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The Rays and the Initiations - Part Two - Section One - The Aspirant and the Mysteries of Initiation
3. Projection. The task of the disciple has now reached a most critical point. Many aspirants reach this particular stage and - having developed a real capacity to visualize, and having therefore constructed by its means the desired form, and organized the substance which is to be employed in this later phase of the building process - find themselves unable to proceed any further. What then is the matter? Primarily, an inability to use the Will in the process of projection. This process is a combination of will, further and continued visualization, and the use of the ray Word of Power. Up to the present stage in the process, the method for all the seven rays is identical; but at this point there comes a change. Each disciple, having successfully organized the bridge substance, having brought into activity the will aspect, and being consciously aware of process and performance, proceeds now to move the organized substance forward, so that from the center of force which he has succeeded in accumulating there appears a line of light-substance or projection. This is sent forward upon a [491] Word of Power, as in the logoic creative process. This is in reality a reversal of the process of the Monad when It sent forth the thread of life which finally anchored itself in the soul. The soul, in reality, came into being through the means of this anchoring; then came the later process, when the soul in its turn sent forth a dual thread which finally found anchorage in the head and the heart of the lower threefold man, the personality. The disciple is focused in the center which he has constructed upon the mental plane, and is drawing all his resources (those of the threefold personality and the soul combined) into activity; he now projects a line towards the Monad. It is along this line that the final withdrawal of the forces takes place, the forces which - upon the downward way or the involutionary path - focused themselves in the personality and the soul. The antahkarana per se, completed by the bridge built by the disciple, is the final medium of abstraction or of the great withdrawal. It is with the antahkarana that the initiate is concerned in the fourth initiation, called sometimes the Great Renunciation - the renunciation or the withdrawal from form life, both personal and egoic. After this initiation neither of these aspects can hold the Monad any more. The "veil of the Temple" is rent in twain from the top to the bottom - that veil which separated the Outer Court (the personality life) from the Holy Place (the soul) and from the Holy of Holies (the Monad) in the Temple at Jerusalem. The implications and the analogies will necessarily be clear to you. In order, therefore, to bring about the needed projection of the accumulated energies, organized by the creative imagination and brought to a point of excessive tension by the focusing of the mental impulse (an aspect of the will), the disciple then calls upon the resources of his soul, stored up in what is technically called "the jewel in the lotus." This is the anchorage of the Monad - a point which must not be forgotten. The aspects of the soul which we call knowledge, love and sacrifice, and which are expressions of the causal body, are only effects of this monadic radiation. [492] Therefore, before the bridge can be truly built and "projected on the upward way, providing safe travelling for the pilgrim's weary feet" (as the Old Commentary puts it), the disciple must begin to react in response to the closed lotus bud or jewel at the center of the opened lotus. This he does when the sacrifice petals of the egoic lotus are assuming control in his life, when his knowledge is being transmuted into wisdom, and his love for the whole is growing; to these is being added the "power to renounce." These three egoic qualities - when functioning with a measure of potency - produce an increased activity at the very center of soul life, the heart of the lotus. It should be remembered that the correspondences in the egoic lotus to the three planetary centers are as follows: Shamballa - The jewel in the lotus. Hierarchy - The three groups of petals. Humanity - The three permanent atoms within the aura of the lotus. Students should also bear in mind that they need to rid themselves of the usual idea of sacrifice as a process of giving-up, or renunciation of all that makes life worth living. Sacrifice is, technically speaking, the achievement of a state of bliss and of ecstasy because it is the realization of another divine aspect, hidden hitherto by both the soul and the personality. It is understanding and recognition of the will-to-good which made creation possible and inevitable, and which was the true cause of manifestation. Ponder on this, for it is very different in its significance to the usual concepts anent sacrifice. When the disciple has gained the fruit of experience which is knowledge and is learning to transmute it into wisdom, when his objective is to live truly and in reality, and when the will-to-good is the crowning goal of his daily life, then he can begin to evoke the Will. This will make the link between the lower and the higher minds, between spirit and matter and between Monad and personality a definite and existent fact. Duality then supervenes upon [493] triplicity, and the potency of the central nucleus in the egoic vehicle destroys - at the fourth initiation - the three surrounding expressions. They disappear, and then the so-called destruction of the causal body has taken place. This is the true "second death" - death to form altogether. This is practically all that I can tell you anent the process of projection. It is a living process, growing out of the conscious daily experience and dependent upon the expression of the divine aspects in the life upon the physical plane, as far as is possible. Where there is an attempt to approximate the personality life to the demands of the soul and to use the intellect on behalf of humanity, love is beginning to control; and then the significance of the "divine sacrifice" is increasingly understood and becomes a natural, spontaneous expression of individual intention. Then it becomes possible to project the bridge. The vibration is then set up on lower levels of divine manifestation and becomes strong enough to produce response from the higher. Then, when the Word of Power is known and rightly used, the bridge is rapidly built. Students need feel in no way discouraged by this picture. Much can happen on the inner planes where there is right intention, as well as occult intention (purpose and tension combined), and the bridge reaches stages of definite outline and structure long before the disciple is aware of it.
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