AAB: We start a new rule today. [Reading from The Rays and the Initiations, p. 112]:

In unison let the group perceive the Triad shining forth, dimming the light of the Soul and blotting out the light of form. The macrocosmic Whole is all there is. Let the group perceive that Whole and then no longer use the thought, "My Soul and thine.”

AAB: Before we took up the first rule the Tibetan said we had to attempt to think and understand not in terms of discipleship but in terms of initiation. It really is a difficult approach. I think we have to read this with an entirely open mind and let a lot of our preconceived ideas go, because the difference between the attitudes of an initiate and that of the intelligentsia is as great as it is between the intelligentsia and the illiterate individual. [Reading further from The Rays and the Initiations, pp. 111-112]:

Rule 5, which we are now purposing to consider, is one of great interest and practicality. I would remind you that one of the new things that the coming era of spiritual expansion will see is the inauguration of something entirely new: Group Initiation. Hitherto, one by one, units of the human family have found their way through the Door of Initiation. If this system is to persist, and considering the vast numbers of Souls in and out of incarnation who must eventually achieve the goal – two-thirds of the total in this world cycle – even the greater cycles, which include many world cycles, would prove too short a time. The space-time schedule of the planetary Logos Himself would be upset, for He has such a schedule for the cycle of His present incarnation. There is a term set for the appearance of His body of manifestation, our planet, just as there is for the human body. He therefore has to work out His plans within a certain time limit, and this factor conditions the experience of all the lives that move within the radius of His expression, including the human kingdom.

It must be remembered also that as humanity develops and more and more people begin to function as Souls, the nature of the Soul (which is relationship) begins to have an effect; people become larger in their outlook and their vision. The outlook of the separated self vanishes, and group relationship and group interest supersede that intense personal and interior relationship and interest that have made the evolving human what he is: first of all an integrated personality, and then a disciple – a candidate for initiation. As more and more disciples come into group realization it will become increasingly possible for the Hierarchy to admit such disciples in group formation. That is one reason necessitating the reestablishing of the Ancient Mysteries on Earth. That group relation has to be demonstrated in the three worlds and expressed by disciples in their group life upon the physical plane.  Hence the new experiment being undertaken by the Hierarchy of externalizing Their Ashrams. This process involves immense difficulty, owing to the astralism, the ambitions and the growing personality influence of so many people. Many groups, under self-seeking leaders, will react to this experiment and will proclaim themselves as Masters with Ashrams and as occupied with training people for initiation. Signs of this can already be seen.

AAB: In one place the Tibetan makes a distinction between the group and the Ashram. He would call this a group, but a group can be an embryonic Ashram. As a group becomes thoroughly fused and blended and sensitive to each other’s quality, it can be stepped up and become an Ashram or, if that doesn’t happen, the group can break up and certain people will be gathered into the Ashram and the rest will have to wait. I think we ought to focus our attention as a group upon that possibility and upon the quality we have, upon the relationship that we have to each other, upon our attitudes to each other, in order that it might be possible that this group become an Ashram. When I say that, you have to remember that a Master’s Ashram is divided into many smaller Ashrams. The Hierarchy is the Ashram of the Christ. It is divided into seven groups, seven types of Masters, but these groups will be divided into many Ashrams, and some disciples in their Master’s group have their own Ashrams. When a disciple is himself a Master, he will take with him the people he had worked with in the Master’s Ashram. You can have a group gathered together that is made up of people who belong to an Ashram and people who don’t belong. This is very difficult. [Reading further from The Rays and the Initiations, p. 112]:

The Hierarchy has been confronted with definite difficulty in this matter, for on the one hand the Masters were faced with the glamor-making tendency and astralism of the majority of people and, secondly, with the rapid advance of the human consciousness into the realm of group relationship, group life, group reactions and group activity. This has brought about the intention of the Hierarchy to train such ready minds and hearts for a united moving forward through the Door of Light onto the Lighted Way. That externalization has not yet taken place. Tentative experiments are being made with some success and some discouragement.

AAB: It is for you to decide whether you are part of an experiment or not. You have an interesting occult situation. The Master is not really the one who is making the experiment. You have to remember that the Masters create thoughtforms; they work with thoughtform building, and into their thoughtforms they may integrate different people, but the experiment lies in the people themselves, whether they are ready to take the risk and experiment with the Master. It is a very interesting and abstruse relationship because the group is not integrated until all the members in the group are reacting similarly and simultaneously. In a group, members can hold a group back. Everybody in an Ashram must have attained a certain stage of reliability and inclusiveness so that there is no fear of their disrupting the Ashram. That is not the case with a Master’s group. It is a mixed body, and a sense of responsibility is developed because people watch themselves to see if they are the cause of a lack of group progress. The sensitivity that you must develop in the group before you enter an Ashram is also developed.

