to be told. Only they hate to ask for fear of being snubbed, and they are conscious of our fear. Why not mention it? We have no idea how ready people are for the new thing.

N: A friend of mine who is on the religious side gave me presents beyond what I could reciprocate. So I asked what I could do for him. He said to call him up and talk to him as I had in the past and that would compensate him a thousand times for what he had done. He said he went home and felt transformed after our talk.

AAB: His sense of values was sound. He knew that material things didn’t compensate for spiritual things. I think we have to do something in this group to release this new thing.

AP: It says that radiation is transmutation in the process of achievement. Wherever we are, if we are in the process of transmutation, we will radiate something that will attract those who want help.

AAB: And then be positive.

AP: Positive and definite.

R: That is part of the answer to there being so much that you can’t put into words. Radiation is part of the answer to that. Those currents of radiation that pass through us are healing, and they stimulate certain thought lines that are needed.

AP: That is a constructive thing, and then I think you have to implement it with speech. The people who are ignorant are talking plenty.

AAB: Our trouble is that our vision is inclusive; they work in blinkers.

R: There are plenty of intelligent people who are responsive to what we have to say.

AAB: People who are not occultists and who will not be occultists in this life lead far more beautiful lives than we do. It is one of the problems with which we have to deal.

C: Isn’t what AP said about implementing it with the word important? The voice and the sound go further than the vision.

AAB: They are behind the vision.

C: They transcend the vision.

R: It wouldn’t be our voice.

AAB: It is not voices; it is the voice – the sound behind the word.

C: He gives them precedence of the vision.

FG: Isn’t sound connected with the will?

AAB: Yes, I suppose it is the thing that is found in the heart until the love aspect is developed, because there can be nothing more awful than will without love.

C: We get back to the Voice of Silence.

AAB: The Voice of the Silence is connected with the Soul; his voice is connected with the Monad. The Voice of the Silence is the echo of the sound.

CH: In Cosmic Fire it says the formula concerns the physical form aspect; the mantra concerns the Soul, and the Word the Monadic aspect.

RK: I think he says “works through.”

CH: He also says that the formulas of the scientists have not been reduced to sound, and for that we should be grateful.

RK: Don’t you think we are beginning to reduce formulas to sound with our emphasis upon vibrations?

AAB: He then goes on to deal with the three great energies that are focused in Shamballa: 1) the energy of purification, 2) the energy of destruction, and 3) the energy of organization.

Will to purification
Will to destruction
Will to organization

The Will to purification is not physical purification but mental and emotional purification. It will take a lot of will to do that. What can we get rid of in the School? I don’t mean people; but what would make our presentation more perfect? Shall we destroy the spirit of criticism, the spirit of curiosity? People are selfish in the apprehension of truth for themselves. It will take a lot of will to do these things. I don’t think we quite realize the close relationship there is between the physical vehicle and the will. It is like the relationship between the heart center and the center at the base of the spine.

I was talking to a close friend and he asked me, “Why don’t you initiate an entirely new attitude toward life and be happy, be well, be prosperous?” I replied, “I haven’t the strength to generate the will.” It takes a lot of will to do things down here. That is why I think so many efforts flop. It is a lack of emotional intensity, of mental focus, of physical stamina, and there it ends. We have to bring the whole thing right down from the source of will onto the physical plane, and then nothing can stop us. The will to purify, to destroy, to organize. We can apply it to ourselves, to the School, to the Hierarchical attitude toward the world today. The world needed purification, therefore the force that came through from Shamballa brought in the fire of purification. Then the Hierarchy knew that the world had things that needed to be destroyed, and we saw the destruction of forms. And as this war has gone on, we have seen purification and we have also seen vast destruction, and a still vaster destruction is on its way. It is just beginning. Now we are going to wake up; it has touched us and we sit up and take notice. The destruction that is abroad in the world has only just begun. We haven’t lost as many men in this war as were killed in one week in the last war. We are going to have invasion soon, and then we will know what destruction is.

FB: We are trying to get hold of the will to organize for the reconstruction.

AAB: First the will to purification, then the will to destruction, and then the will to organize. That is the wonderful part of this teaching – its application today to you, to the School, to nations, to humanity as a whole.

M: In “The Lessons on Discipleship” in The Beacon he said we could do these things by the proper handling of spiritual energy. If you could handle spiritual energy in the right way, you could carry on with a sick body.

AAB: Yes, and you can carry on with an emotional body that is in a riot.

M: You concentrate on spiritual energy so that it goes out as force in the right way.

AAB: It really means, if you can do that, that you, the Soul, are not identified with your physical or emotional states.

RK: I was interested when you talked about bringing the vision all the way through. “Seek perfection in action.” Perfection means to carry through from the highest down to the lowest. From the will to the actual expression on the physical plane. Perfection means that; it isn’t anything abstract.

AAB: [Reading further on p. 84]:

The Energy of Purification:  This is the power, innate in the manifested universe, which gradually and steadily adapts the substance aspect to the spiritual by a process that we call purification, where humanity is concerned. It involves the elimination of all that hinders the nature of divinity from full expression, and this again from inherent or latent capacity. This necessitates the leaving behind, stage after stage, cycle after cycle, life after life, and plane after plane, of every tendency in the form nature that veils or hides the glory of God. It is essentially the energy that substitutes good for evil. Human thinking has debased this concept so that purification is related mainly to physical phenomena and physical plane life and to a selfish idealism that is largely based on the thought of the sanitary care of substance. An enforced celibacy and a rigid vegetarianism are familiar instances of this, and these physical disciplines have been put in the place of emotional loveliness, mental clarity, intuitional illumination, and the thoughts of the aspirant become focused downwards into matter and not outwards and upwards into light.

M: Emotional loveliness – I wonder what he means.

AAB: I can’t see that there is very much beauty in my emotions. There should be beauty and loveliness. [Reading further on p. 84]:

The Energy of Destruction:  This is a destruction that removes the forms that are imprisoning the inner spiritual life, and hiding the inner soul light. This energy is therefore one of the major aspects of the purificatory nature of the divine Life, and that is the reason why I have put purification ahead of destruction. It is the destroying aspect of life itself, just as there is a destructive agency in matter itself.

R: It is as though he gave us the third aspect of the whole of life instead of the quality aspect and making them subsidiary to the Second Ray, as we know they are. He brings it out as the third aspect and calls it reorganization.

AAB: What he is discussing is the manifestation aspect and not the quality aspect. That is probably why the Seventh Ray is coming into manifestation now.

JL: It is the Will toward atonement, whereas the Second Ray is desire for atonement.

AAB: I think atonement is over when you have at-oned yourself with the Soul.

RK: Emotional loveliness. The astral is the water aspect and is like purifying water that is good for everything. The mental is gaseous, and the lower mental should be like a lovely perfume.