AAB: I thought we might talk a little bit about the use of the higher will. [Then follows selected quotes about the �burning ground,� out of sequence, from The Rays and the Initiations, pp. 29-31]. Three aspects there of will: Spirit or the Monad, Soul and self-will. A great many people tread the path of discipleship through self-will. The new thing that is coming out is this emphasis on the Will. The Monad has contacted the personality; Shamballa has contacted humanity � in neither case reflecting through the Soul or the Hierarchy. This is a very interesting thing for discussion.

M: Doesn�t it seem odd that the Soul is an obstacle to be burned away?

AAB: It�s the destruction of the causal body. Don�t you like this phrase: �The secret of the higher initiations lies in the trained use of the will. It does not lie in purification or in self-discipline or in any of the expedients that have acted in the past as interceptors of the truth.� You do have thoughts of interceptors coming in when people are so intensely preoccupied with training as disciples. If you are so preoccupied with yourself, there isn�t any room for the truth in your mind. It would be interesting if we each wrote down what we feel in our own individual lives are interceptors of the truth, the things we have to leave behind.

M: How are we to know they are interceptors?

AAB: If your intuition is not coming through and you are entirely dependent upon books and teachers, then you are not open to what is coming from within. I would like to feel that in these evenings we spend together that we are really going to talk frankly and clearly of the realities we find within ourselves and the realities outside ourselves. Otherwise we are wasting time.

M: The Tibetan speaks of the true meaning of sacrifice and not the general meaning given to it. [He a quote on the �petals of sacrifice� from The Rays and the Initiations, p. 31.] Doesn�t the Tibetan in one of the School papers say it is the Will-to-Good?

RK: He calls it so many things. That is one of the names, but there are many more.

P: It seems to me so many words have a negative connotation and are bound by that. We have a painful idea of sacrifice. If you know you are sacrificing, you aren�t sacrificing. Sacrifice means the laying down of a lesser good for a greater. That is the sacrificial way of evolution, in which there is no pain but only joy and power.

AAB: It would be identification with Purpose. If you really knew the Purpose it wouldn�t be sacrifice. Sacrifice comes from the word meaning to make whole.

JL: To make holy.

AAB: I don�t think it means holy in the sense of being very good. I think it is wholly, that which is concerned with the whole. I imagine that the life of the higher will, which covers the higher initiations, is entirely concerned with the Purpose, total wholeness, total completeness, what Patanjali calls �isolated unity.� And yet we can�t even in our minds identify with each other.

RK: We are talking about three fields of approach: personality life expression, Soul life expression and the field of Monadic expression. It is elementary that in the first field we are individualistic, in the second field we recognize the value of the group, and in the third field of Monadic expression it is the wholeness of thinking that matters. Our talks here and what we get from each other are making us perfect the second aspect, but only because our eyes are focused on the third.

N: Do you think that most of humanity is creatively starving? It might help if people would become more creative.

AAB: I am sure that is so. I think it is a very difficult subject. So many people in the Arcane School are not creative, hundreds of them, and yet they are full of desire and aspiration. What is the hitch? If you are really creative you have some glimmering of Purpose, and that means you are not really creative until you are nearing the third initiation. I suppose individuals like DaVinci had taken the third initiation. This whole subject of creativeness has always been difficult.

N: People like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were living a very creative life. Jefferson infused into the mind of the nation the Soul of democracy. I believe that in the Declaration of Independence he awakened the very highest mind we have here in this nation, and now from here the world is beginning to awaken to the same fact. If we could tune in to the high Purpose of the Divine Will and serve that Purpose, I believe that would be creative activity.

AAB: People are apt to think creativity is painting a picture or writing a poem. But let�s consider four great creative moments in the life of humanity: the Magna Charta, the first great declaration of the Four Freedoms; the statement of the French Republic; the Declaration of Independence, and the joint declaration of the Four Freedoms in the Atlantic Charter. In those four great declarations you have the sounding forth on the physical plane of something that is creative � four great creative moments in the unfolding consciousness of humanity.

N: What�s the role of personalities in all this?

AAB: We have to remember in the new era that personalities don�t count. They are just temporary passing forms through which something focuses. The creative thing that happens in the race is what counts. Personalities anchor on the physical plane something that has been built on the mental plane and pulled down to the desire plane. The person who does the anchoring is unimportant, but in all cases he must establish something using what other people have thought for a long time. That doesn�t exclude the idea that the person who does the anchoring is doing creative work.

FB: There came a time in the spiritual growth of the School when it could be used for service. Prior to that time the Hierarchy had resolved to change its methods of work in the world and to use its disciples, and it was the action of the Tibetan working for Hierarchy and using AAB that produced the New Group of World Servers, a great spiritual event in the world.

