AAB: We will now take the second sentence in Rule II. [Reading from The Rays and the Initiations, pp.59-60]:

Withdraw not now your application.  You could not if you would; but add to it three great demands and forward move.

[Continues reading] These words are a living command conditioning [the disciple] whether he will or not. The inability to withdraw from the position taken is one of the first true results of hearing the Word spoken after passing the two tests. There is inevitability in living the life of the Spirit, which is at once its horror and its joy. I mean just that. The symbol or first expression of this (for all in the three worlds is but the symbol of an inner reality) is the driving urge to betterment that is the outstanding characteristic of the human animal. From discontent to discontent he passes, driven by an inner something that constantly reveals to him an enticing vision of that which is more desirable than his present state and experience. At first this is interpreted by him in terms of material welfare; then this divine discontent drives him into a phase of the struggle that is emotional in nature; he craves emotional satisfaction and later intellectual pursuits. All the time this struggle to attain something ever on ahead creates the instruments of attainment, gradually perfecting them until the threefold personality is ready for a vision of the Soul. From that point of tension the urge and the struggle become more acute, until Rule One for Applicants is understood by him and he steps upon the Path.

Once he is an accepted disciple and has definitely undertaken the work in preparation for initiation, there is for him no turning back. He could not if he would, and the Ashram protects him.

In this Rule for accepted disciples and initiates we are faced with a similar condition on a higher turn of the spiral, but with this difference (one which you can hardly grasp unless at the point where the Word goes forth to you): that the initiate stands alone in �isolated unity,� aware of his mysterious oneness with all that is. The urge that distinguished his progress in arriving at personality-Soul fusion is transmuted into fixity of intention, ability to move forward into the clear cold light of the undimmed reason, free from all glamor and illusion and having now the power to voice the three demands. This he can now do consciously and by the use of the dynamic will instead of making �application in triple form� as was the case before. This distinction is vital and significant of tremendous growth and development.

It seems to me that there are three points that it would be interesting to discuss: 1) �the Ashram protects him,� 2) the ability to move forward following fixity of intention, and then 3) the voicing of the three demands consciously and by use of the Will. I think these points are worth considering, and I believe it would be profitable for us to discuss them.

In what way does the Ashram protect you? Are you part of the Ashram? Why should it protect you? What have you done to merit this protection? Where does the protection lie and from what are you protected? Does it protect your physical plane life, or what does this protection affect? I have never personally felt that the Ashram protected me in any way, even though my Master is a Chohan. Also, what is this ability to move forward, and are you moving forward? What are these three demands that can be implemented consciously by the use of the Will?

AP: I think the Ashram only protects a person of such service that they need to be kept here in order to carry on their work.

AAB: How can the neophyte, who isn�t so terribly useful, be protected?

M: He can be protected against turning back.

AAB: I don�t think you get the protection until you are past turning back. Any protection vouchsafed to you via a Master means tremendous expenditure of force.

N: I believe the protection is from evil forces when the disciple is trying to do the work.

AAB: I think that is true of advanced disciples, not of beginners. The advanced disciple warrants help. Unless you are very important, the Black Lodge, which is not as fully staffed as the White Lodge and is smaller, will never attack you. The moment they do, a counter power is evoked from the White Lodge, but you have to be a very advanced initiate to warrant that type of activity.

R: What you are talking about is an automatic thing. You have a certain amount of group consciousness and are only able to absorb and use force in group formation; therefore it is inevitable that the group protects you. Otherwise you couldn�t stand the impact.

AAB: The Tibetan made a distinction between group and Ashram.

R: Yes, I mean Ashram.

AAB: I think that when we get protection it is from our own glamor and our own stupidities when what we are thinking and doing is a detriment to the group. We don�t get it to protect ourselves from danger, but rather the group.

B: Could it be protection from more general disasters that occur?

AAB: Nothing physical ever. It is a curious paradox. A very high initiate may be protected from something physical if he is far enough along, but the beginner, never. It is better for us to discuss these matters in terms of beginners.

R: In a sense it is the Path that is protected, and just in so far as you are on the Path you are protected.