An Ashram is a silent place. It isn’t a place where the Master gets up and talks or where senior disciples give instructions. Everything is done via the Science of Impression within the Ashram. What goes on in the group is developing an ability to be sensitive to impression. If I am trying to get something over and you don’t understand, it may be my fault that you are not impressed, or you might be so eager that your eagerness gets in your way, or you might have barriers up, or you might have interfering thoughtforms, or concerns and worries that are stronger than the impression that you are seeking to register. It is something that is very interesting to work out in this group – the development of sensitivity to impression. It has to be developed in yourself before you enter an Ashram.

Take the work I do for the Tibetan. It is impossible for me to be aware of what he is trying to impress upon my consciousness unless I know a lot about the subject. He has to have something to work with in my mind before he can give me the work. I had to study The Secret Doctrine for three years and sort it out in my consciousness before it was possible for him to give me Cosmic Fire. I had established a sensitivity to abstract thought within myself and was alive at that point. When you have carried your thought as far as you can go and can go no further, another factor has to enter in. On a different turn of the spiral, the group carries itself as far as it can along the line of sensitivity to each other and to the Master, and then that sensitivity to impression that the units have developed has to have stability and inclusiveness, and then you can function in an Ashram. There are three things we all have to work at: sensitivity to impression, inclusiveness and stability.

An Ashram is a quiet place. You could go into an Ashram and sit down in your place; the Master might sit in his accustomed place, and nothing would be said, but you would go out with knowledge, with information, with understanding of what you had to do, provided you were sensitive to impression and had left your personality behind.

M: Isn’t this referring to perception? The Tibetan said he was endeavoring to describe it, but then he said he thought it was not connected with vision or registered sight of any kind.

AAB: Isn’t that another synonym for the Science of Impression? What are the mechanics of it? What do you think?

M: You become aware.

RK: A great deal of this is given to us to study and practice in the eighth set of the Esoteric Instructions on the building of the Antahkarana. Read the four points on projection; you can get into the Ashram if you succeed in practicing it.

AAB: You could say that the mechanics of the Science of Impression, as far as we can go, are alignment, the power to hold the mind steady in the light, sensitivity to quality and receptivity to synthetic impression.

C: Perception is really the ability to receive.

AAB: You perceive and then receive. It is a dual process. You don’t perceive with your eyes, but you know. You have an example of the process in that telepathic experiment we tried several years ago. Suppose that I was the broadcaster, and the information had to come in to me from the other members of the group, and I broadcast a triangle with an eye in the center. Some of the group would see a triangle with an eye in the center; some of them would hear the words “triangle with an eye in the center,” but some would know via neither of those two faculties functioning at all. And the ones who would know were the most highly developed in the group. When you know in this way, when you have straight knowledge, then you are receptive to impression.

FB: Possibly there is an analogy in the musical field. When you have alignment between Soul, mind and brain, what really happens is that substance on those planes becomes synchronized so that the impression of force on any level will have an overtone or undertone on the other levels. Because you have established an alignment, then the impression you receive in the Ashram – or the thought of a Master or telepathic impulse – can have an effect that is a scientific, automatic, inevitable result if your condition is right. Receptivity would lie in holding that condition long enough and near enough to the quality or nature that is going to come in. If the group focuses on the Hierarchy and its Plan, when it finally has alignment it will be “on key,” and that will enable it to be receptive to what comes in.

M: If we focus on the idea that we will become aware of the Hierarchical Plan, that very idea that we can become aware will help us become aware of it; it will put us all in the proper vibration to receive.

RK: All this was very practically illustrated in the instance of the composer Rachmaninov. Rachmaninov had prepared himself, and he sat in his prepared place with an instrument like a disciple’s mind, and he had learned how to play this instrument. The hall, with its receptive audience, was the world, and then there was the Master Musician, whose work he was going to play. Then, from the unseen, which would be the Triad or Monad, he began to play, and he played right through the whole thing. He impressed us with that. He was a practicing disciple in terms of music, but it can also be in terms of the world Plan. His instrument was ready; his understanding was ready; he also had skill in action. 

