AAB: We have a very interesting theme for discussion. It deals with the whole story of our reception of energy, our use of energy and the effect that that energy will have upon others. If we have no effect upon others, it means that we have some obstruction set up between us and those we ought to serve, or else we are using energy so that we do more harm than good. When you take up that theme you are dealing with the basic factor of all study by all initiates, because the whole problem that the Hierarchy faces is the right direction of energies so that the human consciousness can be raised. And if you and I ever want to be conscious parts of the Hierarchy and not just stay at the stage of original accepted disciples, we have to grasp this whole problem of the handling of energy, either deliberately as we direct it in certain directions, or unconsciously as we act as channels. When you have really grasped that the work of the occultist is primarily the handling of energy, then whether you are young or old there is no inhibition of any kind, provided you have all your mental ability and are able to use force rightly. Thus the task we have is the right direction of energy, to act as unconscious or conscious channels for spiritual energy.  

The third phrase of Rule One is [reading]:

The clear cold light shines forth and cold it is and yet the heat � evoked by the group love � permits the warmth of energetic moving out. 

In these words you have the key to group initiation. The light of the higher initiations can stream in when it is evoked by the group love. That light is clear and cold, but produces the needed �heat,� which is a symbolic word used in many of the world Scriptures to express living, spiritual energy. I said �spiritual energy� and not Soul force, and herein lies a distinction that you will some day have to grasp.

The Rays and the Initiations, pp. 31-32

Some people deal with spiritual energy before they are ready to deal with Soul energy. Some day we will be able to handle it directly when we know the Soul as One. At present the major effort of students is largely directed to Soul force, but what we are after in the [Antahkarana work] and this group is to bypass Soul force and work with spiritual energy, which comes from the Monad. We cannot do that until we have taken initiation, but you have to have the stage in the unfoldment of disciples where on a higher turn of the spiral you enact the part of the initiate just as the aspirant enacts the part of the disciple. An aspirant goes through lives just thinking about the Soul; then there comes a point when he makes Soul contact, and that is where his major effort has to lie as regards his integrated personality. But as regards his mental perception, he has to pass on to the next higher cycle and that which he is to become. So it isn�t a waste of our time to study these rules of the higher initiations. We are on our way toward grasping the next great step ahead of disciples, just as the aspirant spends a long time visioning the stage at which you are now. The moment we begin to function as Souls we begin to understand what group consciousness is, group love, group relationships. If that is a fact, a basic fundamental of the path, then as we study together as a group the next obvious unfoldment is group initiation. It is a logical conclusion to all the teaching. [Reading further]:

This group love is based upon the Egoic aspect of the will to which we give the name �sacrificial love.� This does not connote happy relationships between individual members of the group. It might, presumably, lead to unhappy outer, superficial interplay, but basically it leads to an unalterably staunch loyalty, underlying the surface of the outer life. The Master�s influence, as He seeks to aid His disciple, always produces transitory turmoil � transitory from the angle of the Soul, but frequently appalling from the angle of the personality. Similarly, the projection of the life and influence of any senior disciple into the periphery or aura of the aspirant or lesser disciple is � in its degree � likewise disturbing and upsetting; this is a point that should be carefully borne in mind, both as regards the disciple�s own reactions and training, and as regards any effect that he may call forth in the life of a probationary disciple or lesser disciple in his own sphere of influence. These intrusive influences and their consequent effects that are produced upon an individual or a group by a Master or a senior disciple are usually interpreted in personality terms, and are very little understood. They are nevertheless aspects of the higher will in some higher disciple and are beating upon the personality will and evoking the sacrificial will of the Ego, and hence lead to a period of temporary discomfort. This the aspirant and the inexperienced disciple resent and blame the evoking sources for their discomfort, instead of learning the needed lesson of receiving and handling force.

Ibid., p. 32

This concerns your reaction to senior disciples, to yourself or to the Master, and it very definitely conditions you as regards the effect you have upon those who are not as far along as you are. There is a giving and a taking all the time. Those of us who have been working in the School so long have seen that work itself out. People come into the aura of the School and their lives are disrupted, but as time goes on and they learn to handle the force that comes through the group and they become related to the Hierarchy, they stabilize down into that rhythm and they begin to be an influence.

ES: Why do you say �down�?

AAB: We come down to earth after being up in the air for a while. Up and down are all wrong, but they enable us to get a picture. I have seen it happen in this relationship. There are people who do not know as much as we do, and we expect too much of them. It means you are handling forces wrongly; you are over-stimulating them and expect from them what they cannot give. I remember one man who left us years ago. He had a high voltage ambition and a great deal to give. I asked too much of him in the way of service, in the way of taking energy. I didn�t step down the energy, the power through me as a senior disciple, to temper it for him.

