September 14th, 1920

It might be of value to us in our consideration of the subject of access to the Masters via meditation if we started with a few fundamental statements, dealing with the Masters and Their place in evolution. We will therefore take up our first point. We shall thus bring before the readers of these letters some idea as to Their status, Their comprehensive development, and Their methods of work. Needless to say, much that will follow will carry nothing new in import. The things that concern us most closely and the things that are to us the most familiar are oft the most frequently overlooked, and the most nebulous to our reasoning faculty.

• A Master of the Wisdom is One Who has undergone the fifth initiation. That really means that His consciousness has undergone such an expansion that it now includes the fifth or spiritual kingdom. He has worked His way through the four lower kingdoms:  - the mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human - and has, through meditation and service, expanded His center of consciousness till it now includes the plane of spirit.
• A Master of the Wisdom is One Who has effected the transfer of polarization from the three atoms of the personal life - as included in the causal body - into the three atoms of the Spiritual Triad. He is consciously [260] spirit-intuition-abstract mind, or atma-buddhi-manas, and this is not potentially but in full effective power, realized through experience. This has been brought about, as earlier said, through the process of meditation.
• A Master of the Wisdom is One Who has found not only the chord of the Ego, but the full chord of the Monad, and can ring the changes therefore at will upon all the notes from the lowest to that of the monadic. This means occultly that He has now developed the creative faculty, and can sound the note for each plane and build thereon. This power - first to discover the notes of the monadic chord and secondly to use those notes in constructive building - is first realized through meditation occultly performed, balanced by service lovingly administered.
• A Master of the Wisdom is He Who can wield the law in the three worlds and can dominate all that evolves on those planes. By learning the laws of mind through the practice of meditation, He expands the laws of mind till they embrace the laws of the Universal Mind as demonstrated in lower manifestation. The Laws of Mind are mastered in meditation. They are applied in the life of service which is the logical outcome of true knowledge.
• A Master of the Wisdom is He Who has passed out of the Hall of Learning into the Hall of Wisdom. He has there graduated through its five grades and has transmuted lower mind into mind pure and unalloyed, has transmuted desire into intuition, and has irradiated His consciousness with the light of pure Spirit. The discipline of meditation is the only way in which this can be accomplished.
• A Master of the Wisdom is He Who, through knowledge acquired by means of the five senses, has learnt [261] that synthesis exists and has merged those five senses into the synthetic two, that mark the point of attainment in the solar system. Through meditation the geometrical sense of proportion is adjusted, the sense of values is clearly recognized, and through that adjustment and recognition, illusion is dispelled and reality is known. The practice of meditation and the inner concentration there brought about awakens the consciousness to the value and true use of form. Thereby reality is contacted and the three worlds can no more ensnare.
• A Master of the Wisdom is He Who knows the meaning of consciousness, of life, and of spirit. He can pass - by the line of least resistance - straight to the "bosom of His Father in Heaven". The approach to the line of least resistance, the direct path, is found through the practice of meditation.
• A Master of the Wisdom is He Who has resolved Himself from the five into the three, and from the three into the two. He has become the five-pointed star, and when that moment is reached He sees that star flash out above the One Initiator, and recognizes it in those of equal place to His. He has sanctified (in the occult sense) the Quaternary, has used it as the foundation stone upon which to erect the Temple of Solomon. He has grown beyond that Temple itself and has come to recognize it as limitation. He has withdrawn Himself from its confining walls and has entered within the Triad. He has done this always by the occult method, that is, consciously and with full knowledge of each step taken. He learns the meaning of each confining form; then, He has assumed control and wielded the law upon the plane consistent with the form. He has then outgrown the form and has discarded it for other and higher forms. Thus He has progressed always by means of the sacrifice and death of the form. Always [262] it is recognized as imprisoning; always it must be sacrificed and must die so that the life within may speed ever on and up. The path of resurrection presupposes crucifixion and death, and then leads to the Mount whence Ascension may be made. In meditation the value of the life, and the confines of the form, can be appreciated and known, and by knowledge and service can the life be set free from all that limits and trammels.
