“Devotion to objects will eventually be superseded by the creation of that which will more truly express the Real; ugliness and materiality will give place to beauty and reality. On a large scale, humanity has already been “led from darkness to light” and the light of knowledge fills the land. In the period which lies ahead and under the influencing radiation of the seventh ray[1], humanity will be “led from the unreal to the Real.” This the first initiation[2] makes possible for the individual and will make possible for the mass of men.”[3]
“Not beauty, but the comprehension of beauty will save the world”: the comprehension (or understanding) of beauty leads humanity from the unreal to the real, from the partial to the all-inclusive vision, from personal fanaticism to ‘divine indifference’ or impersonality that works always for the common Good, that is, for the Evolution and restoration of Order.
“Man is essentially devoted (to the point of fanaticism) to whatever may be the goal of his life’s attention. This goal may be to achieve discipleship, or to raise a family, or to get money, or to achieve popularity, or any other objective to which he consecrates his time and energy; but whatever it may be, to it he devotes all that he is or has. Man also is essentially and inherently a producer of law and order, though this quality is only just beginning to make its presence felt. This is because mankind is, at last, becoming mentally centred, and hence we have in the world at this time the many and varied attempts to straighten out affairs along business, national, economic, social and other lines, to produce some system and order, and to bring about the re-arranging of all energies with the objective (unrealised consciously as yet) of inaugurating the New Age.
Owing, however, to defective mental control and to an almost universal ignorance as to the laws of thought, and in addition, to a profound lack of knowledge as to man’s own nature, man works blindly.
The ideals sensed are not correctly interpreted by the mind nor applied in such a way that they are of general and appropriate application. Hence the confusion and the chaotic experimentation going on, and hence also the imposition of personal authority to enforce an individual’s idea of the ideal.
The need today is for sound teaching as to the laws of thought, and the rules which govern the building of those thought-forms which must embody the ideas sent forth from the universal divine Mind. Men must begin on the subjective planes of life to work out the needed order.
When this is realised, we shall have every important group of men engaged in world affairs, or in the work of government in all its branches, aided on the mental plane by trained thinkers, so that there may be right application and correct adjustment to the Plan. This time is as yet far away, and hence the distortions and misrepresentations on earth of the Plan as it exists in heaven, to use the Christian phraseology.
It was the realisation of the present world need for illumined thinkers and subjective workers which prompted Those Who guide so to direct the incoming spiritual energies that the formation of the esoteric groups everywhere came about; it led also to the publication of the mass of mystical and Oriental literature on meditation and allied topics which has flooded the world today. Hence also the effort that I, a worker on the inner side of life, am making to teach the newer psychology in this treatise, and so show to man what is his equipment and how well suited he is to the work for which he has been created, and which he has as yet failed to comprehend. The force and the effect of the seventh ray influence will, however, reveal to him the magical work, and the next twenty five hundred years will bring about so much change and make possible the working of so many so-called “miracles” that even the outer appearance of the world will be profoundly altered; the vegetation and the animal life will be modified and developed, and much that is latent in the forms of both kingdoms will be brought into expression through the freer flow and the more intelligent manipulation of the energies which create and constitute all forms. The world has been changed beyond belief during the past five hundred years, and during the next two hundred years the changes will be still more rapid and deep-seated, for the growth of the intellectual powers of man is gathering momentum, and Man, the Creator, is coming into possession of His powers.”[4]
It is therefore essential to learn to think in order to understand Beauty and to reveal the magical work of Reality: learning to think big, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in depth, and in truth.
The science and the art of thought to “formulate” the causes of the events and forms clearly concerns those human consciousnesses capable of holding the mind steady in the light, and is summarized as so by the esoteric tradition:
– the Forms are constructed from the causal level of the human Soul, focused upon the 5th plane of the abstract or Higher Mind (higher manas — the fiery plane of ‘Ideal Formulas’, the Fiery World)
– they are molded on the 6th Astral and 5th Mental planes through the creative imagination (kamâ-manas),
– and are vitalized on the 7th etheric plane[5] (linga-sharira) through visualization.
On the higher Mental plane or the Abstract mind the reason for building cannot but be ‘golden’, that is, in right proportion to the World of Ideas (the fourth Buddhic level) and to the common Purpose: evolutionary, benevolent, loving, beautiful.
Even if the true thinkers are evidently few in the world, every individual already knows deep down that it is necessary to learn to think in love, for the Good, in the here and now, always and everywhere.
Such is the premise and goal of every art and art form: “there is no harmony without love and no love without harmony.”
And it is not about a vague aspiration, but an intense discipline that is learned in the Workship of Human Thought at the expense of innumerable experiences and inspirations. In that center of consciousness or Heart, the Soul or ‘silent’ Observer knows where it must go, united yet individually responsible: onward and upward, converging in the center, thus attaining the infinite.
Just as the Heart employs the Eye of the Mind to create, Man as a creator or initiate utilizes the power of his/her very own apparatus of thought to knowingly fix and reflect the Archetypes of Reality necessary for advancement — in the case of TPS project, it is the Ideas, Formulas and Forms for a new Culture and Civilization.
From the plane of the mind illumined by Love will emerge the understanding of the beauty of Reality.