RK: I think we sometimes tell the student as much as we know, and that disheartens him. It is a showoff thing on our side.

P: Agni Yoga says somewhere that to tell is to put on chains.

AAB: Don�t you see how practical all this is and why I am belaboring it a little bit? Here we are a group of disciples, and here I am a senior disciple, and what is the effect of all that? We have two things to do as a group. We have to direct energy and be channels, and the moment we do that we are going to get reactions from the outside world that are both good and bad. Goodness and strength can be repelling forces. One of the ways in which you can drive off undesirable people, if you want to, is to pour out love upon them. You can protect yourself not by building a wall but by pouring out love. It is a very good illustration of the wrong use of spiritual force. Here we are a group of disciples who want to make an impact upon people and who are getting ready to serve in a large way when the war is over. We have had an enormous amount of teaching given to us; we have more information as custodians than we can possibly handle. There are people in the School like Roberto Assagioli and others who are in direct relationship with the Masters. It means that here, there and everywhere the School has a center of energy, and out from the School into the world and the Goodwill work this energy is flowing. Nothing can stop it, provided you accept the fact of the Hierarchy.

Do you ever sit down and wonder if there is a Hierarchy, if there is a Soul, if there is a mode of work? If I can be a channel, if the group can be a channel, then the result will be inevitable. We have done a lot of talking about the Hierarchy and about initiation, and how much is still �if� with us? [Reading further]:

This the aspirant and the inexperienced disciple resent and blame the evoking sources for their discomfort, instead of learning the needed lesson of receiving and handling force. 

Where, however, real love exists, it will produce the lessening of the personality will, the evocation of the sacrificial Egoic will, and a constantly growing capacity to identify the group with the will or purpose of the Monad. The progress of the group is, therefore, from one burning ground to another � each burning ground being colder and clearer than the preceding one, but producing sequentially the burning fire, the clear cold lighted fire, and the consuming divine fire.

Ibid., pp. 32-33

�Each burning ground being colder.� What does that mean? If you go from burning ground to burning ground you go in isolation. It is very cold alone. There is no warmth around you, and the further you are on the path the more alone you are from the personality angle, and that is why you feel so cold.

DB: Dante says that the inner circle of hell is the coldest.

AAB: Occult life is full of paradoxes. As integration is registered by you and you feel the cold, you can say to yourself, �I am still very personal,� but if you don�t feel the cold because you are too busy with the Master�s work and Soul service, then you are shattering the outer pull of the personality, and only the inner person is aware of the warmth that the clear cold light shields. [Reading further]:

Thus in parables the truth goes out, and gradually the initiate grasps the uses of heat, warmth, light and energy; he arrives at an understanding of self-will, sacrificial will and Shamballic purpose, and only Love (self-love, group love and, finally, divine love) can reveal the significance of these symbolic words and the occult paradoxes that confront the true aspirant as he attempts to tread the Way�.

I would call your attention to what should be the basic attitude of the would-be initiate:  it should be one of purpose, governed by pure reason and working out in spiritual activity.  That is a sentence easily written, but what specifically does it convey to you? Let me enlarge upon it somewhat. The attitude of the initiate-in-training should be one of right spiritual motive � the motive being the intelligent fulfillment of the will aspect of divinity, or of the Monad. This involves the merging of his personality self-will into that of the sacrificial will of the Soul; and this, when accomplished, will lead to the revelation of the divine Will. Of this Will no one who is not an initiate has any conception. It means, secondly, the release of the faculty of spiritual perception and of intuitive understanding, which involves the negation of the activity of the lower or concrete mind, of the lower personal self, and the subordination of the knowledge aspect of the Soul to the clear pure light of the divine understanding. When these two factors are beginning to be active, you will have the emergence of true spiritual activity upon the physical plane, motivated from the high source of the Monad, and implemented by the pure reason of the intuition.

It will be apparent to you, therefore, that these higher spiritual faculties can only be brought into play when the bridging Antahkarana is beginning to play its part.

Ibid., pp. 33-34

RK: What should be the attitude of the initiate?

AAB: It should be one of purpose governed by pure reason and worked out in activity.

RK: That describes the functioning of the Spiritual Triad: spiritual will, pure reason or love, and abstract mind.

AAB: When you have the spiritual will, pure reason and the abstract mind perfectly functioning you have an adept.

RK: But at this stage the initiate is not yet expressing them completely. He is trying to direct energy and to be a channel.

