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A Treatise on White Magic - Rule Fifteen - The Esoteric Sense
Beyond this triple group stand the Thrones, Principals, and Powers with whom we need not concern ourselves. On the other side stands humanity, torn by the disasters of the past world war, bewildered by the social, religious and economic pressure of the present, sensitive and responsive to the influences and energies pouring in on the new tide of the Aquarian Age; unable to understand and explain, and conscious only of a longing for liberty of thought and of physical condition, snatching at every chance to gain knowledge and so providing a fertile field wherein this new group can work. We have seen that the objective of all inner training is to develop the esoteric sense, and to unfold that inner sensitive awareness which will enable a man to function, not only as a Son of God in physical incarnation but as one who also possesses that continuity of consciousness which will enable him to be interiorly awake as well as exteriorly active. This is accomplished through developing the power to be a trained Observer. I commend these words to all aspirants. It is persistence in the attitude of right observation that brings about detachment from form, a subsequent power to use form at will and with the end in view of furthering hierarchical plans and consequent usefulness to humanity. When this power to observe has been somewhat brought about, we then have he aspirant joining that intermediate group of trained communicators who stand between the aforementioned groups (the exoteric groups and the group of spiritual workers on the subjective plane), interpreting the one to the other. It is well to remember that even the [610] members of the Hierarchy profit by the opinions and advice of those disinterested disciples who can be trusted to rightly recognize and interpret the need of the hour. When this stage has been reached and a man is in conscious touch with the plan then true magical work can begin. Men and women, who are beginning to live as souls, can undertake the magical work of the new age, and can inaugurate those changes and that rebuilding which will bring about the manifestation of the new heavens and the new earth, to which all the Scriptures of the world bear eloquent testimony. They can then work with forces in etheric matter and so bring into being those physical plane creations and organizations which will more adequately embody the life of God in the Aquarian Age which is now upon us. It is to this stage that Rule XV refers. These words mark the consummation of the magical work, and are equally true of the magical work of a solar Logos, of a planetary Logos, of an incarnating soul, or of that advanced human being who has learnt to work as a white magician under the plan of the great White Lodge. It, of course, refers to the work of those who through intellectual achievement have learnt to work as magicians but on what is called the black side, for the same rules of magical work hold good for both groups, though the motivating impulse differs. But with the work of the black magician we have naught to do. That which they do is powerful in transient effect, using the word transient in its cyclic sense; but these effects must in due time cease, and be subordinated to the claims and the work of the bringers of light and of life. The shadow stage is the dim and uncertain period which is found prior to dense and concrete manifestation. It does not here refer to the shadow as the counterpart in physical manifestation of the soul. It refers to one of the intermediate stages in the creative process. [611] It is technically called the "stage of the waxing and the waning of the nebulae", and this stage precedes the appearance of the more stabilized and relatively static exoteric form. In the formation of a solar system, this is recognized as a preliminary period and can be seen going on in the starry heavens. It indicates the stage wherein the Great Magician is only in process of carrying forward His work; He has not yet finally chanted those mystic words or those spiritual sounds which will produce concretion and the tangible appearance of form. The Secret Doctrine refers to the three fires, and these are of ancient usage; the Vishnu Purana gives these fires exactly the same nomenclature as does H.P.B. who borrowed the terms from the ancient Scripture. Electric Fire, Solar Fire and Fire by Friction, when brought into conjunction, produce the manifested macrocosm and microcosm, and to this conjunction my earlier Treatise on Cosmic Fire referred. These fires are esoterically one fire but this fire produces, according to the witnessing consciousness (itself at varying stages of evolutionary development) the effect of differentiated fiery essence. This fiery essence can be known as Life itself, or as the "Self-shining Light," or it can be known as the active form inherent in the one substance which underlies all phenomena. In this final rule for magic the fires which are considered are those of matter itself which approach the shadow and (as the Old Commentary symbolically expresses it) "rise up from the second darkness at the call of the spirit of light and meet in their appointed place that which will absorb them and raise them to the fiery point from whence the fires of living light and radiant life have come."
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