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The Rays and the Initiations - Part Two - Section One - The Aspirant and the Mysteries of Initiation
The Masonic Work is an ancient and laudable attempt to preserve in some germinal form the spiritual truth anent initiation. In spite of distortion, some loss of the Ancient Landmarks and a deplorable crystallization, the truth is there and at a later date (in the early part of the next century) a group of enlightened Masons will rearrange the rituals and adapt the present forms and formulas in such a manner that the spiritual possibilities, symbolically indicated, will emerge with greater clarity and a deepened spiritual potency; the coming form of Masonry in the New Age will necessarily rest upon the foundation of a newly interpreted and enlightened Christianity, having no relation to theology and being universal in [534] nature. Its present form, resting as it does on a Jewish foundation which is nearly five thousand years old, must disappear. This must take place, not because it is Jewish, but because it is old and reactionary and has not followed the evolutionary passage of the sun through the zodiac. That passage should and does symbolize human evolution, and just as the sin of the children of Israel in the wilderness was their reverting to a dispensation and religious ritual which had passed and gone (the religion of the people in the time of Taurus, the Bull, symbolized by their falling down and worshipping the golden calf), so today modern Masonry is in line to do the same; and the ancient usages and forms, consistent and right in the Jewish dispensation, are now obsolete and should be abrogated. It is equally true of the Jewish race that in the rejection of the Christ as the Messiah they have remained, metaphorically and practically, in the sign of Aries, the Ram, or of the Scapegoat; they have yet to pass into the sign (again speaking symbolically) of Pisces, the Fishes, and recognize their Messiah when He again comes in the sign Aquarius. Otherwise they are repeating their ancient sin of non-response to the evolutionary process. Let us now consider what the initiatory process signifies to the disciple as he seeks to lead the dual life which it demands. You will note that I call it a process in contradistinction to the theosophical definition which regards it as a culminating ceremony of a period of training. The initiatory process is in reality the result of the activity of three energies: The energy generated by the disciple as he seeks to serve humanity. The energy made available to the disciple as he succeeds in building the antahkarana. The energy of the hierarchical Ashram into which he is being "absorbed" or integrated. It is these three energies, each with its own mode of expression and each producing its own specific results, which implement or engineer the initiatory process; these [535] energies are evoked by the disciple himself, and their increasing strength and revelatory capacity depend largely upon the disciple's determination, purpose and will, his persistence and spiritual integrity. It is through his understanding of the word "process" that the disciple discovers the true meaning of the occult statement that "before a man can tread the Path he must become that Path himself." Increasingly the disciple finds what it is to become a creative agent, using the creative faculties of the mind and conforming increasingly (as he creates) to the Plan of the Creator, the Lord of the World. The first three initiations are definitely and in a most mysterious way concerned with the creative work, and with the spiritual expression in a human being of the third aspect of divinity, that of intelligent activity. The fourth, fifth and sixth initiations are as definitely related to the second aspect of love-wisdom as it expresses itself through created forms; the seventh, eighth and ninth initiations are occultly "inspired" by the first divine aspect, that of the Will. Only, therefore, at the ninth initiation is the human being a full and true expression of divinity; he then realizes that in him all the divine aspects meet. Through them he is consciously, creatively and constructively en rapport with the consciousness of the One in Whom we live and move and have our being. All this is the result of a process and the effect of the inherent livingness which is found in all forms of life from the tiny atom up to Those great Lives Who are little more than names to the disciple. This initiation process governs the dual life of the disciple in three ways: It is expressed in the results effected in the three worlds and in the tangible and growing proof he gives of definitely defined areas of attainment. It is demonstrated as effects in his consciousness in the form of an increasing fusion of soul and personality as well as growing power to invoke the inflow of the higher light, through the medium of the antahkarana. [536] It is revealed both through the Spiritual Triad and the soul-infused personality as they unitedly prove the livingness of the divine Love-Nature. As this revelation takes hold of the disciple's consciousness and conditions his expressive form of service, it initiates him into that mysterious area of the divine consciousness which we call the "Heart of God"; this is our planetary correspondence to the "Heart of the Sun." The heart of God, i.e., of our planetary Logos, and the heart of the Sun, i.e., the solar Logos, are mysteriously related, and it is through this sustained relation that it becomes possible for human beings to enter the Hierarchy. Forget not that the Hierarchy is the expression of the energy of love. The relationship also enables them eventually to pass off the cosmic physical plane on to the cosmic astral plane. Each divine aspect has three subsidiary aspects, and in our planet and on the cosmic physical plane the lowest aspect of love (that which we call the Will-to-Good) is revealed. For humanity, struggling upon this cosmic physical plane, we subdivide unconsciously this will-to-good into three aspects; these we are only today beginning to grasp as existent possibilities. The lowest aspect we call goodwill, little realizing the attitude to the universal goal which it sets; the second aspect we vaguely call love and hope to demonstrate that we do demonstrate love through our affiliation with the Hierarchy; the highest we call the will-to-good and leave it undefined because it is in no way possible, even for initiates of the fifth initiation, truly to comprehend what is the nature and purpose of the will-to-good. which conditions divine activity.
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