In the recent article entitled: “Second Year of the Sixth Septennium”, we quoted from the text “The Distant Goals” (by E. Savoini) seven lines of thought on which a New World Religion, consistent with the energies of the now approaching Age of Aquarius, could be based.
Turning our gaze to the future, which as always will astound us as it comes true, let us try to substantiate the first of these propositions, which reads:
“On account of the absence, which will be prolonged, of the Sixth Ray, the new religion will not be polarized on the emotional level. The religious set-up is not in itself necessarily sentimental. The future one will possibly be qualified by a great respect, sincere and deep, for the liberty, life and consciousness of every creature: fewer tears of devotion, a more genuine joy.”
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In the first paragraph of the book The Call, Master Morya says:
(…) “You and We—here together in spirit.
One Temple for all—for all, One God.
Manifold worlds dwell in the Abode of the Almighty,
And the Holy Spirit soars throughout.
The Renovation of the World will come—the prophecies will be fulfilled.
People will arise and build a New Temple.”
The Temple of the new Religion, the heart of the One Humanity, will therefore be built essentially by the people of the world, as a great and luminous thought-form, utilising the rising energies of Aquarius: the fifth Ray of the Mind and of Knowledge and the seventh, of ceremonial Order and Magic, brought by its ruler, Uranus.
Humanity, from its very beginnings, from the time men stood up and looked up to the heavens, identified the divine with the Sun, the Moon, the stars, the forces of nature, trying to explain the Mystery in which it was immersed: the alternation of day and night, the events of life, death and what happens afterwards. And from early on, a number of people stood out in the various clans with special personal powers who acted as intermediaries for the various deities and consequently acquired positions of power.
Throughout the ages a closed and powerful priestly caste (with the obvious exception of luminous examples of charitable abnegation and effective wisdom) constituted itself as the guardian and intermediary of the Teachings of the Masters and translated them for the people into decrees, prohibitions and rules of behaviour, the transgression of which entailed not only the threat of divine punishment, but also more or less severe punishments by the competent authorities. And the last regurgitations of that past are still relevant today in some countries of the world, where, however, the population (especially women, the most harassed) rebel and invoke freedom.
At the beginning of the age of Pisces, with the exaltation of the energies of the second Ray of Love and Wisdom and the sixth Ray of Idealism and Devotion, as the human consciousness began to grow, Christ brought the Teaching of Love and entrusted it to the people of the world in a manner as simple as it is powerful: “Love thy neighbour as thyself”, “Love thy enemy”… and we know how that went down with holy wars, abuse and persecution. But the words of power do not pass away, they remain as milestones pointing the way and little by little they settle into the common consciousness.
Indeed, the history books do not tell us that since time immemorial the Hierarchy of the Masters, followed by a small part of Humanity that is more evolved and therefore responsive and collaborative, has been watching over the fate of the human race, intervening at the most critical moments and tirelessly pointing the way, one and manifold, back to the Father’s House, in the great cycle of the evolution of consciousness.
Today, the anthropocentric religion of prohibitions, of guilt, of self-inflicted suffering for the glory of God, of childish and emotional faith (which has, however, also produced great Mystics) is losing power as mankind is increasingly settling on the mental level. Instead of hells (a thought now almost totally obsolete), purgatories or paradises foreseen at the end of every existence, it’s becoming progressively evident that the continuity of life is a reality, already a legacy of Eastern Teachings since antiquity, in which manifest and unmanifest cycles alternate so that the consciousness evolves, reincarnating under the impetus of karma, or the law of cause/effect.
Even the division between reason and faith, which was rightly introduced in the West at the time of the Enlightenment because the two fields had become irreconcilable, is slowly being recomposed: the most advanced science, exploring the Mystery with reason, now finds answers that come close to those of faith, making them more enlightening, precisely because they are also substantiated by mental understanding.
The Italian philosopher Norberto Bobbio, a father of secular thought who always defined himself as a man of reason and not of faith, wrote in his ‘last will and testament’: “I consider myself neither an atheist nor an agnostic. As a man of reason and not of faith, I know that I am immersed in the Mystery that reason cannot fully penetrate, and that the various religions interpret in different ways”.
The ultimate Mystery will therefore continue to be such and to attract human and solar minds and hearts, and it is therefore puerile to divide us between believers and non-believers, between followers of one or another Teaching, since the Holy Spirit ascends everywhere.
The “religious” are and will be, therefore, those people who think out of love, who, actively working in any field, feel above all else the need to understand the deep meaning of existence, asking questions to Space and to the Masters or studying the physical laws of the Universe, or ‘simply’ bringing beauty and joy into existence not out of a desire to accumulate knowledge, their personal affirmation or an aesthetic pleasure, but to serve the Common Good by pouring water of life for thirsty men, according to the motto of Aquarius, the sign of the new Age. And each will draw from it to the extent of his or her need, or invocation.
These ‘free Builders’ will be consciously telepathic and thus united through a powerful inner network, and will naturally form a Hierarchy of Service in continuity with that of the Masters of Wisdom.
The Masters of all times are the great Servers of mankind. Christ said of Himself that He was ‘the last of the Servants’, and it is interesting that just recently the current Pope affirmed that God is the first Server, overturning our modern thinking that claims we who must serve Him. In reality, Service is bestowed from Above and we should ‘surrender’ to His love and ‘imitate’ Him, allowing ourselves to be drawn by His Light.
In the chain of Service, mankind, the intermediary between Heaven and Earth, is thus a lesser god called upon to draw to itself the lower kingdoms of nature over which it has jurisdiction, i.e. responsibility. In this way everything is held together and the return of the many to the One is guaranteed.
The new Religion will therefore be based on an understanding of the power of Service which is an infinite process of liberation. The capacity to serve is directly proportional to the expansion of consciousness, and those who serve must always have empty hands so that higher energies may fill them. An excerpt from Agni Yoga says: “Only when everything is given can you receive”. Thus is the process of giving continually nourished. Thus does one evolve in the joy of the work.
Indeed, the keynote of the new Religion must be joy, that perfect bliss that St Francis explained to the world with lightness and subtle humour:
- The joy of infinite inner freedom conquered day by day.
- The joy of self-giving in the great Service.
- The joy of collaborating to restore the divine Plan on Earth.
- The joy of gratitude for the Beauty of creation and for human works.
- The joy of understanding the power of Thought.
- The joy of universal Brotherhood and Communion.
- The joy of the work accomplished to help build the Temple of Man and the world: as a crystal, as a flower, as a Man, as a Sun.
That Master, imitating the Christ, also taught us, through His life, the special joy that is experienced in all situations of scarcity, material difficulties, failures, misunderstandings, doubts, rejections and refusals and in all kinds of trials at all levels, which gradually bring out the directing power of Faith, that is, the experience of the divine.
With our minds steadfast in the Light and our hearts aflame with joy, let us therefore set, as One Humanity, on the plane of the enlightened and unifying mind, the foundation stone of the thought-form that will define the contours of the Temple of the new Religion, that the relieved and uplifted people intend to build:
“Free action of the mind, united in the joy of infinite Service”
“Smile—I grant you the joy of spreading the Teaching of Christ.
The joy of conceiving the Greatness of the Universe,
The joy of manifested labor,
The joyous fatigue of accomplishment.”
“Joy! There is no present hour of happiness.
There is the past hour of happiness,
and there is the future hour of happiness.
The past hour holds you,
And the future hour draws nearer.
I have ordained for you a time of future bliss.
Joy!
Naught that holds you is worthy.
Live in the hour of future happiness.
Joy!”
(Agni Yoga Series, The Call §153 and 339)
