AAB: I think what we have to read tonight is above our heads. The Tibetan was talking about the Rules as a whole, and then he goes on with the familiar phrase, �in the last analysis.� [Reading from The Rays and the Initiations, p. 35]: 

In the last analysis, these Rules or Formulas of Approach are primarily concerned with the Shamballa or life aspect. They are the only Formulas or embodied techniques at present extant which have in them the quality that will enable the aspirant to understand and eventually express the significance of the words of Christ, �Life more abundantly.� These words relate to contact with Shamballa; the result will be the expression of the will aspect.  The whole process of invocation and evocation is tied up with the idea. The lesser aspect is ever the invoking factor, and this constitutes an unalterable law lying behind the entire evolutionary process. It is necessarily a reciprocal process, but in time and space it might be broadly said that the lesser ever invokes the higher, and higher factors are then evoked and respond according to the measure of understanding and the dynamic tension displayed by the invoking element. This many fail to realize. You do not work at the evocative process.  That word simply connotes the response of that which has been reached. The task of the lesser aspect or group is invocative, and the success of the invocative rite is called evocation.

I think this sentence is interesting: �The higher factors are then invoked and respond according to the measure of understanding and the dynamic tension displayed by the invoking elements.� The spiritual dynamic tension is adequate in the world at present. But the emotional dynamic tension is so powerful that the spiritual hasn�t a chance. The cause of the dynamic tension is not invocation. Invocation is an effect of tension, and tension is also itself an effect of that which has produced the tension. For instance, we have a world that is suffering for what it has itself done, and that produces tension, and the state of tension produces invocation.

RK: But only as it is invoked.

AAB: If you go far enough back you run the round of the circle. Because of our invocation there is the pull of the spiritual factors.

FB: The tension in the human family is caused by our own wrongdoing or ignorance or whatever you choose to call it. You have cause and effect. If invocation takes place and spiritual force is induced, you have good cause and effect.

AAB: You have progress of some kind; in fact, you have life.

C: It is really a new link.

AAB: We haven�t got a name for it.

JL: Is what you evoke the First Ray?

AAB: I suppose that in this particular cycle it is First Ray more than anything else that we are invoking [referring to the second (1940) part of the Great Invocation]. The Tibetan says that he is going to give us another invocation when the war is over, and that surely would be a Second Ray invocation.

JL: What pours down?

AAB: First Ray at present, but not after the war � after the war it is going to be Second Ray. Aside from that you would invoke the type of energy required to meet the need in any particular cycle. What we need now is the will to win. You have to remember that all rays are subrays of the Second Ray and that it is the mass of the people who are to do the invoking. It is the Hierarchy that invokes Shamballa, not us. What we are invoking is that within the Hierarchy that can be relayed, if you like, to Shamballa, and the line of least resistance for the mass of humanity is the Second Ray. So that is what will have to come in order to rebuild the world along the new lines. Still, maybe it is the Seventh Ray that we are going to invoke, bringing together spirit and matter and building a new form. I am quite sure that when the war is over the Shamballa influence will be withdrawn. We will have had all we can take.

P: The First Ray � God the Father � holds within it all rays. We can�t any of us register that First Ray.

AAB: Nobody has any idea of what the will is until they have taken the third initiation. It is so new we do not know anything about it. [Reading further]:

When, therefore, your life is fundamentally invocative, then there will come the evocation of the will.  It is only truly invocative when personality and Soul are fused and functioning as a consciously blended and focused unit. 

The next point that I seek to make is that these Formulas of Approach or Rules deal with the unfoldment of group consciousness, because it is only in group formation that, as yet, the Shamballa force of the will can be tapped.

Ibid., p. 35

And only by Hierarchy � the Hierarchy is the only coordinated group working without any interior friction, without any personality reactions of any kind whatsoever. [Reading] �They are useless to the individual under the new initiatory dispensation.� We are going to have fun when the book is published because all the old ideas in regard to initiation are exploded. [Reading further]:

Only the group, under the proposed new mode of working and of group initiation, is capable of invoking Shamballa.  That is why Hitler, the exponent of the reversed reaction to Shamballa (and consequently the evil reaction) had to gather around him a group of like-minded people or personalities.  On the upper arc of the evocative cycle (Hitler being the expression of the invocative arc of the Shamballa force) it requires a group to bring about evocation.