AAB: The Path itself protects you; I think that is very sound. The second point deserving of our consideration is �the ability to move forward into the clear cold light of the undimmed reason.� Do you ever look forward into the clear cold light of the undimmed reason? It simply leaves nothing in shadow, nothing unexposed, no excuses. It is just clear revelation, and clear revelation is a terribly difficult to face. It is the first indication that you have moved forward. It is at that very point that there descends upon you that spiritual inferiority complex that is the germ of the �dark night of the Soul.� Do you realize that there would be no dark night of the Soul if the person who was undergoing it were perfect? I say that, and yet I know that Christ went through the dark night of the Soul. Because he went through it, it was an indication that he had as yet not fulfilled all the conditions that entitled him to fully experience the Sixth Initiation. So we need to cultivate the ability to move forward in truth � but not in the way they use that phrase today. I received a letter from a woman in which she said that she lived in truth all the time. It�s just not so. If you are living in truth you will live in the clear undimmed light of pure reason.

R: Maybe she was living in the light of what for her was truth at the moment.

AAB: It was just sentimental blah. It didn�t mean anything. If you and I want really to live and move forward, we have to �take it on the chin.� That jolts your eyes open and you will see new things. That of course is something that is very difficult to take.

The third point was the voicing of the three demands consciously and by the use of the dynamic will. What do you mean when you do a thing consciously? Do you see yourself doing it; or as you do it, are you consciously aware of your objective and what is involved? We have had a lot of teaching from the Tibetan in previous readings in connection with the use of the dynamic will. Personally I don�t know what the dynamic will is. I know perfectly well what a fixed will is that nothing can make me deviate from. I don�t think I know anything about the dynamic will. I know nothing has defeated my will, my purpose, since I was sixteen, but I haven�t the remotest idea what the dynamic will is. Being a First Ray personality I know what a dynamic self-will would be, but not what a dynamic Soul Will would be. I know what a steady forward push through every obstruction would mean, but I can�t crash straight through. Foster will say, �smash it!� I can�t smash it. I can repeatedly pick at it, but I can�t break it. I do not know what the dynamic will is, but maybe some day I will. Consciously, with the use of the dynamic will, we make the three demands. I make the three demands and I affirm that they will materialize. I can�t do them dynamically, so I will do them sequentially.

AP: According to your own description, why isn�t it the creative will? �Let there be light,� the fiat went forth, �and there was light.� I think the dynamic will is the will that brings about immediate precipitation.

AAB: He said that through the First Logos, and then it worked out through the Second and then through the Third.

R: A great many creative people can do the thing AP speaks of. I think the focus from which it emanates is a point in the higher mind.

AAB:  I think it isn�t even higher mind. Creativity in most cases is an expression of the integrated personality that is becoming expansive and is producing something the world needs. The higher mind is higher than Soul. It is the lowest expression of the Spiritual Triad.

AP: I don�t mean something a creative genius does; I mean the word fiat. When the dynamic will issues a fiat, it immediately becomes. It has nothing to do with creative ability.

AAB: Doesn�t that only come when you function as a Monad? I think when we function as Monads we will say let there be light and there will be light. I think that is the dynamic will, but we don�t have it yet.

AP: That is the marvel of it, the fiat of the great creative will. The moment it thinks a thing, it is.

AAB: When God created the universe, it was an evolving organism. In his consciousness he was thinking on behalf of all of us, and of time and space. There you have the clue to evolution.

JL: In one of the later Antahkarana papers there is a description of the attainment of will for all seven rays. The First Ray initiate acquires dynamic will, and apparently the others do not. They move forward toward will in different ways. In reading it, it sounded as though there were a will aspect in each ray.

AAB: Don�t you think that in time those on all the rays have to acquire the power of the Monad, which is dynamic will? [Reading further on pp. 63-64]:

It is not possible for me explicitly to give an understanding of the nature of these demands. I can only give you certain symbolic phrases which, intuitively interpreted, will give you a clue.