AAB: Yes, he is trying.

HR: That brings us back to this group�s purpose.

AAB: What did we decide it was?

HR: You said you knew what it was, but you made the statement later that we were not to consider this group as the Headquarters Group of the Arcane School.

AAB: It has nothing to do with it at all.

HR: The effort is to integrate this group in Soul terms. Until we can do that to a certain extent I don�t see how the purpose can be revealed to us.

AAB: People work so hard with integration that they shut out the vision. If we are preoccupied with what the Hierarchy wants, we become integrated.

RK: The Gita says, �seek perfection in action.�

AAB: When I am struggling with myself I do not get anywhere, but if I am preoccupied with the Soul and the things the Soul wants done, the other things take care of themselves.

M: We think so much about service, and we talk about it. I think it should be a spontaneous thing.

AAB: But I don�t think service or integration is the purpose of this group.

HR: The Soul will integrate the group.

AAB: The Tibetan started off telling us that we are not concerned with Soul force but with spiritual energy. I think we have taught too much about Soul force.

H: �The progress of the group is from one burning ground to another.� I think something might come out of that.

C: Is the purpose of the group to use spiritual energy?

AAB: I didn�t say so.

N: One of the purposes of the group is to train the human heart and mind so that they will recognize the oneness of life and become sensitive to higher impressions.

AAB: I think that is the purpose of the group. In due time another purpose will appear. I think the major preoccupation of this group is to render itself sensitive to the impressions that come from the Hierarchy.

RK: At the beginning of the age the wise men from all over the world came together to consider the pattern of the then new age. They sat in silence for seven days, and then one of them said one thing, and then they sat together in silence for another seven days. It was the creative silence when minds become one.

AAB: As the group purpose begins to dawn we shall find ourselves automatically as a group stopping to think for a minute or two, to be receptive for a minute or two. We might end up with seven days.

HR: We must not be afraid of those moments of silence, because it is then that the Soul gets in its work.

P: Those three fires: the burning fire, the clear cold lighted fire and the consuming divine fire.

AAB: Fire by friction, solar fire, and spiritual fire. Humanity it going through the burning ground now and, in the case of humanity, you can see what is being burned up: selfishness, greed, stupidity. What is true of the whole is true of the part. Watch it in the U.S. Congress where all the idiots get up and talk, and then someone gets up with the clear cold light of the quiet mind and they vote right; the rest has no effect upon them.

HR: The situation of Rome is very symbolic.

AAB: I do not see why Rome shouldn�t be destroyed any more than London or Coventry or any other city in the world. It is just an aggregate of the past. That 75,000 people should come together in New York City to pray that Rome be spared, why don�t they pray that humanity be spared and saved? It is interesting that Italy is chosen as the place of the burning ground. It has a dictator, has the head of the Catholic Church, and is a monarchy. The past has to go.

We have to think in terms of the world burning ground, the individual burning ground, and the group burning ground.

HR: Would it be a matter of time element? Humanity goes through this burning ground, and then there would be a long period of assimilation.

AAB: Every burning ground is succeeded by revelation, and then that revelation becomes part of the life of the people over, perhaps, hundreds of years. It is for that revelation that we have to work.

HR: Is that part of the work of this group?

AAB: It is sensitivity to revelation.

RK: A group that holds the vision does not wait for revelation to become objectified. You can all be sensitive and get two or three steps ahead of people if you are a disciple.

HR: That is part of our purpose � to see the future.

AAB: Yes, but not in the sense of prophecy.

RK: I think it would be extremely useful if we as a group cultivated the renewal of identity. Integration would take care of itself if we knew we were that greater being, and then our individual fears, etc., would fall into their proper place. If I want to go to Jersey, my feet carry me, but I am not conscious of them. If we become sensitive to the greater light, it begins to precipitate down here upon Earth.

AAB: I think that integration so often means that the physical body must be purified, and the emotional body and so on. That might be disastrous. The same thing is true of Soul contact and as to what the Tibetan tells us is the effect of a Master. It shatters. We talk about the integration of Soul and personality, and when it happens the Soul shatters the personality.

RK: And the personality absorbs the Soul, and both of them become null and void and the new individual stands forth. The word goes forth and the old form goes. I think it has a message for us here. It was spoken about individual disciples. It has group application.

