Printed in The Beacon July 1971 and November 1999
by M. F. Haselhurst
The objective of all training given
to the disciple is to shift his conscious awareness from the point where he is
to levels which are higher than those in the three worlds of definitely human
evolution. (The Rays and the Initiations, p. 138)
One of the principal tasks of the
combined Hierarchy is the presentation to humanity of the basic divine ideas. (Discipleship in the New Age, Vol. II, p. 185)
IT IS STRANGE HOW STRONG an
influence age, physical age, the age of the body, not of the soul, has on what
could well be crucial points of discipleship training. Men and women negotiate
years of necessarily divided effort, of meeting family and social commitments
as well as the demands of esoteric effort, and then, in the years of splendid
opportunity, when outer obligations lessen, and external demands on time and
attention diminish, turn their backs on, close their minds to, the
opportunities which are opening. All because of this so powerful illusion of
"old age".
It is a tragic loss to the world
esoteric group that so many students either lay their work aside, or decrease
its intensity, at the precise point in time when they are being presented with
opportunity on a wider scale than ever before. Instead of regarding physical
age as a period of withdrawal, a time when life is closing in, becoming
limited, quiet and restricted, disciples should realise that what is really
happening is that spiritual opportunities are multiplying; the vistas of the
soul are spreading in increasing glory, as the barriers of smaller daily duties
fall away, leaving them free to live as souls. Margaret Forbes wrote a prayer
that could have been directed at disciples at this point of their training:
Available for guidance also is the
clear, unequivocal statement of the Tibetan teacher that the soul can work more
easily through bodies long disciplined to its use, than through those that are
younger. The factor of paramount importance is that point of conscious
awareness, which has to be shifted beyond normal human levels. What better
period for this to be consummated than the years in which desire atrophies,
duties decrease, and time pressures are miraculously eased?
These are the disciple’s years of
opportunity; opportunity to expand existent efforts and to initiate new ones.
Now he has precious hours in which the energy of thought can be used
creatively, and work in meditation can be deepened. These should be years of
radiation, of purposeful expression; years in which the disciple finds,
possibly to his own amazement, that he has developed capacities which now can
be used to reveal and to radiate the love and light, the will and purpose, of
that Divine Self of which he is a fragmentary expression.
In youth and middle age the aspirant
and disciple are called upon to cope with diverse, outwardly-oriented
commitments. There are demands from family and friends, social obligations, the
complicated process of earning a living, bringing up children, meeting the
demands of his external environment. All these things distract (rightly, but
still distract) attention from the core objective of living as a soul, of
directing spiritual energies, of learning to recognise, realise and release, spiritual
truth.
If an individual has been a student
for many lifetimes, he will have developed considerable skill in maintaining
consciousness beyond these limitations, and will be able to use them with some
degree of facility as aspects of his esoteric work. For the individual who is
taking up esoteric study for the first time, or who is at least relatively new
to it, such duties and obligations come between him and his purpose deflecting,
temporarily, attention and energy he would fain give to esoteric effort.
It is, of course, only an apparent
interruption. Actually, he is training himself in the skills, aptitudes and
qualities he needs to unfold or to strengthen, if the soul is to work with
maximum efficiency through its outer instrument, the integrated personality.
These outer-plane obligations, rightly fulfilled, lead to the atrophy and
subsequent discarding of undesirable and hindering character components.
Years
of Opportunity
Nonetheless, for a period of the
life span or incarnation, a great deal of attention is necessarily centred in
the present point of awareness, the world of daily effort and demand. How
gladly, then, should disciples welcome the coming of that period usually
referred to as "old age" and linked in men’s minds with limitation.
Here, in this period of "old age", the years of opportunity are
opening. They are years in which the disciple is free to shift his training
programme to a higher level, to focus his conscious awareness much more
permanently beyond immediate necessities. Now is the era when outer duties,
commitments, interests, are the temporary expressions of a life carried
consciously forward beyond (or is it above or within?) these limiting
obligations.
Words matter little. The fact is
that the soul enters into its own. It is free to dominate, with very little
interruption, its so carefully integrated vehicles; to flood them with its
divine, enduring, eternal life as it demonstrates its reality by means of the
phenomenal appearance.
These are not poetic concepts,
conceived as youth looks at an idealised old age. They represent the factual
experience of a student who has walked the Way for a long lifetime, and now
faces those seemingly desolate years which are crying aloud to be mined for
their spiritual wealth.
