The Way of Man by Henry T. Laurency
9. THE SECOND SELF (Part 2)
9. THE SECOND SELF (Part 2)
1The unique superiority of esoterics appears in the fact that there are in esoterics no insoluble problems, no absurdities, no “mysticism”. Then it is quite another matter that you must experience the reality of higher worlds in order to fully understand it.
2Man is a primordial atom, a monad (an evolutionary monad) in a triad in a causal envelope. It is another fact that he when incarnating puts on four other envelopes (mental, emotional, etheric aggregate envelopes and the organism). Using this one exact definition, the Buddhists would be able to explain the self. The problem of the self cannot be solved without esoterics, however.
3When you have once got the facts, there are no problems. And mankind will receive for nothing all the facts which it cannot ascertain by itself when it refrains from abusing knowledge and power. As yet, this seems to be impossible before the individual has become a causal self. When esoterics has become the property of all, perhaps mankind will have learnt that necessary lesson. Until then the essential knowledge will be reserved for the initiated disciples.
4The esoteric world view and life view can never, of course, be anything else for mankind but a working hypothesis. The further mankind develops, however, the more evident will it be that this hypothesis is incomparably superior. The causal self is able to ascertain its accordance with facts in the five worlds of man.
1The life view, with its guidance for self-realization, is more important to our consciousness development than the world view. Too many people devote too much time to the esoteric world view for which they have no other use than as the theoretical knowledge basis of the life view with its art of living. Pythagorean hylozoics is more than sufficient as a world view for mankind for the next thousand years. The material contained in KR 1.4–41 is quite enough for most people. It affords them a vision of existence and gives them what they need to liberate themselves from the ruling, disorienting idiologies.
2We have received the esoteric world view from the planetary hierarchy as an unshakable basis of knowledge to start from and so be liberated from the speculation of life ignorance. It is totally abortive to use the esoteric mental system for further imaginative speculation. We have received it to be able to live right, not to speculate. All speculations are erroneous, just as theology and philosophy have been so in all times. Human reason cannot solve any problems of reality. That is a fact which the majority of occultists have not yet seen. No esoterician (initiate with a latent knowledge) speculates. He waits until he receives more knowledge from his teacher. We should all take the same attitude: wait to accept more information about the superphysical until we get the facts from the planetary hierarchy, the individuals of the fifth natural kingdom, the only ones who are able to obtain knowledge of superphysical reality. Anyone who speculates with esoterics has not been an initiate. The individual’s stage of development largely appears in his direct understanding at the contact with his old knowledge in a new life. We cannot know what is latent until we have achieved a contact with our old knowledge. Due to our stage of development this understanding may manifest itself relatively early or late in life.
1Esoterics is for seekers of a tenable world view and life view who have not found and who seek till they have found the knowledge they have possessed, they lost at incarnation, but have latently in their subconscious.
2Esoterics is only for those to whom reincarnation is the only possible explanation. If that insight is lacking in them (is not directly self-evident to them), then esoterics is not for them.
3Esoterics is for the few, for the very few who must have a world view and life view in accordance with reality in order to know how to think right. Esoterics is first and foremost for those who feel the need of an unshakable theoretical basis to know how to arrange their lives, live and serve best.
4Esoterics is for those who have been able to assimilate the pertaining ideas and facts, an elaborated, exact world view and life view. They are few, however, who feel a real need for such a view until they have reached the mental stage.
5Esoterics is for those who have once been initiates and for seekers who have seen that the ruling idiologies (theological, philosophical, scientific, and occult) are untenable, seen that “it cannot be like that”, understand the significance of the proofs of esoterics. Most people lack the mental prerequisites of understanding esoterics, of understanding (rightly judging) that the proofs the esoterician possesses are correct.
6Esoterics is nothing you discuss with those who are unfamiliar with it. It requires a devoted, penetrating study. It cannot be mastered through some superficial procedure. It will be more than a working hypothesis only when you are able to explain by yourself previously inexplicable facts and have seen that these explanations are inevitable.
7Esoterics must not become a matter of belief such as all idiologies are, dogmatic systems that are blindly accepted. Those who study esoterics must understand it and be able to prove it. If it becomes a matter of belief, it will be bungled and idiotized. Esoterics must make up the basis of explanation for daily experiences. Only so will it come alive and enable contact with superconscious reality (something different from the freaks, brainwaves, and fantasies of speculants). What does not hold good in the face of exhaustive analysis and reality checks is a mistake. Having that attitude the individual stands a good chance of receiving inspirations from his Augoeides, who always appeals to the common sense of his protege. Other kinds of “inspiration” come from those in the emotional world.
8Esoterics is only for those at the higher emotional and mental stages. Others misinterpret it if they deal with it at all. The difficulty to be overcome by all who publish esoteric literature is to find precisely those who are in need of or even seeking for it. It is downright wrong to force it on those who lack understanding. You do no “business” in esoteric literature. In that respect it is a matter of sacrificing your money or, at the utmost, selling the books at cost price. Esoteric authors do not live by their books, no more than esotericians charge people for their services.
9What idiology an individual needs often depends on his level. It is unessential, however, in the matter of the will to serve mankind burdened with problems that must be solved if everybody is to be secured an existence worthy of a human being and the freedom necessary to his own consciousness development. The esoterician helps in the way he is able to (in politics, in society, science, technology, education, etc.) without caring for the idiology of the man needing help. Perhaps it helps us to understand this if we are informed that Mustafa Kemal, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Dag Hammarskjold (were unbeknownst to themselves) disciples of the planetary hierarchy.
10In our times increasingly more people incarnate who were once initiates of esoteric knowledge orders. And the book is intended for them. For all the others, esoterics is at the utmost an improbable working hypothesis, and they may very well leave the book unread. It is a mistake to force esoteric knowledge on those who cannot understand. Mockery or rejection has its consequences for both parties
1An esoterician is not the same as an ordinary occultist. He has mastered the hylozoic mental system and has not been content with sporadic occult facts without a system.
2Esoterics is not for those who are content with their “truths”, their conceptions of reality, illusions and fictions, not for those who have got stuck in some other world view or life view. To 85 per cent of mankind esoterics is either imaginative speculation or superstition pure and simple. Therefore, it is not for the public.
3Even the vast majority of intellectuals, headed by the litterateurs, are unable to understand esoterics at their stage of development. Also those are uninfluenceable who have already procured a view corresponding to their ability to conceive of reality, or those who cling to some belief system. They have got what they need for this incarnation, do not need the knowledge. Presumably they also lack the ability to work at the mental system so as to prove to themselves how it agrees with reality.
4Theologians, philosophers, scientists, and their parrots are rather hostile. The majority are physicalists who are unable to understand anything superphysical. To the physicalist, esoterics is madness, since it is beyond his ability to comprehend, is so different from everything he has learnt in theology, philosophy, and science, the only branches of learning he knows of. If esoterics had been impressed on him in childhood, he would have accepted it as you accept anything else. But that is not the same as understanding it.
5Not even the mystics are inclined to take an interest in esoterics. They live in their own imaginings, desire no mental clarity.
6There remain only those seekers who have not got stuck in any one of the countless idiologies. Generally, they have become agnostics, atheists, or resigned. To the extent that they have once been initiates and thus still are such ones in their subconsciousness, they possess a latent understanding of esoterics.
7It is probably asking too much that philosophers and scientists take an interest in the esoteric knowledge. The day will come, however, and it is perhaps not so far off, when that knowledge will be in demand. It shall then be offered.
8Experience has shown that those who do not have the esoteric knowledge latently but who are sufficiently developed to see that hylozoics agrees with reality rarely succeed in doing more, during one incarnation, than acquiring this insight. The practical application will usually have to wait to the next life. The immense encumbrance from the general ways of thinking and the tendencies of the subconscious have an all too inhibitory effect. Nor is it easy work to acquire the necessary qualities and abilities.
1Such as people abuse the knowledge to their own exorbitant gain and to the detriment of others, they have no right to it. Being without it, however, they would cause evolution to stand still. It comes to cautiously taking a middle course.
2This middle course has consisted in publicizing such parts as may form the basis of a tenable world view and life view while not being so easily abused. The fact that the esoteric knowledge has been publicized to such a great extent has nevertheless occasioned great difficulties.
3The contact with the ideas of esoterics entails a contact with their energies, and our organisms are not adapted to such ones. Moreover, we do not know how to use them purposefully. This easily gives rise to many difficulties of various kinds.
4One difficulty in publicizing the esoteric knowledge is that it falls into the hands of those for whom it is not intended, those who are not in a position to understand, those who think they understand but misunderstand.
5The individual in the human kingdom cannot by himself know his own level, cannot himself decide how much of this knowledge he can conceive in the right way. Most people believe too much of themselves, and that is why we have got such a multitude of offshoots, various occult sects in which the knowledge has been more or less distorted.
6Ever since Blavatsky appeared in 1875 with her esoteric teaching more and more occultists, that is, fantasts who believe they have received all manner of inspiration, have delivered a wealth of so-called facts which are esoterically absurd. Deterring examples are also the many clairvoyants who believe what they see, interpreting what they see according to their misconceptions of reality. Also disciples may misinterpret knowledge given to them, which nevertheless is another problem. Their misconceptions are at any event not that wide of the mark.
7Therefore, it seems necessary to point out a few facts. Nobody (mark this: nobody) in the fourth natural kingdom can solve superphysical problems. We have received all knowledge from the planetary hierarchy, individuals of the fifth and sixth natural kingdoms. Only individuals of the fifth kingdom are able by themselves to acquire knowledge of reality, a knowledge they can communicate to their disciples. Only disciples of the planetary hierarchy are in any way able to give reliable information about the superphysical.
8As to how life-ignorant people relate to esoterics you should expect that theologians as well as philosophers and scientists are not just unable to understand but generally also have a downright hostile attitude. Anyone who assumes that intelligence is sufficient for understanding should recall Platon’s saying, “knowledge is remembrance”. Even as an exoteric phenomenon esoterics will remain esoteric for those who have not once been initiates. If it is accepted by others, which will probably be the case to an increasing extent, then it will turn into a new form of superstition.
9It is also necessary never to trust testimonies other people give to themselves. They are null and void. Strangely, only after many painful misjudgements you will learn that people cannot tell belief from knowledge, cannot tell when they know and when they just believe they know, when they believe they understand and when they really understand. It is actually surprising to see how few are able to understand right, and never those who testify to their understanding.
10You have any reason never to accept other people’s opinions, ever ready-made without their own examination. We allow ourselves to be influenced by others to an incredible extent.
11To the esoterician, everything exoteric said about the occult is a priori mere legend. As a rule there is a kernel of truth in legend, but what has been said about individuals, and particularly what has been said they said, is 99 per cent fiction pure and simple. Else the occult would not be occult. How can anybody know anything about esoteric orders and their teachings than the fact of their existence, since no initiate ever disclosed anything? Only after 1875 was it permitted to publicize facts about them, and at once new legends were made out of those esoteric facts. What is nowadays written by all “inspired” people is fiction pure and simple, “experiments with truth”! D.K. has said the last that can be said. The present age lives in chaos.
1It was left to causal selves Blavatsky, Besant, and Leadbeater to find out facts about existence by themselves. This involved certain difficulties, which appears from their mistakes in various respects. It proved necessary to correct some of their misconceptions, and so the secretary of the planetary hierarchy, 45-self D.K., was charged with the publicizing of real facts, which he dictated to Alice A. Bailey. (Also The Secret Doctrine was largely the work of D.K.)
2The works of D.K. can be rightly understood only by former initiates. It would be very dangerous if his books were generally read by occultists with their infantile belief in their own power of conception and their incurable tendency to speculate on esoteric ideas and facts. We would soon be blessed with an endless number of occult sects fighting over the “one and only truth”. Esoterics is for esotericians, however, and not for various occultists. It would have been best if the works of D.K. had been reserved for a certain school and not been allowed for publication. Because D.K.’s books are intended for disciples of the planetary hierarchy who are in a position to have their misconceptions corrected. Of course such warnings are wasted, as usual. Everyone thinks he is an exception. One thing is certain: anyone who is certain is in error. The true exceptions are very uncertain. That is the big difference. Distrust all cocksure people! Man is a first self and no authority on esoterics. Such authority requires at least a causal self. If you say so, those certain people believe they are causal selves. Prove it then by experiment: the magical control of physical matter by mental consciousness. That will expose their self-deception.
3The more informed you are of all kinds of occult follies, the more you wonder whether the planetary hierarchy was not right in its opinion that not even advanced occultists are mature for esoterics. There is no end to all imaginative excesses. We would have been spared those countless occultists if the planetary hierarchy had waited until the new Aquarian vibrations had managed to stabilize (about the year 2200).
1The greatest value of esoterics lies in the fact that it liberates us from all the idiologies of ignorance and from all the explanations of phenomena and processes of life presented by ignorance and fed to people from all directions. We learn to see our enormous ignorance in all respects (except, of course, what we can definitively master sovereignly in practical respects).
2According as mankind receives from the planetary hierarchy the knowledge of reality, life and the laws of life, of man’s different envelopes and their kinds of consciousness, etc., the individual wishing to reach the fifth natural kingdom has got an opportunity to acquire ever higher kinds of consciousness in relatively few incarnations. It depends on himself what use he will make of the knowledge. Without this knowledge he would be reduced to the normal evolution with its slow jogtrot through millions of years and thousands of incarnations.
3Anyone who has become a mental self has certainly liberated himself from dependence on his emotionality but often he is instead defenceless against the mental fictions (history is rich in examples of this: typical consequences in both politics and culture). Here the esoteric knowledge can wield a saving influence with its causal ideas until the individual has become a causal self and may share the wisdom of higher kingdoms. The knowledge also enables him to strive to live “as if” he were already a causal self and thereby to efficiently activate the incipient subjective causal consciousness. Anyone who grasps this received knowledge as a unique offer of consciousness development has rightly understood why it has been given mankind. It is good to him who uses the opportunity. It may take time before the next opportunity is offered.
4Thinking people, having some knowledge of the world history of the last few millennia, the boundless suffering and need of mankind, and the general helplessness, will reach the same conclusion as Schopenhauer, that “life is suffering”, with pessimism as the result. A rational and tenable (since true) explanation of this misery is given only by esoterics, and that is its not least important purpose.
5“If men could accept the fact that the individual develops through a series of involvations (incarnations) and that this is true of all individuals (monads) in all kingdoms, that all kingdoms exist to help each other in various ways according to the possibilities of each, that it is as impossible to avoid the ascent through ever higher kingdoms as to avoid death, that if they could be made to catch a glimpse of the causal and essential worlds with their joy, knowledge, and power, that if they would sacrifice their ignorance, their blinding self-sufficiency, then that burden which mankind has put on itself and all living beings would quickly be lifted.”
6“The worst of it is not that you will die. The worst is that you will return ever and again to reap what you have sown.” If people have once seen this fact, that they must be reborn over and over again until they have learnt the lessons of life, they will do what they can to improve conditions in physical life so that when returning they will be spared ending up in such political, economic, social, and cultural barbarism as now holds sway; so that when returning they may expect to get all they need to keep body and soul together and a rational, purposeful upbringing and education, get true knowledge of reality in order to do more for evolution. That will be something else than cramming young people with unnecessary, useless learning unfit for life. Most of what is now taught us will never be of any use to us, will not increase our understanding of life, will make us erudite fossils engaged in the accumulation of meaningless facts, all manner of fictions and popular mistaken views of reality from all past ages.
7There is immensely much that needs to be pointed out in connection with the new view of life afforded us by esoterics. But that is something which has to grow forth from the rethinking of future centuries in all spheres of life and based on experience.
1We have for close on one hundred years (since 1875) received more esoteric knowledge than even the planetary hierarchy considered possible, and this concerning both world view and life view. Already there is more esoteric knowledge than mankind needs to rationally orient itself in existence, to have a comprehensible system, quite sufficient to an esoteric world view necessary to self-realization.
2The question is how fit for life this knowledge has made us, how much art of living, wisdom of life, ability to apply the knowledge we have acquired.
3The purpose is not that we shall try to procure knowledge of things of which we have absolutely no use in the worlds of man. We have received esoteric knowledge to be able to lead rational lives in the physical world, not to lose ourselves in speculations which are always (repeat: always) abortive. We have received the knowledge to develop our consciousness purposefully, not to burden ourselves with useless learning. There is endless learning we do not need to live right. Consciousness development is the meaning of life for us to be able to help in the work at the processes of manifestation.
4It is part of discipleship that the individual selects what he needs for his activity and does not concern himself with theoretical learning, which only becomes a burden and is basically incomprehensible. There are esoteric facts for all developmental stages, emotional, mental, causal, essential, publicized to spare those who are at these stages time-consuming research-work and set the teachers free to do other tasks. All nowadays publicized knowledge thus is not for everybody. Surveying all this (corresponding to the different degrees of esoteric knowledge orders, adapted to the various stages of conception and practical realization) everybody must select what he needs from what he does not need.
5Many people are content that esoterics has liberated them from the current theological and philosophical views and afforded them an explanation of the phenomena of life. Then they put the knowledge on the shelf and go on living their lives as usual, unconcerned about these problems. Then they have never seen what is meant by responsibility for others. Along with knowledge goes responsibility for the right use of knowledge, and this is particularly true of the esoteric knowledge. We have not received it to sleep better or to develop rapidly in an egoistic sense. According to the Law, much is demanded of anyone who has received much. Anyone who does not apply the knowledge as best he can makes a mistake. “Evil” arises in two ways: when you do the wrong thing and also when you know the right thing and can do it but nevertheless desist. As Pythagoras said once: “He who walks the path exists not for himself, but for others.” If we will not use the knowledge rightly, then we have no right to it. If we will not develop our consciousness and understanding of reality and help others to the same, then we shall lose those opportunities in lives to come. There are many former initiates who do not renew their contact with the knowledge and many seekers who do not find it, even are unable to understand it.
6Instead of being grateful for the knowledge they have received for nothing, many people become proud and important because they “know so much that is completely unknown to other people”. Instead of being humble when seeing how little they are able to realize of all they have been given to know, how long way they have to go before they are able to ascertain that it is correct (which is possible only at the causal stage), they think they are superior to other people. They do not see that esoteric knowledge entails a great responsibility, which they otherwise have to experience in subsequent incarnations.
7We have received esoterics, the knowledge of reality, to be able to help people to live rational lives in the physical world, set them free from all the idiologies of ignorance. By living purposefully we automatically acquire all the necessary qualities and ever increasing understanding of reality and thereby ability to solve the problems of physical life. We have received a vision of existence in order to grasp its meaning and goal and to arrange our lives accordingly.
1The radical difference in conception of reality between esotericians and exoterists has caused the esotericians to withdraw to their “ivory tower” and have considered it useless to build a bridge from physicalism over to superphysics. This is regrettable, for a bridge can be built and that work will be increasingly easier as decades pass. It can be done by esotericians having an all-round training in science but not by speculating philosophers.
2Just as the work of philosophy should be limited to summarizing the results of research at different times into a system that surveys knowledge (and not be concerned with the pseudo-problems of the so-called theory of knowledge, an unfeasible task), so there are specially trained esotericians having the task of expanding the hylozoic system of knowledge with the new facts and ideas that are gradually publicized. This is not done to satisfy the insatiable demand for unnecessary and useless facts typical of theoretical fossils, but to serve consciousness development and to make it easier to solve the problems of practical application in life. At all events such formulation of new systems is not a work intended for all manner of presumptuous constructors of imaginative systems but for experts belonging to the fifth department who have been trained for this through a long series of incarnations. Thanks to the perspective consciousness they have acquired they are able to assimilate the essentials of the human acquisition of knowledge in various spheres of life, having an all-round orientation in culture as well.
1Every man who has started reflecting on the meaning of life makes his own religion, philosophy, and as an occultist his own fictive view, differing from those of all the others, always in some respect. The knowledge of reality is one, however, and that knowledge is common to all in the fifth natural kingdom.
2The knowledge exists in the causal world and higher worlds, not in the worlds of man. Those who have not made contact with the causal consciousness or with their Augoeides therefore cannot understand esoterics. To them it will appear as a hypothesis with a great or small probability, anyhow no certainty.
3Without objective consciousness (physical or causal) we cannot ascertain the facts necessary to a right assessment of the content of reality. And where the emotional and mental worlds are concerned, so-called clairvoyance is insufficient. It can only see aggregates but not their component parts.
4Knowledge is not only hylozoics and the knowledge of the laws of life but also an allround orientation in the physical world. Such an orientation must of course be based on facts.
5Knowledge consists of true (not spurious) facts, their insertion into their correct contexts (which is seldom possible), and the final criterion of truth of these contexts in a perfect system (impossible at the stage of ignorance).
6Correct knowledge of objective reality is acquired through correct observation, through reliable information, and through a correct conclusion from the two former. Too often all three grounds are wrong, still more often two are wrong, and seldom all three are right. As to superphysical reality, all three are downright wrong without the esoteric knowledge of immemorial age. Still nobody has seen correctly or guessed correctly.
7It is the same with all axioms as it is with the mathematical ones. You cannot prove them correct. They are evident, obvious when you have discovered them or had them demonstrated to you. All knowledge of reality is evident when it has been brought down from the world of ideas. That is why all speculative philosophy remains fictionalism. Human reason cannot logically figure out how reality is made up, and all philosophical proofs remain illusory. All knowledge of reality is directly self-evident. Anyone who cannot conceive this self-evident knowledge is blinded by fictions. Reality is directly given to us without any psychology. Only what is self-evident is “truth”, can be true.
8Sectarianism with diversified views in theology, philosophy, and science is to the esoterician sufficient proof that knowledge is lacking. For knowledge can be only one, which is also evident from the fact that those in higher kingdoms have a common view of reality and life. Thus for example the two Buddhist sects are proofs that none of them has represented the Buddha’s teaching correctly. For the true knowledge is irresistible in all respects and precludes sectarianism.
9As long as man is a mere physical self and his consciousness is limited to the so-called visible world (at present the three lower physical molecular kinds), a scientific world view and an ethical life view is authoritative (a matter of belief). However, man is able, in his higher envelopes, to develop faculties that enable him to ascertain that the knowledge we have received from individuals of the fifth natural kingdom is the only true one in essential respects. And this fact, ascertained by thousands of individuals, is the objective ground of esoterics.
10Quite apart from this objective ascertainment there are incontrovertible proofs that esoterics is logically tenable. Every “physicalist” who takes the trouble to examine these proofs can be satisfied of their validity.
11Life-ignorant man who is unable to judge the matter may accept or reject the esoteric world view and life view for his own part. But he has no logical right to deny its justification.
1Reality appears different in the different worlds and is such as it must be perceived in each world. Thus it is logically unwarranted to judge and criticize that conception of reality which is the only correct one in a lower material world by the perception from a higher one. This is a mistake, however, made by most occultists. Matter must appear different in the different worlds and must be judged accordingly. Let this be this and nothing else! We end up in a chaos of concepts if we depart from this logical demand. Above all it is logically wrong to judge the first self’s synthetic conception of reality from the second self’s viewpoint.
2The constantly recurring question about what matter, consciousness, etc. “actually is” thus is part of the childish things still inherent in the human reason. Soon enough we shall have to confine ourselves to attempts at conceiving what is possible to conceive by this reason. We shall have to content ourselves with ascertaining the existence of laws within our various domains of life. There is deep wisdom in the Sokratean paradox: I know that I know nothing.
3Tegner’s common sense appears in his ingenious utterance, “reality is given me”. He saw that the philosophers had made out of this directly given fact an insoluble pseudo-problem: the so-called epistemological problem of reality. Tegner’s solution was too simple, however. Nothing must be that simple. The obvious must be made something profound, for that demonstrates superior acuity. The fact is, however annoying to the philosophers, that the simple is the very ingenious. “The simpler a hypothesis, the more correct is it” (Poincare). According to esoterics, the simplest is the most difficult to find, in many cases unobtainable to human reason but directly obvious whenever it is pointed out. This unobtainable was communicated little by little at initiation into the ever higher degrees of the esoteric knowledge orders. Those in the first degree thought they were wise and important, but they became ever more humble by each higher degree when they discovered how primitive the human reason is.
