The healing power of sacrifice

Today we celebrate the heliocentric conjunction (occurring every three months) between Mercury and Pluto, both associated with reunifying and thaumaturgic powers; on this date it is auspicious to sow ideas, formulas and thought-forms around the theme of Healing.

Mercury represents the energy of harmonious connection (4^th Ray) and as such is able to bring the energy of electric fire onto the physical plane, right down into the deepest matter, symbolically represented by the dark realm of Hades/Pluto.
The light of loving Intelligence, of thought generated out of Love, pure expression of the Buddhic Plane where Mercury works and where the essence of the 4^th Hierarchy (the human one) dwells, descends, through the “winged” flight of the Luminary of healing Harmony, into every form and transfigures it, bringing regeneration.

Pluto, the most profound celestial Consciousness that destroys to liberate, in the encounter with Mercury unleashes the power of the 1^st Ray that eliminates all resistance and leads to the supernal light: “The first ray destroys death because in reality there is no such thing; the concept is all part of the Great Illusion… It is in a very true sense “a figment of the imagination”. Ponder on this. The abolition of death and of the destruction of form is a manifestation of Ray I, for it brings about in reality the death of negation and the inauguration of true activity. It is the energy which can be called “divine incentive”; it is the life in the seed which destroys successively all forms in order that realised fruition may eventuate. That is the clue to Ray I. It is the Will which initiates. Today, as regards humanity, its highest realisation is initiation… Ray I.—That which incites to and produces initiation.” (1)

To speak of healing therefore also means to speak of liberation and initiation. Initiation at first to the will of the soul and then of the monad (the spirit), and liberation not only from physical or psychic pain and death, but also, and at this time above all, from illusions, from glamour, from the separateness that deceives and distorts reality and keeps the soul confined in the dark meshes of matter.

There are worse evils than death and pain. We know that this is the hour of humanity’s greatest opportunity and that if men can pass triumphantly through this and (by the strength of their own souls) surmount this very present evil, then the evolution of humanity will be hastened beyond all that was believed possible. It will constitute a release, self-achieved and self-initiated. This means as much in the life of mankind as it means in the life of the individual disciple. That chance and that opportunity must not be taken from man; the gained spiritual and eternal values are of far greater importance than his temporary agony. Little as you may realise it as you think of Us in Our so-called safe retreats, the capacity of identification with all that is involved in world pain today and the sensitivity of Those connected with the Hierarchy to the unhappy condition of humanity makes Their task of standing-by one of supreme spiritual agony. They understand the depths of the reaction of humanity; they comprehend and understand, for They are one with all men. This involves a far greater comprehension than you can grasp and one which can only be adequately expressed in the word “identification”. (2)

“The art of the healer consists in releasing the soul”; “The true and the future healing is brought about when the life of the soul can flow without any impediment and hindrance throughout every aspect of the form nature. It can then vitalise it with its potency, and can also eliminate those congestions and obstructions which are such a fruitful source of disease.” (3)

Liberation, healing and initiation are therefore closely interrelated and also show an intimate connection with sacrifice.
Initiations have as their objective the liberation of the consciousness from erroneous, and imprisoning, identifications with the lower planes and cruder states of matter, transferring the identity into ever wider spheres.

This process enables the consciousness, step by step, to fully illuminate and permeate matter and thus return to the source from which it came.
“When light illuminates the minds of men and stirs the secret light within all other forms, then the One in Whom we live reveals His hidden, secret lighted Will.” (4)

Healing processes are first aimed at freeing oneself from the spell and fascination of a plane of substance (physical/etheric or astral or lower mental) and then at mastering the plane itself, i.e. mastering all matter in a certain sphere by voluntarily remaining in that sphere until the “prisoners of the planet”, still succumbing to illusion and glamour, immersed in suffering and pain, crying out for healing and liberation, are completely freed.

