This is the situation which confronts the Knowers of the race in their various grades of knowledge and illumination at this time. Neither of these influences - the Taurian or the Aquarian - can be avoided. As you will see when we study the analysis of this sign and come to a consideration of its rulers, Taurus forges the instruments of constructive living [375] or of destruction; it forges the chains which bind or creates the key which unlocks the mystery of life; it is this forging process, with its consequent clamor, which is going on at this time in a most potent manner. Vulcan controls the anvil-like processes of time and strikes the blow which shapes the metal into that which is desired, and this is true today as never before.

I would like here to call your attention to the fact that this sign is a synthetic sign in the sense that it brings expression of an inner urge of some definite nature upon the physical plane. This it does, because its basic quality demonstrates as desire in the mass of men and as will or directed purpose in the disciple or the initiate. It manifests as stubbornness in the average man (and this is literally wilful adherence to personality aims) or as intelligently expressed will - actuated by the impulse of love - in the advanced man. This connotes adherence to soul purpose. People who are Taurians naturally and by natal inclination would do well to consider this statement and thus test all their major determining activities by the question: Is my present attitude, my work or intention actuated by personality desire or am I working and planning directly under soul urge and incentive? This should give the keynote of all Taurian [376] problems. The entire secret of divine purpose and planning is hidden in this sign, owing fundamentally to the relation of the Pleiades to the constellation, the Great Bear, and to our solar system. This constitutes one of the most important triangles in our entire cosmic series of relationships and this importance is also enhanced by the fact that the "eye of the Bull" is the eye of revelation. The underlying goal of the evolutionary process - "the onward rush of the Bull of God," as it is esoterically called - reveals steadily and without cessation the stupendous and sublime plan of Deity. This is the subject which light reveals.

This Shamballa force is that which "fans or intensifies the light by the removal of obstructions and proceeds from far distant places, pouring through the eye of illumination into those spheres of influence upon the sorrowful planet, the Earth, impelling the Bull upon its onward rush." So speaks the Old Commentary. The import of this is that the energy of will - newly released by Sanat Kumara upon our planet - emanates, via the head center of the planetary Logos, from the Great Bear; it is stepped down in vibration via one of the Pleiades (hence its influence upon matter and hence also its pronounced Taurian effects upon humanity) and so enters into the solar system. It is there absorbed by that major center of our planetary life to which we give the name, Shamballa. Its effect is necessarily twofold. It produces in [377] certain nations, races and individuals, a welling up of the self-will or of the will-to-power which is characteristic of the developed lower nature, the personality aspect of integrated selfhood. It produces - though less readily - a stimulation of the will-to-serve the plan as it is grasped by the world aspirants, the world disciples and initiates. Thus are the purposes of Deity materialized.

Owing to the world glamor, the true purpose and ideal set before our planetary forces by the all-creating Will becomes distorted by many people. They are not polarized in the divine will but are as yet centered in their personalities and hence only the few appreciate the beauty of the intended group life, group purpose and group fusion. Group living tends to the fulfilment of free will in service and a free subordination of the lower will to the higher purpose in group formation. Through the glamor contacted, however, this group activity and life becomes twisted into the imposed will and the concept of the superstate. This produces the imprisonment of the mind and the curtailment of all freedom, all free thought and free will. The man becomes the captive of the man-made state. This gives a clue to much that is happening today and to the headstrong progress of the glamored peoples, to the stiffening of individuals in their separate, wrong idealisms and to their acceptance of the imposition of a rule of life and an order of living which is imposed upon them by force and which is not the free expression of a free people.