1For mutual understanding it is necessary to start from a common basis. This may be the fictional basis of science, philosophy, or theology, or the esoteric (Pythagorean) basis of knowledge. Otherwise you speak different languages, mean something else, talk at cross-purposes with incessant misunderstandings as results.
2Esoterics is the second self’s view of the worlds of the first self. It is true that esoteric writers try to scale down the knowledge (“popularize” it). But if this is not done consistently, you will have a heterogeneous mixture of concepts belonging to two quite different conceptions of reality. This must entail confusion of ideas, which is also apparent from the writings of many occultists.
3Ideas and facts are the same in all esoteric systems. Each system has its own form, however, which makes its content easier to grasp for a certain category of people on a certain level, in a certain department, and with certain epochal concepts of reality. No system is for everybody.
4It is not as easy as many researchers think to enter into the various conceptions of reality held by widely different peoples over the ages. And you are faced with the same difficulty when trying to enter into different mental systems. It is a great thing and enough if you have learnt to master one system.
1In the esoteric literature you frequently meet with such expressions as “time is an illusion”, “time can be eliminated”, “time does not exist”, and more such absurdities. Such incongruities are the result when you do not keep the three aspects apart. Time belongs to the matter aspect and the motion aspect, but not to the consciousness aspect. It is that simple.
2In man, only the physical brain is capable of perceiving time, noting the flight of time, though it is dependent on mechanical appliances to measure time exactly. In superphysical envelopes, it is possible to ascertain time only for those in higher kingdoms who are able to study the duration of the processes of manifestation.
3It is of course incorrect to say that there exists no time merely because you are unable to measure it. Time exists as long as the cosmos with its processes of manifestation exists.
1Science can explore the matter aspect in the physical (visible) world and has achieved magnificent results in technical respects. The triumphs of technology have had the effect that people have become ever more “objectively extravert” and ever less interested in the subjective consciousness of their emotional and mental envelopes, in superphysical problems, on which everybody has his own view, not just people in the physical world but also those in the emotional world.
2Man (the first self without causal objective consciousness) cannot ascertain facts in the emotional and mental worlds, only in the physical world. This condition Patanjali generalizes to say that the first self’s knowledge is always erroneous. In such statements appears the Oriental conception of reality, which has always counteracted a scientific exploration of even physical matter. The Indians have been impeded by their dogmatic belief that scientific material research is impossible. That research is the triumph of the West. Instead of taking an interest in the matter aspect, the Indians have devoted themselves to the study of the consciousness aspect, which has afforded them incomparable superiority in this domain, a fact which our scientific psychologists have not yet seen.
3The individual’s prospects of research and knowledge depend on the kinds of objective consciousness he has developed. Consciousness development means the acquisition of consciousness in ever higher molecular kinds and material regions (worlds) corresponding to them. Nobody can know anything of what lies beyond the range of his objective research.
4The knowledge of reality (the truth!!) is one and common to all who have reached the fifth natural kingdom. The knowledge of reality consists of knowledge of many worlds: physical, emotional, mental, causal, essential, etc. If you start from the esoteric axiom saying that the matter aspect of existence is made up of 49 ever more composed atomic kinds (forming 49 interpenetrating material worlds of different degrees of density) and if you can ascertain that man is unable to perceive more than the three lowest of these 49, then you see that human reason will never be able to solve the “riddle of the universe”, that no man in the human worlds has ever succeeded, will ever succeed, that all claims to do so are unreliable and that philosophy, trying to solve this problem, can never be more than fictionalism.
5Man tries to explore physical reality, the only reality he is able to explore. His scientific world view is therefore limited to physical reality.
6He is unable to explore emotional reality. Certainly man can acquire objective consciousness of the emotional world, so-called clairvoyance. What the clairvoyant cannot see, however, is the fact that emotional matter is affected by consciousness, takes shape according to the conceptions of ignorance. Instead, he is convinced that whatever he sees is correct, being ignorant of the fact that it is man’s own creation. Objective research in the emotional world is impossible for man. Therefore, the human view of life, being mainly of the emotional category, is divided into a great number of religious, philosophic, occult, etc., idiologies, all of which are subjective constructions with a scanty content of reality.
7Man is unable to acquire objective mental consciousness. The mental world cannot be observed by him, and consequently it does not exist to him.
1The concept of “illusion” comes from India and has its basis in the understanding of the impermanence of existence. In Indian literature and thought there is a recurring thesis: “Only the eternal is real; everything impermanent is unreal.” By the “real” they usually mean nirvana or atma (45), which is considered to be the definitive final goal and the eternally unchanging.
2To the esoterician, however, there is nothing unchanging. Everything in all worlds is subject to the law of change, due partly to the material turnover in matters, forms, worlds; partly to the processes of manifestation with involvation, involution, and evolution. The whole cosmos is one process with both beginning and end; the formation and the final dissolution of the cosmos, everything in a continuous process, eternal change.
3To the esoterician, the eternal is the true knowledge of reality with the consecutive right application of the laws of life; the only factor that enables the monad to finally acquire cosmic omniscience and omnipotence. Having seen this you have reached the end of all manner of incomprehensible mysticism by which the self drowns in the illusory infinitude of emotional consciousness.
4No reality of any kind, no world, is an illusion. Illusion is the result of the attempts at explanation by ignorance with all kinds of vagaries, guesswork, assumptions, suppositions, hypotheses, and, above all, dogmatization of beliefs.
5The old expression, the “world of appearances”, meant, although it was never correctly understood, the world of emotional illusions and mental fictions. It was said that man “lives in appearances” or “lives in darkness”. Acquiring the esoteric knowledge, you enter into another world, the world of reality, and are able to think in accord with reality. Even if you cannot se how the immediate future will be shaped, you know how reality is made up, all kingdoms in the cosmos, the solar system, planets, and worlds of man, the constitution of man (his five envelopes and their different kinds of consciousness), the three aspects of existence, the process of manifestation, the rationality of life, its meaning and goal, and much, much more. With the knowledge of the laws of life you have the unlosable certainty that the powers which lead evolution and which have allowed the individual to reach the human kingdom will also see to it that he will go on to reach higher kingdoms. The individual is immortal and always lives in some kind of envelope and in constantly new envelopes. The whole life is, for anyone who understands, an exciting adventure.
1All the monad’s envelopes dissolve in due time, thus are mortal. Also the second self dissolves when the monad moves to the third triad. The third triad dissolves when the monad enters into the cosmos and thereupon successively identifies with ever higher cosmic atomic worlds, until it reaches the highest cosmic kingdom and world. Immortality thus is a relative concept. Certainly there is an essential difference between the first self’s view and a higher self’s view, since the second self knows that the monad, even if it abandons its envelopes to dissolve, need not lose its self-identity any more. In the absolute sense, only the primordial atom-monad-self is immortal, since all material combinations must sooner or later dissolve.
2The theosophical doctrine saying that the self “can perish” when there “is not the least spark of spiritual life” any more, is erroneous. The monad (primordial atom), once introduced into the cosmos, must sooner or later reach the final goal, however many wrong paths it embarks on during its process of evolution, however many unnecessary eons it takes or however many solar systems for renewed experiences.
1Everything belonging to the matter aspect is objective. Everything belonging to the consciousness aspect is subjective. Objective material reality cannot be rendered subjectively any more than subjective consciousness can be rendered materially. Everything written in scientific (and parroting literary) works about objectifying anything belonging to the consciousness aspect is based on ignorance of the three aspects of existence and on thence emanating inability to distinguish subjective from objective.
2Whatever in the context discussed has been taken as objective is not the very consciousness but the effects of consciousness expressions in matter. That is a fact which modern artists cannot see because they do not understand the three aspects of reality. Artists have apparently been confused by the fact that all feelings, objectively, have colours, but they forget the fact that if there is something rational in it (something higher than desire, some meaning behind it), then feeling also has a form and energy and can never be rendered as art. Like everything else art has its given limitation. If you burst those limits, you will end up in the absurd.
3It is the same case with modern musicians trying to render in music the energy aspect. It is evidence of the confusion of ideas, nowadays habitual in most cases. The essence of music is rhythm, harmony, and melody. Whatever lacks anyone of these three is no music, the ignorant of life may then call it whatever they want. In the esoteric sense, music is the souls’ experiences of unity in the essential world, and no disharmony is to be found there.
1Esoteric judgement is not so easily acquired as most people seem to think. Either you overrate your own insight and underrate that of others or, on the contrary, overrate that of others. Only long experience of erroneous judgements seems to teach us how unreliable are our own judgements and those of others. As a rule we are mistaken, and this is particularly the case when we are certain that we are right. Theoretical learning (esoteric world view and life view) is a necessary basis, but power of judgement is acquired only by experience, experiment, and working up of experience had. This ability demonstrates in the understanding that esoterics agrees with reality, in the ability to make wise decisions also in so-called worldly matters. It should not be confused with wisdom, however, which requires essential intuition. The value of theoretical learning is of course due to the level of development attained. You may meet very learned theorists bereft of judgement, unable to apply their learning in a sensible way. There is such an immense amount of learning, which we have not the least use for and which can have a hampering effect on our practical exercise, can make many of us appear to be lifeless encyclopaedias without a prospect of consciousness development and realization.
2Only causal selves are able to judge how esoterics agrees with reality. Also first selves have a logical right to be convinced, which is due to the fact that they have the knowledge latently as initiates of esoteric knowledge orders in previous incarnations, and also to the fact that the working hypothesis is logically defensible. Uninitiated people, however learned, however great mental geniuses they are, have no logical right to judge a thing they have not truly examined.
3The more you penetrate into esoterics, the more clearly you see how hopeless it is to speculate and how necessary to confine yourself to the facts we receive from the planetary hierarchy. Human reason cannot solve any problems of reality, least of all by speculation; philosophy is sufficient proof of that. Exceptions are those thinkers (Pythagoras, Platon, Demokritos, for instance) who were no philosophers but esotericians and were unduly classified among the philosophers. They knew what they were talking about.
4To ordinary reason, esoterics is full of paradoxes, which fact demonstrates our basic ignorance, a fact which the esoterician alone will understand in its true significance.
1Material forms in the emotional and mental worlds (apart from envelopes of evolutionary beings) are formed by feeling and thinking beings in those worlds and are taken by the esoterically ignorant to be a free, permanent reality of its own. However, that does not justify denying the existence of emotional and mental worlds. Those worlds consist of primary as well as secondary matter. The fact that the forms of secondary matter have a deceptive effect on human beings in those worlds is quite another thing and it should suffice to point that out, clarify that many human and divine shapes in those worlds are creations of the imagination and are always taken as evolutionary beings by the ignorant, although they actually are involutionary beings, elementals.
2Many esotericians say that the esoteric knowledge has opened the “path into reality” to them, meaning the path to the understanding of reality. In actual fact, everything is reality, since there cannot be any superreality. Physical reality is as real as any higher worlds: everything is divine, even though the monads in the lowest natural kingdoms cannot realize this.
3The conception of reality, the conception of the three aspects of reality, is totally different in the different atomic worlds. Logically, it must be asserted that the general and common conception of reality held by the individuals in each particular world must be valid to them as the only correct one. It is quite another matter that reality in lower worlds, the worlds of the first self, for instance, appears different to a second self, in still another way to a third self, and so forth in ever higher kingdoms. When new dimensions are added, everything appears different, matter as well as consciousness and energy appear new in all worlds. This epistemological insight is necessary to avoid confusion of ideas. It clarifies once for all the logical error of the old Oriental view of reality as illusion, clarifies how this has come about. And it demonstrates the absurdity of all epistemological speculations hitherto; a new proof that it is impossible for a first self to solve the problems of existence by speculation. They should soon be able to see that all such undertakings are infantile.
1Mere belief has a hampering effect on consciousness development. That was the reason why the Buddha forbade his disciples to believe. What is accepted, after analysis has demonstrated that it is probable and logically tenable, is only a working hypothesis and no sure basis to build upon. It is a sign of a former initiate that he finds this fact self-evident.
2Belief can be said to be certainty and firm faith. It may in actual fact be however irrational, and countless fools in all ages are the proofs of that. But it may also be based on knowledge of reality and then has an unshakable basis.
3Esoterics must never become a matter of belief; must not even be accepted on the basis of probability. Everybody has to convince himself, at least logically, that it is tenable. Nothing would be simpler than proving it correct by experiment. So doing you would appeal to credulity, however, and that is precisely what must not be done. The basis of esoterics is common sense, and that must be developed first, before the individual is ripe for this knowledge.
4The expression “common sense” are (as usual) much abused. Common sense is man’s highest mental faculty, and most people are unable to even think logically and using principles. To comprehend what is logically correct in a conclusion, whenever the chain of ideas is clarified, is not the same as being able to find the intermediate steps yourself. There are still many hazy notions about elementary logic. And the modern attempts made (by Bertrand Russell and others) show that logic of higher kinds is still unexplored ground. Every attempt at confusing logic (bearing on quality) with mathematics (bearing on quantity) must lead astray.
5Often you find that people are uncertain whether D.K. (a 45-self) is right and that they must ask people at the emotional stage how they view it before they are “able to believe it”. O sancta simplicitas!
1Esoteric knowledge is like any other kind of knowledge. You cannot comprehend anything of science, mathematics, or philosophy until you have studied those subjects. Why then do they at once demand to be able to directly understand esoterics, the most difficult knowledge of all, since it treats of such things (new concepts of unknown realities) as mankind knows nothing about?
2Most people want to form an opinion quickly, so demonstrating how little they suspect the difficulties. Esoterics is something totally different from the apparent reality people live in and entails a radical rethinking in all respects.
3Understanding of the knowledge of reality becomes possible only when the individual has liberated himself from his emotional illusions and mental fictions. Ruling views are insurmountable obstacles.
4Three conditions of knowledge: the desire to acquire it, the ability to comprehend and understand it, the inability to abuse it.
1Most students of Laurency who say they have understood esoterics have not understood it; they only believe they understand it. They believe they understand because what is said sounds rational, sensible, probable and reliable and they accept it therefore. Understanding is quite a different thing, however. You do not master esoterics just like that. Pythagoras allotted two years of study to enable disciples just to put the right questions. The dismissing, unsubstantial critique by outsiders confirms that he was right in his demand.
2It obviously needs to be pointed out that you have not understood until you have mastered the system, and that you have not mastered the system until you can by its aid explain, in a rational and unitary manner, previously inexplicable phenomena. Only he has truly understood who is able to calculate how it must be and afterwards has it confirmed.
3At the bottom of understanding thus lies a comparison of what you previously considered correct and a logical scrutiny of the tenability of the very system. Then you also recognize how much or little the basic system can explain and how many more facts are needed for further explanations.
4Esoterics (hylozoics) remains a working hypothesis to most people, since they either are unable to mentally master the system or do not care to devote the requisite work on it. When you are once able to rationally explain thousands of otherwise inexplicable facts, you will soon see that the system accords with reality.
5You have not really understood if no questions are raised that demand answers. The more you have understood, the more new problems appear. Those who say, “this is all you need to know”, have not understood much. Judging from questions put by readers who have demanded more information it appears that very few readers of Laurency have done “some more thinking”.
6Those who have understood have also tried to realize. The mere capacity to lecture on hylozoics is no proof of understanding.
7There would not be much in higher kinds of consciousness, if man with his mental concepts could understand them. Without the acquisition of higher kinds (divination, being the first contact with the intuition) he cannot even grasp that there can be higher kinds than human reason. Thus it is wrong to assume that philosophers who have cultivated concretizing mental consciousness would be in a special position to understand the esoteric knowledge. The very tendency to concretion counteracts the instinct for higher consciousness (tendency to abstraction). The tendency to concretion makes the philosophers end up in the incomprehensible (the mentally massive, immovable), so that finally many do not comprehend their own philosophy (Kant, Hagerstrom, and others, also Oriental philosophers). The methods of attaining higher kinds of consciousness can be communicated by or derive from teachers of the fifth natural kingdoms. Without their aid that result would be attained by the majority only in the next eon (mental eon).
8Alice A. Bailey was an old disciple who also (thanks to her faculty of clairaudience) was able to publicize 18 books, which were dictated to her by the secretary of the planetary hierarchy, D.K. These books are intended for disciples (mental selves) and not for ordinary esotericians (aspirants to discipleship). In spite of this information, immature people have grappled with the works of D.K. with deplorable results: misunderstanding and distortion. As usual, conceited people believe they comprehend and understand everything, not suspecting that their conception is emotional and not mental, least of all causal. Only causal consciousness is able to rightly interpret most of what D.K. says. His works need to be “scaled down” by disciples (various specialists), a thing D.K. himself has pointed out.
9In things esoteric nobody can understand anything beyond his own level: level of development, level of knowledge, level of conception, level of experience. Many misconceptions would be avoided if students of esoterics made this clear to themselves at the very beginning. You understand causal matter when you are able to ascertain its existence and analyse its make-up. You understand causal consciousness when you have become a causal self. Everything you may know about that world before that is a mental description with physical materials of representation, thus what is called symbols. We shall have to do with such auxiliary concepts until we have acquired subjective as well as objective consciousness in ever higher kinds of matter.
1Platon’s thesis “knowledge is remembrance” or, if you like, “understanding is remembrance”, is taken from esoterics. The meaning of the thesis is that understanding requires intimate knowledge, profound elaboration of experiences had in previous lives and, as a rule, not in one incarnation but in a whole series. Esoteric knowledge must have been acquired in previous lives and been incorporated with the subconscious by methodical work. Since after Atlantis esoteric knowledge was taught in secret knowledge orders only, anyone who sees that esoterics is correct has renewed his familiarity, thus has been an initiate and probably several times.
2In the following, “initiates” means all who in some former incarnation have been initiates of esoteric knowledge orders instituted by the planetary hierarchy. There have also existed orders of other kinds. The orders had seven degrees. Most initiates have remained in the first or second degree. Very few have reached beyond the third degree.
3Those who have passed the two lowest degrees understand that life is immortality, continuous transformation and development, that justice rules the world, that the opposite of this is nothing but pseudo-reality.
4Those who have been initiates of the third degree of an esoteric knowledge order possess the esoteric knowledge latently. It is these few people who have an innate understanding of esoterics. A contact in a new life entails immediate understanding, directly self-evident insight that hylozoics agrees with reality. In their case, this precludes any talk about working hypothesis. Only those old initiates take an interest in esoterics.
5To the uninitiated, esoterics remains a working hypothesis. However, if he takes pains to master the system, so that by its aid he is able to explain a great number of otherwise inexplicable phenomena, the system becomes logically cogent to him and then it is no longer a hypothesis.
6The rest of mankind will not accept esoterics until it is universally taught by the “learned”, by scientists and scholars, doctors and professors, for then it will be “scientific”. This is connected with the fact that esoterics, if accepted, cannot be more than a matter of belief and no true insight to most people.
7Old initiates have generally become skeptics when they have not been able to find their lost knowledge again. They have constantly said to themselves when studying other world views and life views, “it can’t be like this”, and in the end they have doubted man’s chance of reaching a knowledge of reality. The tragical aspect of this is that they often walk through life with a permanent sense of insecurity which re-acts on their capacity to find their bearings in existence. It is even more tragical that some of them, to have the “certainty” (“peace in mind”) they desire, accept such things as involve denying the common sense they have once acquired. Regrettably, they are more numerous than you think.
1The higher world the teacher has reached, the less suitable he is as a teacher. On the whole, higher selves than causal selves (46-selves, etc.) are not suited to be teachers of the human intelligentsia, to make the knowledge comprehensible to the “uninitiated”. Second selves are not fit as teachers of first selves. They are too much removed from the conceptual world of first selves to be able to express themselves understandably to those selves; in any case it causes them unnecessary trouble to re-enter into individual and general illusion and fiction thinking. In contrast, they can teach causal selves who still are able to use mental concepts exactly.
2Causal selves are in all respects the most suitable teachers if they are interested in education at all. The best ones are causal selves having departments two, three or five in their causal envelopes. The least suited are the fanatics having the sixth department in their envelopes.
3The best educators are those who have themselves had difficulty in learning. Those who have found it easy do not see the difficulties there are in grasping. It is the same with esoteric teachers. Those who have easily acquired intuition seldom satisfy the need of exact mental definitions. They all too often make intimations and loose statements that lessen the value of their teaching activity.
4A teacher of esoterics must never assume that what he says is conceived rightly, but he must satisfy himself that this is truly the case. If he does not, he makes a mistake which is all too commonly made. What you do not understand is either ineffective or a source of further misconception, as is demonstrated by the many occult sects. It is the risk of esoteric textbooks that the reader is left to his own interpretation.
1The reading of many books fosters superficiality, which is not strange considering the content of most books. This has entailed that many people have not even learnt how to read. It is no use reading hylozoics or the true knowledge of reality and life in the ordinary way. The knowledge system must become a living whole, so that the reader can solve a great number of otherwise insoluble problems by himself. There are many degrees of acquisition. Most students seem to be content to have a “vision” of existence. Those who want to understand more and more must work upon the knowledge they have received and apply it.
2The knowledge can be worked upon in two ways. You can study the matter and energy aspects of existence, the objective knowledge. You can pay especial attention to the consciousness aspect, which is a prerequisite of acquiring higher consciousness. This involves a subjective study of the consciousness content of your own so-called inner life. This is the shortest route to acquire intuition.
3Mere reading or hearing about esoterics is not up to much. Anyone who does not work these ideas and facts into his thinking, so that he lives in this world of ideas so different from that of the esoterically ignorant (when he does not need to do his exoteric duties), does not learn how to think in accord with reality. You may dwell in the mental world although you are a physical being. So doing you also get perspectives on existence.
4If you work on the system until you are able to explain the previously inexplicable, the hypothesis will be increasingly more probable the more you are able to explain. If you make this clear to yourself, you will be able to judge whether it is any use speaking to exoterists about these things. They should at least be interested in matters of life view and be seekers. Otherwise everything will “fall on stony ground”.
5Repetition is the method of understanding and learning. Many people are content with casually reading through an esoteric standard work presenting a totally new view on reality. What should not be read a hundred times can be left unread. You will quite simply never be finished with the standard works.
6The writer makes it easier for his readers to study by often returning to the same thing with a new formulation, putting it in a new light. The writer then does what the reader should have done, namely meditate on what he is reading and noting every word. Reading is an art that few have learnt. It is also counteracted by the reading of many books, books that should never have been printed. The power of judgement is developed by quality, not by quantity. Most “readers” have read their minds out and become mere passive receivers.
1The most important faculty is the “sense of proportions”, a faculty that is still very rare. Without it, also esoteric knowledge is little more than superstition and all directions are misunderstood. There is a great risk that students, before they have realized the knowledge, become caricatures and ridiculous phenomena that deter people from such a “teaching”. Judgement acquired through experience in life is required to be able to relativize and not absolutify everything as usual. Common sense is an important quality.
2Esoterics does not cease to be esoteric because it is publicized. It still remains esoteric to those who have not been initiates. It can be comprehended, as philosophers comprehend philosophy, but not understood. Understanding is remembrance of the working up once done and preserved in the subconscious.
3You have gained your latent knowledge by your own experience in past incarnations. What you immediately understand, you know with immediate certainty. Whenever the initiate contacts the corresponding knowledge in a new life, the experience he has had is roused to a new life and he does not need to have the same experience again. The esoterician knows what he has latently. That is a thing which cannot be grasped by anyone who has never been an initiate, thus does not have the knowledge latently.
4In the higher degrees of the esoteric knowledge orders, the initiate was made to experience reality. The teaching was done in such a manner that the disciple was shown in a film, as it were, the processes that made him immediately see the realities he had previously mastered theoretically.
5How much esoterics a seeker can assimilate depends on the level of development he has reached. As a rule it is much less than most of them think, not least because of the great difference between comprehension and understanding. Understanding requires previous experience and working up of experience had. It is a general trait of first selves that they believe they understand what they are only able to comprehend. And this is the reason why there are different views among students of esoterics. The greatest obstacle to understanding is the ineradicable tendency to speculation, constructions and fictions that block the way to the “searching instinct”. The basis of this tendency is the need of something certain and firm. But consciousness development is a continuous, never-ending process, and all assumptions are only temporary, the highest possible on the level attained.
