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

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The Rays and the Initiations - Part Two - Introductory Remarks

The Mysteries will restore color and music as they essentially are to the world and do it in such a manner that the creative art of today will be to this new creative art what a child's building of wooden blocks is to a great cathedral such as Durham or Milan. The Mysteries, when restored, will make real - in a sense incomprehensible to you at present - the nature of religion, the purpose of science and the goal of education. These are not what you think today.

The ground is being prepared at this time for this great restoration. The Churches and Masonry are today before the judgment seat of humanity's critical mind and the word has gone forth from that mass mind that both of them failed in their divinely assigned tasks. It is realized everywhere that new life must be poured in and great changes wrought in the awareness and in the training of those who work through and in these two media of truth. Those changes have not yet been carried out, for it will take a new vision and a new approach to life experience, and this only the coming generation is capable of giving; they and they alone can bring about the needed alterations and the revitalization, but it can and will be done:

"That which is a mystery shall no longer be so, and that which has been veiled will now be revealed; that which has been withdrawn will emerge into the light, and all men shall see and together they shall rejoice. That time will come when desolation has wrought its beneficent work, when all things have been destroyed, and men, through suffering, have sought to be impressed by that which they had discarded in vain pursuit of that which was near at hand and easy of attainment. Possessed, it proved to be an agency of death - yet men sought life, not death."

So runs the Old Commentary when referring to the present cycle through which mankind is passing. [333]

The tests for the first initiation, as far as humanity (the world disciple) is concerned, are well-nigh over and the hour of the birth of the Christ as an expression of the fourth kingdom in nature and the consummation of the work of the Fourth Creative Hierarchy is at hand. This there is no gainsaying; the birth hour may be long and the form may be "in labor" for much time, but the Christ will be born and the nature of the Christ and His consciousness will permeate and color all human affairs. It is this condition - so imminent and so desirable and long foretold and anticipated - which will make possible the return of the Hierarchy and the restoration of the Mysteries.

These occurrences are not only dependent upon the fitness of humanity to provide the right setting and upon the inevitability of evolutionary development itself, but the reappearance of the Hierarchy and that which its Members will accomplish is related also (and primarily) to the interior life and the spiritual impulses within the Hierarchy itself and unrelated to mankind altogether. The Hierarchy pursues its own line of spiritual unfoldment as a paralleling activity to its services on Earth in connection with planetary evolution. Men are so apt to regard their own lives and destiny and the unfoldment of the human consciousness as the factor of only and paramount importance upon Earth and in the evolutionary processes of the planet. These conditions are of importance, but they are not the only factors of importance, nor does humanity stand alone and isolated. Humanity occupies a midway point between the subhuman and the superhuman kingdoms, and each of these groups of evolving lives has its own important destiny - important to all contained within the group ring-pass-not. They have their own chosen and differing modes, methods and ways of achievement. Just as individual man has to learn the art or science of relationship to other men and to his environment, so humanity as a whole has to learn its relationship to that which lies above and beyond mankind and with that which is below and left behind. This involves a sense of proportion which can be attained only by the mind principle in man [334] and by those who are beginning to be mentally polarized. This sense of proportion will reveal to men their place upon the ladder of evolution and lead them to the recognition of the peculiar destiny and unique goals of other kingdoms in nature, including the fifth kingdom, the Kingdom of God, the spiritual Hierarchy of our planet.

The Hierarchy is itself also at a point of spiritual crisis. Its initiates stand before the Door which leads to the Way of the Higher Evolution and the entire personnel of the Hierarchy waits to make a united move forward, paralleling - on its own level - the move forward which humanity is also destined to make.

But, my brothers, here is the point of interest. Under the great law of synthetic expression (called by us the Law of Synthesis, the law governing the first divine aspect) the Hierarchy must move forward in such a manner that the effort must encompass the physical plane as well as the higher planes. The activity engineered must cover the three worlds of human evolution as well as the three worlds of the Spiritual Triad. Forget not the overlapping of these two worlds which takes place upon the mental plane and warrants the well-known phrase "the five worlds of superhuman evolution." Hence, therefore, the necessity for the externalization of the Hierarchy and the demonstration of Their united ability to work from the physical plane up to the highest, in order to move unitedly through this Door on to the Way. Speaking symbolically, this externalization is for the Members of the Hierarchy an act of sacrificial service, but it is also a symbolic gesture. The Hierarchy incarnates on Earth again, and for the first time since its last incarnation in Atlantean days. It is, however, a group incarnation and not the incarnation of individual Members. This is probably a subtle point too difficult for you to grasp.

The externalization of the Hierarchy, therefore, and the restoration of the Mysteries, are not something done for humanity or simply carried out because men have earned a closer contact, have the right to some reward or are now so spiritual that the Hierarchy can have a good and useful time [335] helping them. The picture is entirely different. What looms with such importance in the consciousness of men is, in reality, quite secondary in relation to the hierarchical crisis which we are considering. This reappearance upon the physical plane and the consequent life of service (involving factors of profound significance to men) are an expression of the inherent spiritual impulse which is impelling hierarchical action in two directions but involving one unified movement, embracing all the five planes of superhuman evolution and necessitating a group recapitulation of incarnated process.

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