N: Some years ago I had the opportunity to make a portrait bust of Senator Horace of Pennsylvania. He was dead, so I only had a picture. I began to work in the usual way, but the first impression was a failure, and after two days it got worse and worse. All my knowledge failed, and I become very concerned. There was something presented to me of this man, but I couldn’t get it. I decided that there must be an avenue by which I could discover him and bring him out. I held the picture in one hand, and with my eyes on the picture my thumbs worked the clay without me looking at it. I was totally focused on the picture. When I finally looked at the clay it was a perfect likeness.

RK: That is perception.

AAB: I think the whole question of the Science of Impression is something for us to have very carefully in our minds when we are here. [Reading further from The Rays and the Initiations, p.112]:

Two things have therefore been decided upon by the Masters as They face the future of humanity and prepare to take the required steps to meet humanity’s advancing aspiration. I have chosen these two words with care. These two requirements have been demanded of the Hierarchy by Shamballa in order to safeguard the Mysteries and prevent a too premature precipitation of the Hierarchical life upon the Earth. Both these requirements are expressed in this fifth Rule.

Rule 5.

In unison let the group perceive the Triad shining forth, dimming the light of the soul and blotting out the light of form. The macrocosmic Whole is all there is. Let the group perceive that Whole and then no longer use the thought, "My soul and thine.”

AAB: How much do you use thought?

M: How would you describe thought?

AAB: You always describe thought when you create a thoughtform.

C: Isn’t that the end of duality?

AAB: Yes, you are the thinker. [Reading further from The Rays and the Initiations, pp.112-113]:

The first demand made by Shamballa is that the groups being prepared for initiation should consist only of those who are in process of building the Antahkarana, the bridge between the Triad and the personality; the second demand is that those being prepared should show some signs of the sense of synthesis.

You will note, therefore, some of the factors that have controlled the presentation of the truth that I have sought to give down the years. The teaching on the Antahkarana (briefly hinted at by HPB) has been expanded by me in the book, Education in the New Age and in this fifth volume of A Treatise on the Seven Rays (Part II), and has already been given to a number of senior aspirants in the hope that they would profit thereby; the need for synthesis has also been emphasized by me, and is closely related to the will aspect, the first divine aspect. In the past, during the cycle of mysticism through which all aspirants very properly pass, they were taught to “see the vision” – a vision of the goal, of the beauty to be sought, of the loved one to be known, of liberation to be achieved, of spiritual satisfaction and an opened door to greater wonders. In the occult age, which has now definitely dawned, the neophyte will be taught to see the picture whole, to think in the larger terms, to emerge out of the normal separative consciousness into the broad state of awareness that “sees no difference.” The goal, or rather the result of the mystic and occult way, is the merging of the vertical way of life with the horizontal way of service, and it is this merging that Shamballa demands should condition the attempt now in process of training those who will together seek initiation, will together pass through the Portal on to the Way, and who can together be presented to the One Initiator as a “unit of Light.” This sense of synthesis (which must be increasingly demonstrated as each initiation is taken in group formation) is possible only to those who have bridged the gap between the concrete lower mind and the higher mind or – to word it technically and in the language of academic occult science – between the mental unit and the manasic permanent atom.

AAB: There you have a hint as to the use of will. I do not know how I can make clear how the use of the will and the Science of Impression have to go together.

N: Do you think imagination has something to do with the Science of Impression?

AAB: The will comes in when your imagination has brought you to a certain point, and you hold what your imagination has given you, and from it you go on. Unless the will is brought into strenuous focus and held at a point of tension, there will be no impression.

N: I related an experience a while ago in which I said I went into my studies with a determined attitude. The vision was there but it was not clear and whole.

AAB: You have to get it whole. With that another factor comes in. We are used to thinking that impression is a negative process. You wait; you stand and hold the mind steady in the light. There will be no impression unless you are working strenuously at it to hold the mind in the light.

BG: I wonder whether the radio isn’t an analogy. You have to have the radio tuned, the tubes electrified and tuned to a certain wavelength, and then you get whatever is being broadcast.

CH: In the new set of Antahkarana instructions there is something about the use of the will. The Tibetan says that the mind has to be used actively in the process of projection instead of passively, as it is when it receives light from the Soul.

RK: That’s because it is working in connection with will as the agent of the fused personality and Soul, and the mind is being used as an active holding agent.

AAB: You have to bear in mind that it isn’t Soul will but Triadal will, which can only be brought into use when the Antahkarana is built to some extent.

RK: Occultism is the science of the relation of the human mind with the mind of the Universe. This is from HPB’s instructions to her group. That is what building the Antahkarana is.