“To those who are standing in the blaze of pain (and their numbers are Legion), of agony, anxiety and distress—seeing it on every hand and attempting to stand steady in the midst of it all—I say: That which appears is not always that which truly is; that which rends and disrupts the personality life is frequently the agent of release, if rightly apprehended; that which will emerge when the Forces of Light have penetrated the world darkness will demonstrate the nature of the undying human spirit.” (5)

The “liberation”, or healing, therefore occurs through a “sacrifice” (sacrum facere) that purifies, heals and elevates the form by re-establishing the original identity of Spirit and Matter.

“Under this Law of Sacrifice, Sanat Kumara [the Personality of our Lord or planetary Logos] (to express the idea in occult terms) “must turn His back upon the Central Spiritual Sun, and with the light of His Countenance irradiate the path of the prisoners of the planet”. He sentences Himself to stay for as long as may be needed, “acting as the Sun and light of the planet until the Day be with us and the night of pralaya descends upon His finished task”. Thus and only thus can the light of the Central Spiritual Sun begin to penetrate the dark places of the Earth; when this happens all “shadows disappear”—an occult reference to the all-embracing radiance of the Monad as it absorbs both its reflection, the soul, and its shadow, the personality. The initiate, on his tiny scale, achieves a paralleling expression of the Law of Sacrifice; he eventually turns his back upon the courts of Shamballa and upon the Way of the Higher Evolution as he retains his contact with the Earth and works as a Member of the Hierarchy for the extension of the will-to-good among men, and therefore among all the lesser evolutions.” (6)

Christ, Heart of the Sun and current Head of both the Hierarchy and Shamballa, One with the Father (the Central Spiritual Sun), is the example of unreserved self-giving, the example of the perfect healer evoking the soul’s liberating power, the example of sacrifice made to attain that which is deemed most essential and to open an initiatory path for all to follow.
In this way sacrifice becomes a joyful gift of self, it becomes bliss; “wherefore the power and wherefore the sacrifice, if there be no joy?” (7)

In His future work the Christ will aim, as the Bible says, at “healing the peoples” so that Humanity may recognise itself as One and be healed of the evil of separateness.
The Vedas also tell us, first among the sapiential texts, of the importance of sacrifice, understood not only as the primordial self-immolation of Prajapati who, in mythical terms, gives life to Being, and to beings, with his own substance, but also as the way to “heal” the substance, and therefore ourselves, of the encrustations that obscure its light, while guaranteeing the universal order.
“Prajapati gave himself up to them [the gods], and the sacrifice became theirs; for, indeed, the sacrifice is the food of the gods. Having given himself up to the gods, he created that counterpart of himself, to wit, the sacrifice…” (8)

Sacrifice is therefore the continuous and dynamic spiritualisation of the planes of substance of which reality is made up, including us; the consequent spiritualisation of Humanity and the possibility of the salvific, healing manifestation of Humanity itself.

“[It has been called] … ‘wise who performed the all-sustaining sacrifice’,–for that sacrifice is indeed all-sustaining, and they who perform it are indeed wise.” (9)

“By what power wilt thou gain strength?
How wilt thou attain the fulfillment of Our Work?
By the Power given to Us.
Can I speak of power when all folly,
all ignorance, all vanity, strive for power?
But I say, and affirm, Our Power is different.
Our Power is sacrifice.”
(Agni Yoga Series, Leaves of Morya’s Garden I – The Call § 353)

 “Sacrifice is the power of Love” (10)

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1. Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Astrology, pp. 596-7 e 605
2. Alice a. Bailey, Discipleship in the New Age I, p. 101
3. Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Healing, pp. 5 e 17
4. Alice A. Bailey, Discipleship in the New Age II, ing. 315
5. Alice A. Bailey, Discipleship in the New Age I, p. 101
6. Alice A. Bailey, Discipleship in the New Age II, p. 287-8
7. Agni Yoga Series, Leaves of Morya’s Garden I – The Call § 357
8. Satapatha-Brahmana, XI, 1,8, 2-4
9. Ibidem IX, 2,3, 27
10. Formula 1.7 of the Genesis of Ideas – 2. Space