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The Rays and the Initiations - Part Two - Section One - The Aspirant and the Mysteries of Initiation
One might also look at this matter from another angle. The personality is beginning to transmute knowledge into wisdom, and when this takes place the focus of the personality life is then upon the mental plane, because the transmutation process (with its stages of understanding, analysis, recognition and application) is fundamentally a mental process. The personality is also beginning to comprehend the significance of love and to interpret it in terms of the group well-being, and not in terms of the personal self, of desire or even of aspiration. True love is rightly understood only by the mental type who is spiritually oriented. The personality is also arriving at the realization that there is in reality no such thing as sacrifice. Sacrifice is usually only the thwarted desire of the lower nature, willingly endured by the aspirant, but - in this phase - a misinterpretation and limitation. Sacrifice is really complete conformity to the will of God because the spiritual will of the man and the divine will (as he recognizes it in the Plan) is his will. There is a growing identification in purpose. Therefore, self-will, desire and those intelligent activities which are dually motivated are seen and recognized as only the lower expression of the three divine aspects, and the effort is to express these in terms of the soul and not, as hitherto, in terms of a dedicated and rightly oriented personality. This becomes possible in its true sense only when the focus of the life is in the mental vehicle and the head as well as the heart is becoming active. In this process, the stages of character building are seen as essential and effective, and are willingly and consciously undertaken. But - when these foundations of good character and intelligent activity are firmly established - something still higher and more subtle must be erected on the substructure. Knowledge-wisdom must be superseded by intuitive [469] understanding; this is, in reality, inclusive participation in the creative activity of divinity. The divine idea must become the possible ideal, and this ideal must become unfolded and manifested in substance upon the physical plane. The creative thread, now somewhat ready, must be brought into conscious functioning and activity. Desire-love must be interpreted in terms of divine attraction, involving the right use or misuse of energies and forces. This process puts the disciple in touch with divinity as a progressively revealed Whole. The part, through the magnetic development of its own nature, comes into touch gradually with all that Is. The disciple becomes aware of this sum total in increasingly vivid expansions of consciousness, leading to initiation, realization and identification. These are the three stages of initiation. The consciousness thread, in cooperation with the creative thread and the life thread, awakens to a fully aware process of participation in the divine creative Plan - a Plan which is motivated by love and intelligently carried forward. Direction-Will (which are words describing the orientation produced by the understanding of the two processes of knowledge-wisdom and desire-love) must produce the final orientation of the personality and the soul, fused and blended and at-one, towards the freedom of the Spiritual Triad; then the conscious attempt to use these three energies eventuates in creating the antahkarana upon the mental plane. You will note that at this early stage of the process I am emphasizing the words "orientation" and "attempt." They simply indicate the final control of substance by the initiate. One of the indications that a man is no longer upon the Probationary Path is his emerging from the realm of aspiration and devotion into the world of the focused will. Another indication is that he begins to interpret life in terms of energy and forces, and not in terms of quality and desire. This marks a definite step forward. There is too little use of the spiritual will, as the result of right orientation, in the life of disciples today. [470] In the future, this Science of the Antahkarana and its lower correspondence, the Science of Social Evolution (which is the joint or united antahkarana of humanity as a whole), will be known as the Science of Invocation and Evocation. It is in reality the Science of Magnetic Rapport, in which right relationship is brought about by mutual invocation, producing a responsive process which is one of evocation. It is this science which lies behind all conscious awakening of the centers and their interrelation; it lies behind the rapport between man and man, group and group, and eventually between nation and nation. It is this invocation, and the consequent evocation, which eventually relate soul and personality and soul and monad. It is the outstanding objective of humanity's appeal to God, to the Hierarchy and to the Spiritual Powers of the cosmos, no matter by what name you call them. The appeal goes forth. The invocation of humanity can and will and must evoke response from the spiritual Hierarchy and give the first demonstration upon a large scale of this new esoteric science - esoteric because it is based upon sound. Hence the use of the OM. Into this science I cannot here go; we must confine our attention to our theme, which is the Science of the Antahkarana.
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