6It is a common trait in intellectuals who find it easy to assimilate all sorts of learning that they at once set about speculating with esoteric facts, which is a big mistake. They should be alive to the fact that esoterics brings them into quite another way of looking at things than the usual, that the important thing is to think in quite a new manner and that, until they have mastered the entire system, their thinking only disorients them and makes it difficult, not to say impossible, for them to perceive esoteric things exactly. According to old experience, it takes at least two years of intensive study of esoteric ideas and facts before you have gained the power of right understanding, the first condition of independent thought, in which you cannot be too cautious not to draw binding conclusions. Highly intelligent occultists and clairvoyants are proofs of how easily you may go astray. They have not even suspected what difficulties await all before they have become causal selves. This should not deter anyone from persistent analysis, but it could be a warning to them not to trust their own judgement as reliable. Only disciples of the planetary hierarchy should appear as esoteric teachers and so because they can have their views checked by their teachers.
1Symbolism is for causal selves and not for lower selves. Symbolism made the knowledge inaccessible to the uninitiated and also served to develop intuition (46-consciousness). Lower selves have to develop mental consciousness, and one of the tasks of Pythagoras was to scale down the knowledge to a mental level so that it could be formulated into a mental system. Occultists, who understand everything better and must make everything different, have started constructing new symbols, not understanding that their symbols do not afford a greater knowledge but are instead a misleading play with ideas. We must hope that hylozoics will not be the object of such brashness but will remain what it is and nothing more; a mental system, a system of concepts for reason.
2The inability to draw conclusions from what has been communicated is an evidence of mental inactivity. Everything must be specially pointed out like to a class in junior school. They have been taught that thought can reach everybody, but they never draw the conclusion that the ability to be silent also refers to thought. It is an endless personal gossip about everybody, although they have been taught that this is a violation of the law of freedom, that anyone who slanders will be slandered. What are those to do with esoterics who never apply what they have been given to know? A greater knowledge implies a greater responsibility. Esoterics is for those who will for self-realization. For those who do not will for it, it may turn into a worse sowing adding to their reaping.
3Anyone who has acquired esoteric knowledge and insight (not mere theoretical learning) does not care about how soon he will be a second self but how he will be able to help others with their consciousness development. Many people do not see that their eager attempts at reaching higher may be signs of “spiritual selfishness”. Pythagoras inculcated in his disciples: “He who wanders the path exists not for himself but for others.” Otherwise he has entered upon the wrong path.
4To study an esoterician’s work in depth so that you are able to comprehend, understand, and realize does not imply that you have been able to assimilate all the experience of life that are at the bottom of the work. That is a thing which is often overlooked by superficial readers. There are sometimes those who have more of latent knowledge than the writer and, once they have remembered this latent knowledge anew, understand even more than the writer. But they do not show their gratitude for their “awakening” by belittling the awaker. Matter-of-fact criticism in theoretical problems is desirable and necessary for the sake of correct orientation in reality. But personal criticism in respect of life violates the law of freedom.
5Esoterics lays the basis of a new kind of man, and that is the purpose of esoteric psychology and education.
6One of the most typical features of the knowledge of our time is the enormous exaggeration of the importance of theoretical learning, quite apart from the fact that most of this learning is useless in practice and often becomes a hindrance. Theory should be there to enable us to use experience rationally. Instead it has been made into a purpose in itself, which makes the theorists unfit for life.
7It is also typical that all sorts of study courses are arranged, their importance being enormously over-emphasized, passing into the ridiculous. How many are thereby taught to see their own ignorance and the insufficiency of learning?
8People believe they understand esoterics when, at the utmost, they can grasp the esoteric knowledge system by comprehension. They grasp everything emotionally and so doing believe they understand. They cannot distinguish between emotional and mental conception. That is possible only to mental selves. You frequently meet with so-called esotericians who have misunderstood most of the knowledge. It is important for a teacher to satisfy himself that what he says is correctly apprehended so that he does not make the common mistake of thinking he has made himself understood. Actually it is only when they put rational questions that people show they have really comprehended.
1Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras as well as Bhagavad-Gita are authored by members of the planetary hierarchy and, therefore, are regarded as particularly valuable. They have been translated by many people. Even in translation, however, they are too difficult to comprehend for Westerners. In order to comprehend them (to understand is something quite different) it is required that you are familiar with esoteric symbolism as well as the yoga terminology and oriental views generally. Thus mere translation is not sufficient. These two writings need to be adapted for western use. Much of their contents can be peeled off, everything unessential that is part of the oriental framework. The essential content is the knowledge of reality and the methods of consciousness development. This should be reinterpreted so that it is rendered with the terminology of the hylozoic mental system. Such a work requires a superhuman self; a mere human self cannot avoid misinterpretation. It is just to be hoped that some member of the planetary hierarchy will assume the task.
2It is quite unnecessary to waste time and work on Sanskrit studies in order to read Patanjali’s sutras. In Sanskrit there is no knowledge that cannot be rendered in western languages and with hylozoic terminology and, moreover, enormously simplified once it has been freed from symbolism. Once the teaching has been made exoteric, there is no reason to make it difficult to obtain, difficult to comprehend. It is quite another matter that much knowledge concerning the motion aspect must remain incomprehensible.
1It must be particularly pointed out that only disciples are able to rightly understand the works of D.K., dictated by him to Alice A. Bailey. There are risks involved in believing you understand what is above your own level. In any case you must be a mental self and be very familiar with the esoteric literature and symbolism. The same is true of Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, which also is largely the work of D.K. H.P.B. acknowledged that much of what she wrote she did not understand. Many people believe they understand it better than H.P.B., which, of course, evidences the common self-overestimation and lack of judgement.
2You must know what it is about in order to comprehend and not misunderstand an esoteric statement such as the following: “He has learnt to make contact with the soul, the Son of Mind, Who is himself and has in time identified himself with the soul; he becomes the soul in fact.” According to ordinary logic this would mean that reference is made to one individual (monad), who is two individuals (monads), thus sheer absurdity. Small wonder then that the uninitiated who come across such gnostic literature and try to interpret esoteric symbols and paradoxes deliver nothing but balderdash, as was the case with the life-ignorant theologians at the various ecumenical councils.
3In her commentary on Patanjali, The Light of the Soul, Alice A. Bailey made a brilliant summation of the art of living that D.K. sought to teach his disciples. The book may be said to be the most important work that has ever been published on eastern as well as western wisdom of life. It is no easy reading, which is precisely due to its orientalism.
4You should be alive to the fact that it is about a work of many incarnations and that you have to “hasten slowly”. Any eagerness, any haste, any rush counteracts your purpose. It is no bad achievement if you succeed in twelve incarnations after you have made the decision to live for self-realization.
1Anyone seeking for rational directions of a purposeful life may be recommended the little book At the Feet of the Master publicized by Alcyone (Krishnamurti). The one speaking is 44-self K.H. (alias Pythagoras). The book should actually be called The Path to Discipleship by K. H. The foreword, apparently worded by Leadbeater, should be struck. Anyone who understands the content and constantly applies the directions in all respects is ripe for discipleship. It is not as easy at it seems but it pays. It is a book that may well supplant the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount included. It is sufficient guidance for a perfect life. It also liberates the reader from the mentally obscure mystical literature. It should be particularly important as it is approved of by the world-teacher, Christos-Maitreya, which the Sermon on the Mount is not.
2Those who desire knowledge of practical wisdom may be recommended the unique work Talks on the Path of Occultism by Besant and Leadbeater (Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India).
3Other valuable literature that may be recommended includes works by the Swiss Carl Hilty: Gluck, in three volumes; Lesen und Reden, Neurasthenie, the Gospels in summary, etc. Moreover, works by Johannes Muller-Elmau: Die Bergpredigt; Die Reden Jesu, in five volumes, and a series of other works on psychology and other issues. There is a multitude of literature of which readers are never informed, often the most valuable authors. The so-called standard literary works, the “great” and famous writers, bestsellers, etc., which publishers profit on, you may largely and without loss leave unread. The products of the spiritual geniuses are never advertised. They have never been “marketable”, “profitable”. It is as though they never existed.
4All psychiatrists, who have reached beyond the stage where all psychological phenomena are thought to have a mere organic origin, should study Justinus Kerner’s The Seeress of Prevorst. Moreover, there is in that book something for all esotericians, much you easily pass by if you do not read attentively.
5There are books “you are never finished with”, since they contain so much experience of life that you gain from them new materials for your own reflections, they are also books of real comfort, and have a constant stimulative effect.
6Just as every religion best corresponds to a certain level, so every author writes for those who are able to perceive what he says, and this is particularly true of esoteric writers. You cannot write for everybody.
7There is literature corresponding to every level of development, and from its inventory of literature you can with a quite good certainty determine the average level of a nation or the heterogeneity of a greater nation (the United States, for instance).
1Many think they are esotericians because they see that rebirth and the law of reaping are facts. To do so, however, you only need to have been incarnated in India where all people are brought up on that teaching. Still less experienced is that person who thinks that intelligence and education are evidence of understanding of life. The history of culture, philosophy, and science rather demonstrates the opposite. Unfortunately esotericians are very few in the corner of the world called Scandinavia. In contrast, occultists who “experiment with truth” are rather frequently met with.
2Many people who have procured books by Laurency on the recommendation of friends think they have understood their contents and call themselves esotericians. They may have comprehended some of it but understood very little of the esoteric. There is in most people a tendency to overrate their ability to truly understand and to make rash statements on matters they have not mastered. Such readers should not call themselves esotericians, for in so doing they bring the subject into discredit. You are not an esoterician merely because you have read esoteric literature or take an interest in such books.
3You are an esoterician only when you have entered into the world of esoteric thought and the esoteric system has become a living whole in your mental envelope consciousness, which “thinks by itself”, as it were, under inspiration from Augoeides. There is always a great risk that the corresponding occurs in the emotional envelope consciousness, without the assistance of Augoeides, and that you become an occultist and an irremediable victim of illusoriness.
4Moreover, an esoterician never witnesses to himself. You can communicate esoteric facts and ideas without informing the receivers of the fact that they are esoteric. The art of being silent includes not saying more than people need in order to give them some food for thought.
1The esoterician (former initiate) believes nothing, assumes nothing, guesses nothing in esoteric matters, matters of superphysical reality. He never speculates with esoteric facts, since the result will be fictions. He either knows or he knows not. He regards all speculation as unreliable in principle.
2The esoterician knows that he can ascertain esoteric facts only as a causal self. Until he has become a causal self he will not accept other data on the superphysical than ideas and facts from the planetary hierarchy, for only members of the fifth natural kingdom are able to ascertain such things. According to D.K., only 45-selves are unable to make mistakes.
3The proof that facts are facts is that they take their given places in the Pythagorean mental system and explain previously quite inexplicable phenomena in an allround manner. This is in brief the esotericians’ stance in the theory of knowledge and their basic view in logic.
4A true esoterician never tries to solve esoteric problems, even if he is inclined to speculate and finds it difficult to refrain from such attempts. He must know that only second selves are able to solve such problems, that we have to wait for the solution until the hierarchy considers it suitable to communicate it. Every speculation leads those astray who trust him for his otherwise eminent talents. Steiner is a typical warning example. The same is true also of causal selves who should know better. Even 45-selves often must consult specialists when moving outside their own expert field and in any case concerning problems that go beyond the 45-self’s level.
5In contrast, occultists believe they are able to solve esoteric problems, and so we have the untold occult sects, all with differing opinions, just as in philosophy. You may expect occult dictionaries, like philosophical dictionaries, where every speculant brings forward his own views. It is the same in India where every yoga teacher has his own system.
6Regarding all manner of current problems (not concerning the problems of life), the esoterician takes, in default of facts, a rather skeptical stance. In most cases he will probably admit the possibility that a supposition (opinion) is correct, but he does not speculate on its probability. Experience has taught him that hardly one per cent of assumptions is correct. People take their guesswork for facts. That is part of appearances.
7Besides, life in its manifoldness is so complicated that only the deva hierarchy, representing the matter aspect, is able to ascertain facts about everything belonging to that aspect. Science moves on the surface of phenomena. In fifty years hence there will be nothing left of the present-day hypotheses (dogmas).
8The esoterician is radically different from philosophers and scientists in his insight that human reason is irremediably limited and unable to solve the problems of reality and in his insight that the esoteric system of knowledge agrees with reality. Even if he cannot ascertain these facts by himself, his superconscious has come into contact with the world of Platonic ideas, so that causal intuition has been able to make itself felt at least as an awakening instinct of reality. He has freed himself for good from the fiction creating function of mental consciousness. If he goes on speculating despite this, out of old habit, he is at least aware of the fact that his speculations are fictions. They can never be anything more than an amusing play of thought.
9Unfortunately this does not mean that we are liberated from all immature fantasts, who think they are esotericians because they have learnt some esoteric facts without mastering the system. There will always be such presumptuous and injudicious people who unconsciously or consciously do everything they can to discredit the true knowledge. They can always reckon on having their echoes, people devoid of critical thought. It is in everybody’s interest to help debunk them.
10In 1775, the planetary hierarchy expressed the view that mankind was not ripe to grasp esoterics and that it was too early to publicize the knowledge. That view is still valid.
1The esoterician always considers who he is talking to. It is his business to examine the prospects of his interlocutor to see the rationality, the correctness of what is said; where the limits to his understanding of life are. Otherwise he harms not just himself but also the cause he serves. Before he has acquired the ability to say only what should be said he is therefore wise in not speaking about esoterics with “outsiders” but only answer questions put by those who he understands are true seekers.
2To discuss esoterics with anyone at the stage of civilization is to make a fool of yourself. To those at the stage of the mystic you may talk about unity and universal brotherhood. Intellectuals usually have a ready-made view of life and are content with it. Does the individual evince impulses to widen his perspectives, and what are his prospects of gaining new viewpoints? Anyone who wants to help in the right way must learn the “art of the possible”.
3Occultists make propaganda. Esoterics is not occultism, however, and the esoterician should not make propaganda for the knowledge. Philosophers and scientists are as yet unable to understand, before revolutionizing discoveries have been made that overthrow their present fiction thinking with various hypotheses. In that case esotericians can help only seekers who do not know where to seek. But they can work for the community, mutual help, of all life, through admiration, affection, and sympathy do everything to counteract hatred in all its expressions and as for the rest make their contributions in politics, social, economic, scientific work, etc.
4The esoterician’s silence in esoteric matters is not due to any mystery-making but quite simply to his insight that it is useless to speak about things that cannot even be comprehended without special preliminary study. Outsiders not only are unable to understand. With their consciousness expressions they even can unduly affect, not to say harm and thwart, the individual’s development. Universal gossip about individuals is a violation of the individual’s inviolable right, is one of the greatest mistakes men can make and counteracts general consciousness development to a high degree, quite apart from its collective and individual reaping effects. That man is sensible (wisdom is not needed here) who harbours only good thoughts about his fellow man and never speaks ill of anybody. That is a thing which mankind should have understood long ago: also a proof of the general stage of development.
1The esoterician’s criticism of exoteric idiologies is intended to point out their shortcomings to those who have remained seekers and have not been able to accept any one of them. However, those idiologies have in most cases fulfilled their purpose on the various levels of development, and do so still, which is the case for their relative justification. Anyone who is content with his belief has a right to keep it and be left in peace from the criticism of others. In due time, in some future incarnation, he will have an opportunity to try out other paths. Only those dogmas are harmful that counteract consciousness development and hinder the individual from analysing by himself and using his own common sense. It must be firmly asserted that no power in the world has any right to act as an authority for others in world view and life view. Anyone has a right to decide for himself what he will accept as his own view. That is a thing which also teachers have to consider. They have a duty to orient their pupils but no right to force their view on anyone.
2It has not yet dawned upon theologians that the so-called divine commandments are rules of social life that were commonly known long before the birth of the Jewish religion. They preach Jewish teachings and not Christos’ single exhortation to love god (unity) above all and our fellow man like ourselves. The exhortation to love certainly entails all the others (such as: do not kill, do not steal, do not deceive, do not slander, etc.)
1All “thinking” (reflecting) people live in two worlds: the world of physical objective action and the world of mentalized emotional consciousness. The esoterician also lives in the world of causalized mental consciousness. Newcomers in the latter world often lose their balance, since that world has such an overwhelming effect that everything else seems unessential to them. In such a transitional state they become more or less unfit for life in all respects: physical, emotional, mental; they lose their head and their sense of all proportion. This shows that they live in a world of imagination, even if it consists of esoteric ideas, being not understood and not adapted to reality.
1Adaptation often is a great problem for esotericians. Destiny has placed the individual in a certain milieu, and that normally means that the individual is supposed to go well with that milieu and not make up a problem of friction. Then it depends on his sense of proportion (distinguishing between essentials and unessentials) as well as a possible disproportion in his conception of different principles of right belonging on different levels.
2There is a risk that the esoterician reacts wrongly to evil in the world. 44-self M. calls this risk “imperil”. Therein lies uncertainty about the future; discontent with the behaviour of other people; criticism of all kinds of things (political, social, etc., measures) he can do nothing about; a general sense of discontent (depression, despair) coupled with a sense of knowing everything better than others; which all results in a negative attitude.
3D.K. rightly points out that the physical problems of mankind (political, social, economical, etc.) cannot be solved by the aid of the esoteric knowledge. They must be solved by people on the level of development they are on and in each country separately. The esoterician must see, therefore, that the modern world cannot be ruled according to an esoteric view of life and men (which life-ignorant idealists seem to believe in youth). When judging you must start from the general stage of development and not believe that you can lift people by the hair up to a higher stage.
4If an esoterician is to take part in public life, he must adapt to the existing possibility of understanding life and not think himself able to reform society along esoteric lines, something that lies in a distant future
1Since mankind lacks the knowledge of reality and life, everything concerning mentality is fictitious and the concepts pertaining to it are almost all fictions. Not even one per cent of them agrees with reality. Thus it is inevitable that the esoterician leads a double life in mental respect. Among his kin he uses esoteric concepts and among the “uninitiated” exoteric ones in order to be able to consort with them at all. The esoterician knows in fact that he can never expect to be “understood”. Besides, he knows that this is never possible. Nobody knows himself, however much talk there is of self-knowledge, and others of course even less. It is frequently seen that two people on different levels always misunderstand each other (even when they think they understand). It is as though they were speaking different languages, although they use the same words.
2That is why tolerance is the fundamental quality everyone must acquire if we shall ever have peace on earth. The law of freedom grants the individual the right to freedom within the limit of the inviolability of everyone, the right of everyone to his own view, without interference. That does not mean, however, that he has a “right” to be unchallenged when making propaganda for his views. If he claims that “right”, he has crossed the limit of other people’s mental integrity and must put up with being criticized.
3The esoterician will soon notice, when his statements are reported, that they are something quite different from what he said. This shows him that everything he says and does, does not say and does not do, is misapprehended by the “uninitiated”, who cannot understand although they of course think they understand. This teaches him to be silent, to say only what is necessary and if possible make sure that he has been rightly apprehended. True, this does not hinder it from being distorted all the same. Emotionality has a strong tendency to reshape everything experienced.
4What distinguishes the esoterician is the insight of his own tremendous limitation, his own ignorance and the inability to judge accompanying it. That is the direct opposite of the universal belief of people that they can always understand and always judge things. The esoterician has an enormous certainty in his ability to distinguish what he knows and does not know, can know and cannot know. Therefore he soon discovers that most people are mistaken more than 90 per cent, a discovery he keeps to himself. He lets others have their views in peace of criticism and keeps his own views to himself when he is not forced to fight lies and hatred.
1The esoterician finds his way about in all circumstances of life where “destiny” has placed him. Being free to choose, however, he seeks only the group where mutual understanding is a given condition and where it is possible for him to cooperate best.
2When contacting others, the esoterician does not see how they are dressed nor does he notice their physical defects but meets them as new opportunities to understand and be able to say something that may make them happy or make them otherwise feel they have met a fellow wanderer on the path. Very few people are quire insensitive to kindness.
3The esoterician is always inclusive, not exclusive. Everyone has the right to his own view, and all are brothers no matter what views they hold. Any view is dependent on the level of development, and everyone has a right to be on his level.
4To the esoterician truth, reality is the essential thing, not how other people conceive it. He is certain even if billions of people believe something else.
5The esoterician is characterized by a sense of humour, which coincides with a sense of proportion, a rare quality, whatever many people think about that matter. The esoterician must always expect to be contradicted in everything he says, if he says something. At all events he never joins in discussions, which always are held within the limits of life ignorance (the world of fictions and not of knowledge). Of course he can, if need be, “talk with peasants in peasants’ ways and with learned men in Latin” (the saying taken in a symbolic sense).
1Only the esoterician sees how hard it is to live. True, he is endowed with the real world view and life view (hylozoics) but does not therefore know how to rationally apply this knowledge in his struggle with the tendencies of his envelopes of incarnation, tendencies he has acquired during tens of thousands of lives, tendencies that have a constantly degrading and idiotizing effect. During many incarnations this struggle seems to be a desperate, hopeless struggle. It is not easy to acquire lacking qualities. It is therefore psychologically wrong (unfair) to demand that esotericians should live as they teach. That is no excuse but certainly an explanation. It was this insight which made philosopher Schopenhauer write: “I have certainly learnt what is meant by a saint, but have never claimed I were such a one.” With the absurd demand that we should be able to live as we teach, there would be no teachers and no progress would be made.
2An “esoterician” without love will get many enemies. People instinctively feel they are seen through, and they never forgive that. In contrast, if there is love and thus understanding, they mostly overlook the eccentric’s baroque life view, unless the magnetic radiation from his aura is so strong that its vibrations affect others and in many cases reinforce the worst and most easily activated traits in them.
3The esoterician must expect to be despised and rejected. If people instinctively suspect the distance (a reminiscence from previous incarnations) they get their revenge through ridicule and contempt; an automatic reaction from an ever-existing complex of inferiority in conjunction with a complex of superiority. Man is arrogant until he has acquired the Sokratean wisdom, and mere suspicion that another man is superior offends his self-glory.
4An esoterician who has reached the age of 63 years and entered the tenth period of life can be comforted that he need not go on working at his robots (his envelopes and their consciousness content) but be indulgent towards them and let them robotize. Anything else would be like trying to make old dogs sit, wasted toil. Soon enough we get new envelopes. After 63 years there is no use starting to work up unknown domains of knowledge. The brain is not receptive to really new things, even though you manage to imagine it.
1The esoterician with his latent knowledge finds it easy to understand the true knowledge and therefore generally overrates the perceptive powers of other people until he, through constant setbacks, eventually learns to see how rare understanding actually is. Therefore you should never presuppose that intelligence is all you need to grasp esoterics. The many occult sects are proof of that.
2The esoterician has to learn that generalizations are orientations and not exact whenever stages of development, envelope departments, etc., must be considered. Statements on such matters always concern individual affairs, a fact easily forgotten or overlooked. The same knowledge can have quite different effects on different people. The individual’s influence on other people is always individually different, since we are all different. Every individual is a unique being with different experience from thousands of incarnations. How the individual uses energies pouring in depends on a multitude of factors, different in everybody. And the same is true also of groups and nations. To judge rightly you must have quite other perceptive resources than those at the disposal of the first self.
3To the esoterician, everything personal is taboo, and he has no authorities. Who said it is unimportant. Anyone has the right to decide for himself whether it is right or wrong. Most of the sayings attributed to Buddha and Christos they never uttered. What they said to their disciples is known to nobody. What they said to the people was misunderstood and distorted in tradition.
4Man’s aura (the oval sphere made up of all his envelopes) has an automatic radiatory, attractive and repulsive effect on the environment, the stronger the higher his level. All this has an effect on other people (are causes of effects), involving good or bad sowing and possibly entailing future relations with those other people. The esoterician therefore pays careful attention to what impressions he makes; of course also the impressions he receives, and these largely determine his choice of company in so far as he has a free choice. We consciously attract those with whom we sympathize spontaneously through similar vibrations.
