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The Rays and the Initiations - Part One - Fourteen Rules For Group Initiation
1. Know What is the difference between the knowing of the aspirant and the knowledge of the initiated disciple? It is the difference which exists between two differing fields and areas of perception. The aspirant is told first of all to "know thyself"; he is then told to know the relation of form and soul, and the area covered by his knowledge is that of the three worlds, plus the level upon the mental plane on which his soul is focused. The initiated disciple knows the relation of the periphery to the center, of the One to the many, and of unity to diversity. The applicant is concerned with triplicity: himself as the knower, his field of knowledge, and that which is the agent of knowing, the mind. The initiated disciple is beyond registering triplicity and is occupied with the duality of manifestation, with life-energy as it affects or is related to matter-force, with spirit and substance. The knowledge of the initiate has naught to do with consciousness as the mind recognizes that factor in the evolutionary process; his knowledge is related to the faculty of the intuition and to that divine perception which sees all things as within itself. Perhaps the simplest way to express the knowledge of the initiate is to say that it is direct awareness of God, thus putting it into mystical terms; the knowledge of the aspirant is related to that aspect of divinity which we call the soul in form. Putting this in still another way, I might point out that the aspirant is concerned with the knowledge of soul and matter, whilst the initiate is concerned with soul and spirit. If I say to you, my brothers, that the knowledge of the initiate is concerned with that which is produced by Sound and not by the AUM or the OM, I shall have linked up these comments with much else given previously in the analysis of these fourteen rules. The "listening" of the aspirant has now been transformed into the effectual recognition of that which the Sound has created. I refer not here to the creation of the phenomenal world, or to the world of meaning which is essentially the Plan or the pattern underlying that phenomenal world, but to the intention or [289] the Purpose which motivated the creative Sound; I am dealing with the impulsive energy which gives significance to activity and to the life-force which the Sound centralizes at Shamballa. It is not the fault of humanity that it is only now possible for the significance of the divine purpose to emerge more clearly in the consciousness of the initiated disciple. It is a question of timing and of movement in space; it concerns the relation of the Hierarchy, working with the Plan, to Shamballa, the recipient (by means of the Sound) of the creative energy which it is the divine intention to expend in producing a perfect expression of the divine Idea. It is to the knowledge of this relationship and of its effects that the first word of Rule XIV refers. It was the dawning of this significance upon the consciousness of the Christ - a consciousness enlightened, purified and divinely focused - that forced Him to cry out: "Father, not my will but Thine be done." He received a vision of the emerging divine intention for humanity and (through humanity) for the planet as a whole. In the hierarchical stage of development which Christ had attained and which made Him the Head of the Hierarchy - and the Master of all the Masters, His consciousness was entirely at one with the Plan; its application to life in the three worlds, and its goal of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth and the emergence of the fifth kingdom in nature, were now for Him simply the fulfiling of the law, and to that fulfilment His entire life was and had been geared. The Plan, its goal, its techniques and methods, its laws and their application, its phenomenal effects, the hindrances to be met, the energy (that of love) to be employed, and the close and growing relation and interplay between the Hierarchy and Humanity, between the heart center of the planetary Logos and the creative center, were known to Him and fully understood. At the highest point of this consummated knowledge, and at the moment of His complete surrender to the necessary sacrifice of His life to the fulfiling of the Plan, suddenly a great expansion of consciousness took place. [290] The significance, the intention, the purpose of it all, and the extent of the divine Idea as it existed in the mind of the "Father," dawned on His soul (not on His mind, but on His soul). He saw still further into the significance of divinity than had ever seemed possible; the world of meaning and the world of phenomena faded out and - esoterically speaking - He lost His All. These are words necessarily meaningless to you. For the time being, neither the energy of the creative mind nor the energy of love was left to Him. A new type of energy became available - the energy of life itself, imbued with purpose and actuated by intention. For the first time, the relation of the Will, which had hitherto expressed itself in His life through love and the creative work of inaugurating the new dispensation and the launching for all time of the Kingdom of God, became clear to Him. At that point He passed through the Gethsemane of renunciation.
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