Ibid., pp. 35-36

�Stand with massed intent,� we are told. I have a sense of failure with regard to [the second part of] the Great Invocation. I feel that if the School as a whole had stood with massed intent we might have done more. Our use of that invocation has been very perfunctory. We have done it because we wanted to be obedient, and that is not the way to get results. [Reading further]:

We now come to my third point in relation to the Rules or Formulas and their objective.  They are concerned � above everything else � with group initiation.  They have other applications, but for the present here lies their usefulness.  What, you may ask, is group initiation?  Does it involve the taking of initiation by every member in the group?  Can one person have so extensive an influence that he can hold up or delay or even prevent (in time and space) the group initiation?  The group need not necessarily contain members who have all taken the same initiation.  By this I mean that the necessary initiation of all the members simultaneously into the same group development is not required.  Basically, what I am endeavoring to say about these Rules has relation to the third initiation � the initiation of the integrated personality.  They necessarily, however, have a correspondence to the second initiation, and are consequently of more general interest, for it is that initiation which faces so many aspirants today � the demonstration of the control of the formidable emotional nature.

Ibid., p. 36

Most of the senior aspirants (accepted disciples and those in preparation) have all taken the first initiation. The first real initiation from the standpoint of the Hierarchy is the third. The first two are initiations of the threshold. The Hierarchy prepared the world for a statement like that by laying emphasis on the first two. Christ�s real work never started until after the Transfiguration and yet there were two before that. As we study these rules we could take the position that we are aspirants that have the first initiation behind us because our keen interest, our life tendency, our absorption in the life of the spirit is such that we have a guarantee of a past experience even if we don�t remember it. Therefore these formulas, even if they apply to the third initiation for which only a few are being prepared, have relation to the initiation that lies ahead of all of you. I would remind you that several lives may lie between the first and second initiation. There were thirty years between the Birth and the Baptism. I have made a very important statement, which if true definitely implicates everyone of us here. I think that if we hadn�t had any teaching, hadn�t been so absorbed, a statement like that would have come like a sledgehammer blow upon our consciousness. But it is part of a rhythm of teaching, and it doesn�t mean a great deal. The first initiation lies behind you and you are being prepared for the second initiation. Hundreds of thousands of people in the world have come through the Birth at Bethlehem, and the Christ life is taking shape in their lives. Another guarantee of these facts is that the teaching can come out because there are enough people ready to understand these advanced ideas.

RK: You speak of Christ and His work beginning after the Transfiguration. I was reading the Beatitudes. They can only be understood as a scientific statement made to those who have the mental equipment � in other words initiates.

AAB: To people who have taken the second initiation, because they were spoken immediately after the Baptism in Jordan. They therefore deal with �demonstration of control of the formidable emotional nature.� [Reading further]:

Group initiation means that the bulk of the members are correctly oriented; that they are proposing to accept the discipline that will prepare them for the next great expansion of consciousness, and that none of them can possibly be deviated from their purpose (note that word with its First Ray or Shamballic implications), no matter what is happening in their environment or their personal life.

Ibid., p. 36

As we look back over the history of the School, there were cycles when weeding out occurred. Also, quite a number of students dropped out of the School, some of them School secretaries and advanced students. Since Pearl Harbor we have lost many senior students. They have been deviated from their purpose by circumstances. It is true that perhaps they could not do all the written work, but they could have kept up their spiritual orientation and meditation work. But I imagine it is a good thing for the School. They are people whose purpose was not steady.

P: The Tibetan does take the trouble to bother with us, so he must have some hope for us.

AAB: Returning to our text, I want to say three things about the Rules:

1.      Great formulas of approach refer to a special section of the Path and not an approach to an initiator.

2.      These rules or formulas of approach are concerned with the Life aspect. They are the only formulas that will enable the aspirant to understand and express life abundantly.

3.      These formulas deal with group initiation. [Reading further]:

Finally, these Formulas or Rules are susceptible of three forms of application or interpretation and I would have you remember this, because you can thereby discover where your individual focus of attention is and if you are consequently functioning as an integrated personality.  Remember always that only an integrated personality can achieve the needed Soul focus.  This is a fundamental requirement.

Ibid., pp. 36-37

That is what we have to do with the students in the School: make them integrated personalities. [Reading further]:

These three forms of application are physical, emotional and mental in nature.  But those words in their simplest connotation have true reference to the task of achieving one or other of the higher initiations.  The only way their significance can truly appear is by grasping the following meanings:

1. The physical application refers to the usage by the group of the given knowledge and intuitively perceived information in such a way that the needs of the larger group, of which the group itself is a part, are constructively served.

Ibid., p. 37

We are a group that has demonstrated steady purpose, and we have to get in group formation. What for? �To serve the need of the larger group of which this group is a part.� There is the whole theme for consideration. This group has only one purpose � to serve the needs of the larger group. What we serve could be several things � the inner Ashram, the Hierarchy, the periphery of the Master�s group, but always the larger group, and our purpose, our service, is determined by the sum total of the orientation of the bulk of the people in the group, the united spiritual focus of all of us in this group.

