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Discipleship in the New Age II - Teachings on Initiation - Part V
On Hints

I have been working with all of you in this manner for more than ten years now; I have sought to bring about a definite awakening to latent possibilities and to those capacities for cooperation which must be eventually realized by the disciple. I am not discouraged, because apart from my realization of the inevitable limitations which encompass each of you individually, I am also aware that you have placed yourselves in my Ashram for training in the most difficult period in the entire history of humanity - a period in which the whole of humanity is passing through the reorientation required by the time cycle and through an entirely new adjustment to a higher rhythm and area of expression. This has greatly enhanced all your difficulties, and mine also, as I work with you. However, the next one hundred years will see great developments in my Ashram. It is, as I have told you, one of the newest of the Ashrams and is only now finding its own format, enunciating its own note, and taking on its own quality. This situation has also greatly increased your problem, for you are helping me to form something new.

Up to the present time, I have given you four hints which might be summarized as follows:

  1. That the great changes being brought about in the Hierarchy, and in order to make the work of the New Age adequate and to establish a closer rapport with Shamballa, have been the result of the work done by the working disciples of the world. Why the working disciples, brother of mine, and not by the Masters? A hint ever evokes a question, and it is in the answering of these questions that the disciples learn and eventually become Masters. [302]
  2. That human planning and thinking, as the future is faced, are the first indications in the history of mankind of the emergence of the will aspect. Can you answer the question: Why is this indicated?
  3. That disciples in all Ashrams have the task of "modifying, qualifying, and adapting the divine plan." Why has this to be so? This is a most significant and useful question. Why, brother of mine, is the plan not imposed? What are the distinctions between quality, modifications, and adaptations - for there is a distinction in each and every one of them.
  4. That the initiate knows because he works. Christ gave the same hint to his disciples when he told them that if they wanted to know the doctrine they must carry out God's will. Do these words convey any true meaning to you?

You will note that all of these four hints or seed ideas (for much expanded thinking, leading to renewed activity) have to do with humanity and not with the individual man. This is a point of importance to bear in mind, for it again indicates the distinction between the training being given now and that which was given in the past. I, for instance, am not (in these group instructions) giving you individual hints as to your own lives. This I have done in the past, as have all Ashrams today, as they make their transition between the old and the new, emerging techniques; they have to employ compromise and adapt to that which is coming; the future will see, therefore, a gradual cessation of personality hints. In the future, the true method will be to develop in the disciple the sense of synthesis and of "place" in the One World, and thus decentralize him. The theme of direction underlies the system of instructing by means of hints. It is apparently a slow technique, but there is a point which esotericists would do well to remember. If information as to the nature of the microcosm and the macrocosm, as to divine Purpose and the spiritual Plan, as to occult events in time and space, and as to future or immediate possibilities were given out in plain terms (even if the needed language were available) there would be little understanding. I could, for [303] instance, tell you much that would be as useful to you as the following statement might have been to unevolved prehistoric man: "There is naught in the world but energy. The Atom of atoms is only energy and God himself is naught but energy." The phrases would have conveyed to their slow-moving brains absolutely nothing. Primitive man had not the mechanism whereby comprehension would have been possible. A key to the correct interpretation of a hint lies in its association with the idea of direction in time and space. And, my brother, in the above sentence I give you the hint which I have in mind for your consideration this year. The word "direction" is the key to the evolutionary process, to the concept of light, to the secret of Masonry, and to the motivating power behind manifestation. More I will not indicate, but I seek your intelligent assent to that word.

It will become increasingly apparent to you that the entire life of a disciple becomes one of reflective meditation. Meditation forms may at some point of unfoldment drop away, but the habit of meditation will become a permanent and considered habit and will know finally no termination; when that point is reached, the idea of direction will take on divine significance. Here is a second hint on the same theme. You will recollect that in my last Instruction the whole subject of meditation was summarized for you as follows:

  1. A preliminary stage wherein the theme of meditation was recognized.
  2. Receptivity in attitude, so that the possible and esoteric teaching may be recognized and absorbed.
  3. The transmission of ideas in some form or another to the brain after they have been registered by the mind in the form of seed thoughts, hints or presented themes and concepts.
  4. The deliberate focusing of thought upon these ideas.
  5. As these ideas are considered and developed, they are subjected to analysis and take shape eventually as created thought-forms.
  6. They are then subjected to a process of unification through the conscious and constant use of a mantram. [304]

If this outline for thinking is carefully considered, it will be apparent to you that it is suitable for all true thought processes, all mental moods, and all analysis and application of occult hints. I wanted you to realize the essential simplicity of all divine processes and to note the ultimate fact that such processes culminate in a spiritual identification, proving past all controversy that separateness is fundamentally non-existent. This is true also of the formulas which we have been considering.
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