• A Master of the Wisdom is One Who has chosen to stay upon our planet to help His fellowmen... All Who attain the fifth Initiation are Masters of the Wisdom, but all stay not and work as servers of the race. They pass to other work of greater or equal importance. To the general public the significance of the term lies in the thought that They choose to stay and limit Themselves for the sake of men who are pressing forward on the wave of evolution. Through meditation has the Great One reached His goal and (which is a thing not so oft comprehended) through meditation, or the manipulation of thought matter, and by work on the mental bodies of the race, is the work carried on that aids the evolutionary process.
• A Master of the Wisdom is He Who has taken the first initiation that links Him up with the greater Brotherhood on Sirius. As afore I have told you, He is an Initiate of the First Degree in the greater Lodge. He has attained an expansion of consciousness that has admitted Him into touch with the solar system in many of its departments. Now He has ahead of Him a vast reach of expansions that will eventually take Him beyond systemic consciousness into something far greater and wider. He has to begin to learn the rudiments of that cosmic meditation that will admit Him into a Consciousness past our conceivable surmise. [263]
• A Master of the Wisdom is He Who can consciously function as part of the Heavenly Man to Whose Body He may belong. He understands the laws governing groups and group souls. He governs a group soul consciously Himself (a group on the path of return and formed of the lives of many sons of men) and He knows His place in the body systemic. He realizes the center in the Body of the Heavenly Man by means of which He and His group are kept in sympathetic vibration, and conducts His relationship with other groups in the same Body under certain definite laws. The value of meditation as a preparation for this activity will be realized by all thoughtful students, for meditation is the one means whereby the sense of separateness is transcended, and unity with one's kind occultly comprehended.
• A Master of the Wisdom is He Who has entrusted to Him, by virtue of work accomplished, certain Words of Power. By means of these Words He wields the law over other evolutions than the human, and through them He cooperates with the activity aspect of the Logos. Thus He blends His consciousness with that of the third Logos. Through these Words He assists with the building work, and the cohesive manipulating endeavor of the second Logos, and comprehends the inner working of the law of gravitation (or attraction and repulsion) that governs all the functions of the second aspect logoic. Through these Words He cooperates with the work of the first Logos, and learns, as He takes the sixth and seventh Initiations (which is not always done) the meaning of Will as applied in the system. These Words are imparted orally, and through clairvoyant faculty but must be found by the Initiate Himself, by the use of atma and as He attains atmic consciousness... When atmic consciousness is developing by means of the intuition, the [264] Initiate can contact the stores of knowledge inherent in the Monad, and thus learn the Words of Power. This ability comes only after the application of the Rod of Initiation as wielded by the Lord of the World. Therefore by the higher stages of occult meditation does a Master of the Wisdom increase still further His knowledge. Not static is His consciousness, but daily embracing more. Daily does He apply Himself to further expansion.
• A Master of the Wisdom is One Who has earned the right through similarity of vibration to work with the Heads of the Hierarchy of this planet, and in conjunction with analogous Heads on two other planets connected with our chain. When He has taken other initiations He can contact and work in conjunction with all the seven Planetary Logoi, and not just the three in control of allied chains. The whole system can be embraced by Him, and His consciousness has expanded to include the entire objective solar system.

I could enumerate still other definitions, and further elucidate the matter for you, but that imparted today suffices. The point reached by a Master is high, but only relatively so, and you must not forget that when attained by Him it seems low indeed, for He measures it up with the vista expanding before Him. Each expansion of consciousness, each step upon the ladder, but opens before the Initiate another sphere to be embraced, and another step ahead to be taken; each initiation achieved but reveals still higher ones to be mastered, and never comes the point where the aspirant (be he an average man, an initiate, a Master, a Chohan, or a Buddha) can remain in a condition static, and is incapable of future progress. Even the Logos Himself aspires, and even the One to Whom He aspires reaches up to a Greater. [265]