5The esoterician has to learn to observe people and from their speech and actions infer what they think and feel, and why. This he does with loving understanding, and his analysis of people’s behaviour implies no criticism, just a desire to understand them ever better in order to help them, if and when an opportunity is offered, help others to understand (of course in a tactful and not didactic manner). Practice makes perfect also in this respect. You learn to say what can be said in such a manner that the man concerned does not even notice that you wish to help him.
6The esoterician, with his knowledge of the seven systemic (43–49) and the four planetary (46–49) atomic worlds, comprehends without further ado that no individual who would be a reliable authority in matters of knowledge can dwell in the emotional world (48), the lowest world but one, as he must have attained at least the highest world in the planet (world 46 enveloping the planetary chain). The fact that emotional beings succeed in duping people is a better evidence than any other that those who can believe in their own brainwaves and other people’s fancies are without insight and judgement. Should not the fact that incarnated causal selves and higher selves have “empty” emotional envelopes tell them something about the content of reality of that world?
7The esoterician learns how to distinguish between the energies of the first triad and those of the second triad: The energies of the first triad make knowledge in the worlds of man (47:4–49:7) possible and the energies of the second triad (45:4–47:3) make it possible to acquire wisdom and intuition.
1The more esotericians who think esoterically, the mightier become the esoteric mental forms in the mental world and the more easily can they be perceived by the mentalists. You can already ascertain that increasingly more esoteric ideas and facts make themselves felt in general language usage without people seeing what this is due to. Unnoticeably the esoteric knowledge is being impressed, and gradually, as decades and generations pass, it becomes ever more easily accessible.
2The esotericians should gradually replace the old dogmatic systems with more realistic systems. You cannot demand that mankind see the justification of hylozoics. It is a matter of weeding out, step by step, the most misleading fictions and replacing them with more rational ones. That is a strenuous work done on a long view, in certain cases hundreds of years. Dogmatic systems based on so-called historic facts are the most difficult to eliminate. That requires researchers to see that history is fictitious, which probably takes time.
1Before we are able to enter into unity, we must have realized unity with disoriented, suffering mankind. It is a matter of developing the qualities and abilities that enable us to contribute to increasing understanding of reality in all domains of life. Therefore, the esoterician always asks himself, “will this make me more competent in serving mankind, evolution, and unity?” The question, “Will this promote my own development?”, is secondary. The whole goes before the part also in respect of oneself. The greater the purposiveness, the more important is the answer to that question.
2The esoterician learns to forget himself, the demands of his first self, his own demand for development, in order to be wholly absorbed in the service of mankind. This service may be done in many different ways: the fulfilment of duties, research, social or political work, spread of knowledge, etc. It also prepares him for entering into unity. The problems of the present moment shall be solved, not problems of the future. We have got problems in order to solve them. When we do our tasks as best we can, Augoeides will arrange everything to our best. It is he who is responsible for our development.
3The rule “duty above all” applies for the esoterician. All commitments and duties in physical life always come first; “spiritual work” comes second. Anyone who neglects his duties for his consciousness development makes a serious mistake; shows that he lacks responsibility and cannot count on sympathy from Augoeides.
4An esoterician does not burden his fellow men with talk about his illnesses, his sufferings, his difficulties. Everybody is quite enough burdened with his own troubles, which the esoterician tries to refuse to consider as far as possible. “Energy follows thought, and you reinforce what you consider”. The fact that this has been turned into a trivial truism is proof how little people really understand of what they think they comprehend, how little they can do of what they believe they can apply. Small wonder that development is so slow. When surveying world history you may wonder if the law of inertia is the law most important for mankind.
5There are no other such radical reformers as the esotericians. But then it is a matter of reasonable reforms and not, as usually is the case nowadays, the unreasonable reforms promoted by life-ignorance. When allowed to go on undisturbed by barbarism, development proceeds uninterruptedly forward, which implies a continuous improvement.
6The esoterician must never ask himself what will be the effects of his work, however hopeless everything may seem. He knows that no effort is ever wasted, and he must be content with that. It is not his business to determine how and when the sowing will be reaped. It will be reaped sometime, and that is the one essential thing. “Never give up, never despair, stick it out”, must be his motto. It is his task in life to serve, and that he does first and foremost by being happy and glad, however the circumstances. (A man’s “radiation”, his “atmosphere”, is of greater importance than the ignorant can even imagine.) In addition it is required that you forget yourself, your first self with its more or less failed envelopes of incarnation (for which you must take the blame yourself) and know that you are a monad, a self, in a causal envelope.
7If the qualities, which moralists in their primitivity call “good”, are called positive, and the others negative, then you will find that the negative qualities outweigh the positive ones. You will thus understand why “the world’s reward is ingratitude”, why the kindness you show is automatically rewarded with feelings of hatred. Knowing this, the esoterician knows what will be the consequences of his contributions. He acts positively without thought of consequences for himself. He, too, has once been in the lower, and now he makes good what then fell short. He acts in accord with his knowledge of the laws of life, and he does what he can to help people reach higher levels. He acts in accord with his “nature” (the Indian dharma) because he cannot do otherwise. Also, the conceptual confusions of moralists in all these things are irremediable until mankind has acquired the esoteric knowledge and can rightly understand the realities of life. Without esoteric knowledge, it would take millions of years before that instinct of life had been acquired. In their assessment the yoga philosophers approach the esoteric way of looking at things, which is due to the fact that their original teachers were disciples of the planetary hierarchy and that much of what they taught has been preserved in their secret circles and from there been spread to the receptive ones. Contributing to this is the fact that the whole people is permeated by reverence for the sannyasi in a spirit that is totally foreign to Westerners with their disdainfully critical attitude to everything superior.
1When passing from the emotional stage to the mental stage many people think they “have lost their contact with spirituality”. That belief is part of emotional illusoriness as well as mental fictitiousness. The esoterician knows that we are all contained in unity and that we can never lose that contact as long as the desire to own it remains. The sense of loneliness and abandonment is an illusion, for we are all enclosed by higher worlds and share in their consciousness, whatever we believe or feel or think. The individual is so helpless, however, that he may fall a victim to mistaken views of whatever kind. He lacks the factual criterion of truth until he has become conscious in the causal world.
2The esoterician’s “god” is the cosmic total consciousness of which he himself makes up an unlosable part (god immanent). His percentage share in this is due to the developmental level he has attained.
3What the mystics call “to live in the sense of god’s presence” is related to what esotericians conceive as their share in cosmic total consciousness (and thus potential divinity). The experience of the mystic is emotional, that of the esoterician is mental, but it concerns the same reality. Also the esoterician is wise in learning how to experience this reality not just mentally but also emotionally, for emotionality is in the current eon the mightiest impelling force. For man, it is his Augoeides who represents this “divine presence”, his Augoeides is his soul, the deva deputy of the second triad.
4The esoterician has a very easy method of measuring the degree of his capacity and the degree of his humility. He only needs to ask himself: How much can you love, how many can you love, independent of how they relate to you, how much of all living things can you love, how much remains for you to love of everything superconscious? Even high cosmic beings see how far above them other beings in other worlds are. That insight is the basis of their humility.
5For the esoterician there is only one “community”, the “community of the saints”, the fifth natural kingdom, the planetary hierarchy. Those communities which are part of mankind are just too imperfect to be of avail to him. It is not the planetary hierarchy, however, which the clairvoyant meets in the emotional world and which so willingly receives him as a member, and which so easily makes him believe that he can soon enough become a mental self as well as a causal self and essential self and many more kinds of higher self. He only needs to pass those initiations to which he is summoned when he has been duly prepared to accept all the illusions that are part of those higher degrees. It is in the nature of the matter that the illusion appears intensely real to the man passing the degrees. Do not try to tell him otherwise for he has experienced “reality”, and he knows what he is talking about.
6A piece of good advice to the esoterically ignorant: Don’t strive to become clairvoyant! Put that off until you have become causal selves, so that you cannot be deceived, for causal consciousness is the only guarantee.
1At lower stages of development the self identifies with its envelopes and their consciousness content. At higher stages, the individual has learnt that life in lower worlds has no enduring value. He does not let himself be captivated (emotionally or mentally) by anything in these but becomes the impersonal observer who for that very reason is able to see and judge life as it actually is in these worlds. Then he can become an aspirant to discipleship.
2When the aspirant to discipleship has reached the mental stage, has assimilated the esoteric knowledge publicly extant, has come in contact with his Augoeides, has acquired the necessary qualities of emotional attraction, he (everybody is called “he”, a “brother”, since there is no difference of sex) is brought together with some other aspirants into a group, which will in due time acquire telepathic community and experience unity.
3The aspirant to discipleship nowadays does not seek to be accepted. He awaits to be summoned to form a group together with others under the guidance of a 45-self. Thereby he is not a real disciple, however, but will remain an aspirant until the group is accepted as a disciple.
4The aspirant is made to pass several probationary stages (physical, emotional, mental) before he is accepted as a disciple on probation. Simultaneously the firmness of the group is tested (there will be very hard tests), before it is accepted as a group. Very great demands is made on the probationer to be accepted as an aspirant, since once accepted as an aspirant means always accepted as such until he in some incarnation is accepted as a disciple and in a group.
5It is abortive to offer oneself as an aspirant. Nobody who is within the range of even a distant possibility of being accepted can be overlooked. Augoeides, who belongs to another hierarchy, has nothing to do with discipleship, even if he sometimes confers with the teacher after the disciple has been accepted.
6The above should dispose of most misconceptions about the possibilities of discipleship. The knowledge of the methods of attaining discipleship grows more common. Therefore, the demands for discipleship must be gradually raised.
1From of old, occultists have believed that aspiration is an emotional phenomenon and of course they have taught what they have not known. But aspiration is a process in the scientific sense, the fundamental energy process of evolution. It is through continuous aspiration and purposeful activity that the individual achieves three results: activates consciousness in the higher molecular kinds of his envelopes; eliminates lower molecular kinds from his envelopes; increases the magnetic attraction in the higher molecular kinds so that they are able to attract with their vibrations similar molecular kinds. This becomes an automatic process through aspiration.
2Aspirants to discipleship are “in search of their soul”. The mystic, in his devotion and will to unity with the deity (“life” or “the all”) reaches contact with essential consciousness; the researcher in his striving after knowledge of reality can come in contact with causal consciousness. A flood of light suddenly pours into darkness, and then they are certain that they have been in contact with “true reality”, a certainty they cannot lose. The politician who is wholly absorbed in his striving to better the physical life conditions of mankind can have a corresponding experience. Where the motive to serve mankind, evolution, and unity is present and the individual lives for this purpose, he is on the right track and has great prospects to come in contact with the planetary hierarchy in some one of his subsequent incarnations.
3Learning to love is not possible without work and service. The three key words, “work, serve, love” show the seeker the path and have an ever greater significance according as they are applied. It is a long and laborious path through the incarnations.
1The immense difference between men and individuals of the fifth natural kingdom lies in the latter’s knowledge of reality and life, of laws of nature and life, and their ability to apply this knowledge. That knowledge cannot be entrusted to individuals who would just abuse it to their own and other people’s undoing. The would-be disciple thus must be tested.
2Formerly, the aspirant to discipleship was accepted on probation and was made to pass diverse tests to show that he had acquired certain requisite qualities to a very high percentage. Nowadays the future disciple is tested without even his knowing it. Those are no tests that are obvious as such ones, but he has to evince his level of development in the general difficulties of everyday life.
3The tests to be passed by aspirants to discipleship must convince their teachers of the fact that the disciple would never, even for a moment, consider using his newly acquired faculties for his own good or misuse the knowledge entrusted to him of hitherto unknown (never even suspected) laws of nature and of life.
4What esoteric teachers test in aspirants to discipleship is their will to serve, purposeful striving to acquire the qualities and abilities that make them useful tools, endurance, reliability, will to cooperate, etc. They are tested by having opportunities to demonstrate these qualities. The more awakened, competent, etc., the disciple is, the more opportunities he has to learn how to become an ever more useful tool. Thereby he automatically acquires ever higher kinds of consciousness.
5Long before the aspirant comes in contact with the teacher he has been in contact with disciples at various stages of discipleship. His relations to these people have simultaneously been tests of his level, his understanding of life and necessary qualities acquired.
1The common psychological mistake in freshly awakened aspirants to discipleship is their eagerness to be “soon finished”, to become saints at once, to acquire higher consciousness quickly. They forget to make haste slowly.
2With their meditations they draw down energies that strengthen existing qualities they want to liberate themselves from, rouse self-pity and sometimes rebellion against destiny. From the subconscious there well up so much old dregs, which they have been unaware of and which arouse their despair. As being conscious, however, they can also be eliminated by cultivation of the opposite qualities. By being faced with such worse qualities in ourselves we can better understand other people and their difficulties. It is a work that requires perseverance, patience, and endurance. No effort is wasted, however, and the result must show in the next incarnation if not before.
3The wrong direction of life from untold incarnations, with the acquisition of repulsive qualities, requires the correction of several incarnations. Those incarnations are part of the preparatory stage before discipleship and are characterized by forgetfulness of one’s own self and devoted service of mankind. It is a short time in comparison with the thousands of incarnations used by those who follow along in the general jog-trot.
1The basic error of aspirants is the fact that they are overly occupied with their first self, which they should forget in service. If you have once ascertained what necessary qualities are lacking, you cultivate them and forget what should be forgotten.
2Moreover, they do not see that at the stage of ignorance the process of development is an unconscious process. The right meditation is given them by their teacher in the planetary hierarchy. Until then, the right meditation consists in assimilating the esoteric knowledge so that the very mental system becomes a living whole and enables them to understand reality, which appears from the fact that hitherto inexplicable phenomena have their natural explanation. It is not enough to learn facts by heart, but these facts need to be worked up through strenuous mental activity.
3Some aspirants to discipleship devote too much attention to their physical envelope and often also to their mental but forget their emotional envelope, which is needed for its dynamic energy and one-pointed purposefulness.
4An aspirant who is the centre of his circle, who is acting, speaking, thinking of what he wants to give rather than what his fellow man needs, who is interested in the private life of other people, criticizes the views and behaviours of others, who is the dramatic centre of all and everything, is the aspiring person who wants to reach higher, is misunderstood, etc., has not forgotten himself and cannot possibly become accepted as a disciple.
5Aspirants sometimes sense the expectation that all their finest and noblest emotional consciousness expressions and physical actions in the secret will be perceived, appreciated, and rewarded. They do not see that this is egoism, that instead they should be grateful for experiencing such things, which indicate that they are in the process of learning to forget themselves and their noble traits.
1Long before the aspirant can be accepted as a disciple, he must have liberated himself from bad habits and unsuitable character traits. In the old knowledge orders they were taught that this was done in the quickest and most efficient way by daily meditation on desirable qualities, particularly qualities that were opposite to the non-desirable ones. If they were uncertain about which these opposite qualities were, the matter was discussed with some reliable adviser. For there may be many causes of bad habits, and it is important to find the right one before you start meditating. This often requires a detailed self-knowledge, which is much more rare than most people think. Man has a monstrous ability to deceive himself, particularly in matter of his real motives.
2“The aspirant to discipleship has to gradually eliminate everything in himself influencing him painfully from without, all kinds of suffering in his envelopes of incarnation. He must reach that stage where he is unable to feel sorrow for his own interests. He must make his emotional envelope a tool of his second self only, without desires or wishes, without expectations or fears, indifferent to everything that affects himself.”
3It is characteristic of the true aspirant that he deeply mistrusts his own ability.
4Long before the aspirant to discipleship can expect to be accepted, he must have learnt to accept life as it is, his own inevitable limitation, he must have ceased to rebel against “destiny” or his own bad reaping, his displeasure with the conditions of life. This actually means an acquired understanding of the various stages of development there are in self-realization. Everybody is found on a certain level, his own work. It depends on himself whether he wants to reach higher. It depends on himself how his future incarnations will be shaped. He is the master of his future “destiny”. That was the meaning of the old esoteric formula: be done to you as you want.
5In many incarnations the aspirant to discipleship acquires necessary qualities and abilities to the requisite percentages, until in one incarnation all the external conditions are present which enable him to pass to a higher stage of development. In all too many incarnations, the aspirant is hindered by weak health, unsuitable, unsympathetic environment, wrong upbringing and education, which factors by no means need hinder him from acquiring qualities and insights but, despite everything, afford him opportunities to have necessary experiences. Often the aspirant cannot see the importance of such a seemingly abortive incarnation.
6The aspirant’s esoteric knowledge of the meaning of life, of worlds, envelopes, consciousnesses, etc., is of little avail to him in the matter of daily life problems, of the manner in which to serve, etc. According to an esoteric axiom, “the disciple knows because he is working”. Guided by his latent esoteric instinct, by the inspiration from Augoeides through his obedience to these promptings, the experience he has in this, he is guided step by step to the knowledge he needs, acquires necessary qualities and automatic understanding of his attempts, failures and seemingly abortive strivings. The insight he gains, the joy he experiences through his endurance aware of duty, compensates for all hardships and disappointments.
7Those who study esoterics and are aspirants to discipleship should heed three very common hindrances to self-realization (which generally affect the nervous system with very deplorable consequences): Self-interest (interest in one’s own self, egotism), self-importance, self-sufficiency. The planetary hierarchy has no use for those impaired by these hindrances.
8Only in exceptional cases is man aware of the unavoidable, degrading influence of an uncongenial environment, from those on lower levels, due to the fact that it is not so much the sayings as the very “atmosphere” (the radiation of the aura) acting in the unconscious and over a long time. Many aspirants have in this way been hampered in their development.
1In whichever natural kingdom, at whichever stage of development the individual is found, he is in unity. The aspirant to discipleship has to see everybody in that light. We are all on the path to the final goal of life. That is the essential insight. Everything else is unessential. To meet all people with loving understanding however they affect us is the only manner of acquiring intuition, essential consciousness.
2We need not care about our consciousness development, not even bother about a world view and life view, if we consciously live for evolution, mankind, and unity. From this everything else follows automatically: acquisition of all the qualities and abilities that are needed for discipleship.
3The esoterician serves in all ways: physically, emotionally, mentally. But since he has special qualifications for mental service, that path is the essential for him. Physical service is open for everybody, emotional service for many, but mental service is still just for few people. And when the server may choose, he chooses what he is best at doing.
4The aspirant to discipleship is seeking for a teacher. The teacher is seeking for an assistant, for he can achieve something for people only through people. There are many important tasks – political, social, economical, educational, psychological, esoteric – in which people need assistance; many problems they cannot solve with their intellectual resources.
5It is a great mistake to “wait” for discipleship. Only he becomes a disciple who has qualified for it. Everyone may start by trying to acquire the qualifications. Anyone who does his best receives more help to do it, because the planetary hierarchy needs co-workers. Without people it cannot affect people. If “sacrifice” is needed to become a disciple, sacrifice of time and energy, then those who have become disciples (if they were allowed to speak about it) can certify that they have been handsomely “rewarded for their pains”. However, anyone who has understood needs no such certificates.
6An expression that is often found in esoteric literature is “esoteric obedience”. It is almost always misunderstood as commands and demands imposed by a higher authority and encroaching on individual sovereignty. Such a thing is impossible, however, since it conflicts with the law of freedom. The misleading expression refers to the individual’s purposeful application of the knowledge of laws of nature and laws of life, the understanding of their necessity in those who want to enter into higher kingdoms.
7Expert knowledge (expertise) presupposes not just theoretical education but also long (experimental) experience. Such experience is precisely what our present day experts lack. They believe their bookish wisdom is everything they need. A serious mistake. The tenability of the theory must be checked and completed in experience. Practice provides solidity.
8The more the individual knows and is able to do, the more useful is he for the planetary hierarchy in work among people. University education is nothing to despise. Most people are unable to study and profit by book-learning on their own.
9Much which the aspirant to discipleship regards as mistakes and errors bringing about despair and depression has physical and physiological causes.
1No man can be “overlooked”. Everyone has his Augoeides, who knows which level of development his protege is found on, and there are plenty of other authorities. Besides, every individual emits light and sound in the emotional and mental worlds. We are all penetrated in every moment by material energies of countless kinds and therefore we also emit such ones ourselves. Since matter is light and energy is sound we demonstrate our levels by the material energies we emit from our auras. And when these effects have reached a definite strength, this shows that the aspirant is ripe for discipleship.
2The only thing we human beings can do is to try to reach higher levels by ennobling our emotionality and developing our insight and power of judgement in accord with our latent qualities and abilities in various respects (demonstrating in our envelope departments and our interests of life). At our stage of ignorance we learn the lessons of life largely through our mistakes, which instead of depressing us should be regarded as necessary and enriching experiences. Instead of getting annoyed we should be grateful for those opportunities to learn.
3We need not worry that we shall not be used, if we wish to be used, if we try to acquire loving understanding (in 48:3) and knowledge of reality (at least in 47:5).
1In theosophical literature by Besant and Leadbeater discipleship has been presented very deficiently, so that theosophists have got a distorted view of this subject. At all events, essential conditions changed after the year 1925.
2The writings of Laurency are intended for aspirants to discipleship and for those who want to acquire the causal self’s conception of reality as a basis of a right life view. Disciples enter into esoteric groups and are given individual as well as collective guidance by some member of the fifth natural kingdom whose intention is to communicate the essential self’s view of reality to them. Disciples thus have already mastered hylozoics and are well acquainted with the knowledge that was imparted in the three lowest degrees of the ancient knowledge orders. Also, they have once and for all dedicated their lives to the service of mankind, evolution, and unity, the planetary hierarchy and the planetary government.
3As the requirements for discipleship are tightened the hierarchy gives out more knowledge, so that the senior disciples of our time know much more than their predecessors and also are far more skilful at handling practical and psychological problems.
1For every human being who has reached that stage of development where he has become an aspirant to discipleship there comes that incarnation in which he is brought together with his esoteric family and enters into that group under the guidance of a teacher from the planetary hierarchy. They know each other well, as they have been brought together in thousands of incarnations in all conceivable connections and family ties. They are now ready to perform the common work for which they have been trained during their incarnations, work for mankind or evolution or unity.
2There are many such groups (of course unknown to the uninitiated; the initiated = disciples) who are active in mankind. And the planetary hierarchy hopes to be able to form such groups in ever larger numbers, if mankind has learnt something by the sufferings it underwent during the two world wars (1914-1945). When there are sufficiently many such groups in all “cultural nations”, the planetary hierarchy hopes to be able to reappear.
3The quickest way of developing is for man to become a tool (and train himself to become a tool) of Augoeides and later of the planetary hierarchy. All according to your own conditions you can serve mankind, evolution, unity. Everything that can make life in the physical world easier to live benefits all mankind. There are contributions to be made in countless domains: political, social, economic, scientific.
4By becoming tools we develop the necessary qualities and abilities automatically through our incarnations. Augoeides sees to that matter. We shall have experiences in all kinds of environment and in all combinations of departments in our envelopes of incarnation and in all domains of human life. Nothing human may remain strange to us.
5In the current emotional eon or, which amounts to the same, at the present stage of mankind’s development, nobody can enter into the world of Platonic ideas, the causal world, acquire causal consciousness, except as a disciple of the planetary hierarchy. Only in the next eon, the mental eon, will this be possible during the slow jog-trot of evolution.
6The disciples chosen by the second self are such as possess the qualifications to rightly use and scale down the knowledge so that it will be conceivable to the ignorant of life. It cannot be avoided that those disciples sometimes fail in their task and the result is a misleading idiology. It is not the teacher’s task, however, to either lead the disciple or correct his mistakes. The “apostle” Paul, a mental self that had become a disciple, was allowed to cause such a misconception of the teaching of Christos and so doing ruin the work of Christos with fatal consequences for the whole of so-called Christendom without intervention by any member of the planetary hierarchy. The same was the case with those so-called reformers, who also were disciples but who lacked sufficient insight to fully understand the intentions of their teachers. Only essential selves (46) are unable to make any mistakes, because the whole planetary hierarchy is responsible for their contributions.
7The disciple always runs the risk of making serious mistakes as long as he has not acquired causal consciousness or else is unable to be in constant telepathic contact with his teacher. He must do as best he can, and the results are seldom the best ones. It is worse when individuals who are not disciples believe they are able to reform or appear as prophets and chosen ones. Then there will be equally many false teachings which regrettably always gain supporters. In that respect you may say that mankind lives in a chaos of mutually contradictory idiologies.