The first demand is made possible because �the desert life is passed; it flourished and it flowered, and then the drought arrived and man removed himself. That which had nourished and contained his life became an arid waste and naught was left but bones and dust and a deep thirst which naught in sight could satisfy.� Yet to the initiate consciousness it remains clear that the desert land must be made anew to flourish like a rose and that his task is the restoration (by the distribution of the waters of life) of its pristine beauty, and not the beauty of its false flowering. He demands, therefore, upon the note of the lower aspect of the personality (I am talking in symbols), that this flowering forth should take place according to the Plan. This involves upon his part a vision of that plan, identification with the underlying purpose, and the ability � through the medium of the higher mind, which is the lowest aspect of the Spiritual Triad � to work in the world of ideas and to create those forms of thought which will aid in the materializing of the Plan in conformity with the Purpose. This is the creative work of thoughtform building and that is why we are told that the first great demand �sounds forth within the world of God�s ideas and towards the desert, a long time left behind. Upon that great demand the initiate who has pledged himself to serve the world returns into that desert, bringing with him the seed and water for which the desert cries.�

AAB: We are told to kill out physical plane desire and the animal lusts. This is a clue to the fanaticism of monks, to vegetarianism among occultists and to all those fanatics who put such stress upon the physical discipline. They have to demonstrate to themselves control and discipline on the physical plane. Then they move on and eventually come back to the physical plane and make it blossom like a rose. Aleister Crowley held that nothing is so bad that we can�t make it good by doing it. This is the extreme opposite of the fanaticism of celibates and vegetarians. The initiate occupies the midway point between the two. That was the only thing that St. Paul taught that was worth learning. I think he misused the Christian teaching terribly, but he did teach the beauty of the middle way, of temperance. I think everybody has to go through that phase the Tibetan describes, �that which had nourished and conditioned his life becomes an arid waste.� I think that was one of the things that the Christian church went astray on. The church of the Middle Ages taught that everything physical was sinful, and this made necessary the violent reaction of the other side. I think it is an interesting point. St. Paul, for instance, gave out the teaching that women were no good. He sowed the seed that worked out in the Middle Ages in the lowly position of women. St. Peter, I suppose, was the person who endeavored to reveal that there was a middle way. He had a vision of a sheet let down from heaven in which were all kinds of creeping and crawling things, and he heard a voice saying, �Rise and eat.� He said, �Nothing unclean has ever passed my lips,� and a voice replied, �That which God hath cleansed is not unclean.� [Reading further on pp. 64-65]:

The second demand is related to the earlier cry of the disciple, which was sounded forth �over the seas.� It refers to the world of glamor in which humanity struggles, and to the emotional world in which mankind is sunk as if drowning in the ocean. We are told in the Bible, and the thought is based on information to be found in the Archives of the Masters, that �there shall be no more sea�; I told you that a time comes when the initiate knows that the astral plane no longer exists. Forever it has vanished and has gone. But when the initiate has freed himself from the realm of delusion, of fog, of mist and of glamor, and stands in the �clear cold light� of the Buddhic or intuitional plane (the second or middle aspect of the Spiritual Triad), he arrives at a great and basic realization. He knows that he must return (if such a foolish word can suffice) to the �seas� which he has left behind, and there dissipate the glamor. But he works now from �the air above and in the full light of day.� No longer does he struggle in the waves or sink immersed in the deep waters. Above the sea he hovers within the ocean of light, and pours that light into the depths. He carries thus the waters to the desert and the light divine into the world of fog.

Yet he never leaves the place of identification, and all that he now does is carried forward from the levels attained at any particular initiation. All that he does �upon the desert, and over the seas� is undertaken through the power of thought, which directs the needed energy and certain destined and chosen forces so that the Plan (let me repeat myself) may go forward according to divine purpose through the power of the dynamic spiritual will. When you can appreciate that the initiate of high degree works with monadic energy and not Soul force, you can understand why he finds it necessary ever to work behind the scenes. He works with the Soul aspect and through the power of monadic energy, using the Antahkarana as a distributing agency. The disciples and initiates of the first two degrees work with Soul force and through the medium of the centers. The personality works with forces.

This concerns the relation of the accepted disciple, who has taken the first initiation, to the work of the astral plane. This demand has more connection with our work here in the School than the first or third. The first demand, which signifies that the physical plane no longer has any control over us, is one we have sounded forth. The first plane is for most of us an arid waste, but when it comes to the demand that sounds across the seas, there you have our problem as I see it. Glamor is such a peculiar thing.

JL: Are the three demands made at one time, or one at each initiation?

AAB: It doesn�t say. It is up to you. As you look out upon the world today and see the picture of the world as a whole, you can see humanity sending out a cry across the desert. The world is today an arid waste.

JL: The Atlantic Charter was signed upon the water.

