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The Rays and the Initiations - Part Two - Introductory Remarks
This thought of group initiation must be remembered, for it will color all that I shall seek to convey to your minds and will hasten the day of your own acceptance. No one is admitted (through the processes of initiation) into the Ashram of the Christ (the Hierarchy) until such time as he is beginning to think and live in terms of group relationships and group activities. Some well-meaning aspirants interpret the group idea as the instruction to them that they should make an effort to form groups - their own group or groups. This is not the idea as it is presented in the Aquarian Age, so close today; it was the mode of approach during the Piscean Age, now passed. Today, the entire approach is totally different. No man today is expected to stand at the center of his little world and work to become a focal point for a group. His task now is to discover the group of aspirants with which he should affiliate himself and with whom he must travel upon the Path of Initiation - a very different matter and a far more difficult one. He needs to bear in mind the meaning of the following words from the Archives of the Masters, given in question and answer form. The questions are addressed to the neophyte who is getting his first glimpse of group relations leading to group initiation: "And dost thou see the Door, O Chela in the light? I see the door and hear a calling voice. What should I do, O Master of my life? Go through that Door and waste not time in backward glances at the road just trodden. Go forward into light. The door is far too narrow, O Master of my life. I fear I cannot pass. [345] Go closer to the Door and take the hand in thine of another pilgrim on the way of life. Go closer to the Door; seek not to enter it alone. I cannot see the door, now that I grasp the hand of the brother on the right and the brother on the left. I seem surrounded by the pilgrims on the way. Alike they seem, their note is one; they seem like unto me, and press around on every side. I cannot see the door. Move forward on the Path, O pilgrim in the light, and stand together, hand in hand, before the Door of Light. What seest thou? The door again appears, and wide it seems, not narrow as before. What was that I saw before? It was not like the door which now confronts this band of brothers as we stand together on the Path. The door you saw before was a figment of your mind; a thought-form of your separative creation, something that cuts you off from truth - too narrow for your passing yet full of wrong allure. Only the man who holds his brother's hand can see the Door in truth; only the man, surrounded by the many who are one, can enter by that Door which shuts itself upon the man who seeks to enter it alone." In Lemurian days, initiates entered alone and one by one, and then only a few managed to attain the goal and one at a time were admitted to the Mysteries. In Atlantean times, when the Door of Initiation stood wide open, the aspirants to the Mysteries were admitted in groups of seven, but had not contacted their fellow group members in physical consciousness; the emphasis was still (during the training period) upon individual attainment and achievement. Today, so rapidly is man making spiritual progress, the Hierarchy is admitting groups all the time, particularly in connection with those rays which are at present in incarnation. This means that the three major rays (which are always [346] predominantly active though they may have varying cycles of increased or decreased activity) have large groups undergoing their preparatory training for some one initiation. This group admission will develop rapidly as the world settles back into a cycle of peaceful growth and unfoldment after the drastic experience of the world war (1914-1945); it is for this that information such as I am here attempting to give must be made available. One other point I would seek to make clear. As you know, an Ashram has in it disciples and initiates at all points of evolutionary development and of all grades and degrees; these all work together in perfect unison and yet - within their differentiated ranks, for each degree stands alone yet united with all the others - with their own established rapport, their coded telepathic interplay, and a shared occult secrecy and silence which guard the secrets and knowledges of one grade from another and from the unready. Similarly, when an aspirant, seeking upon the physical plane to find those who will share with him the mystery of his next immediate step or demonstrated expansion, discovers his own group, he will find that it has in it those who have not reached his particular point of wisdom and those also who have already left him far behind. He will be drawn into a vortex of force and a field of service simultaneously. Ponder on this statement. He will learn, therefore, the lessons required by one who is to work in an Ashram and will know how to handle himself with those who may not yet share with him the secrets which he already knows, and with those who have penetrated deeper into the Mysteries than he has. [347]
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