8If people listen to reason, make good their immeasurable folly of banishing the planetary hierarchy and call it back, they will thereby have quite different prospects of becoming disciples through opportunities of personal contact with those masters of wisdom. Also disciples will then be able to openly acknowledge their discipleship and help mankind in a quite different manner with revolutionizing methods of upbringing and education, with reforms of the school and university. Not even the planetary hierarchy knows whether mankind will prove to be that sensible, although it of course hopes for the best and does what it can to make people go in for their consciousness development instead of their childish occupations, the illusory pursuit of gold, glory, and power and their cultivation of hatred as a stimulating elixir of life. To judge from a world history with almost nothing but follies, the political actions, religious division, and so-called culture in our time, there is little hope for anything so sensible as calling the hierarchy back.
1You are accepted as a disciple not to be more quickly developed but to become a suitable tool of the hierarchy in all three worlds of man. It is a secondary matter that this service automatically brings about the disciple’s development by forcing him to solve the always difficult problems of helping. By being absorbed in service, the disciple forgets himself and his problems and finds to his surprise that those problems are solved of themselves. People have a typical tendency always to complicate their problems, not understanding that directness and simplicity is the ingenious factor of action.
2Not those who adore Christos are sought as disciples by the planetary hierarchy but those who forget themselves, want to assist those in distress, have unlosable certainty that higher worlds exist.
3The planetary hierarchy wants to help mankind solve its problems of reality and life, which mankind cannot possibly solve without help from the hierarchy. To do this the hierarchy needs tools in the physical world and discipleship means that the individual has placed himself at disposal for this task (not to be “saved”). We must all live for mankind, so that it can develop its material life as well as its consciousness, solve its political, social, economic problems. Otherwise mankind will perish and have to start all over again, as it has done twice before. If we do nothing, this will mean for us that we must take part in this new work of development from the stage of barbarism up. For mankind will some time reach its goal, the fifth natural kingdom, however many times the experiment must be repeated.
4We may expect that disciples of the planetary hierarchy incarnate in ever larger numbers to help mankind with its many different problems. They teach no esoterics, which is not for mankind at its present stage of development. There are so many problems that must be solved before people can understand anything about higher worlds and their consciousness. (Truly understand means that you clearly see that the system agrees with reality.) Esoterics can obstruct the work for mankind at the stage of civilization, since it can divide the worker’s consciousness and hinder him from concentrating on the problems occurring at lower stages.
5The disciple does not live to acquire higher kinds of consciousness but to help mankind and evolution. Whatever becomes of himself does not have the least significance for him. He forgets himself in being absorbed in his tasks. Evolution is such a slow process and mankind is so misled by its idiologies that you must be content if you can bring it one small step forward, help it solve some problem, help some individual or people.
6Three stages of discipleship can be distinguished. Accepted on probation (many fail in the tests). Accepted as disciple (which stage lasts until the individual has become a causal self). Attached to the teacher’s aura (as a causal self and essential self), until 45-consciousness has been acquired. The higher the stage, the more suitable as a tool of the planetary hierarchy. The same is true of the relation to the planetary government. The higher the world the second or third self has reached, the more suitable is he as a tool of the planetary government. All are tools of higher kingdoms. All work is voluntary but nevertheless purposeful, since this is a condition to enter higher kingdoms. The freedom to remain in a lower kingdom is no freedom that has any attractions. Only a man can be that foolish.
7Also the word “discipleship” can be misunderstood. You do not at once come in contact with a 45-self. He has several 46-selves who engage to guide his many causal selves to serve as guides of the seekers. In as much as the latter make such progress that guidance should be entrusted to 46-selves (they too overburdened), they may take over the responsibility. Man must have reached far on the path to the causal stage before the 45-self, overwhelmed with work, considers it worthwhile to merge the individual with his “ashram”, his group of groups of disciples.
8All are disciples, in the full sense of the word, until they have reached the highest cosmic kingdom. In the ordinary sense, however, the term “disciple” refers to the individual before he has become a second self. He is subsequently in contact with the planetary hierarchy and has opportunities to learn much by attending discussions. Such knowledge as he, according to the law of self-realization, must procure himself, he has to acquire through his own work. Only so will he become self-determined and develop his individual character.
9The disciple of the planetary hierarchy is considered as a member of it even though he is a first self. He receives knowledge, which is not for the public at large but only for seekers who understand the knowledge that was formerly reserved for initiates of the esoteric knowledge orders. This is still true even though esoterics has become publicized. It is only a small portion of mankind that has a need of this knowledge, is interested in it, has capacity to understand it; and this is due to the developmental levels of individuals. Far from all mystics, clairvoyants, occultists, yogis are able to understand, are aspirants to discipleship. Many other people are, however, unbeknownst to themselves, since they have not been conscious seekers but devoted their incarnations to the service of mankind, evolution, unity with the powers they already possess. There are also many people who are disciples without knowing it.
10The requirements for discipleship have been constantly tightened up and particularly so after esoterics became exoteric. In Atlantis it was enough if you had reached up to the higher emotionality (48:3). After the founding of the esoteric knowledge orders, discipleship required the third degree in an order. Nowadays (after the year 1925), the disciple must be a mental self, possess esoteric knowledge, and live to serve mankind, evolution, and unity. The teacher does not seek for the disciple, but the disciple must force the teacher to discover him by acquiring the requisite qualities and abilities. The disciple does not give himself out as such to outsiders, and to discover such an individual is not easy. Most of those who believe they can do it are mistaken.
11The planetary hierarchy’s methods of training disciples are changed eventually as disciples generally have acquired ever higher degrees of consciousness and thereby ever greater prospects of insight and understanding. It is the disciples and their increasing needs that determine which new methods are needed. The disciples make up, so to speak, the connecting link between the hierarchy and the mankind at large. Also, they are the ones who convey the knowledge from the hierarchy.
12Many are surprised when they learn that it is only as a disciple of the planetary hierarchy that man learns how to think. Because the hierarchy considers only that individual capable of thinking who thinks in accord with reality. And no man can do so. He uses speculations, dogmas, assumptions, hypotheses, theories and is unable to verify them. However certain, however convinced he is, he still is unable to reach beyond subjective certainty. The normal individual can ascertain facts in the physical world only. Clairvoyants, with their objective consciousness in the emotional world, are unable to determine whether the “realities” they think they ascertain are anything but products of their own and other people’s creative imagination.
13As a disciple man has to rethink about everything he has accepted as knowledge of reality. He cannot even decide what is meant by “freedom”, for that is known only by those who know the laws of life and can rightly apply that knowledge. Before man can become a second self, he must be able to experimentally demonstrate this esoteric fact. It should be noted here that what a second self knows he must be able to verify by himself. There is to the second self nothing that can be called assumption as to reality in worlds 45–49 in the solar system.
14Discipleship implies for the disciple during many years largely only rebuffs. That period can be extended over several incarnations. The disciple should be clear about the fact that he is a burden to his teacher. The same is true of those whose profession it is to teach and guide children and adolescents. To guide barbarians (for that is what most individuals are at that age) is martyrdom for many people.
15Nobody can enter the world of Platonic ideas, be conscious in the causal world, except as a disciple of the planetary hierarchy. As a disciple he can acquire “intuition” and receive ideas from the world of ideas. As a disciple he is counted among the planetary hierarchy and may consort with its members. There are members of the planetary hierarchy in incarnation. But they cannot be reached by the curious and exist only for their disciples. It was typical of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual status that he had no chance of personally meeting the present incarnation of the founder of the Rosicrucian Order.
16Against certain theosophical misconceptions it is asserted that the disciple is thrown back on himself and may ask for his teacher’s opinion only in certain special cases. A great feature has been made of the fact that the disciple at a certain stage has the privilege of consulting the teacher’s causal subconsciousness. It is not allowed just like that. It depends whether it is done in the work for other people and is important for the group. Theoretical problems must not be solved in that way. Causal selves must not use that resource any more.
17Anyone who through comparison and testing of idiologies has arrived at the result that hylozoics is the only tenable working hypothesis is probably also an aspirant to discipleship, has learnt to be skeptical to the world views and life views of other people, skeptical to his own freaks, skeptical to all voices from the emotional world, skeptical to all claims to superior spiritual wisdom. The physical and emotional worlds are teeming with world saviours of all kinds. Their teachings may however well agree with the esoteric knowledge of reality and life (which they have picked up and made their own), but the single fact alone that they in any way appear as teachers with personal claims to correct knowledge is quite sufficient to debunk their claims as false. The same is true of all those who found orders, start organizations, build temples, etc. No disciple of the planetary hierarchy does such things. He is an impersonal tool; his teaching is not his own; he appeals to common sense and people’s independent judgement; propaganda and persuasion of any kind are out of the question. He puts forward his ideas to be individually tested, accepted or rejected. He does not contribute to the formation of any associations. All such things sooner or later become exclusive, however much they talk about community. All make up a unity, whether they know it or not, and any other kind of unity is not the true unity. It is quite another matter that there must exist groups in the work for the necessary ends of life in the process of manifestation and in consciousness development, but they are all groups in unity.
1Those in the planetary hierarchy see at once when a man can become a factor in the service of evolution, and do what they can to further his strivings. Many are unconsciously their tools. That does not at all mean that they particularly encourage people to try to become disciples. Generally also other qualifications are necessary to that. You can be a “good worker in the vineyard” without being a disciple.
2If you are to be accepted as a disciple, however, you must long before that have shown your willingness to serve mankind. Every accepted disciple thus has been a server of life during many incarnations. It is only when discipleship proves to be the factor that enables the individual to serve even better that the question comes up to the supervising authorities. If also the qualities and abilities required for a more rapid consciousness development are there, the individual will undergo particular tests that show his stability.
3If these tests turn out well in the eyes of the supervisors, he will be accepted as a potential disciple. Thereby he has certain prospects of being directly accepted by the teacher who may do it on his own responsibility without the need of obtaining permission to do it from the planetary hierarchy. If then one more 45-self offers to “stand sponsor”, he is reported to the Bodhisattva, who decides whether the disciple can be accepted by the hierarchy and be regarded as associated with it. As a rule the disciple should be able to become a causal self within seven incarnations and thereby be recognized also by the planetary government.
4To become a causal self and a second self is by no means as easy as many theosophists, among others, seem to think. The secretary of the planetary hierarchy, 45-self D.K., inculcates this in his disciples. Most of them have many incarnations left before this will be possible. And he adds that those in particular who think they will soon be ready thereby show they are victims of an illusion.
5It is lucky for most people who think they are ready for discipleship that they are not accepted even on probation. They would not stand the tests. If there is any rust stain in the steel armour, the arrow will pierce it and the man will fall. And how many people have their armours made of cardboard?
6Not even all mental selves have a chance of being accepted as disciples. They also must have acquired the basic qualities almost 50 per cent, which is a great deal at mankind’s present stage of development. Newly accepted disciples must be prepared to be tested for the firmness of these qualities. The task of Augoeides is to perform the tests, and they are not easy to pass. They may refer to inner as well as outer conditions, even to the attitude of people in close contact with the individual. The old symbolic saying “guide men’s hearts as rivers of water” proves to be literally true. Augoeides can influence whomever he wants to take whatever attitude he wants and considers necessary.
7You can be accepted as a disciple when you can work on your own without being a disciple and without reckoning on discipleship. You will be accepted as a disciple when as a mental self you have learnt to cooperate with a group in the right manner (unswerving solidarity without criticism of other people’s views and ways of life) and when such a group can be formed for a common job the planetary hierarchy wants to have done.
8Thus this is something quite different from the current ideas of discipleship. Everything is changing and also the forms of discipleship. This new method, adopted in 1925, is connected with plans of a new fifth natural kingdom not entering into the organization of the planetary hierarchy. Those who are ready to become second selves must be prepared to form their own kingdom working in concert for mankind. When you are good enough to do this, then you are ready for discipleship the most important task of which is to help mankind to solve its problems.
1There are thousands of disciples in incarnation who do not know they are disciples. Neither Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt nor Dag Hammarskjold knew they were disciples. There are many who suspect they are disciples but do not care about it; many who lead lives of service without knowing anything about esoterics. The status of unconscious disciples appears in their understanding of life and realization and also in the fact that they at the first acquaintance with true esoterics directly see that it agrees with reality.
2For such people the main issue is serving mankind in some way: in politics, science, culture, etc. They devote all their powers to it. Such people the planetary hierarchy needs, not such people as think of their own development. The fact that the serving attitude develops them the most quickly is quite another matter, which they do not ponder on. They forget themselves and thereby automatically liberate themselves from their first self, that “impediment” for those who want to enter into unity. That gives Augoeides his “chance”, and he will not miss it.
1Before the monad in the first triad decides to become a second self at any cost, it must have acquired all the conditions of this. Many people imagine that they are ready for discipleship whereas they know nothing of these requirements: acquisition of the qualities of attraction to high percentages, mental control of emotional and physical consciousness, perspective consciousness, will to renounce everything in the first self, will to live just to serve. And all this under the most difficult conditions.
2There was talk about the terrible tests the individual must undergo to be initiated into ever higher degrees. That was a symbol expressing the difficulties the individual meets with in all circumstances of life, with a diseased body and with resistance from all the people around him. There are certainly compensations, but the tests are of such a kind that only those at the verge of the causal stage will stand them. Nobody who believes he is ready and spontaneously offers himself for such tests would stand them. Discipleship is no period of rest. It demands everything of man. Perhaps that consciousness development, which normally corresponds to ten thousand incarnations, is to be done in some twenty ones, with final liquidation of all old debts. The right aspirant does not care how many incarnations it will take, if only he may serve.
3Above all, the self must have seen in full that emotional illusions and mental fictions are worthless. At the pertaining levels, they are necessary tools of consciousness activation but surrogates in respect of knowledge. The self, being centred in the highest mentality (47:4), cannot any longer be fascinated, dazzled by anything lower. Then there is nothing in the human worlds that the self desires. The self is ready to experience a causal intuition. Then it knows what knowledge is and must have it. Other people come in contact with essential consciousness, experience what unity is and sense that they must enter into unity.
4As long as you can be captivated by anything in the human worlds, you are not finished as a first self and cannot reckon on becoming a disciple. Even if you are finished, however, you must fulfil your duties in all respects, as if those duties were your only interests in life and this independent of outer circumstances. There must be no excuses whatever for individual shortcomings. Such shortcomings are found in all people until we have become second selves.
5A condition of discipleship is the highest emotional and mental capacity and a self-acquired trust in the Law (known or unknown laws of nature and laws of life). There is no arbitrariness in the application of law by higher kingdoms.
6“In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” This intimates one of the conditions of discipleship, the result of the contact with Augoeides. Quietness has reference to emotionality and confidence to mentality. Anyone who has acquired this confidence (our own work through meditation) has reached the safe haven.
7A disciple must have reached that emotional stage which precludes what people call “falling in love”, in which the individual loses his freedom and becomes a slave of someone else. He must become the master of his attraction, not a slave to it. Signs of slavery are all kinds of “hatred”, such as envy (jealousy), etc., and emotional attachment, bias, inability to judge impersonally, objectively (to analyse). Such a slavery, belonging to the lower emotional stage, has always made the individual a fool, surprised outsiders and exposed him to their ridicule.
8Most people identify themselves with their envelope consciousnesses and are slaves to them, often all three envelopes (physical, emotional, mental). Not until you are able to control them are you ready for discipleship. It belongs to the matter that many people think they are ready who have never undergone the trials that are part of the test of endurance.
9The majority of people have their monad centred in the envelope solar plexus centre. In order to become a disciple, the monad must centre itself in the heart centre. To do this you must acquire the qualities of attraction. The theoretical love must be superseded by the practical love, which affords understanding, disregards mistakes, faults, and failings, does not admit disuniting thoughts but surrounds all with that sense of unity whose source is the world of unity. The aspirant to discipleship must have acquired so much self-knowledge that he sees which qualities he lacks and is working to acquire them in daily meditation.
10Devotion to the welfare of others is a basic requirement.
11“He who is on the path exists not for himself, but for others.”
12Before the esoterician becomes a disciple (which in this case means a conscious disciple of some member of the planetary hierarchy), he must carefully consider the following four active factors: Augoeides, the monad in the triad envelope, the knowledge in the mental envelope, and the loving understanding of all in the emotional envelope. They make up the very groundwork of a lasting contact with the second self via the centres of the causal envelope.
13It is in the emotional envelope that the individual must learn to distinguish between true and false, between real and unreal. That is an esoteric fact which spiritualists, occultists, yogis have not seen. They have not seen it because they are victims of their own misleading assumptions.
14Only after they have learnt this will they learn how to distinguish between fictions and reality ideas in the mental world (mental consciousness), a thing they must be able to do in order to be accepted as disciples of the planetary hierarchy.
15The disciple is supposed to be familiar with the esoteric world view (the matter aspect of existence), so that he can be wholly concentrated on the consciousness aspect of existence.
16In order to become a causal self you must have acquired knowledge of, and have learnt to control, the matters and energies of the physical, emotional, and mental worlds. It should not be difficult to see that at mankind’s present stage of development, or rather stage of ignorance, some incarnations’ energetic work under the guidance of an experienced teacher is required even for mental selves. It is not worthwhile to embark upon the venture on your own. The wisest thing a man can do is to become a willing tool of the individuals of the fifth kingdom by applying, to the measure of his ability, the laws of life, particularly the laws of freedom, unity, self, and activation.
17The condition is an unbounded confidence in the teacher; trust in the fact that he knows and is able and does what he may without being asked. Then it all depends on the disciple himself. Extremely few disciples use all their possibilities and opportunities, and the number of incarnations depends on this.
18That obedience which the teacher must exact from his disciple is no violation of his free-will. Obedience means that the disciple carefully follows the instructions he receives in order to profit by the necessary methods for acquisition of higher kinds of consciousness. Anyone who does not want to obey will learn nothing and cannot be helped by the teacher.
1Firmness is a quality that the disciple must possess. The tests he will undergo require steadfastness when everything around him collapses. Quiet, patience, endurance are required by anyone who will be silent, practise right speech, await the insight of right action and the right path to walk.
2Gratitude is a quality you must have acquired one hundred per cent. Ingratitude (absence of gratitude for everything in life) is an absolute hindrance to discipleship. Accepting things as acquired rights is a totally erroneous attitude, which is a bad sowing for the future. We are in debt to everyone who does us the least kindness. We are not in a position to speak of karma in such cases. Those who do so are unable to understand esoterics even if they know Laurency by heart.
3Another important quality is that true humility which follows the insight of our boundless ignorance of life and the many levels which we have to attain through our lives to come. Anyone who thinks himself wise is a fool.
4That old expression, “take the kingdom of heaven by storm”, which is offensive to many, of course refers to unswerving, one-pointed purposiveness.
5In order to become a second self, the individual must become “divinely indifferent” to whatever happens to the first self; expressed in a paradoxical way: nothing can happen to him whatever happens to him. That is one of the most important qualities to acquire and presupposes in its turn trust in life and trust in law. You do not care for your emotional states. You joyously fulfil all your duties but “in your heart of hearts” you are invulnerable, unperturbed, unassailable.
6This demonstrates that the individual has understood: that he is a self, a monad, and that the self in the causal envelope is unassailable; that the self is not identical with its envelopes of incarnation; that the envelopes are just tools of the self’s consciousness development and are renewed at each incarnation; that the self has mastered the tendencies of those envelopes and has become a master of them, independently of the demands that are expressed in those envelopes because of the habitual wrong attitude to life.
7How could it be possible for the uninitiated to understand the gospel legend of Gethsemane? A historical personage. The insight that the legend referred to the perfect “divine indifference” to whatever happens to the personality. The total agreement of the will with the Law. The attainment of divinity (43-consciousness) with access to the planetary government.
8The second department faculties, which the aspirant to discipleship must acquire, include vision, cooperation, unity, impersonality, will to sacrifice, endurance, and creative activity. When the self has acquired consciousness in his triad envelope, then it will learn to use its causal ideas and energies to direct its mental, emotional, and physical consciousnesses, and so doing the self will qualify for discipleship.
1Soon after being accepted the disciple goes through an elementary course in reality perception intended to set him free from human learning in so-called world history (religious, social, cultural fictions), everything mankind has accepted as truth in everything not directly ascertainable in the physical world. He is to set himself free from his first self’s idiosyncrasies, conceit, egotism, desire to become a second self, etc., and learn to live for others, for evolution, for unity.
2When the aspirant is accepted as a disciple, he is informed which departments are in his envelopes, a first condition of understanding what kinds of envelope energies he has to employ.
3The disciple is taught to perceive the energies that are constantly pouring through the centres of his envelopes, discern from where vibrations come (through the three units of the second triad, etc.) and expediently use the different energies. He is taught how to rightly utilize the energies of the triad envelope. The unceasing attention necessary to this may react on his organism, and so the disciple must accord it a scrupulous, automatized care and, when tired, relax his attention.
4When he has learnt how to control consciousness and energies in his envelopes of incarnation, has learnt to distinguish between the energy of life from the third triad and the energy of consciousness from the second triad, he is increasingly able to assimilate these two kinds of energy and to rightly utilize them.
5The envelopes of man are penetrated by energies which have the effect that the envelopes radiate and attract. This affects man’s preferences in many respects, determines his choice of associates, for instance. When people have acquired a knowledge of their envelopes and go more in for the study of esoteric psychology, they will of course become more sensitive to other people’s vibrations (radiation or magnetic attraction). We all affect one another, mostly unconsciously. And every contact with a human being has an effect.
6People are still ignorant of all these things. The disciple has so many new insights that he, being a first self, sees the wisdom of the paradox of Sokrates: he knows that he knows nothing.
7The disciple is taught that the frame of mind which expresses itself in joy, happiness, cheerfulness, bliss, is of the utmost importance to consciousness as well as to the energy aspect and the organism. It liberates from and dissolves complexes; relieves the entire work of the organism, especially everything connected with the work of the organs of digestion.
8The disciple learns that development implies the overcoming of otherwise inevitable failings. This also means that if we want to help people, we must keep our eye steady on the good points in order to strengthen them, not to see failings and strengthen them. Here lies our responsibility and our good or bad sowing. Most people largely sow bad sowing and hinder themselves in many ways. Having that tendency and those dispositions you should not expect to be born into a “noble environment”. Like is attracted to like.
9Disciples are taught to disregard everything that separates and to heed only what unites, what is common to all. This has certainly been said ad nauseam but cannot be said too often, for this is a necessity and, moreover, presupposes many qualities of attraction. It implies not merely a wide tolerance but also a positive attitude to differences, based on the understanding of the fact that there are differences of developmental levels, temperaments, departments, and experiences of life. It appears that “good qualities” (above all patience, perseverance, and endurance) seldom have been acquired so many per cent that the procedure goes without friction. Self-realization proves to involve a methodic and systematic work. Mental inactivity, easy-goingness, laziness results in no progress. It is a matter of discovering your own failings and eliminating them, not excusing them or explaining them away. Too “intensive souls” should keep in mind, however, that the individual must have forbearance with himself. You are not “through” at once. Self-torment is as abortive as martyrdom and concentration on your own imperfection. A sense of proportion must be developed; humour, joy, happiness should be cultivated.
10The disciple is taught to approach the individual with loving understanding, however perverse he is. General phenomena, however, he is fully entitled to attack and expose. One instance may be cited of how D.K., otherwise indulgent, severely criticizes absurdities: “It is the second and third hand expositions that are responsible for the idiotic presumption of the present occult world organizations.”
11The disciple is taught the art of being silent. That means something much more extended than appears from the expression as such. It means understanding when you should speak and what you should say, adapted to the perceptive powers of the audience. It also refers to thought itself, not just speech, thus implies control of thought.
12As to the esoteric names of the great ones, disciples are requested to be satisfied with initials. Because the utterance of names produces in the emotional and mental worlds vibrations that disturb the individuals intended and obstruct their work.