FB: Regarding getting the power of the will to function, there are three factors – desire, intention and desperation. You have to have an almost burning desire. Then it has to become your intention to do something. This intention has to be so desperate and strong that it will function and go on functioning. You have to be really desperate enough about it, about the world need, about having the group, in whose life you have merged, function and having the need met. That last factor enables you to love enough. Then liberation comes and the will can come in as an entirely new factor.

RK: That is the Yoga of Synthesis.

AAB: It would really depend upon what your desperation and intention are about.

JL: Regarding the human will and this First Ray will, we become it; it uses us. It is related to the phrase “I am That.” We don’t seem to use the will; we become the will. We are absorbed in it.

AAB: [Reading further from The Rays and the Initiations, pp.113-114]:

The goal of the Probationary Path is made beautifully clear in the fifth Rule as given earlier in Initiation, Human and Solar. It says:

Let the applicant see to it that the solar Angel dims the light of the lunar angels, remaining the sole luminary in the microcosmic sky.

The Soul must be seen by the probationer as the sun of the life. All lesser lights must be put out by the light of the central luminary; all little fires must be obliterated by solar fire. The solar Angel controls the personality life and its forces. This, in the New Age, is the goal of the probationary path and of the applicant for discipleship. Hitherto it has been the goal of all the teaching given about the Path of Discipleship, but the higher rate of intelligence of the modern applicant warrants a change, and as time goes on the present requirements for disciples, up to and including the second initiation, will be the requirements for the Probationary Path.

This will necessitate a clearer understanding of the Path of Discipleship.  On that path, the major teaching given in the future will concern:

1.  The building of the rainbow bridge, the Antahkarana.

2.  The nature of the intuition and its development, as it supersedes the mind in its two aspects: concrete and abstract, lower and higher.

3.  The nature of life as the Monad expresses it. 

In these three approaches to truth the new revelation lies hid; it will take the place of the teaching upon the Soul for the neophytes and disciples of the world, and the emphasis will be laid – for them – on the life aspect and not so much on the love aspect. The reason for this is that more and more people will be living as Souls and therefore expressing love, and for them the nature of life and of monadic experience will constitute the normal next revelation – one that is, however, possible only to those who do attempt to live as Souls, who cultivate love or the sense of non-separateness, and who are at least dwelling upon the periphery of the Hierarchical world. It would therefore be inevitable that – to those so dwelling or treading the Path of Discipleship – the factors that inspire all Hierarchical effort would begin to be dimly apparent and that, slowly, these factors would also assume for them the outlines of a dim and distant goal.

AAB: We seem to be doing the right thing. We have been studying the Antahkarana and the intuition. If you take the books on discipleship written many years ago by Mrs. Besant, they are simple things; we know all about them. We want something more. The requirements stated there are something we have all been struggling with and have achieved in some measure; they have become part of our thinking and we are ready to pass on to newer things. I often think that HPB gave the seed thoughts of the new revelation. She gave just a word about the Antahkarana.

B: Won’t the life aspect be emphasized as the First Ray comes through? The minute you start to work on the life aspect you get away from the impulsion of love that must underlie the other work. To love is the most scientific thing that it is possible to do.

AAB: [Reading further from The Rays and the Initiations, p.115]:

The two parts of this rule are consequently expressive of the new demands for disciples – not applicants. This becomes apparent when you study the two rules: one for applicants and one for disciples. The applicant is referred to the microcosm. The Macrocosm is held before the vision of the disciple.

The two demands are expressed in Rule 5 as follows:

1. In unison let the group receive the Triad shining forth, dimming the light of the Soul and blotting out the light of form.

This is the demand for the building of the Antahkarana, which relates the disciple in his personality to the Triad.

2. The Macrocosmic Whole is all there is. Let the group perceive that Whole and then no longer use the thought, “My soul and thine.”

This is the demand for a sense of synthesis, which is occult vision and not mystic vision.  These two demands will be the two basic requirements for the new schools of occultism.

AAB: What we are really doing, if we are doing this work right, we are laying the foundation for the Hierarchy for the new occult schools. I don’t know who else is doing it. I think there is nothing more dangerous than to believe that one is unique. Looking around, I don’t know what other groups are doing just what we are doing in giving out the Tibetan’s work. That in itself is a danger. We have a difficult hairline path to tread because we are very definitely in the forefront of the wave of revelation, and we are doing something about the new occult schools and the next step forward in the field of esotericism that is, I believe, quite unique. After all, there are no books in the world that touch the books of the Tibetan.

