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The Rays and the Initiations - Part Two - Section One - The Aspirant and the Mysteries of Initiation
The Dual Existence of the Master I would have you note here the difference between the two headings. I refer in one place to the dual life of the [438] disciple but in another to the dual existence of the Master. That distinction is deliberate and intentional. The disciple lives in the three worlds and, until the third initiation, he demonstrates his livingness strictly in relation to the soul and the personality, and therefore strictly to the phenomenal world and to the various levels of the dense cosmic physical plane. The Master functions on the plane of Being and demonstrates the fact that He eternally Is, that He exists as a divine aspect upon the formless levels of the cosmic etheric planes; this is a very different matter to the life of the disciple and to which little attention has been paid. Existence, Being, Essential Life, Dynamic Energy, Electric Fire are all of them distinctive of the higher initiations; they produce basic distinctions between their constitution and mode of life expression and that of those who live, who are in process of becoming, who express quality, and who fuse and blend solar fire and fire by friction. Being and Existence are not the same as Becoming or of Qualified Appearance. It is largely a question of emphases. A Master has synthesized within Himself all for which the advancing disciple longs to express, all that is possible as Expansion, plus an emphasis upon the dynamic life aspect, plus an ability to stand immovable in pure Being. Here again I find it hard to express that for which no words are to be found. In the Master, all the divine aspects are proved capable of expression in accordance with this particular time, in this particular round and chain (reverting to the old symbolism of The Secret Doctrine) and through any particular racial expression. These divine characteristics - viewed from the angle of time and space - are shewn in a definitely relative form; later cycles and time periods will show these aspects in a still more perfected form. But the relativity of these matters does not really concern us, and the perfection is - from, the angle of the human disciple today - exactly what we understand by perfection. The Masters know, however, that a higher, deeper and more intensive manifestation of divinity is potentially possible, but it causes Them no [439] concern or strain, no anxiety or fiery aspiration; They know, as no disciple can know, the workings of the Law of Inevitability. This Law releases the Masters (under the accompanying Law of Service), at the sixth initiation, into a wider field of experience, with all the divine assets and qualities so developed within Them that They know that Their equipment is adequate to the undertaking and that They can, without hesitancy and concern, take the next required steps. It is hard for the disciple - struggling with glamor and illusion - to realize that the higher initiations are free from all concern and from any emotional or self-centered reactions to the work which lies ahead or to the form side of manifestation; it is well-nigh impossible for the neophyte to vision a time when he will be free from all reactions engendered by life on the dense cosmic physical planes and from all the limitations of life in the three worlds. Today, aspiration provides a constant source of anxious questioning, of painful deliberations and of high voltage spiritual ambition, with their consequent limitations and moments of sensed failure and lack of achievement. The Master has left all this behind, knowing that even this so-called "spiritual responsiveness" is a form of self-centered attitude. Eventually - and disciples should take courage and hope from this statement - all this agonizing reaction to the spiritual urge will be left behind. The Master knows the Law and is entirely free from any consideration of the time equation, as far as He Himself is concerned. He only regards time as it may affect the working of the Plan in the three worlds. The dual existence of the Master involves what we might call the two poles: that of the monadic consciousness, whatever that may be, and that of the self-created form which He may use as a member of the Hierarchy and a worker in the three worlds of human enterprise. I would here remind you that there are many groups and types of Masters, and most of Them are quite unknown to occult students either from Their work or from rumor or from knowledge of the many evolutionary processes of which the human is only [440] one. Not all the Masters work in the three worlds; not all the Masters need or possess physical bodies; not all the Masters "have Their faces turned towards the realm of dark light, but many face for aeons towards the clear cold light of spiritual existence"; not all the Masters make or are required to make the sacrifices which work for the fourth kingdom in nature entails. Not all souls liberated or limited constitute the Kingdom of God in the sense which that phrase conveys to us; that term is limited to the soul which informs units in the human family; not all the Masters work under the great Buddha of Activity Who is responsible to Sanat Kumara for the Plan working out in connection with Humanity. He works through the three Great Lords of the Eternal Ashram of Sanat Kumara, but His two Brothers have Each of Them an equally important work and are responsible - as He is - to the Council Chamber. Each of Them also works through a triangle of energies with grouped subsidiary forces working in seven departments and differentiated also into forty-nine lesser departments, as is the Ashram which we call the Hierarchy. Forget not, there are many Hierarchies and the Human Hierarchy is but one. This whole theme is one of great complexity and yet at the same time so simple that when the simplicity of the planetary constitution is truly grasped and the analytic disputations of the concrete mind are overcome, the liberated Master enters a world of spiritual endeavor which is free from forms and symbols or the veils which hide the basic truth and the underlying mystery. Being is simple, free, unlimited and unimpeded and in that world the Master moves and works. Becoming is complex, imprisoning, limited and subjected to hindrances, and in that world the disciple and the lesser initiates live and move and have their being. The Master works simultaneously in two worlds or states of awareness; i.e., that related to pure existence, to the untrammelled life of the planes controlled by the Monad, and also by the Hierarchy. There naught but the Plan engrosses His attention. He deals safely with "the simplicity which is Shamballa" and its [441] sphere or aura of influence and "with the field of relationships which are nurtured from the Ashram of the Christ." I am here quoting one of the Masters Who was endeavoring to explain to a disciple the simplicity of the life which a Master expresses.
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