13The disciple is taught to think of to whom he is speaking and to adapt his language to the perceptive powers existing. To talk esoterics with the “uninitiated” is to bring the knowledge into ridicule. Connected with this is the fact that he never speaks about himself and his stage of development. That is a secret he shares with his Augoeides and his teacher in the planetary hierarchy. Besant and subsequently Leadbeater made very great mistakes disclosing their stage of development, and this has harmed the cause of theosophy as has all the chatter about “initiations”. Initiation is a ceremonial acknowledgement of a stage of development reached by an individual and is of no concern to outsiders.
14The disciple is taught how to distinguish between the different stages of development, which are determined by the age of the causal envelope. About 40 per cent of mankind have causalized on our planet in this eon, approximately 20 million years ago. In those people there is no mentality to work upon. It is quite abortive to try to appeal to a reason which is not there. Those people need to be informed about what is truly desirable, not about what is rational. Also, it is important to differentiate four groups: those who are only able to parrot, those who possess an elementary faculty of inference, those who are independent thinkers, and those thinkers who are able to grasp and use principles.
15A common psychological mistake made by the intelligentsia is to appeal to reason in their dealings with people at the emotional stage (the majority). Instead, they should appeal to emotion. The great popular speakers, the real demagogues, are masters of that art. They play on people’s emotions just as a skilled musician on his instrument. Philosopher Schopenhauer had a lifelong experience that he could not make himself understood no matter in how simple a manner he strived to express himself. He constantly found to his astonishment that no matter how much he lowered his level, he had nevertheless overrated people’s power of comprehension. This insight is of great importance to those who want to help people.
16The disciple learns to distinguish between objective observation and criticism, which most people cannot do. Criticism is an instance of repulsion and is always personal. Criticism produces a thought-form, and it is by that you see and judge. If at all you concede that other people have good qualities, you underrate these. Faults and failings dominate at a possible balancing of good and bad points.
17The disciple learns to judge things and people quite impersonally and matter-of-factly. Judgement is a condition of right conception and of possible help. There is much he does not need to know or to have any idea of at all. This, too, demonstrates his power of discrimination.
18Man’s subconscious is the sum of what he has been in the past, in present and past incarnations, what he has thought, felt, said, and done. That subconscious makes up the greatest portion of his unconscious. He has not done much to activate his superconscious. To look down into the subconscious may be compared to “looking down into an abyss” of delusions and misdeeds. What man fears the most and detests in other people (and condemns) is what takes up the most space in his own subconscious, shows him what still remains to be overcome. The disciple is taught to see himself such as he is and accept even things feared and detested, also as being parts of mankind, for only so doing can he set himself free from the power of the past.
19The disciple also has a small glimpse of the action of “karma” in various relations.
20The disciple is taught that he is not his envelopes. They are intended to become his obedient tools, and he is taught how to understand their own reactions. Thereby he learns how to better understand other people, whose reactions should also leave him unperturbed.
21An esoteric saying goes: “The self must learn to be silent before its first self.” Let it rave; nothing to take notice of. The esoterician holds his lowest self in no esteem whatsoever. There is no cause for self-admiration.
22The esoterician is taught to observe impersonality, a “divine indifference” to the views of other people. This does not imply that common indifference which eschews everything “unpleasant”, is impassive to other people’s views, feels superior. On the contrary, it receives everything offered, learns whatever it can learn, is not put off by a personal reaction. This implies elimination of prejudice, of individual idees fixes, of personal tradition, of the idiosyncrasies of the first self.
23The disciple is taught to say goodbye to everything that seems valuable to him in life. Everything must be revalued. His mind must be totally occupied with the task he has set himself. He must fully accept the conditions of his own life and life in general. As long as there is any trace of a rebellious spirit as to “destiny”, discontent with outer conditions, desire to be in a different position, critical attitude to people on their levels, it is impossible for him to experience unity with life. He must see his own limitation and take life as it is and will be, be in harmony with life.
24For the aspirant, the “as if” method is of great importance in meditation. The energies of attraction are roused to a heightened activity when the individual regards himself as if he were the man he desires to be. By thinking, feeling, sensing yourself as if you were at a higher stage, you are drawn, even if unnoticeably, you are raised to an ever closer contact with the world (with its vibrations) you are seeking.
25Even disciples are taught to use the technical method of “as if” to the greatest possible extent. It is an immense “psychological” aid. It is also justified because the individual, through his share in the cosmic total consciousness, always potentially is (god immanent) what he actually will be (god transcendent). “Potentially you are a second self, think and feel and act as if you were one already!” thus is the advice given. This has nothing to do with self-deception, does not mean that you imagine you are a second self. You are fully aware of the fact that this only implies an “as if”, that it is a psychological trick, an aid. Of course, the method is not for everybody, not for logicians who refuse to use “psychological tricks”. The advice of the planetary hierarchy, however, are worth all consideration. Experience will confirm the justification of this method. It is a stimulation that counteracts the sense of inability and helplessness.
26The disciple is taught to “economize on time”, that time is valuable, that waste of time swells the number of incarnations, shows inability to plan a job and do it, evidences a lack of self-discipline without which the self will never be able to control its envelope consciousnesses.
27The time factor, the manner of using time to acquire knowledge, insight, understanding, ability and to rightly use this insight (“good qualities”), is the essential factor as to the number of incarnations. The more methodically and purposefully you use time, the more rapidly you develop, the fewer incarnations you will need.
28The disciple is taught to live “rhythmically”, to discover his right states of activity and rest (rest from his daily exoteric work; not to be confused with his need of sleep). As a rule it appears that the five days around full moon (two days before and two days after it) are the most suitable periods of rest. They are the times when the disciple finds it easiest to come in contact with his immensely busy teacher in the planetary hierarchy.
29The disciple is taught to be active in all circumstances, thus the direct opposite of the manner of spiritualist mediums who in states of passivity lend their organisms with their etheric envelopes to other individuals. If you want to help those in the emotional world, then it must be done through your own emotional objective consciousness under the control of objective causal consciousness.
30The disciple is taught to discover seven different evolutionary tendencies in human consciousness development: the tendency to synthesization, the tendency to visualization, the tendency to self-initiated consciousness activity, the tendency to planning, the tendency to penetration, the tendency to idealization, the tendency to opposition (polarization).
31The tendency to synthesization is that factor of evolution which enables incorporation of ever higher kinds of consciousness in self-consciousness, acquisition of ever greater percentages of cosmic total consciousness. It is made possible through the attraction of lower kingdoms by higher ones, an attraction issuing from the highest cosmic kingdom. In the individual’s triad chain, it works the attraction of the second triad by the third triad, and the attraction of the first triad by the second triad.
32The tendency to vision. Therein lies the unconscious striving after “more light”, a conscious acquisition of insight and understanding, scientific research, etc. That is the basis of progress. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
33The tendency to activity: physical, emotional, mental, from instinct via intelligence to intuition. You could also call it the tendency to create, the creativity of imagination when it takes charge of the vision, seeks a meaning in events, an explanation of existence.
34The tendency to plan, arrange, organize, strive after ever greater purposiveness.
35The tendency to penetrate, to enter into an area of reality, a domain of knowledge, experience it through identification. That is a typical mental activity, an analytical discrimination (not to be confused with the common critical ability), a stage at the transition from intellect to intuition.
36The tendency to idealize, a longing for something to admire and imitate, an imaginative ideal with aspiration to realization, striving to reach beyond what has been attained and finally beyond things human.
37The tendency to polarization (to be understood only in the consciousness tendency of the second self), an apparently paradoxical striving to unity through opposition, an ever more refined ability to discriminate (in emotional consciousness as pairs of opposites making up an ever narrower path into the choice).
38The disciple is taught not to bother his teacher with questions, is taught to live without his teacher and without a thought of him, is taught to live in order to help his teacher with what he can do in the work for mankind. The more he lives in order to serve, the more energy he automatically receives from the planetary hierarchy through his Augoeides.
39The disciple is taught that nobody ever has a right to demand anything from those in higher kingdoms. Any such assumption demonstrates ignorance of the Law. We shall all reap our good sowing, so we shall always be rewarded. We know nothing, however, how that reward will come, and when; as a rule, never as we have expected. The disciple is wise in not expecting even encouragement from the teacher. The fact that he has been accepted as a disciple is encouragement enough. The teacher knows what the disciple needs, so no disciple asks anything from his teacher. That would be a proof of lacking trust.
40It would be a great mistake to believe that we are set free from the hardships of life through discipleship. We become disciples in order to be better able to serve life and to become ever better tools of those in higher kingdoms who better than we can decide how we best can serve.
1The disciple accepted for a certain incarnation never asks his teacher about or for something, and this for several reasons. He is given to know what he needs to know, and no unnecessaries; besides, most of it is already publicized. The teacher knows everything about the disciple’s consciousness expressions, so that he can help him or answer his questions if need be. The disciple knows that he cannot ask rationally, for that presupposes that he already knows the answer. The disciple is allowed to directly appeal for help only when in insuperable difficulties in his work of service, never in personal matters and never on account of common thirst for knowledge.
2Thirst for knowledge may be a good thing. However, there is so immensely much which you need not know and which only hinders the individual from keeping to essentials: from living purposefully and onepointedly.
3It is by no means as the “uninitiated” think: that the disciple may utilize his teacher’s knowledge to have all manner of problems solved for nothing. The law of self-realization (also valid for all mankind) means that the first self must himself solve the problems he can solve both in the present and in the future. Every kingdom has to solve its problems. Mankind receives only such knowledge for nothing as contains problems which the first self will never be able to solve. That knowledge, which can be acquired in the worlds of man with man’s various kinds of consciousness, must be acquired by mankind without help.
1The disciple is encouraged not to take an interest in people’s matter aspect but in their consciousness aspect, the particular needs of their selves. This does not, of course, mean indifference to sufferings of other kinds, where such ones occur, only that the imperishable self is the essential. The disciple must not allow himself to be attached by emotional friendship or love of perishable personality, the transient habitation of the self.
2The disciple is encouraged to seek contact with the “souls” of other people and liberation from their “personalities”. Of course, you can do that only when in contact with your own Augoeides. Anyhow it is a direction deserving attention in more than one respect, also for aspirants.
3The “souls” heal and vitalize each other. The “personality” degrades and devitalizes.
4The disciple is encouraged, at his acquisition of knowledge, not to refer this to the matter aspect (as he usually does) but to start from the reality perception of the monad consciousness in order to learn how to live in the consciousness aspect. It is the monad that seeks and finds, and it is this urge of exploration that must be cultivated to activate superconsciousness.
5Each planet is a planetary collective being with 43-consciousness, and each world is a collective being with the atomic consciousness of that world. Westerners are so accustomed to considering only the matter aspect that they find it difficult to grasp that there is always in addition a consciousness aspect. The disciple is taught to disregard the matter aspect and to exclusively consider the consciousness aspect. To him, a planet is a planetary being, not a lump of matter. And to him, the worlds are not filled with atoms, molecules and material forms, but with beings belonging to various natural kingdoms. To hylozoicians, this is indeed the same thing; but now the disciple has to develop consciousness and to acquire consciousness in ever higher worlds, and then he has to disregard the matter aspect.
6The three lowest atomic kinds (47–49), the worlds of man, are the three densest ones, enabling consciousness to shape permanent material “thought-forms”. The consciousness expressions of even causal matter are, from the material point of view, light and colour phenomena that dissolve with lightning rapidity. It is this quality that makes the matter aspect the most easily comprehensible to the first self who is affected by these coarse energy effects of coarse matter. They have the disadvantage that they make it more difficult to apprehend the phenomena belonging to the consciousness aspect and therefore to acquire higher kinds of consciousness. For that reason, the disciple is encouraged to disregard the matter aspect as far as possible, and instead to have his attention directed to consciousness and consciousness expressions.
1The influx of disciples is nowadays so great that the teachers have been forced to resort to new methods. Nowadays, no single individual is accepted as a disciple, but the disciple always belongs to a group of nine individuals at the most, and the group is accepted as a disciple. What the disciple is given to know becomes the common knowledge of the group. Also the individual teaching about the disciple’s envelopes and the particular recommended consciousness activation is communicated to all in the group. There must be no individual isolation. Everybody may know everything about everyone in the group so that the individuals learn to think collectively as a unit. Unity becomes paramount.
2This means very great advantages for all the members of the group. Everyone in the group is prepared to help the others with his special qualities and abilities, in doing which the individual has an opportunity to be quickly liberated from remaining faults and failings and quickly acquires the requisite percentage of insufficient qualities. All sense their oneness in full harmony and understanding. This requires from everyone a spirit of self-sacrifice and a total dedication to the task. One individual may delay the work for the others. It is a shared knowledge, ability, and energy, almost like a force of nature. This capacity is put to the disposal of the planetary hierarchy to solve a particular problem in mankind. If a few thousand such groups are formed, the evolution of mankind can be speeded up considerably. The problems may concern any sphere whatever: political, social, scientific, philosophical, esoteric, etc.
3Also, the group is protected from the too forceful energies pouring down. Neither the envelopes nor centres of the disciple can assimilate those, but they would have a destructive effect if they were received and not passed by without trace. When the old methods were used, the energies were first made to pass through the teacher’s envelopes and then transferred to the disciple. In the group, the energies are distributed to several people and therefore they can be absorbed by the group members without harm. The group thus acts as a protection.
4The task of the group is to form a common “group soul”, a collective being. Everyone must make his special contribution to that end, using the qualities and abilities of his individual character. These will benefit the others in the group. The common work for the perfection of the “group soul” makes it easier for all to reach the same perfection. Each one-sided individual character is complemented by the others for common allroundness. And sharing in the common group soul facilitates the transition to the essential world, the definitive passing into community. With his collective consciousness, Augoeides does what he can to facilitate this making of collectives. At the dissolution of the causal envelope and transition to the essential envelope, also the “collective soul” is dissolved, since it has then achieved its purpose. The collective being is a material form, made of molecules from all the participants’ envelopes. Exchange of molecules in the form takes place when the individual has activated a higher molecular kind in some one of his envelopes. When perfected, the form consists of the highest molecular kind (the subatomic one) of every member. It should be kept in mind that all the molecular kinds have originally been formed of atoms from the world they belong to, thus consist of atoms.
5Also esoteric medicine becomes a group activity. The “healing energies” are a common group force to which everyone contributes with his ability, being fully aware of the state of ill-health and which centre of the etheric envelope is to be worked upon. Thus it is no random healing but an activity that presupposes true expert knowledge.
1The bridge between the first triad mental molecule and the second triad mental atom (the antahkarana) is a thread of matter that proceeds from the heart centres of the envelopes of incarnation and connects with the corresponding centres of the causal envelope. As a mental self, the disciple must construct the bridge himself. This is done through his thought dynamized by emotional imagination. In those who have lived only to serve in many incarnations, the bridge has been formed automatically.
2The true meditation is the science of the one right, individual method of building the antahkarana. That method, uniquely adapted to individual character, is given to the disciple by his teacher. Other kinds of meditation are regarded as “preliminary exercises”. The method presupposes acquisition of the faculty of “visualization”.
3Visualization affects the eyebrow centre, making it more active. This is the centre that enables mental and causal objective consciousness. The solar plexus centre is the seat of emotional objective consciousness. Visualization and formative imagination have a mutual effect when they are once acquired.
4The esoteric axiom goes: “As man thinks, hopes, and wills, so is he.” It is not a matter of “faith” but of will, an unrelenting, purposive direction with dynamized individual energy. The saying, “be done to you as you will”, has become an empty locution and is dismissed as a utopy. When the individual’s will is in harmony with the law of unity, the law of development, and the law of self-realization, then the saying will be literally true. Then man’s will has become “god’s will” (not the other way round). The saying “not my will, but thine” means precisely this.
5The time the disciple of the planetary hierarchy uses for his own development does not amount to one hour of twenty-four once he has been informed by his teacher about the right method of activation. He will divide the remaining time between expedient care of his organism (diet, hygiene, exercise, rest), acquisition of knowledge for service in the most purposive manner (much due to his individual character, level of development, social and economic conditions, education, etc.). We can always help in some way, make our contribution to individuals, society, science, technology, culture, etc. Forgetfulness of your own self, will to unity, living for others and the whole, that is the right service.
1Of old the causal world has been called the “world of knowledge” (the matter aspect in the worlds of man, 47–49); the essential world, the “world of wisdom” (the consciousness aspect in worlds 46–49).
2As a disciple you are taught the right method of contacting the pertaining consciousnesses. In contrast, occultists quite simply believe they are in contact with those worlds and that all their brainwaves come from there. Also the yogis with their methods end up in the emotional world.
3Only essential consciousness can avoid errors of which even causal selves are guilty.
4The three centres below the diaphragm are vitalized by the four physical etheric energies (49:1-4). The four centres above the diaphragm are vitalized by energies from worlds 43–46 via the second triad. Those energies cannot be rightly understood and handled by the first self. The disciple is positively warned against attempts at vitalizing these centres by directing his attention to them; the results can only be deplorable. As attention is paid to energies they are reinforced, and there is a risk that they take the wrong direction. The four higher centres mentioned are not vitalized through meditation but automatically through right way of life, noble thinking, and loving activity.
5The aspirant to discipleship would be wise to postpone all kinds of breathing exercises until he has been accepted as a disciple. Also disciples are warned against unguided breathing exercises, for these often have dangerous results. Disciples are taught the right procedure of such exercises, which means that you breathe rhythmically through your mental consciousness guided by the causal consciousness. Such exercises are always assigned individually and are done under special supervision.
6Exceptionally, esotericians may experience that the pineal gland is vitalized and that phenomenon occurs which is called the “light in the head”. The brain is lit up from within, as it were. You would be wise to refrain from such experiments. There are cases where people have become blind. The experience gives you no reason to believe you are “chosen” or understand everything. There are high initiates who have not experienced it.
1Real hindrances are criticism of other people, a separative tendency, and pride. It is not enough to lead a saintly life at the emotional stage. Your desire to “save your soul”, “be on the safe side”, strengthens your egoism and is the sure way of missing the purpose of your incarnation. All too many people become the victims of some complex: Messiah complex, service complex, unselfishness complex, activity complex, leader complex, saint complex, ideal complex, understanding complex; all of them having “self” as the centre. The esoterician forgets himself in order to be a tool of his Augoeides. He is spared thinking of himself.
2Nothing is as easy as to imagine you are free from illusions. Everyone can do so. And that shows the inevitable self-deception. It is incomparably easier to rid yourself of mental fictions.
3Curiosity, interest in personalities, and gossip have no place in esoterics, are absolute hindrances to discipleship, are vices that block the path to the planetary hierarchy. We do not get higher kinds of objective consciousness to spy, to violate the laws of life more easily. The higher level the individual is on, the greater is the effect of mistakes made by or against him.
4Many people could be accepted as disciples but are not, since their equipment lacks something for which the individual himself is responsible, could himself remedy, even though he cannot see it. Arbitrariness in the matter of “election” is absolutely precluded. Everything is determined by law. There is no predestination, even if it can so appear to those who have no knowledge of the individual’s previous incarnations and his reaping.
5Among countless hindrances an incredible one may be pointed out: rejection of an offer of discipleship. The effect of such a stupidity may be that the opportunity will not return in the same zodiacal epoch.
6Idealists have no prospects of being disciples. Ideals belong at the emotional stage. For that reason the name, stage of ideality, perhaps is not very fortunate, although that stage implies the realization of everything men can grasp as ideals. The planetary hierarchy has no ideals. Such things do not exist in the world of unity, which is dominated by the knowledge of the laws of life and their unfailing application. Ideal was (and perhaps still is) the only thing that mankind could grasp. The question is whether men can grasp the concept of law. They seem hardly able to do so in the matter aspect and motion aspect; how much less then in the consciousness aspect.
7Fanatics stand no chance of being accepted as disciples. Fanatics lack a sense of proportion and, moreover, are usually aggressive. Usable helpers must possess common sense and a sense of proportion (“humour”), allow people freedom, refrain from criticism (mental analysis in the right spirit to reach better understanding is no criticism), to be willing to sacrifice. We can never lose our self-identity, but we must learn to live as if we did so, become impersonal, become channels for the energies of higher kingdoms, which we become when we no more are anything but channels, forget ourselves in our work.
8Many people confuse fanaticism with intensity or consistency. Fanaticism appears in the desire to force one’s views on other people, is evidence of intolerance, aggression, and repulsion, the opposite of the striving towards unity (community with all). Fanaticism is at variance with the law of freedom. Fanaticism belongs to the emotional stage and is particularly apparent in those having the sixth department in their envelopes.
9Dogmatism is a serious hindrance to discipleship. Even the greatest intellect, making the greatest intellectual discoveries, must be prepared to abandon its hypotheses and theories for new discoveries. For man there are no definitive solutions of the problems of knowledge. The solutions he reaches are only preliminary, even if some of them may have a life-time of some thousand years. You must always be prepared and willing to abandon even the best formulated mental system. However, men are constrained to accept mental systems in order not to be disoriented in reality, in order to be able to think in accord with experience had; the only way of developing. We must have some system of thought. But such a one cannot be constructed without a knowledge of reality, which philosophers have not seen. All belief systems are untenable. If they are not dogmatized, they can, however, help people to develop their mental consciousness.
10The dogmatic mindset involves, among other things, the refusal to examine other systems for what they may be worth, experiences had and facts ascertained. Much could be gained by a reciprocal consideration of what is contained in the various systems.
1“God tempts nobody.” Before man can become a causal self, however, he is tested in all respects, so that his most hidden weaknesses are brought to light to be discarded. The fact that such tests are viewed as temptations is part of theological psychology. At the most, they can be called opportunities of temptations for those who are at all susceptible of temptation. Even a hesitation before the choice would disclose a weakness, an all too small percentage of a requisite quality.
2The tests the disciple must undergo are intended to establish whether there is anything in the worlds of the first self that may seduce him to relapse into anyone of them; whether there are any weaknesses (envy, wrath, fear, suspicion, doubt, pride, vanity, etc.).
3The disciple is tested in physical as well as emotional and mental respect, in his attitude to the things of all three envelopes. Physically, the test is about freedom from dependence on power, glory, wealth; other beings; physical conditions (including effects of the law of reaping). Emotionally, the test is about freedom from illusions, the expressions of repulsion and attraction, as well as the contact with the essential world (via the unity centre of the causal envelope). Mentally, his fictions of various degrees are tested, his power to dominate the physical and emotional envelopes, his contact with the causal world via the intelligence centre of the causal envelope.
4It is easy to understand that disciples unbeknownst to themselves are tested through all manner of opportunities and offers, etc. What most people who come in contact with the knowledge do not know, however, is that the very acquisition of knowledge automatically involves “testing”. Nothing happening to the individual is at random, but everything has a meaning, and the offers of life afford the supervising powers of destiny possibilities to judge what choices the individual probably will make in his next incarnation.
5The tests the disciples must undergo are according to the law of reaping. They have asked to become helpers, and the more liberated from old sowing they are, the freer they are to help. Many think that what they must endure often verges on the bearable. This is a mistake, however, since they cannot know how great resources are at their disposal if they would use them. Nobody who has taken his stand under the law of unity can be put in insuperable difficulties. “Love brings all bad reaping to an end.” Then it is another matter whether the disciple voluntarily assumes sacrifices in order to help. The tests of Hercules were voluntary, as were the incarnations of Buddha and Christos.
6One of the final tests many disciples must undergo is that everything collapses around them socially, financially, and personally, and they are stripped of everything the first self surrounds himself with, confides in, and builds upon. That is the test of reliability. If he will stand it, the self has acquired unshakable trust in the Law and in its own potential godhood.
1Discipleship entails an enormous strain on the organism. That is why a seven-year period of probation is required in most cases, during which a strict diet is necessary. Permitted food includes vegetables and fruit: milk, honey, whole meal bread, all vegetables grown in the sun, oranges (in particular), bananas, raisins, nuts, potatoes, unpolished rice. Butter and cheese are permitted but should be avoided if possible.
2Happy are those who have not lived on anything but pure spring water and raw vegetables and fruit since childhood! Spring water can be replaced with distilled water to which certain nutritive salts (not sodium chloride) have been added. Since the new organism in composition is a replica of the old one, it may happen that the digestive organs do not tolerate the raw food at once but a soft change-over is necessary.
