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Discipleship in the New Age II - Personal Instructions to Disciples - D.P.R.
November 1944 MY BELOVED FRIEND AND TRUSTED DISCIPLE: My heart has gone out to you during the past year as you have struggled with fatigue, with loneliness, with foreboding [652] and with anxieties of many kinds. You have stood with constant steadiness and you must know by now how highly steadiness is regarded by the Hierarchy. These culminating years of your life have been years of great difficulty and much pain - not only for yourself but for others. They have been years wherein everything has been wrested from you, leaving you upon that "pinnacle of loneliness" about which I spoke to your brother, W.D.S., in my instruction to him last year. I would have you regard that pinnacle as an exalted place from which the new vision can be seen. That pinnacle can be turned into a mount of initiation. You have passed the three score years and ten of ordinary living and you are privileged to look back upon a life of great usefulness and of much inner spiritual progress. You have disposed of much karma and are far freer than when you entered into incarnation. The crux of the lesson which you are now in process of learning is to refrain from expectation - from life, from people and from circumstances - except that expectation which concerns spiritual opportunity and your relation to my Ashram. Disciples need to regard the Ashram more definitely as a place of spiritual enveloping, if I may use so peculiar a phrase. They need to regard it as a circle of protection, remembering that if their consciousness can escape into the Ashram, they are in a place of complete security where naught can reach or hurt them. Neither pain nor anxiety can overwhelm the man who dwells in the consciousness of eternity; this sense of the eternal, coupled with the realization of essential unity, marks all dwellers in an Ashram. Herein lies your safety in the vicissitudes of your life. I am not speaking idly or symbolically, nor am I referring to the usual platitudes expressed in the injunction "dwell in the eternal." I refer definitely to the place of a disciple within an Ashram of one of the Masters, and in particular to your place within my Ashram. This place is a reality and not a dream or a figment of wishful thinking; it is a sphere of focused awareness where the minds, the love, the aspiration and the spiritual consciousness of many meet, and meet in truth. Of this meeting you can - as many have and [653] do - become conscious. Avoid vagueness as you think of the Ashram with which you are affiliated. Oft I warn and urge disciples to concentrate upon their service and upon their outer contacts, and thus avoid concentration upon the Ashram and upon me, the Master of the Ashram. Knowing your circumstances and seeing into your future, I reverse the injunction in your case and urge you to make the Ashram a reality in your life and to count with greater definiteness and surety upon my presence there and my understanding welcome. Your natural diffidence and humility will permit this and protect me and the Ashram from any undue pressure on your part, even if - in the stress of circumstances - you were prompted to make it. I would outline for you a meditation which will suffice for your needs for a long time to come. I am not putting it in the ordinary form, for all of you in this group should now have reached the point at which you can formulate your own meditation and reflective approach. I only indicate to you the setting for certain seed thoughts. I suggest that you think, first of all, of the Ashram, my Ashram, as a great center of energy with which you (in your place and in your own way) are privileged to establish contact. See the Ashram as a sphere of radiant, magnetic light; then see me, as you know me, at the center of that sphere, both emitting and receiving light, via the Christ and via the Ashram of which I was at one time a part - the Ashram of the Master K.H. See yourself also as a soul in contact with first ray energy, and thus contributing some of this energy, reaching you via the Ashram of the Master M., to the light and power of my Ashram. Having thus served and been served, and having taken your group brothers into your consciousness and recognized them as within the ashramic light, you can proceed to take three ideas or symbolic sentences as your theme for reflection, during the next few years. They will suffice to meet your need and to evoke in you the necessary spiritual attitudes. The Cross, erected high, reaches from the pinnacle [654] upon which I stand into the place of light, where dwells my Master. Against that Cross there rests a ladder. The golden Cross and the ladder of pure light are one, and by their means I rise. Upward I look and see an outstretched hand. Downward I look and see the many hands demanding aid. With gladness and with hope, I recognize the purpose of the two hands I possess. I climb the ladder, hard as it may seem, with both my hands outstretched - the one above my head to find it clasped with strength, the other down below to find it full of power to lift. A burning sea of flame. Beyond, a radiant sun. Behind, a world of darkness, gloom and heavy rain - a rain of tears. There, in the center of a fire I stand, my eyes upon the sun. The vortex of the fire, the flaming rays of heat cast outward by the sun, blend with my fire and lo! it disappears. The greater fire blends with and consumes the little one. I turn and pass back - out of the light and warmth - into the world of gloom and mist and, as I turn, I hear a voice crying aloud: "Well done. Pass through the gloom; enter the mist; dry up the rain and tears and find yourself upon the other side, and near my heart." A garden full of flowers, of bees and glowing light and sun. I see a wall which separates the garden from the world of men. Beyond its gates I see the forms of those who long to enter. Into my heart there come the words, spoken I know not when: "The key is in your hands; open the gates and let the crowd in. This you can do, for the garden now is yours and yet is theirs, though you have entered first. Open the gate and welcome with a smile and words of love and cheer the sad, unwelcome, miserable crowd. The garden stands between the outer world and the inner sacred place you call my Ashram. Within the garden take your stand. There rest. Move forward to the gate at need, returning ever to the place of rest. Open the door when called upon, [655] but retain the key. The surging crowd will touch you not nor hurt the garden in its loveliness." Behind these three symbolic stanzas, if I may so call them, are veiled three needed lessons which you must learn and master. I am not telling you what these lessons are, for the joy of discovery must be yours. I do not need to tell you either that I send you with constancy thoughts of strength and sustaining understanding. Long years have taught you that my strength goes out to you when your own inner strength is called into play and is used by you consciously and rightly. I give not what you yourself can provide, but I can and do supplement your strength when need demands. Rest, therefore, brother of mine; be not unduly concerned at the plight of those you love. Trust their own souls and know that they, alone, must learn the needed lessons. Rest in peace.
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