AAB: I think there is something there. That is the great demand. I think it is the second demand and is voiced by people who have left the desert behind. Humanity as a whole has not left the desert behind, but is sounding forth the demand across the desert. For us here our problem is not the desert; our problem is the emotional nature as part of the sum total of the sea.

AP: �One foot on the land and one foot on the sea and nothing constant ever.� It may be possible that some of us are a little bit in the desert still.

R: All these amphibious operations.

AAB: Always the bridging group everywhere. I think it really means that we would not deliberately and consciously choose the life of the desert. We pass from discontent to discontent.

RK: The word �discontent� means lack of content. You are not satisfied with the content.

AAB: That is interesting.

AR: What are some of the ways you can know you are going forward?

AAB: I judge it for myself from an increased ability to understand and to serve.

B: Does it seem satisfying to our sense of logic to admit to ourselves that the astral plane doesn�t exist?

AAB: Not in the least. You have to be truthful, and you can�t say it doesn�t exist until it really doesn�t. We are not pleased with it; it gives us so much trouble. We go from discontent to discontent. Emotion is over-sensitivity, self-centeredness. It is a gigantic alibi for everything we think and feel. It takes lives to clear ourselves of the astral plane.

G: But can�t emotion sometimes be positive?

AAB: Emotional control comes from the Soul level, and in the early stages from the mind level. It may be positive. But love has to take the place of emotion. Emotional people will never understand that.

G: We use the term emotion to mean wrong emotion. A feeling of synthesis, of understanding, of usefulness, a desire to serve � wouldn�t you call these emotions?

AAB: I think they are the first indications of love and are beginning to drive out emotion. They will supplant emotion eventually.

N: I believe it is very profound when you say love will do away with forms of emotion. A very prominent person, who is very far along in years, gets spells of emotional depression in which nothing seems to matter. I go to see him about once a week. There are now times when before I leave he has elevated himself to the level of joy and light.

AAB: That might be your power over him.

N: He really has a powerful mind.

AAB: You probably stimulate him enough so that he can make Soul contact and contact Soul knowledge.

JL: You can�t remove the astral plane or you break up the entire strength of the cosmos.

AAB: The Tibetan says there is no astral plane except in your imagination. There is no physical plane except in our imagination. There is nothing but spirit because spirit at its lowest point is matter. There are no planes at all, just states of mind. But you are talking in terms of space and location.

RK: Patanjali answers this point when he says that one of the ways of attaining is through sympathy, compassion and tenderness. They supplant emotion.

AAB: Yes, I think so.

W: That means that when you have gotten out from under emotion you are more or less focused in your love nature.

AD: What happened when Jesus wept over Jerusalem?

AAB: It was the effect of powerful love pouring through him.

RK: Sympathy.

AP: Plato said, �Before entering into any argument, define your terms and clarify your concepts.� No two people in the room have the same concept of the word �emotion.� To distinguish between emotion and feeling you have to set up some definitions.

AAB: When you come into the realm of Soul, definitions don�t count.

RK: You can�t define because you can�t confine.

AP: I don�t think we can think clearly; we are not in the realm of the Soul.

AD: The astral nature functions through the solar plexus; love functions through the heart.

AAB: I always have to wonder whether my reactions are solar plexus reactions or heart responses. You have to be a very advanced occultist to know the difference.

H: Emotion means moving out toward. It implies attachment to something, or going out toward something you want. This personal sensitivity to outside stimulus or attachment to something outside ourselves is feeling.

AAB: The Soul and the personality are sensitive in two different ways. The personality is selfishly sensitive.

RK: Don�t you think it is also true of people in groups that there is a group selfishness?

AD: Are we talking about emotions or getting rid of the astral plane? Astralism isn�t always emotional.

AAB: Lower psychism and the astral are on the plane of sensitive reaction to that which lies in your environment. As long as there is personality there is emotion. When it ceases to be personal, it is love.

AP: It becomes impersonal in objective and motive.

AAB: The difference is very subtle. Often in your evening review, you only find personal motives.

AP: They say a person who stops to help a maimed animal often does it because the sight gives him discomfort and he wants to remove it. That is a subtle form of personal motive. But I still think it is a step forward, because if you are a person who is hurt by the suffering of others, you are advancing.

N: Compassion.

LM: The astral plane reflects Buddhi.

AAB: Yes, when you have eliminated emotion. The moment that the astral plane has been brought under complete spiritual control, we don�t know what emotion is anymore. There is no moving forward or backward.