“The fifth great secret underlying the purpose of Sanat Kumara[6] is related in a peculiar sense to the cyclic manifestation of all that is found in the three worlds of human evolution. It concerns that which is working slowly into manifestation through the medium of the lower concrete mind as it controls desire and brings substance and matter into conformity with the divine thought along this line. The sumtotal of the highest phases of human thinking along all lines, materially affects what appears on the physical plane in all the kingdoms of nature, what precipitates civilisations and cultures, and which expresses the best response at the moment of human sensitivity to cosmic impression.
This is all that can be said as we attempt to sum up the fixed desire and the pattern or purpose of divine activity down the ages. We know it to be profoundly inadequate as yet to express or to produce in manifested form the beauty of that design and to create in conformity with God’s thought; but—age by age—the thinking capacity of man and his creative imagination have wrought out the slowly unfolding design, and will continue to do so; every great world cycle sees the emergence of greater beauty, and sees the subtle effects of man’s thinking upon the subhuman kingdoms in nature steadily bringing the unknown to the surface, altering the nature of the flora and the fauna of the planet, and preparing the way for that time of wonder when the Hierarchy will again be exoterically directing the Plan upon the earth and aiding mankind to work with a fuller understanding of the divine design.”
“It is in connection with this effort that he discovers the value, uses and purpose of the creative imagination. [This] instrument … enables him at the very beginning to act as if he were capable of thus creating; then, when the as if imaginative consciousness is no longer useful, he becomes consciously aware of that which he has—with hope and spiritual expectancy—sought to create; he discovers this as an existent fact and knows past all controversy that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
…The creative imagination is “that basic quality which has always been inherent in desire itself [kamâ-manas, desire-mind]: the imaginative quality of the soul, implementing desire and steadily becoming a higher creative faculty as desire shifts into ever higher states and leads to ever higher realisations. This faculty eventually invokes the energies of the mind, and the mind, plus the imagination, becomes in time a great invocative and creative agent. It is thus that the Spiritual Triad [atma-buddhi-manas: will-love/wisdom-intelligence] is brought into rapport with the threefold personality.
The imagination is…. the lowest aspect of the intuition… Sensitivity, as an expression of the astral body, is the opposite pole to buddhic sensitivity. The disciple has purified and refined his imaginative faculties so that they are now responsive to the impression of the buddhic principle or of the intuitive perception – perception, apart from sight or any recorded possible vision … The creative imagination is in the nature of an active energy, drawn up into relationship with the point of tension; it there and then produces effects in mental substance. The tension is thereby increased, and the more potent and the clearer the visualization process, the more beautiful and strong will be the bridge.
Visualization is the process whereby the creative imagination is rendered active and becomes responsive to and attracted by the point of tension upon the mental plane.”[7]
“There can be no objective form on Earth (nor in the Universe either), without its astral prototype being first formed in Space. From Phidias down to the humblest workman in the ceramic art — a sculptor has had to create first of all a model in his mind, then sketch it in one and two dimensional lines, and then only can he reproduce it in a three dimensional or objective figure. And if human mind is a living demonstration of such successive stages in the process of evolution — how can it be otherwise when NATURE’S MIND and creative powers are concerned?”[8]
“… the new small groups dedicated to serving the human race sincerely must trust in the real power of inner construction, which precedes concrete action. Otherwise, or if they continue to follow impulses instead of thoughts, they will obtain temporary and feeble effects on the present situations, but will not affect creation of the irresistible causes of the future.
The great reawakening of Real Art, which determines the causes and which is designated for the dawn of the new Age, will then take place without a human contribution and a fine opportunity will have been lost. In brief, it is a question of learning to build the future, for the future.” [9]
* This article is published at the center of the Taurus Sign, associated with the Light and the Creative Sound, the divine Desire, the Golden Building, the Revelation and Vision; Taurus transmits the pure 4th Ray of Harmony through conflict, Beauty, and Art.
[Thanks to Enrica F. for the translation]
[1] For a short presentation of the Seven Rays see here.
[2] The first initiation is defined as ‘birth’ or ‘rebirth’ to the spiritual or ‘philosophical’ dimension of things.
[3] From A. A. Bailey, “Rays and Initiations”, Lucis Collection, p. 572.
[4] From A. A. Bailey, “Esoteric Psychology I”, Lucis Collection, p. 81-83.
[5] The etheric body, or the double of the concrete physical plane (solid, liquid and gaseous), is composed of the four subtlest layers of matter of the seventh physical plane. “… the etheric body is a focussing point for all the interior energies of the body, and therefore the energy transmitted will not be pure vital energy or simple planetary prana but will be qualified by forces coming from the astral or the emotional apparatus, from the mind or from the soul body. These “qualifications of force,” indicating as they do the karma of the individual, are in the last analysis the major conditioning forces.” (A. A. Bailey, Esoteric Healing, p. 133)
[6] Sanat Kumara is the name given by the esoteric Tradition to the Entity which represents our God or planetary Logos, and is at the head and guide both of the Solar Government of the Earth (Shamballa) and of the planetary Hierarchy of the Masters or Initiates.
[7] A. A. Bailey, “Rays and Initiations”, Lucis Collection, p. 244-5, 443, 442 & 488-9.
[8] H. P. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine II – Anthropogenesis, p. 660, footnote 2.
[9] From: E. Savoini, The Distant Goals, Goal 5.4, the current ‘vortex’ of the Plan which in-forms the 2018 ritual sowing of TPS. See it also in: Asserting the planetary Plan.
