You might well ask what were these steps and along what lines has the preparation gone? The first steps concerned internal preparation. Though the Masters of the Wisdom have all passed through the human experience and are simply men who have achieved a relative measure of perfection, there are aspects of physical contact which They have completely transcended and utterly negated. There is nothing in the three worlds with which They have any affinity, except the affinity of life and the impulse of love for all beings. Recovery of certain facilities of activity has been deemed necessary. For instance, the five senses, where a Master is concerned, exist and, are used at need, but the contact established and maintained with disciples and senior aspirants in the world (through whom They primarily work) is largely telepathic; hearing and sight, as you understand [569] their uses, are not involved. The science of impression, with its greatly increased effectiveness over individual contact through the senses, has entirely superseded the more strictly human method. Except in the case of Masters working on the physical plane and in a physical body, the outer physical senses are in abeyance; for the majority of Masters Who still use these senses, the use is strictly limited; Their work is still almost entirely subjective and the mode of telepathic interplay and of impression is practically all the means which They employ to reach Their working agents. Therefore, the recovery of past usages of a more physical nature has been one of the preparatory moves.

Another has been the achievement of a wide culture and understanding of the current civilization which will be coming into activity and control when the intended project is carried out. You have been told - and told correctly - that the Masters do not trouble Themselves to attain proficiency in all educational subjects - in modern history, for instance, or the newest scientific procedures, or in the use of foreign languages. In all Their Ashrams there are those who can supply Them with any specified knowledge which They may need at any given time or for any specific purpose. This will still remain true of Those Who have attained the rank of Master, but it is not true of all the senior initiates, many of whom, as they passed into higher grades and under instruction from a Master, have retained their worldly knowledge, besides specializing in certain strictly mundane approaches to worldly affairs. For instance, there are adepts who are authorities upon modern financial matters, and these initiates of the fourth degree are competently preparing to institute later those newer techniques and modes of financial interplay which will supersede the present disastrous methods; they will inaugurate a system of barter and exchange, of which modern money is the travestied symbol. This newer method of financial relationships will be comprehensively human and it will supersede big business and private enterprise. It will at the same time, however, retain those phases of modern enterprise which will draw out the initiative and [570] the resourcefulness of the individual. Other initiates have specialized in the various languages, and two of them are authorities in basic English; this is the form of the English language which will eventually take the place of other languages in all forms of international and business intercourse without in any way obliterating the individual national languages in daily use in any country.