LM: The astral plane is no hindrance to an individual to contact Buddhi.

AAB: Once it is completely quieted. That is why a Master is often regarded as inhuman. It is because he has no emotions at all where humanity is concerned because he knows that destruction of the form doesn�t matter. The thing they are interested in is that out of this destruction there shall come something so much better that we will be on our way to a relative perfection.

AP: There is a beautiful correlation in science. A stick immersed in water always appears bent. Anything that passes through the emotions is distorted. We have a thought, we pass it through the emotions, and it is distorted.

G: What I really want to know is this: can an adept use an astral vehicle?

AAB: Yes, the Masters are called Lords of Compassion. They don�t need to use it, but they create one for themselves because there is no astral plane from the angle of the high-grade initiate. The vehicles of Buddhi have been built up from incarnation to incarnation and have been preserved so that when Christ comes there will be an astral body for him to use in order to contact those of us who are astral. The Christ and other great teachers have to have some vehicle through which contact with us can be made. There is no astral plane for them, so there has been preserved for them the most perfect astral body that has been used by avatars of the world. It was last used by the Buddha, and will be used by the Christ. For them the astral is non-existent � they have no astral permanent atom.

N: When the Lord Buddha was very young his father tried to keep from him all knowledge of suffering and pain, but he finally saw it and decided to go out into the world and find light so that we might eliminate this astral illusion of suffering.

AAB: [Reading further on pp. 65-66]:

The third great demand has in it a different implication, and sounds forth, we are told, �through the fires.� In this solar system there is no evading the fire. It is found at all levels of divine expression as we well know from our study of the three fires � fire by friction, solar fire and electric fire, with their differentiations, the forty-nine fires � of the seven planes. Always, therefore, whether it is the cry of the disciple or the demand of the initiate, the sound goes forth �through the fire, to the fire, and from the fire.� Of this technique, underlying the potent demand, there is little that I may say. From the highest plane of the spiritual will, what is technically called �the atmic plane,� the demand goes forth and the result of that demand will work out on mental levels, just as the earlier two demands worked out on the physical and astral levels. I would interject here that even though there is no astral plane, from the standpoint of the Master, yet thousands of millions recognize it and labor in its delusive sphere and are there aided by the initiated disciple working from the higher corresponding levels. This is true of all the planetary work, whether accomplished by initiates and Masters, working directly in the three worlds, or from higher levels, as work the Nirmanakayas (the creative Contemplatives of the planet), or from Shamballa from the Council Chamber of the Lord of the World. All the efforts of the Hierarchy or of the �conditioning Lives� (as They are sometimes called) of Shamballa are dedicated to the furthering of the evolutionary plan which will finally embody divine purpose. I keep emphasizing this distinction between plan and purpose with deliberation, because it indicates the next phase of the working of the intelligent will in the consciousness of humanity.

More about these three demands I may not imply. I have told you much, had you the awakened intuition to read the significance of some of my comments. These demands refer not only to the evolution of humanity, but to all forms of life within the consciousness of the planetary Logos. The directing mind of the initiate indicates within the three worlds the goal of attainment.

�Through the fire, to the fire, and from the fire� � there you have invocation and evocation again. This fifth volume of the Seven Rays is going to be the most esoteric of them all. The first demand and the third demand don�t really affect us as much as the second demand. This is what we have to work at and with.

H: It would seem to me that the second demand has a great deal to do with the second initiation.

AAB: When we have really sent out the demand correctly, the response is the second initiation.

RK: There is a footnote uttered by Krishna on page 28 of The Voice of the Silence: �When this path is beheld � whether one sets out to the bloom of the East, or to the chambers of the West, without moving is the traveling in this road. In this path, to whatever place one would go, that place one�s own self becomes.�

AAB: You never really move from the center. The Monad always stays at the center.

B: It�s just the expansion of consciousness moving out.

AAB: It is more than that. It is much more moving out than an expansion.

RK: A sequential going forth is elementary. A simultaneous one is initiation. Simultaneity demands tension.

JL: I was wondering whether those three demands are the final goal. Before that you are working sequentially, yet you have to work in all three directions at once.

AAB: A disciple is a person who is progressing on all three levels at once.

JL: At the first and second initiation you take one level at a time, but the third initiation is the one that really counts.

R: It is the consummation of the other two