M: All other books seem dull to me.

AAB: I know what you mean, because there is a curious revealing magnetic beauty about the things the Tibetan writes. If we knew how many different translations of them are being made in Europe today, we would be amazed.

JL: One of our translators has said that he had never seen anything like the Tibetan’s English for translation into another language.

CH: Where did he get his mastery of English?

AAB: His early English was bad.

RK: I am recalling a phrase in one of the early writings of the Tibetan where he says, “the vision is one of the ways of experiencing revelation.”

AAB: That does away with the dualities.

GP: About the Tibetan’s language, isn’t he using your language?

AAB: The Tibetan’s English is very good because my English is very good. I had to take his English and turn it into something understandable. I have never fathomed why, when lesser teachers than himself start, they use Elizabethan English. After his mind and mine got into closer rapport, I knew what he was thinking. I wonder if you have any idea what tension it is to take two hours dictation without losing the thread. I can’t let myself relax for a minute.

FB: You speak of the danger in our recognition of our unique position, and we have often spoken here of the necessity of our group as a humble group. I think we have to recognize the necessity and value of humility, and we have to have exactly the same attitude toward other things. We should be no more afraid of recognizing the fact that we are working at a unique job, attempting to lay the foundation for the new occult schools, etc., and be just as indifferent to any possible dangers of taking that position on either hand. Neither makes the slightest difference.

AAB: I think it is a perfectly safe thing to discuss this matter here in this group, but I suppose I am always conscious of the fact that the average people in a group always render a false impression and frequently get the thing wrong.

RK: The Tibetan’s definition of humility is “an adjusted sense of right proportion.” You know exactly where you are and what you have to do.

C: We should not be afraid to know what we know.

AAB: But it does not do to tell Tom, Dick and Harry. What has really happened in the other groups is that the leaders sincerely say something and then it is taken hold of by the little minds and distorted until the leaders cannot recognize it. But there was something said that originated the mess; it can always be traced back to something that was said in the group.

N: Isn’t the teaching of the Christ a great illustration of what the church has done with it?

AAB: There was a man in the office this morning talking to me about the Olympian Society of Mt. Shasta. It is not a very old group; it only originated a few years ago. It has now deteriorated into a most shocking presentation of the Hierarchy. It shows what can happen to a group that was started by well-intentioned people. It really is a tragedy because it started right. Yet the Arcane School has gone on for twenty-one years.

RK: The Olympian Society started right but was drawn down to the people’s level instead of pulling people up to them.

AAB: They got swayed by astralism. I think that any group that is affiliated with the Hierarchy needs protection, and the only people that can protect it are the people in it. I often wonder if 25 years hence we will be as interested and clear-cut in our thinking and as selfless in our service as we are today. Will we have kept the truth just as simple?

M: It will be the younger ones who will carry on.

C: Perhaps our protection is that we haven’t been enormously popular.

AAB: We have been selective.

C: With one aim and one purpose.

AAB: I think it is better to go for quality rather than quantity, and yet we have had literally thousands pass through the School.

CH: All you have to do is keep the emphasis on study papers.

AAB: Quite true.

N: Sometimes I wonder why the School could not begin with people of younger age. Most of us come in after we’re older.

AAB: The younger people are coming in very fast; the ages are averaging from 25 to 40. The entire American group is under 28.

N: You told us that at an early age you were sure and clearly knew what you were going to do. Some of us didn’t come in until we were 35.

AAB: 35 is an average age.

W: Aren’t people more advanced today; aren’t they being stepped up?

AAB: I think some of them are very advanced.

FG: They are being stepped up by the things they are going through.

FB: How do we make the training that the Arcane School has to offer available in wider circles without letting down the bars or stepping down the work? How do we get the School students, and particularly the student secretaries, to use the new material that we now have – the statement of what an esoteric school is?

AAB: Twenty-six people have come in during the last three weeks through that pamphlet alone. I think the Tibetan writes for everybody. Again and again people have wanted to simplify his pamphlets, and they have always failed. Then we send out the pamphlet as written and it does the job.

N: It is infused with power.

AAB: I am going to send out the pamphlet “What is an Esoteric School” to about 1500 ex-students that we have on our list and see how many will come back.

FB: The ex-students have given us a high percentage of goodwill workers.

GP: Isn’t there some way of introducing this work into the colleges by writing certain articles?

AAB: I have always had the feeling about their coming into an occult school very young. I do not think enough of them have tried out life and investigated the various schools of thought. I think college boys and girls are too young; they should play with life a little.