RK: Of course we choose to serve the Hierarchy.

AAB: Not in these instructions. Our orientation is toward the Hierarchy, but it works out elsewhere. If this group is going to measure up to the intentions of the Tibetan and to act as an externalizing agent and servant of the inner group or of a particular ashram � the Master M, KH, the Tibetan, or whoever it may be � if the group is impersonally oriented, this group cannot help but be a potent force through the Arcane School and out into the world. [Reading further]:

The consummation of this ideal is to be found in the activity of the Hierarchy itself which, from progressive point to progressive point, finds itself in the position of intuitive interpreter and force transmitter between the center of Shamballa and Humanity.

Ibid., p. 37

The individual initiate, on the way to one or other of the higher initiations, has in his lesser degree to achieve the same dual function and thereby fit himself for the wider cooperation.

2. The emotional application has definite reference to the world of meaning, interpreted in a group sense.  At present, well-meaning aspirants are satisfied if they are able to interpret their personality conditions, events and happenings in terms of their real meaning.  But that still remains an individual reaction.  The aspirant who is seeking to comprehend these Rules is more interested in seeing the situations which he contacts in terms of a world whole, and in searching for their meaning in terms of their group significance.  This serves to decentralize him and to convey into his consciousness some aspect of that larger whole, and this in its turn contributes to the expansion of the consciousness of humanity as a whole.

3. The mental application has to be grasped and considered in terms of the �great light.� It must be remembered that the mind is the organ of illumination.  Therefore it might be asked:  Do the united mental processes of the group as a whole tend to throw light on human problems and situations?  How much does the light of the individual group member aid in this process?  How much light do you, as an individual, register and therefore contribute to the greater light?  Is the group light a dim flicker or a blazing sun?

Such are some of the implications lying behind the use of these familiar words, and the careful consideration of their meaning might bring about a definite expansion of consciousness.  This expansion normally follows certain clear and definite stages:

1.      A recognition of the goal.  This goal is often expressed under the word �the door.�  A door permits entrance into some place larger than the area covered by the standing room of the would-be initiate.  This statement refers to the �door of incarnation� through which the incarnating Soul enters into life � limited and restricted from the angle of the Soul.  The door of initiation admits �into a larger room� or sphere of extended expression.

2.      The approach, under regulated and imposed and well-tried rules, of the entering one towards a visioned goal.  This involves conformity to that which has been tried, known and demonstrated by all previous initiates.

3.      The arresting of the steps of the initiate before the door in order that he may �prove himself to be initiate� prior to entry.

4.      The passing of certain tests in order to demonstrate fitness.

5.      Then comes the stage of entrance � under due and set rules and yet with full freedom of action.  You will see, therefore, why ever the need for understanding is emphasized.

Ibid., pp. 37-38

We have been dealing with the general subject of the formulas of approach. I cannot tell you more about it or I would defeat my own purpose. I think that is a scientific statement. If our intuition doesn�t suffice, if he gives us information, he puts stuff into the concrete mind instead of throwing ballast overboard so that you can reach up yourself. That is why the formula is �give, demand, then take� because we are so loaded up with knowledge. We have to give first. We don�t know how rich we are.

P: To tell all is to put on chains.

BM: There was a man who came through the School to the Disciples� Degree and then he thought he would stop studying. He missed the whole point that it is life itself. I don�t see how students can leave it; it becomes second nature.

AAB: It is difficult to remember that people fall into different groups. People like ourselves cannot be deterred. We may hesitate, but on we go. There are others who are making their first contact with this line of thought. Another group has absorbed all it can absorb in this life and they can�t take any more.

P: Why can�t they just stand?

AAB: They are tired; they have to wait for a while.

P: I have known people who stop because they couldn�t reconcile it with their Catholicism or their old dogmatic beliefs. It is interesting to watch these people when they have once had these ideas in their consciousness. It is as though they had had something put into their blood stream; they cannot get it out of their consciousness. I know some who become uncomfortable every time they think of the School. They have the kind of mind that has to choose between this and that.

AAB: It is all right for them in this life. We give too much importance to a single lifetime.

RK: There is another type that is interesting, and that type is us. We have been given a tremendous amount of teaching, more than we can use, so we need to slow down. I happen to be in a position where I can pass it on. We are given this tremendous amount to pass on and not hoard.

FG: We forget that a lot of our students have to make it factual.

AAB: So often you can�t make it factual except after months of effort. All along the way you come up against mental difficulties that have to be dealt with, against emotional situations that have to be dealt with, and against physical disabilities.

