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Discipleship in the New Age II - Teachings on Initiation - Part IV
Man has learnt to use the physical eye and to find his way, by its means, around and through his environment. The stage in human evolution wherein he learnt first to "see" lies far behind, but when man saw and could focus and direct his course by sight, it marked a stupendous unfoldment and his first real entrance upon the Path of Light. Ponder on this. It has also interior repercussions and was indeed the result of an invocative interplay between inner centers of power and the groping creature in the phenomenal world. Man is now learning to use the eye of the soul, and as he does so he brings its correspondence in the head also into functioning activity; this produces fusion and identification, and brings the pineal gland into action. The major result, however, is to enable the disciple to become aware, whilst in the physical body, of a new range of contacts and perceptions. This marks a crisis in his unfoldment of as drastic and important a nature as the attaining of physical sight and the use of the physical eye was in the unfoldment of the curious creature which antedated the most primitive animal man. Things unknown can now be sensed, searched for and finally seen; a new world of being stands apparent, which has always been present though never before known; the life, nature, quality and the phenomena of the kingdom of souls, or of the Hierarchy, become as patent to his vision and as real as is the world of the five physical senses. Then later, upon the Path of Initiation, the initiate develops his tiny correspondence to the planetary "All-seeing Eye." He unfolds the powers of the Monad. These are related to divine purpose and to the world in which Sanat Kumara moves and which we call Shamballa. I have impressed upon you elsewhere that the state of being of the Monad has naught to do with what we call consciousness; in the same way, there is naught in the world of Shamballa which is of the same nature as the phenomenal world of man in the [293] three worlds, or even of the soul world. It is a world of pure energy, of light and of directed force; it can be seen as streams and centers of force, all forming a pattern of consummate beauty, all potently invocative of the world of the soul and of the world of phenomena; it therefore constitutes in a very real sense the world of causes and of initiation. As man the human being, man the disciple, and man the initiate gradually move onward on the stream of life, revelation comes step by step, moving from one great point of focus to another until naught more remains to be revealed. In all these spiritual points of crisis or of opportunity for vision, for fresh spiritual insight and for revelation (for that is what they are in reality), the thought of struggle is the first one to warrant attention. I used, in this connection, the words "stage of penetration"; the thought which this conveys to the initiate understanding signifies an extension of the struggle which the neophyte makes in order to achieve inner control, and then to use the mind as a searchlight so as to penetrate into new fields of awareness and of recognition. Forget not that recognition involves right interpretation and right relation to that which is seen and contacted. Into all revelation enters the concept of "whole vision" or a synthesis of perception, and then comes recognition of that which is visioned and perceived. It is the mind (the common sense, as it used to be called) which utilizes the physical senses of perception, and through their united contribution gets a "whole vision" and a synthesis of perception of the phenomenal world, according to man's point of development, his mental capacity to recognize, rightly interpret and rightly relate that which has been conveyed to him by the activity of the five senses. This is what is meant when we use the phrase "the mind's eye," and this ability is the common possession of humanity in varying degrees of availability. Later, man uses the "eye of the soul," as we have noted above; it reveals to him a world of subtler phenomena, the kingdom of God or the world of souls. Then the light of the intuition pours in, bringing the power to recognize and rightly interpret and relate. As the disciple and the initiate progress from stage to [294] stage of revelation, it becomes increasingly difficult to make clear not only what is revealed, but also the processes of revelation, and the methods used to bring the stage of revelation about. The vast mass of mankind throughout the world have no clear idea as to the function of the mind as an organ of vision illumined by the soul; still fewer, only the disciples and initiates, are able to glimpse the purpose of the spiritual eye and its functioning in the light of the intuition. When we come, therefore, to the great organ of universal revelation, the monadic principle, functioning through the medium of an extra-planetary light, we enter realms which are indefinable and for which no terminology has been created, and which only initiates above the third degree are able to consider. With the sequential stages of polarization and precipitation I will not today deal; I am desirous that you grasp as far as may be, the idea of penetration, of the struggle involved and the instrument available in the struggle to see, to perceive and to register impression. What I have given you at this time will provide much ground for thought. Further instruction along this line would be unprofitable until such time as the inner mechanism of progressive revelation is more clearly defined in your consciousness and is at least theoretically understood and hypothetically accepted. If you will think with clarity and with spiritual brooding upon this subject during the coming year, it may be possible for me greatly to enlarge upon the matter in my next instruction.
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