AAB: In the new book on discipleship in the new age [DINA, Vol. 1, was about to be published] you read certain of the instructions given to individuals extending sometimes over a period of years. The Tibetan told this person in 1931 or �32 that karmically, or through his aspiration, he was entitled to prepare to make the grade of accepted disciple, but it was also very conceivable that he couldn�t do it, that he couldn�t make the grade. The Tibetan knew ten years beforehand, but he gave him a chance. The student would not make the necessary sacrifices. You cannot be a disciple unless you are willing to let everything go. I didn�t know a thing about these people, but you can trace the teaching all the way through. That man is still regarded as part of the group.

JL: Isn�t it the normal thing for the aspirant to feel that he has a right to a job that is one stage bigger than he can handle?

AAB: That is a dangerous matter. There is no reason for you to fail. I watch a lot of people not fail. I think we can all make it if we want to.

RK: Failure does not consist in not making the grade but in no longer trying.

JL: It is the physical body that breaks.

AAB: I think we are never asked to accomplish more than we can. Take these 50 people who put their instruction into my hands. I would see some of them struggle and eventually break through into the light, and yet others did not respond.

G: Do you think they realized what they were up against?

AAK: They nearly all failed on the physical thing: laziness, inertia, unwillingness to make sacrifices. They never failed on big things but on the little things. The Tibetan says what matters in all the disciples of the world is the life tendency, not the little separate failures. What does count is whether you have moved on in general, have remained steadfast in your radiation.

M: Irritation is one of the last things a Master is able to drop.

AAB: It has gotten me many a time. Irritation is the last fetter dropped off, because as you proceed on the way you become more sensitive, and it comes out unless you are terribly well focused or preoccupied with more important things. Irritability and sensitivity go together.

HR: I should think it would be the last thing the Masters would let go because we are so annoying.

AAB: We are not important enough. The thing every spiritual teacher has to do is to present the truth, and then the responsibility ends. You gather people together because of the group thing, and when they come together they will work it out.

HR: I think there was a certain note of irritability at the disciples who fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane.

AAB: If he actually responded that way. I think a great deal of the New Testament is the interpretation of sympathetic monks.

RK: Falling asleep reminds me of what HPB said: �The lower man has to be polarized before the higher man can function.�

HR: How will we come to know the truth about the Gospels? Will the truth be taught to students as time goes on?

AAB: I don�t think there is anything true except the episodes [Epistles?]. It is there where it has really been given correctly.

HR: The Tibetan said that some day we would be given the true story.

AAB: I haven�t the remotest idea what he meant. Take the New Testament, St. James version, and look for the sentences in italic. All those italics are interpolations, and on some of them the whole doctrine of the church is built up. These sentences were never uttered by Christ.

P: Speaking of isolation, there are times when it is almost unbearable, the sense of complete planetary isolation of the Christ. No one, John perhaps a little, but nobody around Him. Not even God Himself. He was completely isolated in consciousness. It is so much more than crucifixion, the life He lived. The last three years, the complete isolation of his consciousness, nobody anywhere in the whole world could do anything about it.

AAB: That was the whole tragedy of the thing, the dark night of the Soul.

RK: Once we discussed that in relation to the Christ: antagonism, protagonism, agony. The job of the Christ was pure agony, not pro or con.

P: It always seemed to me that Lincoln personified that � his ugliness, his loss of all that was dear to him, his agony of Soul.

AAB: Of course he was a great initiate.

P: Most people have something, somewhere, some one person who understands them in some way. All Lincoln�s Cabinet crucified him.

AAB: There is great danger in deifying the common man and pulling down the upper man. It is man that matters, just man.

RK: We have got to Christ; that is pretty far.

AAB: Very interesting thing you said, RK, because you have these various grades towards which we look and aspire, but none of the Masters is of the same rank as the Christ, because He is pure Monad. Jesus is not of the same rank. That is why Sixth Ray people are so difficult, because their Master is not complete in his consciousness yet. Sixth Ray people can be a disruptive force in a group, isolated by their devotion, their sense of personality. Jesus was a militant person. It was he who took the sword, who took the whip.

HR: According to Esoteric Psychology, Vol. 1, Sixth Ray people are difficult up to the throne of God.

AAB: Very few Sixth Ray people reach up to the throne of God in this cycle; they pass onto the Second Ray. The Sixth Ray is just as much a spiritual force as any other. People have to go through that phase, and you have to have a Master who will hold them steady and train them, because it gives them certain qualities; it gives them the staying power. The Second Ray person sees too much and hasn�t the staying power.

RK: I think that sometimes we don�t remember that when we speak of spiritual. It does not mean Soul force; it means a purposive goal. And what it requires is spiritual in nature.

AAB: Some of the greatest spiritual forces in the world are not religious people, but they are great humanitarians.