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Problems of Humanity - Chapter V - The Problem of the Churches
The keynote of the New World Religion is Divine Approach. "Draw near to Him and He will draw near to you" is the injunction, emanating in new and clear tones from the Hierarchy today. The great theme of the New World Religion will be the unifying of the great divine Approaches; the task ahead of the churches is to prepare humanity, through organized and spiritual movements, for the fifth imminent Approach; the method employed will be the scientific and intelligent use of Invocation and Evocation and the recognition of its stupendous potency; the objective of the coming Approach, of the preparatory work and of the invocation, is revelation - a revelation which has ever been cyclically given and which today is ready for man's acceptance. Invocation is of three kinds. There is, first of all, the massed demand, unconsciously voiced, and the crying appeal, wrung from the hearts of men in all times of crisis, such as the present. This invocative cry rises ceaselessly from all men living in the midst of disaster and is addressed to that power outside themselves which they feel can and should come to their help in their moment of extremity. That great and wordless invocation is rising everywhere today. Then there is the invocational spirit, evidenced by sincere men as they participate in the rites of their religion and take advantage of the opportunity of united worship and prayer to lay their [159] demands for help before God. This group, added to the mass of men, creates a huge body of invocative applicants and, at this time, their massed intent is in great evidence and their invocation is rising to the Most High. Then, lastly, there are the trained disciples and aspirants of the world who use certain forms of words, certain carefully defined invocations and who - as they do - focus the invocative cry and the invocative appeal of the other two groups, giving it right direction and power. All these three groups are, consciously or unconsciously, swinging into activity at this time and their united effort guarantees a resultant evocation. This new invocative work will be the keynote of the coming world religion and will fall into two parts. There will be the invocative work of the masses of the people, everywhere trained by the spiritually minded people of the world (working in the churches whenever possible under an enlightened clergy) to accept the fact of the approaching spiritual energies, focused through Christ and His spiritual Hierarchy, and trained also to voice their demand for light, liberation and understanding. There will also be the skilled work of invocation as practiced by those who have trained their minds through right meditation, who know the potency of formulas, mantrams and invocations and who work consciously. They will increasingly use certain great formulas of words which will later be given to the race, just as the Lord's Prayer was given by the Christ, and the New Invocation has been given out for use at this time by the Hierarchy. This new religious science for which prayer, meditation and ritual have prepared humanity will train its people to present - at stated periods throughout the year - the voiced demand of the people of the world for relationship with God and for a closer spiritual relation to each other. This work, when rightly carried forward, will evoke response from the waiting Hierarchy [160] and from its Head, the Christ. Through this response, the belief of the masses will gradually be changed into the conviction of the knowers. In this way the mass of men will be transformed and spiritualized, and the two great divine centers of energy or groups - the Hierarchy and Humanity itself - will begin to work in complete at-one-ment and unity. Then the Kingdom of God will in deed and in truth be functioning on earth. it will be obvious to you that this technique of invocation and evocation has its roots in past methods of human approach to Deity. Men have long used the method of prayer with important and deeply spiritual results, in spite of its frequent misuse for selfish purposes; people, more intelligent and more mentally focused, have employed more generally the method of meditation in order to arrive at knowledge of God, to awaken the intuition and to understand the nature of truth. These two methods of prayer and of meditation have brought humanity to the various spiritual recognitions which distinguish human thinking; through their means also the Scriptures of the world have been produced and the great spiritual concepts which have conditioned human living and which have led man on from one revelation to another have found their way into the minds of men. Worship also has played its part and has attempted to organize groups of believers into an oriented and united approach to God; however, the emphasis has again been on God transcendent and not on God immanent. When the God immanent in every human heart is awakened and functioning (even if only in a small degree) the potency of worship as an act of invocative approach to God will prove amazing and miraculous in its results. A response beyond man's deepest hopes will be evoked from Christ and His group of workers. To these two great concepts underlying the New World Religion - Approach to God, and Invocation and [161] Evocation - must be added the exceedingly modern one of energy as the basis of all life, all forms and all action and the medium of all relationships. The force of the mind in producing telepathic rapport has already been recognized by science; mental power is today registered as an energy, capable of contact, of recognition and of producing a reciprocal activity. Prayer has always recognized this, without attempting to formulate the mode whereby phenomena are produced through the medium of prayer. But in prayer, meditation and worship there is undoubtedly an energy factor, proceeding from this to that and producing in many cases the desired response in some form or another. Meditation is also an energy, setting in motion potencies which can eliminate certain aspects of thought or attract other aspects, such as visions, ideas, and spiritual recognitions. Worship has ever been known to produce a group stimulation when successfully oriented and focused even to the point of ecstasy or hysteria, Pentecost or revelation. To these three - Prayer, Meditation and Worship - must now be added conscious Invocation, plus a trained expectancy of a reciprocal Evocation.
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