3The organism is renewed every seven years. The longer you delay changing your diet, however, the more difficult will it be to carry it through. And it can be too late, a fact which diet fanatics all too easily forget.
4Alcohol limits the self’s access to the higher emotional consciousness and precludes work in the mental envelope. That is the explanation why disciples must not consume any kind of alcohol.
5With the exception of disciples at the stage of training (under the guidance of a teacher) to acquire higher consciousness, everybody may eat whatever he feels is good for him. Diet fanatics make the mistake of meddling too much with things that the body regulates automatically if left in peace and untroubled by erroneous ideas with their energy effects. Nutritional science is still at the experimental stage. Moreover, diet is an individual problem. Medical science has a long way to go before it will be able to individualize correctly. It deals with stereotypes and too wide generalizations. Individualization in medical matters requires etheric objective consciousness.
1The internal language of the planetary hierarchy consists of symbols. These have a condensed reality content. Mathematical symbols may perhaps give a faint idea of what is meant by symbolic language.
2Esoteric symbolism is a terminological discipline in its own right, and the esoteric symbols can have many different functions. They can also sum up the knowledge. They can hide the knowledge from the uninitiated. They are vitalized forms of mental involutionary matter, observable to objective mental consciousness. They can function as robots.
3The higher kind of consciousness (and thus of insight) that has constructed them, the longer their life. There are symbols which will not dissolve until the mental world itself dissolves.
4Using symbols they could mask concepts so that disciples of lower degrees could not grasp what was intended for those of higher degrees. This is still true of disciples of different degrees. There is always a risk of misconception and a resulting misuse of energies. However, a number of symbols have been explained as the knowledge that was communicated in the three lowest degrees of the knowledge orders has become exoteric. It will certainly be a long time before the knowledge of the fourth degree is available. The knowledge of the fifth, sixth, and seventh degrees will be reserved for disciples of the planetary hierarchy until mankind has reached the causal stage.
5Anyone who wants to acquire the conditions necessary to intuition is also encouraged to study all kinds of symbols, since the intuition is a kind of symbolic thinking. Concepts are part of mental consciousness, and in causal consciousness they are superseded by objective vision to the extent that these concepts belong to the matter aspect. It is this objective seeing of everything past within the worlds of man (and thus within the planet) that is called causal intuition. Essential intuition in addition apprehends everything that has been part of the consciousness aspect. Where these higher kinds of consciousness are concerned, the terms “sense” and “reason” are unsuitable. The terms “causal objectivity” and “essential subjectivity” can preferably be used in their stead until those realities are more generally understood when certainly new terms will be found for each particular mode of apprehension by consciousness. For those who are unfamiliar with esoterics we must use the language which the educated people of our times can understand. It goes without saying that this is unsatisfactory to the esoterician. But we must shift as best we can. We can at least avoid such words as have become irremediably idiotized. There is a limit even to “scaling down” and popularizing. New terms must be exactly defined as far as possible. If we use old terms then they must be redefined. Omission in this matter has regrettably caused a general confusion of ideas.
1Whatever is found in the worlds of the envelopes of incarnation exists only to enable the self to acquire a knowledge of reality in these worlds and to acquire qualities and abilities possible there. The disciple must cling to nothing of this and regard nothing of it as so valuable that he cannot bear to lose it. He must be able to give up everything hindering him without a sense of loss.
2The disciple’s attention is called to the fact that he devotes too much time to his first self. The second self is his next goal, and its interests he should try to understand and cultivate as far as possible. If the first self does not want to become a tool of his second self (Augoeides), then he “is standing in the way”. It is true that the individual is now and then liberated from his first self (the envelopes of incarnation) but has little benefit from it, since the monad in its first triad only produces a new first self, equally unsuccessful. The new envelopes are “copied” from qualities and abilities of the first triad and as a rule correspond to its level of development.
3In order to become a second self you must “sacrifice” your first self with everything which this implies, with its content of numerous unnecessary “needs”, theories, misconceptions of practically everything, all manner of wishes. By forgetting yourself, forgetting your development, living for mankind, evolution, and unity you acquire automatically all the requisite qualities and abilities and eventually ever higher kinds of consciousness.
4The master says to the disciple: “I shall be satisfied if you forget both yourself and me in the work for others.”
5The teachers have experiences of such disciples as they must protect themselves from: namely such disciples as are (even though unwittingly) spiritually selfish and too eager for knowledge and evolutionary energies. They also have experience of others who are too cautious about their own development. Some disciples overdo and others underdo things.
6The disciple allows everyone to hold his own opinion. It is not his business to force his knowledge on other people. If he chances upon seekers who are still seeking and want to have knowledge, he may account for his view on life, but he will go no further.
7Disciples have no privileges. In addition to their own burden they have to carry those of others (physical, emotional, mental ones), being glad and grateful for it. They have their allotted share in the various human diseases and disabilities. Those who believe differently are in error, as usual. But then of course: there are compensations, though the ignorant of life would not appreciate them.
8The disciple puts up with even so-called intolerable circumstances, which cannot be changed and which generally are prolonged by inner resistance and revolt. He goes on living without concern despite all adverse conditions.
9When being daily disillusioned the humanist has a natural tendency to be amazed at the self-blindness and selfishness of men, finding it useless to do something to help them. The disciple is given to learn that all this and even more will just incite him to renew his efforts and that is not his business to decide whether his work seems wasted or whether he is fighting for a lost cause. He knows he is a tool of those who know and understand.
10By trying we create the conditions of ultimate success. The disciple who asks himself whether it is possible for him to do a certain thing always receives the answer: try! Without trying you will never succeed. And each failure guides you a bit forward. Everybody fails sometimes (even those in higher kingdoms) and always calculates with that risk.
11The disciple serves in all the ways he can, first and foremost where he best can serve, independent of how big or small it is. He never asks whether his work is of any importance, makes any difference, whether it seems wasted. He does his share, then the result must be what it will be. He is a server and does his job in the service of his master, and the result will be his “employer’s” business. The habitual question “if it is of any use” is not for him to answer. It is not of his concern.
12A disciple never speaks of himself. This has been said countless times and it seems never to be heeded or constantly be forgotten. He carries it so far that he does not even notice such things as concern his first self, which he wants to forget. Anyone who cannot forget himself is unfit for discipleship.
13One consequence of this, too, is that the disciple takes no interest in other people’s first selves and their doings unless this enables him to help them. This is imperative. This also definitively eliminates everything in the way of curiosity, gossip, negative criticism (though not unbiassed analysis for understanding). The private lives of other people are taboo.
14One of D.K.’s disciples exclaimed to himself, “Now I know all I need to know, one day I shall realize it as well”. The teacher (who always knows what his disciples think in matters of life) answered in a letter: “Heard what you said. And inevitably it will be so; but the question is, when? And that is only up to you.”
15“Many disciples think they are being tried beyond their powers. That is a mistake. They do not use their true sources of power. The tension they ought to live in from day to day is very weak and does not require their all.”
16The tension consists in attention to and expectation of the experiences and lessons of the new day in preparedness for all contingencies. This is no physical tension, which would tire and exhaust, but mental attention combined with the joy of learning.
17The disciple is mostly thrown back upon himself and his group. He receives materials to work on, facts, hints, but it is up to him to use this in the right manner. Being aware of his limitation, of what remains to be “conquered” (46 of 49 different kinds of world consciousness), of the tasks which he apprehends as his own and which he seldom performs with the success he hoped, he also experiences the path of life with its heights and abysses. Using his knowledge of mankind he cherishes no illusions as to his own contribution. Trust in the Law and in the wisdom of higher worlds are required for walking the narrow, steep path of discipleship. Those who believe they are ready to walk it fail in their entrance examinations.
18Also a disciple can fall a victim to both illusoriness and fictitiousness, to authorities in the emotional world, so discipleship in no way means infallibility. That is a thing which theosophists have yet to learn, not to mention other sectarians and occultists.
19Also a disciple has a right to guess if he says that it is a guess and nothing he knows. If others take his guesswork to be truth, then it is no fault of his. Where the guesser is concerned, it indicates his deficient contact with Augoeides.
20The disciple eventually learns to see his own total ignorance of life, learns to see how little he can comprehend and understand. That is a thing which mankind has not yet seen, and before it does so everybody’s consciousness is not up to much. The disciple must be prepared to be at school and relearn, rethink about everything he believes he knows and understands, liberate himself from his emotional illusions and mental fictions. That appears a Sisyphean work to him. It will be done, however, even if it takes incarnations to do it.
21A valuable insight is also the fact that there are a few in every country (all countries) who are the authors of evil in the world and who mislead the easily led masses and the injudicious. The instinct of life (the subconscious, latent experience from thousands of incarnations) tends, despite everything, in the direction of the good and right.
22“Joy gives strength.” That is an esoteric axiom, which the disciple of the planetary hierarchy has to work into his daily meditation. The occult leader of nazism succeeded in picking up that axiom and had it proclaimed as a slogan (Kraft durch Freude), to no avail, since the true source of joy was absent.
23The disciple is given to know that he is well taken care of, so that he need not worry. Augoeides, who represents the law of destiny, sees to it that he will have the necessary experiences. The authorities of reaping perform their tasks. The planetary hierarchy watches over him with all its resources. He need not think of himself, his own development, his relations to all those guardian powers. Anyone who lives for others, to serve and to help, develops automatically all the necessary qualities. He receives the knowledge he needs to do his tasks in the esoteric group he belongs to, receives the requisite information from a member of the planetary hierarchy.
24The disciple is exhorted to remember, “in his hours of great trial”, that “his soul watches over him and that his soul is one with all other souls, that to the soul there is neither light nor darkness, only existence and love. There is no separation, only identification with the heart of all love (the essential world). The more you love, the more love (essential molecules) you receive to give.”
1There has been so much imaginative talk about what is meant by initiation that it should be apposite to account for initiation in the sense the planetary hierarchy uses the word. Very generally, initiation simply means expansion of consciousness. This means that the individual has attained a higher stage. Initiation is a process of gradual, self-acquired, increasing knowledge of reality, increasing insight, understanding of ever more kinds of consciousness, widening perspectives, ability to synthesize, to express this and put all of it into action. The acquisition of ever higher kinds of consciousness follows automatically upon this.
2Also the ceremony gone through by the neophyte at the initiation into a knowledge order has been called “initiation” as well as the recognition given to the disciple after he has attained a higher stage of development. However, this is to disregard the essential thing: one-pointed, self-initiated self-activation of consciousness.
3The so-called first initiation approximately corresponds to the individual’s attainment of the stage of emotional attraction; the second initiation, to the incarnation as a saint and the acquisition of higher mental consciousness (47:5); the third, to the acquisition of causal objective consciousness; the fourth, to the dissolution of the causal envelope received from Augoeides and the entry into the essential world of unity, in doing which man definitively leaves the fourth natural kingdom. It should be grasped that those stages of development also presuppose the acquisition of the pertaining qualities and abilities through self-forgetfulness and unselfish service. It is part of the paradoxes of life that the self-forgetfulness of the first self implies self-realization. The second self need not forget himself, for he exists only for unity.
1The perception of reality is one single and common to all higher selves. It is different in the different worlds but the same to all the departments in the same world. What makes the difference between the seven departments in one world is different methods of activity, different uses of energies, due to different relationships to the three aspects of reality; which of them make themselves felt and in different manners. It is in the cosmic worlds that the individual has opportunities to go through all the departments to have an allround illustration of all available possibilities to grasp the inmost things of existence.
2All monads (primordial atoms) can be divided into seven cosmic departments (not to be confused with solar systemic and planetary ones). These seven cosmic departments have their correspondences in seven basic cosmic energies of various intensity, significant for the progression of the monads in the processes of involution and evolution. This explains why monads have individually different tempos of development, a fact which men cannot ascertain since they know nothing of the points of time when monads passed from the various natural kingdoms.
3The seven departments can be brought together in different ways in different contexts. Generally, 1 and 7 correspond, 2 and 6, 3 and 5. 1, 3, 5, and 7 are extravert; 2, 4, and 6, introvert. It should be kept in mind that it is always a matter of energies. Everything is in motion, everything possessed of actualized consciousness is life in the 49 atomic worlds of the cosmos.
4The higher the department, the more dominant is the will or energy aspect. The lower the department, the more dominant is the matter aspect. Add to this the fact that any one of the three aspects manifests itself differently in different kinds of matter: departments 1, 4, and 5 most expediently in mental matter; 2 and 6, in emotional matter; 3 and 7, in physical matter.
5Most generally, it might be said that the first department is that of politicians, the second that of philosophers, the third that of carriers of culture, the fourth that of psychologists, the fifth that of science, the sixth that of religion, and the seventh that of finance. For those who are able to determine which is their principal department, this can be directive when they are to choose a profession.
6Usually four, at the most five, departments develop special activity simultaneously in the worlds of man. The two or three others limit their activity proper to the causal world at the lowest. The interesting feature of this is that those monads, whose causal envelopes belong to these three, do not incarnate during this intermission between periods of activity. This is the reason why monads incarnate in series during periods of activity. Usually the activity of the departments is determined by mankind’s need of guidance in the assimilation of the zodiacal energies of the epoch.
7Needs are different in individuals of different departments. Those who belong to the second, fourth, and sixth departments have less understanding of the graduation of the various kinds of molecular consciousness; and still less, of the matter aspect itself and the pertaining exactitude. Those who belong to the third, fifth, and seventh departments want to follow the processes of manifestation in detail for their future activity as robot constructors and process leaders.
8There is something archetypal in so-called national character, although this has of course been thoroughly misinterpreted by exoterists. This archetypal is due to the fact that individuals having a certain combination of departments in their envelopes tend to incarnate in that nation where this combination predominates. For instance, the “soul” of France is of the fifth department, and her “personality”, of the third department, because most Frenchmen have precisely that combination. It is important to understand that these departments have no bearing on particular stages of development. There are Frenchmen at all stages of development. You can use that combination to advantage at all stages, even though it is particularly valuable at a certain stage or to a certain individual character.
1The first department, the dynamic one (symbol: Shiva) is described as predominantly destructive energy, which is misleading, since it represents dynamis and, therefore, all power. So much is true that it can be put in to act destructively (dissolving matter) and be used when something worn and unfit for life must be pulled down to leave room for fresh construction work. This is also true of civilizations and cultures. The symbol (Shiva) is, however, expressive of the energy that makes the process of expansion possible, the cosmic expansion of consciousness through ever higher, ever more comprehensive worlds, ever widening participation in the cosmic total consciousness.
2The fourth department has been called the department of harmony. That is true of those at the causal stage. For men in general, however, it is a truth with very great reservations, and for those who are striving after a tenable view it is rather a department of conflicts until harmony has been won through struggle and great difficulties. The department of the human collective soul is the fourth, and that fact should explain a great deal. It is hard to find any harmony in that soul. The fourth and sixth departments are the most difficult ones.
3The seventh department (the special one of the physical world and of matter) is in respect of consciousness the most synthetic one, the one most important to basic consciousness activation, enabling the subjective consciousness of involution to acquire objective consciousness and thereby the fundamental distinction between sense and reason, objective and subjective, outer and inner consciousness, “matter and spirit”. It is only in the physical world that man is able to acquire all the qualities and abilities that are possible for the first self. The matters of the emotional and mental worlds are being reshaped by the pertaining kinds of consciousness and that is why objective research in those worlds is out of the question. They are without significance where problems of world view are concerned but are the more important to the psychological problems of life view, problems of subjective consciousness.
4The Liberal Catholic Church, founded by Leadbeater, is an attempt at uniting essential features of catholicism and esoterics. Leadbeater demonstrates the significance of the sacraments and of the ritual to those who have the seventh department in their envelopes, a counterpart of the ritual of freemasonry without sacraments. That was the reason why Leadbeater also founded co-masonry, where women are also accepted into the order. Since more and more people incarnate having the seventh department in either their causal or triad envelopes, these two creations of Leadbeater will probably meet with a growing support. They meet a need in those who in reverence and devotion follow the ritual process, a symbolic rendering of certain processes of manifestation.
1The departments in the envelopes of incarnations are due partly to the law of destiny, partly to the law of reaping (where the individual in a previous incarnation has activated most, has concentrated most of his consciousness and energy).
2It is the departments in the envelopes of incarnation that determine what the monad is in the first self. Since “like is drawn unto like”, also the individual’s entourage mainly follows from this. When, some time in the future, the ancient Chaldean astrology will again be made exoteric, the interpreters of nativities will be able to read from them what departments envelopes belong to.
3The departments in the envelopes indicate only possibilities and preconditions. To what extent these can be utilized depends partly on the level, partly on qualities and abilities already acquired. For instance, you may have the fifth department in your mental envelope and still be unable to use the pertaining energies even though you are interested in problems of philosophy or science. On the other hand, in the current emotional eon and at the present general emotional stage of mankind, it is pretty certain that the sixth department in the emotional envelope makes itself felt, most often at the expense of the other kinds of consciousness, with strong feelings and with illusions that are irremediable or in any case difficult to control.
4A disciple having the second department in his causal envelope has to learn liberation and simultaneously attraction and inclusiveness; having the first department, to be free of attachment and simultaneously to include the whole world in a series of ongoing attractions. The disciple is trained in how to grasp paradoxes. To be one with all and not be attached by anyone is an art that has to be learnt.
5The fifth department in the mental envelope makes it easier to receive inspiration from Augoeides. But like all departments of the series 1–3–5–7 it has a tendency to isolation, makes it more difficult for you to emit your own “radiation” and to receive that of others.
6Mental selves having the first department in their causal envelopes easily tend to isolate themselves from the surrounding world as well as neglect to activate their higher emotional consciousness anew. They sense no need to avail themselves of emotional dynamism. As disciples they find it particularly difficult to reacquire the energies of emotional attraction in order to get into contact with the energies of unity in the essential world via the unity centre of the causal envelope.
7In that final process, in which man becomes a perfect physical self, his first triad is enclosed in a triad envelope of the third department. He becomes a perfect emotional self when enclosed in a triad envelope of the second department; and a causal self, in a triad envelope of the first department.
8For man to become a second self, his causal envelope must belong to anyone of the first three departments. If at causalization the monad has received a causal envelope of any one of departments 4–7, it must, in order to become a second self, supply its causal envelope matter of any one of departments 1–3.
9The third self chooses his department himself, one of the seven, usually according to the chief department of the third triad.
10Not knowing anything about the departments in the individual’s causal and triadal envelopes the diagnoses that psychoanalysts make are not up to much. Only esoteric psychology can elucidate the pertaining problems.
11In order to determine which departments are found in a man’s envelopes of incarnation, you must have become at least an essential self. On the other hand, those who have achieved discipleship know which departments enter into their own causal and triadal envelopes. When, in the future, we shall have more knowledge of the departments and their consciousness aspect, it is expected that esoteric psychologists will be able even to establish the departments of the envelopes of incarnation. The same is true of the individual’s evolutionary stage, though not his level. Habitual presumption, comprehending everything, settles such trifles at once. And the psychoanalysts, of course, by studying dream life, the key of all psychological enigmas!
1Those familiar with astrology can with profit study the relations of the twelve zodiacal constellations to the seven departments: Aries, first and seventh departments; Taurus, fourth; Gemini, second; Cancer, third and seventh; Leo, first and fifth; Virgo, second and sixth; Libra, third; Scorpio, fourth; Sagittarius, fourth, fifth, and sixth; Capricorn, first, third, and seventh; Aquarius, fifth; Pisces, second and sixth.
2Five constellations influence one department only, five influence two, and two constellations influence three departments. In contrast, all seven departments have access to three constellations each.
3The sun sign in any incarnation indicates what kinds of latent departmental energies in the subconscious will be activated; the rising sign, what kinds of departmental energies in the superconscious will possibly be absorbed, depending on the level.
1An analysis that is useful for those who are able to do it is to try and find how understanding, unity (love), and energy express themselves in each of the seven departments. This frees thought from any onesided conception of the departments in respect of consciousness and energies. The energy aspect is particularly important as a counterpoise to mere theorizing. The essential thing is to put knowledge into action, if your aim is change and not passivity and standstill.
2Understanding of the departments also includes a knowledge of their unconscious influence (effect), the technique, mechanics, and objective purpose of each department. There is much that cannot be said until hylozoics has been accepted as a working hypothesis. Individual understanding is always precarious. Only general understanding affords – if not a guarantee – at least a possibility of allroundness counteracting onesided approaches.
1Astrologers have heard about “esoteric” astrology. And at once they believe they know what it is. In that case it would not be esoteric. It is the same faith in one’s own ability to judge, the same presumption as in all domains of knowledge. They believe they are able to produce esoteric astrology by speculation, or they accept the constructions of some fantast, if such a person claims to understand the matter. It probably needs to be pointed out that they would not understand, let alone be able to work at esoteric astrology, if it were publicized. Only causal selves who have worked at astrology during many incarnations, old Chaldean astrologers, who were active thirty thousand years ago, are in a position to do so. It is to be hoped that they will soon find the time is up to incarnate again.
2When the esoteric astrology will be elucidated some time, men will be able to assimilate purposively the twelve different zodiacal energies as the twelve months of the year pass. Then present-day astrology will have been relegated to nursery psychology.
3From the individual point of view, man is determined by his nativity. Each of his envelopes (bodies) is determined by planetary, interplanetary, or interstellar vibrations that act most strongly in him. He may be thoroughly divided or thoroughly integrated, depending on the harmony or disharmony of the vibrations in his envelopes. Between these two extremes are found all possible degrees of division or cooperation. At the present stage of mankind’s development, without esoteric knowledge of reality and life, man remains ignorant of the pertaining realities, an enigma to himself and others.
4The zodiacal vibrations are inaccessible to those at lower stages of development. Those individuals are affected only by the planetary vibrations. This effect may be highly variegated, due to the positions of the planets in the different zodiacal constellations in the individual’s nativity. The Jupiter vibrations are most easily discernible in the general pattern of behaviour. They are also the most powerful ones within the solar system.
1The causes of everything happening in the solar system are cosmic energies that arrive via the twelve zodiacal constellations and pour through our solar system to which they are conveyed by the planets and departments. Therefore, esoteric astrology will once again be the most important discipline.
2These cosmic energies arrive from a certain zodiacal constellation during each epoch. As the zodiacal epochs pass by, atoms pour into the planets from the twelve zodiacal constellations (or via them from other solar systems) in succession. All those are solar systems of the second or third degree. It is those atoms that effect revolutions in the three aspects of reality within our planet, bringing renewed impulses into all areas.
3Esoterics divides the course of past events (men’s so-called universal history) into zodiacal epochs of some 2500 years (varying), a stellar annual cycle of some 25 000 years, and the revolution of our solar system round Alcyone in the Pleiades of some 250 000 years. The Piscean zodiacal epoch lasted from 550 BCE till 1950 CE, the Aquarian zodiacal epoch will last from 1950 till 4450.
4During the Piscean zodiacal epoch of 2500 years, energies were largely made up of Piscean atoms. In the new epoch, we shall have mainly Aquarian atoms, affecting all kinds of matter in our planet with a particular effect, manifesting itself in all natural kingdoms. It takes about 500 years before the full effect of the new atomic kinds is obtained. In the period of transition, the conflict between the two atomic kinds gives occasion to frictions that are in many respects difficult to control.
5These atomic kinds are of secondary matter (involutionary matter having passive consciousness which can be activated). Primary matter (lacking consciousness) pours directly from the highest world through all worlds to the lowest world in an unchecked flow.
6All atoms have their individual characters and react differently to different kinds of vibrations (energies). This in particular is the reason why the effect is different in the three aspects of reality. The Piscean zodiacal vibrations favoured the supremacy of emotion and the tendency to blind belief in authority. The Aquarian vibrations stimulate the individual’s ability to reflect, desire to understand, and striving to have direct knowledge through ascertaining facts.
7It is particularly important to understand the Law (laws of nature and laws of life) as a condition of freedom.
8The higher culture has reached in a zodiacal epoch, the greater prospects of those incarnating to quickly reach higher stages of development and even become causal selves. During the latter part of the epoch, characterized by phenomena of decay, prospects are reduced.
9There is something tragicomical in the fact that in our time, with its perverse “culture”, the very people who work frantically to destroy culture are appreciated and rewarded as representatives of culture, whereas the true cultural workers of past ages had to live in misery.