RK: I believe that the group meditation that we are using now is a meditation for externalizing the Antahkarana. It is a terribly potent thing and has tremendous power.

AAB: All these things can be utterly innocuous if they are used by people who are impotent, but they can be powerful if they are used by people who have built the Antahkarana. HPB said the Sacred Word is most potent, but it�s a good thing only a few people can use it correctly.

RK: If the group becomes aware and wants to do it, it can cultivate that potency. We are potent because we bring the accumulated power of effort.

AAB: Plus something else � if we build the mechanism, we need to work through it. Lots of people have love for their fellow men but have no mechanism to work through.

RK: These formulas the Tibetan gives [in DINA2], it is like tuning in on a universal scope. If I put myself into it wholly, not just as a form of aspiration, but also as higher understanding, it creates tension, and the understanding becomes cumulative. This tension draws out or draws down the initiating fire. We become initiates that way.

AAB: If we can do that, we are working in the substance that will produce the new world order.

RK: I am amazed every day anew the way we are taught to build the Antahkarana, being at one with it and building it. The higher mind reflects the higher Will. We go into the very heart of Buddhi and bring down understanding. It isn�t the Soul that is in the way; it is the mechanism � the Soul body.

AAB: If people haven�t built the Antahkarana they aren�t very powerful.

FB: Nearly ten years went by in the life of the School before the New Group of World Servers was anchored on the physical plane. The mode of service in the School changed from the mode of the individual to group work. Then another ten years went by bringing us to 1943, and we are again taking hold of the same thing. The first time it happened unconsciously; this time there is a degree of group consciousness, and we are struggling to find our major service as a group. We are coming of age spiritually, and it is for us to abandon ourselves to the forces of the New Age that are sweeping in upon us and not care what disappears in the process. This is the process that is going on in the School at the moment, and that is why the School is struggling.

MW: Is this matter of coming together and trying to formulate our thoughts a forerunner of what is happening in the world, such as group forms and clear laws of unity? If you work this way, you lose a sense of identity. Then ideas would go out to the whole of humanity.

AAB: It has seemed to me that the approach is not that I lose my identity but that I pool my identity with others, pool every resource that every individual has, if we are disciples. If we were initiates we would be pooling everything � Soul and personality � but being disciples we work with the Plan and not with the Purpose.

M: Isn�t that creativeness?

AAB: Yes, we have to create the plans through which the Purpose works. When we work with the Purpose we are incentivators and not creators � Third Aspect creators.

N: In our teaching it says that we must function along three parallel lines: physical, mental and moral or spiritual. If we develop the three lines we will have powerful instruments.

AAB: On the physical plane. I was referring to the mechanism that relates Soul and personality and makes them a united instrument for work. I think meditation brings us to the point of contact with the Soul. Then there comes fusion with the personality. But what we are dealing with in the Antahkarana work is the mechanism that unites the Monad and personality/Soul. The trouble is that the fusion is only spasmodic and incomplete, and the Antahkarana is scarcely built, and that accounts for so much failure, if you can call it failure. I think it is evolution.

P: There must be the creative individual before anything is precipitated. There must be delivery onto the physical plane before evolution proceeds. Some time ago somebody said, �Why doesn�t the money come through? It is created on the etheric plane.� And you said, �That is the truth; it is created on the etheric plane and you don�t bring it through.� That part is important.

AAB: All life fights its way to the surface. Speaking of getting stuck on etheric levels, somewhere the Tibetan in speaking of the work of the disciples said something about how many disciples and aspirants can grasp the spiritual idea and work it into substance on the astral plane and even get some etheric matter adhered to it, but they can�t hang on long enough so that it can precipitate. People get tired and give up, and these abortive things hang around on etheric levels but never get any further. That is true of everything, whether it is money or sweet disposition.

C: Do you think it is a failure of the will or of intelligent activity?

FB: You may say that if you have will you will not quit, but it is not the will that does the work.

RK: It�s intelligent activity.

AAB: It might be an act of the will. The final cause is an act of the will that focuses through the brain and reaches to the base of the spine, and I think both are right. I think RK has put her finger on that which is lacking in so many disciples. Many are working with self-will, and that has got to go. Then there is the Soul will. I do not believe that people distinguish between them. They are using a highly developed self-will. Then there comes this Monadic will, which is that dynamic purpose that cannot be frustrated, and I don�t know anything about it yet. I would put it down to Soul will, what is going on now. I don�t think the Monadic Will is functioning now. But I would love to think you were all a group of initiates.

JL: If we have self-will, Soul will and Spiritual Will, what is there in the three that makes them all will?

AAB: Dynamic impulse.

JL: Don�t we get right back to the idea that will is always will. We all have dynamic impulses.