The Tibetan says flatly and
categorically that physical fatigue need not necessarily impair, in any way,
the disciple’s usefulness, since disciples have a curious capacity to continue
with their work no matter what may be happening to them physically. They
learn to live with physical disabilities under adverse conditions, and still
maintain their work on a high level.
Part of the training of a disciple
consists of learning to tune into, to recognise and to precipitate those
emergent divine ideas with which the Hierarchy aims to seed the thinking of
humanity. These must then be translated into the concepts which will condition
human thought in the cycle just ahead. Such work demands a trained sense of
timing, capacity to refrain from precipitate or premature action. How clearly
this lights up the opportunity lying open to "older" disciples, who
have trained themselves to patience, and have learned from experience how
deceptive are the time values which condition much outer action.
In his book Discipleship in the
New Age,Vol. II, pp. 502-4, the Tibetan sets out with great clarity
the reasons why a disciple should continue his work in the later stages of an
incarnation, pushing on "in spite of fatigue and the increasing ‘creaking’
of the human apparatus". Epitomised, these reasons are:
- the need to continue and carry forward the rhythm of
service and of fruitful living when, free of the physical body, he stands
upon the other side of the veil. There should be no gap in the service
pattern.
- the need to preserve the continuity of consciousness as
a working disciple. Thereshould be no gap between the present
attained point of tension and the point of tension which supervenes after
the death experience.
- the need to close the episode of this life experience
so that it is apparent he is a member of an ashram: there must be no break
in the established relationship, nor any cessation of the flow of ashramic
life through him to the world of men. This is a task calling for a
definite concentration of effort. It is rendered difficult by the natural
and normal deterioration of the physical vehicle as it grows older, a
deterioration which must be offset by increasing the tension in which a
disciple ever lives.
Following these three
"needs" there is a threefold statement which defines with almost
cruel clarity the heights toward which disciples should be climbing, heights
from which neither physical age nor physical weariness should be allowed to
keep them.
"For any disciple in my
ashram", we are told, "the problem in this time of world crisis is
peculiarly urgent for the following reasons:
a. through my ashram (working under
the inspiration of that of the Master K.H.) the newer esoteric presentation of
truth is to be given out, and this will make much of the older teaching
exoteric.
Reading such words, how can any
disciple look on his years of "old age" as anything but a time of
splendid, specialised opportunity, a time-bonus to be spent with royal
generosity as he continues his unending quest?
c. the final point of this trilogy
stresses the terrific re-adjustments in human consciousness "incident to
the inauguration of a new culture, civilisation, and world religion", and
stresses the opportunity to preserve intact and free from all deterioration the
state of mind of the members of the ashram throughout the remaining years of
this life, through the process of dissolution, and on into the freedom of the
other side of the veil. This preservation of conscious integrity is no easy
task; it requires understanding and most deliberate effort.
As if all this were not sufficient
incentive to perseverance, we have this further plea from the Tibetan:
I would ask you, as life proceeds
and you face eventually and inevitably the discarding of the vehicle, to hold
increasingly on to your knowledge of the Hierarchy, and thus to pass over to
the other side with complete dedication to the hierarchical plan...this is an
attempt on my part to call to your attention the concept of a spiritual
continuity of knowledge and of a rightly oriented attitude. Thus time will not
be lost; you can . . . attain a true continuity of consciousness and it is one
of the factors which will serve to hold this group of disciples together.
And we have the further promise that
"when the student or disciple returns to incarnation this knowledge
(stored in the soul’s content) will be usefully available".
Here is indicated the type and scope
of the work the Masters aim to accomplish through their disciples for mankind.
It is work which they can outline and indicate, for which the needed training
is available, but which, in the last analysis, must be done through, carried
out by, their disciples. And chiefly, perhaps, through those disciples of
long standing who, having worked for many years, are now at the point where the
vital shift of consciousness can take place, making possible the new and
necessary recognitions and realisations. For it must be remembered that it is
the disciple who has established a usable contact with his soul, of which he
can avail himself at any time he so chooses, who can begin to register
impressions coming directly to him from the Master.
Again turning to the Tibetan Master,
we are told that one of his functions is to "anchor ideas in the mind of
man and carry down into the realm of words certain emerging concepts, so that
they may begin to influence the higher levels of thinkers. These latter are
responsible for precipitating the ideas into the human consciousness".