BM: You said in a previous talk, �Let�s own ourselves.� Somewhere the Tibetan said in speaking of illness, �You can overcome it, and I do not mean mind over matter; I mean handling of energy so that the illness doesn�t matter.� A person with a disability can go right ahead.

P: Take people who have a hard time giving up old ideas. I was a strict Episcopalian, and I haven�t given up a single idea.

AAB: You owned your ideas; they didn�t own you. Some people are owned by their ideas.

P: They are not called upon to give up the old ideas, but to enter into a new understanding of them.

BM: Could you consider an integrated personality a tensioned personality?

AAB: I do not think it is necessarily so. An integrated personality needn�t be a good personality. It might be very bad.

P: Integration means that there is no one part of yourself that is pulling against any other part. Whether it is a good personality depends upon motive. Integration means that you are whole and your mind and emotions and body are not fighting with each other; they act as one; there is no tension. The tension isn�t the point; the oneness is the point.

AAB: Where would you put your point of tension, if that is part of an integrated personality?

BM: On the plane of the Soul.

AAB: An integrated person, as I see it, has his point of tension on the physical plane in his brain and his head, because if you are integrated, the mental knowledge and the powerful emotional energy come down onto the physical plane so that your point of tension demonstrates there. There has been too much of �up there.� When you begin to work at the building of the Antahkarana, that is another point of tension. You choose not to work so much as a personality but as a disciple on the mental plane. In an integrated personality the mind, the emotional nature and the physical brain are completely unified, all focused down here on the physical plane to achieve something.

P: Achieving a point of tension is only a temporary thing.

AAB: But it becomes a habit � particularly in the Antahkarana work.

BM: There are certain moments when I have achieved that point of tension and something pours in. I have to be an integrated personality for that to happen.

AAB: I am not at all sure in these instructions whether we are able to make them factual. We are dealing with a future possibility, which has a stretching effect upon our minds. There is great danger in a theoretical grasp that is confused with fact. It may take us lives to make these things factual. They can be made factual if we are willing to undertake the discipline. Remember that there is the physical application, the emotional application and the mental application. As DK says, a careful consideration of their meaning may bring about a definite group expansion of consciousness.

RK: Physical in this instance doesn�t mean what we usually mean by physical.

AAB: As you can see by the definition:

The physical application refers to the usage by the group of the given knowledge and the intuitively perceived information in such a way that the needs of the larger group, of which the group itself is a part, are constructively served.

RK: The physical and the use we make of it � it is always a matter of re-identification. I become that server, that Hierarchy, that spiritual will, and that is the way I use it, and then its effect is inevitable. The end becomes identified with my intention and we become identified with the greater group. The thing that begins to dawn on me is that this always means the greater realization of who we are.

FB: I had a talk with a man about the triangle work, and that some people are doers and some are not. He said most of the people who are a guiding network of light are doers.

AAB: It really works out that way. I should say there are about 800 triangles working with subjective energies and only six or seven working with objective energies. The subjective groups are all taking the position that if you are subjective, it will work out objectively. I think those who are working objectively are the type of people who believe in goodwill, but will never be subjective.

FB: If a group meets and prays for peace it would not be an action group, but if they meet and build a network of light they would be an action group. They would be doing something, and it might be as real and as definite as though they went out and talked about the Great Invocation to twenty people. It is subjective action, but it is action, using knowledge for the good of the whole.

AAB: A network of light has to work out in some form of enlightenment.

FB: I think the building of the network of light would become very real to a great many people if they would get away from the idea that it is subjective.

P: It is suggested that you can be a doer on any plane. In doing you produce an effect. Or you can be a drone on any plane.

B: Why does the Tibetan talk about points of tension when we suffer from tension in our daily lives?

AAB: One tension lies in circumstances, and the other is tension in consciousness. Tension can occur in many aspects of our being.

P: I think there is something that is not tension but rather a tremendous concentration that blanks out everything else. They say Pascal could negate a terrible attack of neuralgia by working on a mathematical problem. He lost all sense of everything but the thing on which he was concentrating.

BM: What about nervous tension?

AAB: You are talking in terms of the physical body. There is tension in consciousness and the tension of the athlete taking a high leap. Tension can be at any level, and wherever your focus is, the tension may be high or low from the spiritual angle.

FB: In meditation you learn to align yourself and you try to hold the mind steady in the light. That is a point of tension.

AAB: I think you are right.

FB: That is the effort of the personality in order to get a response from the Soul.

AAB: The Tibetan is actually talking about the next step.

C: That is tension?

AAB: Yes.

FB: You can produce tension by achieving attention.