1To those who can disregard the blinding cult of appearances, history demonstrates that the Piscean zodiacal epoch, the last 2500 years with the sixth department as the chief one, was an epoch of nameless suffering, an epoch of brutality and bestiality. It was an epoch of bad reaping, an epoch of barbarism during which the West was afflicted with the superstitions of the Christian religion, so totally opposite the teaching of Christos and his attempted contribution. Religious hatred dominated the whole so-called civilized world. Christianity took the lead in this, a fact to which fifty million victims witness. But what do historians know of this evident fact?
2The clans at the stage of barbarism will also have an opportunity to incarnate and display their levels of development, and certainly they have done so. How historians faced with these hard facts can fantasize about the equality of all people is inconceivable. (It is quite another thing that all should be equal before the law, all should have a right to develop their potential, all should have a right to freedom under law.) It is typical that the history of culture and civilization, history proper, history of ideas, began to be studied only in our times. In Scandinavia, revolutionary and of course much decried Georg Brandes summarized the currents of ideas during the 18th century (Voltaire) and the 19th century.
1At every transition to a new zodiacal epoch (at intervals of some 2500 years), the new zodiacal energies have a destructive effect on the forms built by the old energies. The New Testament gnostic descriptions of the chaos expected at the transition from the Arian to the Piscean epoch have been taken as descriptions of a cosmic catastrophe. By and large, the description fits all zodiacal transitions. Mankind cannot control the new energies pouring in, the human brain cannot rightly apprehend the new ideas. An age ensues where “everything is in a state of flux”, everything is subjective and arbitrary and no one seems to be able to tell right and wrong, true and false any longer. This state of affairs will last until the new energies have managed to build new forms in political, social, economical, cultural, etc., respects.
2The period of some 500 years we are living in just now marks the transition from the Piscean to the Aquarian zodiacal epoch. It corresponds to the transition from the Arian to the Piscean zodiacal epoch with its religious and philosophical confusion. Like then, also now appear sophists who cause damage by analysing and dissolving all ideas not being able to put forward anything rational instead. The result is that people cannot any more discern the most basic concepts of right. It is all like a madhouse: modern politics, culture, literature, art, music.
3Disturbances in the emotional world are especially apparent. The inability to handle the new emotional energies is the ground for all the deplorable phenomena we are witnessing, chaos in emotional life and “cultural radicals”, actually barbarians, pulling down the culture that nevertheless existed thanks to exceptional geniuses in various domains. This emotional and mental chaos favours all manner of occult delusions. In their ignorance of reality, spiritualists and clairvoyants take guidance from individuals in the emotional world whom they take to be omniscient, not understanding that there are no such beings in that world.
1In the molecular kinds of the solar system there is a constant exchange of cosmic atoms from different zodiacal constellations. As the vernal equinoctial point moves from the constellation of Pisces to that of Aquarius, Piscean atoms are being changed for Aquarian ones. This implies entirely new kinds of energies (vibrations), affecting all within the solar system. This entails for our planet a great change in the matter and consciousness aspects, which will be apparent in all the four natural kingdoms (the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms), and not least in the human kingdom. During a transitional period of some 500 years we shall experience a total transformation in all areas of life, natural science and culture, religion, government, economical and social conditions. In addition a radically new view of life is needed. It will be the task of the esoterician to present those constructive measures which will be needed to shape the new forms of society.
2The incoming zodiacal epoch of Aquarius of 2500 years may be called the “epoch of law”, since in this epoch conformity to law will be the most characteristic state as mankind acquires understanding of law, the basic view that law rules in all events, symbolized in ritual, process, organization.
3There are epochs of progress and epochs of decay; not all offer the same great opportunities of development as the zodiacal epoch of Aquarius which has now entered. If mankind will not avail itself of this great opportunity, then it will take a very long time before an equally great one recurs.
4The things just mentioned will be doubted by the learned, which is quite natural. They doubt everything they do not believe they know themselves. That attitude is in many respects justified, for credulity has been the curse of mankind. Nevertheless it is a drag on development. When mankind has once realized that we receive all our knowledge of things we cannot ascertain ourselves from the planetary hierarchy, then our consciousness development will go on at an enormously increased speed.
5Within the next one hundred years, however, such discoveries will be made as will force science to acknowledge the existence of the etheric world as well as the emotional world. In addition, the Aquarian energies will supply the human brain with such mental molecules that belief in authority will yield to independent thought. The “learned” will accept hylozoics as the only rational working hypothesis. So doing they will be able to think in accord with reality which, it alone, brings about a total revolution in ways of looking at things and understanding of reality. It will also enable the planetary hierarchy to reappear and to show men how they will solve the problem of living a rational life in the physical world, which otherwise they would never be able to do. This is all the more necessary as men have acquired a knowledge of the laws of nature in technical respect that they will be unable to control the energies they have managed to discover.
6In their habitual thoughtlessness, men have not asked themselves what the rise and rapid development of science ever since the 18th century depends on. Do they know from where the revolutionary ideas, discoveries, and inventions derive their origin? In 1775, the planetary government turned on the energies from the fifth cosmic department, the energies that have made those mental revolutions possible. In 1950, however, the planetary government stopped the influx. The original intention was to allow those energies to pour into the planet many years yet. But mankind has so abused those energies that they have to be stopped. After the year 2000 there will be no more “scientific revolutions”, merely further elaboration of the ideas arrived so far.
7It evidences mankind’s catastrophic emergency more than anything that the planetary government finds itself compelled to disconnect the energies of the fifth department from our planet, precisely when the Aquarian zodiacal energies with the seventh as their main department enter into the solar system. Further technological advances would bring on inevitable catastrophe, as mankind abuses everything to the detriment of life.
1It has been thought that the esoteric knowledge orders should not have been closed in 1875 and that the true knowledge of reality and life should not have been publicized as happened. In India, in particular, this attitude is rather common. All knowledge is abused, and the more knowledge, the greater power is obtained by those who seek power with all means. But the planetary hierarchy considered that mankind had developed so far that it largely should be able at least to comprehend hylozoics and so be liberated from the current disorienting views. It cannot be helped that the black ones eagerly pick up all new esoteric facts. Knowledge is like sunshine and rain pouring on the evil and the good alike. Of two things you have to choose the less evil and counter the ruling tyranny of fictions in theology, philosophy, social idiology, and, not least, politics. All who are in a position to choose shall have an opportunity to do so. “Tyranny” perhaps seems an exaggeration. From the psychological point of view, however, they are the defenceless victims of life-ignorant propaganda. Where consciousness development is concerned, it is a battle for the souls, and the question is open whether mankind will reach the fifth natural kingdom. Those who have prospects of seeing the truth shall at least have a chance to find it. The truth must be available to everybody.
2Such as the means of destruction have been developed, mankind once again faces the choice of either of two alternatives: to develop its consciousness or start all over again from the stage of barbarism. The planetary government does what it can to prevent the catastrophe. But it has no right to force mankind. Using intensely charged mental ideas, which they transfer telepathically, the black ones can force mankind to act in a certain manner. Such a recourse is not open to the planetary hierarchy, who must not violate the law of freedom. The word “free-will” is misleading, since free-will presupposes knowledge of life and therefore the possibility of free choice in respect of life and in respect of law .
1In all ages there has been much imagined about devils and their following, all of it the twaddle of the usual ignorance of life, that the time is certainly up for an attempt at clarification of the true state of affairs. As there must be leaders of the energy of evolution, so there must be leaders of the energy of involution. The latter also perform a necessary function. You cannot simply identify those powers of involution with satanists, even though satanists also work with involutionary energies. The black lodge was formed in Atlantis by the so-called lower priesthood, who had acquired a knowledge of magic and subsequently refused to be guided by the planetary hierarchy. They fell victims to the seemingly omnipotent desire for power and became “their own masters”.
2As in so many other cases, Besant and Leadbeater had an erroneous notion of their possibilities of further existence. It is not true that all the “black magicians” are annihilated when the solar systems dissolves. The most powerful of them are able, via their own atomic chain in the monad’s 43-atom, to move to worlds 36–42. For the monads of expansion, this septenary of worlds constitute the material basis of the second divine kingdom. The black ones, being unable to live in any one of the kingdoms of unity, 46–1, cannot experience the common consciousness of these, sojourn in the kingdom mentioned, enclosed in a self-formed world, maintaining themselves by participating in the process of involution, certainly for their own purposes and so counteracting evolution. The black lodge on our planet receives energies from those cosmic satanists, and that is why the black lodge has such enormous power that the planetary hierarchy is able to implement its plans only by the aid of the planetary government. Thus the individuals of the cosmic black lodge must not be confused with those collective beings who in higher kingdoms work with involutionary energies. The black ones are (in rare cases) able in this manner to attain the worlds of the second divine kingdom, but they never succeed in attaining the third divine kingdom (29–35) nor are they able to avail themselves of the energies of that kingdom or of still higher kingdoms, which, in contrast, the planetary government is able to. Even if the cosmic black ones have aims that are hostile to life when working at involution, they nevertheless further the great process of involution against their will, and so they work against themselves in this respect as in so many other. Mephisto, in Goethe’s Faust, enunciated an esoteric fact when saying that his force was a portion of that power which always desires evil and always creates good. However, the black ones are absolute opponents of evolution and implacable enemies of all those who make a contribution to evolution, so that you are fully justified in regarding them as the enemies of life, the very incarnations of all evil in existence.
3The attempts made hitherto by the planetary hierarchy to unite the members of a group into a unit, a group-soul, collective soul, collective being, have failed. Not even the human elite seems to be mature for such experiments. Therefore, hopes are small that esoteric groups could make the contribution a unitary being would be successful in. In contrast, it would seem as if the black ones achieved more in this respect. At the present stage of mankind’s development, it is easier to unite people in hatred than in love. Leadbeater’s assertion that the black ones are supposedly too separative in their being to be able to unite is erroneous. The members of the black lodge cooperate efficiently in order to preserve their power. They know as well as the white ones that unity is essential to the continuance of their power in the worlds of man. The black kingdom is not a kingdom divided unto itself.
4The black lodge is under efficient surveillance and its power is limited to the function of being agents of bad reaping. It entirely depends on mankind whether it will be able to wield any power at all.
5It is impossible for others than essential selves to determine whether an individual is an initiate of the black lodge or allows himself to be led by it consciously or unconsciously. Rather, such an individual appears to be a saint and a great friend of mankind. It lies to his interest to recruit as many friends as possible, so increasing his influence. But to be sure: if anyone crosses his path, thwarting his plans, this individual must expect to face an irreconcilable enemy, who will use every imaginable means to crush the dauntless one. Never expect any leniency from that quarter!
1Present events are effects of the causes of the past. Knowing about these factors it is in many cases possible to assess the future with one hundred per cent certainty: the more certain, the nearer it is. The causal chain always exists and can be ascertained in the causal world in so far as no supercausal factors contribute, which is a rare case where most first selves are concerned. The corresponding is true of the “collective beings” of nations, made up of first selves (the past of the national collectives).
2The ability to foresee the future presupposes a knowledge of the plan laid down by the planetary government for the processes of manifestation during the current zodiacal epoch and a knowledge of the past causes of future events (the causal chains drawn into the future), whether they concern nations or individuals. Uncertainty is the result when factors are added that influence the normal, otherwise inevitable, course of events.
3To those who are able to follow the events of the future as they experience the causes of the past, the future often appears as alternative possibilities. The fourth natural kingdom with man’s possibility of choice is the only hindrance to exact prediction. The three lowest natural kingdoms are in their reactions determined by the forces of nature. The fifth and higher kingdoms act in accord with laws of nature and laws of life. Only the human kingdom chooses its own path. Whichever path mankind finally will choose in our time, the path of development or the path of self-destruction, cannot be determined with certainty even by the planetary hierarchy, although there is some probability indicating that the urge of self-preservation will be decisive. There is thus no contradiction (as people have thought) in speaking of catastrophe and further development at the same time.
4The law of freedom is the factor that hinders the planetary hierarchy from deciding whichever path mankind is to walk. The monad–self–individual can determine his own activity in so far as this is possible in the different natural kingdoms and within the limits of self-acquired ability.
5The impossibility to exactly determine how mankind will act may influence the plans for the future that are being worked out in the planetary hierarchy. New plans are constantly being made as the calculations of probability prove erroneous.
6The planetary government and planetary hierarchy receive cosmic energies from countless directions, and the work to adapt them to the countless kinds of processes of manifestation going on within the planet also demands a certain measure of prevision and revision of plans.
7In so far as evolution goes on new technical methods must also be elaborated. Add to this the fact that all matter and all material shapes are formed, change, dissolve, and are reformed presenting new problems to consciousness development in changing conditions, then we may perhaps have a faint inkling of the problems which the planetary government and planetary hierarchy have to solve, quite apart from the fact that the individuals making up those bodies also have to work for the own development.
8The information that mankind’s choice of path cannot be foreseen is important inasmuch as it also refutes fatalism (the belief in inevitable fate) and predestination (the belief in fore-ordainment). It is true that the final goal (everybody’s acquisition of the highest cosmic omniscience and omnipotence) is determined, but the path to it is an experimentation with the factors existing. In ordinary cases the future is foreseen with some measure of probability through knowledge of the past causes of present events. But when there is a constant addition of many new factors that have incalculable effects influencing otherwise inevitable events, then there is not a high probability. By foresight the individual can change his otherwise inevitable destiny. Warnings by those who can see into the future could prevent an otherwise inevitable catastrophe. The Indian doctrine of karma is a total misconception of the law of reaping. It is correct that a sowing will be reaped and that you can in many cases foresee both how and when if no new influencing factors are added.
9The processes of manifestations presuppose a plain laid down. The entire cosmic organization works at countless processes that sooner or later are carried through. But it is precisely in the matter of time that calculation may be uncertain, since it is impossible to foresee the factors intervening on account of the law of freedom (within limits determined by all laws of nature and other laws of life), valid for all monads who have acquired the possibility of self-determination. They can by their activity or passivity accelerate or impede the process (and the “application of laws”) though not possibly prevent its final implementation. It is entirely up to the individual as a first self how many unnecessary incarnations he will use up to become a second self. It depends on how he uses time.
10When the new zodiacal energies, affecting both the matter aspect and the consciousness aspect in all kingdoms, have been stabilized in the process of evolution, “all conditions become normal”, and this enhances the possibility to rightly assess the future.
1Beginning in 1875, the planetary hierarchy made an attempt to awaken those who had reached the stages of culture and humanity to see the illusoriness of their emotional consciousness and the fictitiousness of their mental consciousness. Already in 1882 they had realized that this attempt had failed. They subsequently decided to enter upon a new course: to gather telepathically all those who had seen that the prevalent religions were untenable in their conception of so-called spiritual reality, who had seen that so-called culture was increasingly disoriented, who had seen that the attempts made by the political idiologies to solve the social problems were hopeless. Those who have seen this are to be sure those who have once been initiates of the esoteric knowledge orders, which were eventually, ever since Atlantis went down, instituted by members of the planetary hierarchy (essential selves). Increasingly more of these former initiates are being awakened by the teaching that has issued from the planetary hierarchy ever since 1875 and particularly since 1920, for the remembrance anew of the knowledge they had once acquired. They are all (consciously or unconsciously) aspirants to discipleship of the planetary hierarchy, which has decided to gather everybody to a common work preliminary to the recall of the planetary hierarchy.
2There must not be any organization. But the intention is that everybody will receive the names and addresses of all (uninitiated or former initiates) who have volunteered to participate wholeheartedly in a concerted striving to serve mankind, evolution, and unity and so doing make it possible for the planetary hierarchy to help mankind again with the problems that cannot be solved without its contribution. The nucleus of this group of world servers is made up of causal selves in contact with the planetary hierarchy. From a humble beginning this free association of understanding seekers, aspirants, etc., will become an ever larger group with hundreds of thousands and millions of members in all countries and in all nations.
1Thanks to the general breakthrough in human consciousness development on the basis of scientific thinking instead of abortive theological and philosophical speculation, mental selves who hitherto have not been able to incarnate, since they have had no prospects of further development, have indeed been able to incarnate in growing numbers. Increasingly more of them can become causal selves, and so the planetary hierarchy faces a new problem.
2For the time being, the planetary hierarchy is to be regarded as the fifth natural kingdom. As millions of men pass to the worlds of the second self, however, they will necessarily make up a particular collective, since the planetary hierarchy is an organization that has special tasks and inescapable functions to fulfil in the worlds 43–46 and thus cannot receive them all.
3The planetary hierarchy has solved the problem thus. It has established a new natural kingdom between itself and the human kingdom, a kingdom called the “servers”. It is a kingdom of those who have consecrated their future lives to the service of mankind in some respect. The most advanced members are causal selves who are in contact with the hierarchy and lay down the guidelines of the work for the raising of mankind’s consciousness and knowledge.
4This new fifth kingdom will take over the tasks of guiding consciousness development of human individuals at the lower stages and of supervising consciousness development in the three lowest natural kingdoms. This will relieve the planetary hierarchy of that burden. The new natural kingdom will also take over many tasks that have hitherto been reserved for the deva hierarchy.
5A first beginning to form this new natural kingdom, being detached from though supervised by the planetary hierarchy, has been made by 146 causal selves in incarnation who voluntarily and temporarily have renounced further consciousness development in order to form a nucleus of “picked troops” whom disciples and aspirants to discipleship may join. Everybody is welcome if he has finally decided to forget himself and to live in order to serve mankind in future incarnations.
6It is these causal selves who in all nations will prove to be the most competent governors superseding the incompetent people now ruling. There is no information available as to how the planetary hierarchy plans the further consciousness development of these causal selves.
7There are many mental selves who, in order to reach people more easily and serve them on their levels, refuse to acquire higher consciousness. In the planetary hierarchy they are called “old faithfuls” and hold a unique position in it. They desire no favours for themselves but share the common lot of men. Of course they can be particularly “used” by the planetary hierarchy.
8Those whom you begin to collaborate with as an esoterician you have a reason to assume are members of your esoteric clan, possibly your esoteric family or larger affiliation, and you may assume that you will collaborate with them in the future as well.
9May the energies of the cosmic worlds pour through the group of the true servers of life!! For they make up a unitary group. They carry the sign on their forehead, visible to all who have causal objective consciousness.
1“Invocation and evocation” are two of the many new concepts the planetary hierarchy has given mankind.
2“Invocation” means request; and “evocation”, the meeting of the needs. They correspond partially to the old concepts of “prayer” and “granting of prayer” which have been abused so incredibly. But invocation is much more than what you only mean by “prayer”. It is also the instinctive longing of “something higher” as well as the disciples’ clearly conscious request of assistance from the planetary hierarchy. The needs are always there and are met when there is a prospect for the right use of the energies received, which seldom is the case. If the motive of invocation is to receive assistance in the service of mankind, evolution, and unity, and if there is a prospect for right use, then the assistance will be given: evocation.
3Evocation thus is intended to have the effect that the insight gained is put into action.
4Invocation-evocation are processes going on in all worlds, not just in the worlds of man. Invocation from a lower world implies the transmission of matter–consciousness energies “upwards”, from a lower to a higher world, and also the demonstration of the need of and receptivity to the higher world energies that are received as an answer to the request. The energies transmitted “up” to a higher world are used expediently for return energies without the need of particular adaptation. Of course, the energies transmitted “up” are such as once were received from higher kingdoms, since all energies come from those kingdoms.
5Dualism in the esoteric sense refers to the opposition of higher and lower. This opposition is always there until the individual has reached the highest cosmic world, although in the worlds of unity (46–1) it is not perceived as opposition. The science of invocation and evocation refers to this very relation; for instance, the mental as lower in relation to the causal as higher. The lower always finds response in the higher whenever the lower is prepared to receive the material energies of the higher. In this “prepared” lie the requisite methodical and systematical conditions of right use. The currents of positive and negative energy are constant and work in both directions: evocatively “downwards” and invocatively “upwards” as evolutionary energies.
6At mankind’s present stage of development, men are unable to rightly use the potential of invocation, since they lack the knowledge of the laws of life and cannot “demand” rightly. The prayers of men generally conflict with the laws of life or bring about a strengthening of the selfish tendency or are harmful to their development. Therefore, men receive from the planetary hierarchy requisite formulations, so-called mantras, which they are encouraged to use. Only those are able to utilize these mantras rightly who understand the import of demand and are prepared to rightly use the energies received, use them for mankind, evolution, and unity.
1Like most Sanskrit terms used in esoterics, also the term “mantra” has many different meanings.
2“Mantra” can refer to the “words of power” (combinations of sounds that are often unintelligible to outsiders), which being uttered with the right intonation have an energy effect produced by the sound. To understand at all how such a thing is possible you must know certain esoteric facts: that energy is sound and sound is energy, that all sounds have an energy effect; realities that Western science has not yet discovered. The yoga philosophers know this in theory, but since they have lost the knowledge of the right intonation of mantras handed down to them, the powers of these have remained inefficacious.
3“Mantra” can also refer to generally intelligible formulations which when repeated regularly serve to keep mental consciousness at the understanding of the factors of development, the laws of life, the reality of unity, etc. In this kind of mantra no importance is attached to pronunciation and intonation but rather to the understanding of the pertaining idea. Such an ancient mantra is: “The sons of men are one and I am one with them. I seek to love, not hate. I seek to serve and not exact due service. I seek to heal, not hurt... Let inner union demonstrate, and outer cleavage be gone. Let love prevail. Let all men love.”
4The most important use of mantras is the collective one by mankind in its work with invocation to higher kingdoms.
5Invocation:
Let the Forces of Light bring illumination to mankind.
Let the Spirit of Peace be spread abroad.
May men of goodwill everywhere meet in a spirit of cooperation.
May forgiveness on the part of all men be the keynote at this time.
Let power attend the efforts of the Great Ones.
So let it be, and help us to do our part.
1Through the secretary of the planetary hierarchy, 45-self D.K., Christos–Maitreya has given a mantra sanctioned for use by the planetary ruler, “The Great Invocation”. Not a single day passes without Christos–Maitreya and the entire planetary hierarchy repeating this invocation. It is part of the science of invocation and evocation which mankind soon will receive and which is intended to supplant common meditation and religious prayer.
2To the degree that mankind is mentalized, it will unconsciously grow increasingly more receptive to causal and essential energies. The esotericians participating in the invocation contribute with their emotional and mental vibrations to the strengthening of the effect of these causal and essential energies in mankind.
3The mantra goes:
From the point of Light within the mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men.
Let Light descend on Earth.
From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May Christ return to Earth.
From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men–
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.
From the centre which we call the race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out.
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.
Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.
4Or, in another formulation:
Let causal energies pour into
the causal consciousness of men
and activate this passive consciousness.
Let causal energies pour down on Earth.
Let essential ideas from the world of unity
activate the passive attraction consciousness of men.
May Christos–Maitreya appear anew.
Let the knowledge of the meaning and goal of existence
guide the little wills of men.
Let the ideas of love and knowledge
be realized by the human elite
and may it seal the door where evil dwells.
May knowledge and love and power
realize the plan on Earth.
5Underlying this invocation is the fact, among others, that all monads share in the cosmic total consciousness and that it is the task of all monads to profit by this share as much as possible in the different natural kingdoms. All receive as much of the energy necessary to this as they need for self-realization.
6The first three mantras of the invocation concern the three aspects. Light is matter. It is a foregone conclusion that matter at the same time is consciousness and energy: matter from the causal world (the “world of light” according to an ancient symbol). The second mantra has reference to the consciousness energies of the essential world; and the third mantra, to the will energies of the superessential world. The fourth mantra clarifies that it is up to mankind to realize the ideas connected with the energies received. The more you know about evolution and its different stages, the better you understand the importance of invocation.
Endnotes by the translator into English
9.171.5 “Talk with peasants in peasants’ ways and with learned men in Latin” is quoted from Swedish poet and Nobel Prize winner Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Song After Harvest in his work The Songs of Fridolin, published in 1898).
9.190.6 “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” The Bible, Isaiah, 30:15.
The above text constitutes the essay The Second Self (Part 2) by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book The Way of Man by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1999 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.