Needed
Co-operation
Surely it is to the
"old-age" group of disciples that he should be able to look for the
needed human co-operation. To a great measure they stand free of the demands of
group affiliations and family responsibilities. They have time; they have brain
cells conditioned to the required high vibratory level, and they have that so
rare other necessity, long, quiet periods of alone-ness during which research
can be prosecuted, meditative thought deepened and intuitive response to divine
ideas cultivated.
It needs to be remembered that the
Tibetan has given as his further objective the task of writing "for the
generation which will come into active thought expression at the end of this
century, and which will inaugurate the new age which will start with
certain premises which today are the dream of the more exalted dreamers".
The end of the century is now on our
doorstep, and if these new thinkers are to accomplish their destiny they will
need the understanding and support of those who can bridge between the emergent
new age and the age that is passing away. Here, again, is dynamic opportunity
for disciples in the older age brackets. They can be alert to note any genuine
expression of this "new" presentation (which will, after all, be
merely the Ageless Wisdom they know so well in a new dress); to encourage those
who voice these new expressions, and to give aid in spreading the proclamation.
They can stand ready, also, to uphold the new workers, who are likely to face
difficulties of many types, to encounter opposition, and to stand in sore need
of the understanding, fellowship, and wise guidance which "old"
disciples, who are maintaining actively their inner links, will be able to
give.
Consider carefully the Tibetan’s
statement that the major task of aspirants "is to cultivate the higher
sensitivity; to render themselves so pure and selfless that the mind remains
undisturbed by the happenings in the three worlds" and that they should
seek that attentive spiritual sense that will enable them to be impressed, and
then to interpret correctly the impressions received.
It is true that disciples immersed
in world activity may have achieved so stable a mental orientation that their
minds are "undisturbed by the happenings in the three worlds". This
is, nonetheless, a condition more likely to demonstrate when the demands of
outer service have decreased, and the mind can be turned steadily toward that
reality which enfolds all happenings within itself.
Here, again, the opportunity, the
privilege, facing disciples in the older age groups is made clear. They need
only to forget the established concepts, the clichés. the attitudes of
withdrawal and limitation, which normally colour and influence their
assessments of service opportunities at this later stage of their life span. In
discarding these habit-produced bonds they find themselves free to act within widening
realisations, and to exploit fully the highly specialised fields of service now
open to them.
A
Continuing Experience
The point of over-riding importance
is realisation of life as a continuing process, of discipleship as a continuing
experience. The journey is one, though the scenery changes and the conditions
fluctuate. Today’s thoughts, attitudes, approaches, efforts, are rooted in the
past but are also sending strong growth toward the future. Today’s efforts are
not a desperate clinging to a hope one dare not abandon. They are part of a
process which flows from one life to another, from one phase of living to
another. If the next demonstration is to achieve maximum efficiency in its
early stages, present effort must be continued as long as the physical vehicle
is capable of response to the impulses of the soul.
There is a tremendous challenge in
the years of "old age" service, because spiritual work is essentially
subjective work, and the years of "age" are the years when subjective
effort can be developed enormously. "You can", says the Tibetan,
"help construct the thought form of the new age teaching; you do this
above all by your thought, by your practical application of any truth which you
may have understood to your personal life at any cost; by your sacrifice and
your service to your fellowmen, and by the constant dissemination of any
knowledge which you may possess."
This is an achievable objective. All
that is needed is to hold firmly to the recognition that the soul knows no age,
and can use its instrument for as long as that instrument is maintained as a
useful and usable tool.
In these special years it is very
necessary to remember that "work" is not synonymous with physical
plane activity. We have a most clear directive which relates to the how of this
later-age effort. "Work through others. This is the way the Hierarchy
works, watching and suggesting, and developing the innate faculty of
prevision...train others to do the detailed work and work yourself behind
the scenes, as we work."
This is not an easy task. There is
no glamour in it, no lure and thrill of public acclamation, no colourful
panoply of outer show. It is almost purely will-inspired effort, and so
represents the next great shift of motivation and energy-use that disciples are
required to achieve. It is a tremendous challenge. It means active effort to
play one’s part in establishing the required re-focusing of the point of
conscious awareness. It demands deliberate effort to register and transmit
divine ideas, regardless of the possibly devastating effect these may have on
established life patterns. It means going forward as if one knew life as
a continuing, expanding, total experience, a wholeness in which each fragment
has unique value provided it is rightly blended with all others. It means
living purposefully every minute of every day, knowing that in this way, with
this co-operation, divine purpose will eventually demonstrate in the world of
men. [-]
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