Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul - The Rays and the Initiations - Part I

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The Rays and the Initiations - Part One - Fourteen Rules For Group Initiation

There are, therefore, great points of tension from which the Sacred Word, in its major aspects, goes forth. Let me list them for you:

The creative point of tension - a tension achieved by a planetary Logos when He responds to the Sound of the Ineffable Name and breathes it forth in His turn in three great Sounds which make one Sound on His Own plane of expression, thus creating the manifested world, the impulse towards the unfoldment of consciousness, and the influence of life itself. This is the Sound.

Seven points of tension on the downward or involutionary arc; these produce the seven planets, the seven states of consciousness, and the expression of the seven ray impulses. This constitutes the sevenfold AUM of which the Ageless Wisdom takes note. It is related to the effect of spirit or life upon substance, thus originating form and creating the prison of the divine life.

The AUM itself or the Word made flesh; this creates finally a point of tension in the fourth kingdom in nature, at which point the evolutionary cycle becomes possible and the first dim note of the OM can be faintly heard. In the individual man this point is reached when the personality is an integrated and functioning whole and the soul is beginning to control it. It is an accumulative tension arrived at through many lives. This process is expressed in the Masters' Archives as follows:

You must remember that these symbols are an attempt on my part to translate ancient signatures in modern occidental type. The only one which is the same in all languages is, esoterically, the AUM. [56]

Then comes a point of tension from which the man eventually achieves liberation from the three worlds and stands as a free soul; he is then a point within the circle - the point indicating the point of tension from which he now works, and the circle the sphere of his self-initiated activity.

I need not carry the story further; from tension to tension the initiate passes just as do all human beings, aspirants, disciples and the lower grades of initiates; from one expansion of consciousness to another they go until the third initiation is undergone and points of tension (qualified by intention and purpose) supersede all previous efforts and the will aspect begins to control.

Here, briefly, is a fresh slant upon the familiar theme of the Word - a theme preserved in some form by all the world religions but a theme which, like all else, has been so materialized that it is the task of the Hierarchy to restore the knowledge of its meaning, of its threefold application and its involutionary and evolutionary significances. Students would do well to remember that its sounding forth vocally upon the physical plane means little. The important factors are to sound it silently, inaudibly and within the head; then, having done so, to hear it reverberate there and to recognize that this self-initiated Sound - breathed forth from a point of tension - is a part of the original Sound as it takes form as a Word. When a man perfectly expresses the AUM, he can then sound the OM with effectiveness from progressive points of tension, until the third initiation. Then the effect of the OM is such that the personality as a separate identity disappears, the soul emerges in all its glory, and the first faint sound of the originating Sound breaks upon the ear of the transfigured initiate. This is the Voice referred to in the Biblical account of the Transfiguration. This Voice says, "This is my beloved Son." The initiate registers the fact that he has been accepted by Shamballa and has made his first contact with the Planetary Logos, the Hierophant, the Initiator at the third initiation, just as the Christ, the Master of all the Masters, is the Initiator and the Hierophant at the first two initiations. [57]

The Word , however, with which we are now dealing is not the Sacred Word itself, but a signal or sound of acceptance. It is translated in this Rule by the phrase: Accepted as a group. This refers to aggregates and blended combinations through which the Soul in relation to personalities, the Monad in relation to the Spiritual Triad, the Master in relation to His Ashram, and Shamballa in relation to the Hierarchy, can work, expressing plan in the initial stages of contact, and purpose in the final stages. Bear in mind that the analogy holds true all the way through. A personality is an aggregate of forms and of substantial lives which, when fused and blended , present a unified sumtotal, animated by desire or aspiration, by plan or purpose, and functioning in its place under the inspiration of a self-initiated inner program. Progress, from the larger angle and from the standpoint of Those Who see life in terms of ever enlarging Wholes, is from group to group.

This pronouncement, issuing from a point of tension, is the Word of the soul as it integrates with the threefold personality when that personality is consciously ready for such a fusion. The hold of the soul upon its instruments of expression, the network of the seven centers and the subsidiary centers, becomes intensified and energy pours in, forcing the acquiescent personality fully to express the ray type of the soul, and therefore subordinating the ray of the personality (and its three subsidiary rays) to the dominating soul energy. This first great integration is a fusion of force with energy. Here is a statement of deep import, embodying one of the first lessons an initiate has to master. It is one which can only be properly comprehended through life experience, subject to interpretation in the world of meaning. Some understanding of what this implies will come as the disciple masters the distinction between soul activity and the action of matter, between emotion and love, between the intelligent will and the mind, between plan and purpose. In so doing he acquires the capacity to find his point of tension at any given moment, and this growing capacity eventually brings him consciously to recognize group after [58] group as units with which identification must be sought.

He finds his soul through the fusion of soul and personality; he finds his group through the absorption of this fusing soul-form with a Master's group, and finally he is absorbed into the Master's Ashram; there he, in concert with his group brothers in that Ashram, is fused and blended with the Hierarchy and hears the extension of the Word, spoken originally by his soul: Accepted as a group. Later, much later, he participates at that august recognition which comes when the Voice issues forth - as annually it does - from the center at Shamballa and the seal is set on the acceptance of the Hierarchy, with all its new associates, by the Lord of the World. This acceptance involves those initiates of the third degree who have been integrated more closely into the hierarchical life than ever before. This is the signal to them (and to their Seniors Who have heard it year after year) that they are part of the instrument whose purpose is to fulfil the plan. Thus the great syntheses are slowly taking place. It has taken many aeons, for evolution (especially in the earlier stages) moves slowly.

In the postwar period and when the new structure of the coming world order is taking shape, the process will be speeded considerably; this will not, however, be for a hundred years, which is but a brief moment in the eternal history of humanity. From synthesis to synthesis the life of God passes. First the synthesis of the atomic lives into ever more perfect forms until the three kingdoms of nature appear; then the synthesis in consciousness, enabling the human being to enter into the larger awareness of the Whole and finally to enter into that mysterious event which is the result of the effect of all preceding developments and to which we give the name of Identification. From the first identification, which is the higher correspondence of the stage of individualization, progressive absorption into ever larger wholes takes place, and each time the Word goes forth: Accepted as a group.

Have I succeeded in giving you a somewhat wider vision of the significance of initiation in these brief expositions? [59] Do you see more clearly the growing beauty of the Whole and the goodness of the Purpose and the wisdom of the Plan? Do you realize more deeply that beauty, goodness and wisdom are not qualities, as their inadequate nomenclature would imply, but are great facts in manifestation? Do you grasp the truth that they are not descriptive of Deity but are the names of Lives of a potency and activity of which men can as yet know nothing?

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