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The Rays and the Initiations - Part One - Fourteen Rules For Group Initiation
Dual the moving forward. The Door is left behind. That is a happening of the past. [72] The first point which should be noted is that we have here the definition of an initiate. He is one who, in his two-fold nature (soul and personality), moves forward. No longer is his point of tension that of the personality. He has fused and blended two divine aspects in himself, and they now constitute one integrated unit. This fusion produces its own point of tension. He has moved forward through the door. A point of tension again ensues in which a Word goes forth in response to the invocative cry of the new initiate. A Word is returned to him: Accepted as a group. Then he, with the group of which he is now a recognized part, moves forward. For the initiate (as I have earlier pointed out) the past is left behind: "Let there be no recollection"; the present embodies a point of tension; the future indicates a moving forward from that point of tension as a result of its effective action. The door closes behind the initiate, who is now an accepted member of his group, and as the Old Commentary puts it, "its sound in closing informs the watching world that the initiate has passed into a secret place and that to reach him in the real sense they too must pass that door." This conveys the thought of individual self-initiation, to which all must be subjected, and indicates also the loneliness of the initiate as he moves forward. He does not yet understand all that his group as a whole grasps; he is himself not understood by those on the other side of the door. He has sensed for some time the group with which he is now affiliated, and is becoming increasingly aware of their spiritual impersonality, which seems to him to be almost a form of aloofness and which in no way feeds in him those elements which are of a personality nature; he therefore suffers. Those left behind as a part of his old life in no way comprehend his basic (even if undeveloped) impersonality. This attitude of theirs evokes in him, when sensed, a resentment and a criticism which he realizes is not right but which at this stage he seems unable to avoid, whilst those he criticizes endeavor to tear him down or (at the least) to make him feel despised and uncomfortable. In the early stages he takes refuge from those left [73] behind by withdrawing himself and by much unnecessary and almost obtrusive silence. He learns to penetrate into the consciousness of his new group by strenuously endeavoring to develop their capacity for spiritual impersonality. He knows it is something which he must achieve and - as he achieves it - he discovers that this impersonality is not based on indifference or upon preoccupation, as he had thought, but upon a deep understanding, upon a dynamic focus on world service, upon a sense of proportion and upon a detachment which makes true help possible. Thus the door and the past are left behind. St. Paul attempted to express this idea when he said: "Forgetting the things which are behind, press forward towards the prize of your high calling in Christ." I would ask your attention to the word "calling."
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