AAB: No, I wish we did. If I had dynamic impulses I would burst the world wide open. If we were dynamic enough, nothing would stop us, because it is the purpose of being. We have selfish impulses. We are personally dynamic. At higher stages you would have Soul dynamism, which is never unkind, and then Monadic dynamism in which the purpose of God would be the only thing you cared for. We all have dynamic will; the trouble is the purpose back of it.  Monadic Will, which is Purpose (I don�t pretend to know what it is); Soul will or the will to love; and personal will, which is the will to have something. The will to progress, the will to love and the will to have.

The Tibetan distinguishes between the three wills: [passages from R&I pp. 30-31 are re-quoted].

P: I am talking about activity being the creative factor through which we must work.

AD: There cannot be the right kind of creativeness on the physical plane until the fusion of personality and Soul. Then the Soul reflects the Monad.

P: That is true in the final revelation, but we aren�t there yet. Isn�t it true that my Soul does reflect? Eventually then spirit and matter are one. When the Soul system has done its work the Soul system passes out.

AAB: The Tibetan has been dealing with direct relationship between Monad and personality via the Antahkarana, exclusive of the Soul, just as we are contacting Shamballa force exclusive of Hierarchy. I think therefore that we have to get clear in our minds what we are talking about. If we want to talk about Soul and personality fusion, then all right, the Soul is reflecting the lower spiritual aspect into the mind. That is what we are dealing with in the fusion of Soul and personality. But in the Antahkarana work and in this group, new concepts are being given to us � that is, when fusion between Soul and personality has been accomplished, something happens in the personality and the Soul fades out. Then the relation is between the Spiritual Triad and the personality and finally between Monad and brain.

RK: It isn�t that the Soul is excluded, but the Soul is absorbed. The personality has absorbed its quality to such an extent that the Monad can come all the way through.

AAB: When you have built the Antahkarana the Monad comes through.

RK: The Soul has sacrificed itself, and its quality is in the personality vehicle, and that is why there is no need of an intermediary. The intermediary has given of its essence to the personality. It is the form that disappears. The building of the Antahkarana uses up the Soul.

AAB: The invocative energy of the personality evokes the Triad. When the personality gets so skillful, it emits a note that is so powerful that it brings out response from the Triad. Soul is not a factor that counts any more than Hierarchy. The Hierarchy is occupied with adjusting effects produced by Shamballa in humanity. Your Soul is occupied in dominating the personality, but in no case is the personality dominated yet.

P: She said that the Soul had sacrificed itself to the raising up of matter and the personality, and made it possible for the personality to be receptive to Monadic power. All Souls are crucified just as Christ was, to raise up the personality where it could be receptive to the Monadic Ray. This is the meaning of the cry, �My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?� We think of personality, Soul, Monad. When the Soul has served its purpose it loses itself in the personality. I have also looked at it the other way. Evolution couldn�t go on unless matter was raised up.

RK: The Soul acts always as the mother in order to build.

JL: Monadic will, Soul will, self-will. Self-will is Monadic will distorted. He doesn�t give Soul will any reality; it is only a reflection.

AD: Aren�t we struggling to create the Antahkarana?

AAB: It is supposed to be the personality in the three worlds through the help of the Monad that is creating the Antahkarana. We are groping our way toward a new science.

FB: We are now confronted for the first time in the history of the planet with the direct receipt of a new kind of force. That is the point; it is the reason for this discussion, for new advances in School life.

AAB: The Tibetan says that the new force from Shamballa formerly was stepped down via the Hierarchy. It is now coming through to humanity. The same is true of Monadic force. Formerly stepped down by the Soul, it is now coming in direct to the personality.

P: What have the initiates done with the Will coming through direct? We are like children who have failed in a large number of examinations on this Soul aspect, and all of a sudden we are to take our Ph.D. in the School of the Monad. We are going to flunk.

AAB: There is a chance that we are given an opportunity to anchor something else. The Tibetan anchored the New Group of World Servers, the new teaching. The world was ready for something beyond the Soul. There is a certain danger in the thing we are trying to do, to talk through the new spiritual realization. But if you don�t do anything because people have failed, you will never get anywhere.

P: What about the use we are making of it?

AAB: I am working with Soul quality that will work out in love.

M: The Tibetan says we have to take it on faith. Used scientifically, this would bring through results. �Scientific knowledge is gained by direct observation and correct thinking.� The Tibetan says we are concerned with energy scientifically used. This whole teaching will prove futile unless we use it scientifically.

AD: We have to use all this knowledge to establish right relationships, isn�t that the Plan?

AAB: Yes, that is the Plan; it isn�t the Purpose. I don�t think the Antahkarana has anything to do with our materializing the Plan. That is the Soul, the Hierarchy, right human relationships. It is working with the Plan. That is not what the Tibetan is talking about; He is talking about the higher Will that is the Plan.