THE SEVEN TYPES OF  PLANETARY PURPOSE

EXCERPT from Rays & Initiations by AA Bailey   p 239

The two Rules which remain for us to study concern the work of the Hierarchy in the Aquarian Age.  Hence they are specifically for the more advanced disciples and for initiates.  We have seen in many ways that-at this time-the Hierarchy, because it is the Ashram of Sanat Kumara Himself, is coming peculiarly and in a new sense under the influence of His will nature.  This means that the Members of the Hierarchy, familiar as They may be with the Plan for the immediate cycle with which They and humanity are confronted, are being brought to a new and more "appropriate" conception of the divine Purpose which lies behind the Plan and which motivates it.  The will of God is becoming plainer to Them.  It is taking on more definite lines.  As our planetary Logos nears the climaxing point of the initiation which He is now undergoing, His Ashram, the Hierarchy, must and does (as part of a normal development) feel the effect.  From the Christ down to the newest and latest accepted disciple, each in his own place, all are becoming increasingly responsive to the "will of God."  This [Page 239] does not take place in a blind, acquiescing manner, but with understanding and "fortitude."  This receptive attitude on the part of the Hierarchy will bring about great, necessary and unexpected changes.  Some of these, I have earlier hinted, may now be taking place; some will follow later.  The following ideas may serve to clarify the whole concept in your minds:

1. The entire technique of training disciples for initiation and of absorbing them into the various Ashrams which constitute the great Ashram of the Lord of the World has been altered.  The Masters are no longer concerned with an individual, here or there, who endeavours to go forward on the Path, who evidences capacity and who is apparently ready for what has been called "the evocation of the initiate consciousness."  It is becoming obvious to the Hierarchy that with the arrival of the Aquarian Age, group preparation, group initiation and group acceptance must and will supersede the older methods.  These older methods, built around the direct relationship between a Master and a disciple, reached their highest point of usefulness early in the Piscean Age.  For nearly two thousand years these methods have proved so successful that the intensity of humanity's response is such that hundreds are now ready "for absorption."  This readiness and success present a difficulty and pose a problem for the Masters, necessitating a reorganisation of Their plans and a readjustment of Their techniques.

2. Not only has the individual approach to the Hierarchy been superseded by a group approach, but it is now found to be possible to make a certain measure of the training objective and exoteric.  Hence the establishment of the New Group of World Servers.  This is primarily a group which, while working on the outer plane of daily, physical living, yet preserves a close ashramic integration; it thus provides a field of service for accepted disciples who are seeking service-expression, and it also provides a rallying point for all determined aspirants where they can be tried out and where their motives and persistence can be tested, prior to direct acceptance.  This is something new, for it [Page 240] shifts the responsibility of preparing aspirants for accepted discipleship onto the shoulders of the pledged disciple and away from the immediate attention of the accepting Master.  He is thus freed for other fields of service.  This, in itself, is one of the major indications of the success of the evolutionary process as applied to humanity.  This "shift" was initiated by the Christ Himself; he worked with men very frequently through others, reaching humanity through the medium of His twelve Apostles, regarding Paul as substituting for Judas Iscariot.  The Buddha tried the same system, but the relation of His group was, in the first instance, to Him and not so much to the world of men.  Christ sent His Apostles out into the world to feed the sheep, to seek, to guide and to become "fishers of men."  The relation of the disciples of the Christ was only secondarily to their Master, and primarily to a demanding world; that attitude still controls the Hierarchy, yet with no less of devotion to the Christ.  What the Buddha had instituted symbolically and in embryo became factual and existent under the demands of the Piscean Age.

3. The third great change has been in the relation of the Hierarchy to Shamballa, and of this you can necessarily know and understand little.  I could perhaps express the underlying significance to you in symbolic language.  The energy, emanating from Shamballa, has been divided into two direct and distinctive streams.  One stream, embodying the dynamic of purpose, is now pouring into the Hierarchy and into its seven major Ashrams; another stream, embodying the dynamic of determination or of enlightened enthusiastic will, is reaching humanity direct, via the New Group of World Servers.  Hitherto a blended stream of Shamballa force has poured into the Hierarchy and has streamed, in its undifferentiated type and quality, into all the groups within the Hierarchy.  Now the quality of determination, or of what the average person understands by the use of the word "Will," is pouring into the New Group of World Servers, whilst the energy of dynamic purpose, differentiated into seven diverging streams, is pouring into [Page 241] each of the "seven points of reception," the Masters' Ashrams within the ring-pass-not of the Hierarchy.  These seven types of purpose embody the seven energies which will reorganise and redefine the hierarchical undertakings, and thus inaugurate the New Age.  These seven purposes might be called:

a. The unknown, unseen and unheard purpose of Sanat Kumara.  It is the secret of life itself and is known only to Him alone.  In its initial phase of this new expression, it works through the Manu and the Master Morya; it is that which veils the central mystery which all esoteric schools-if true to their inaugurating impulse-will eventually reveal.  What that is we do not yet know, but it is hinted at in Rule XIII.

b. The purpose underlying revelation.  This may be a somewhat new idea to you for you are apt to regard revelation as a goal in itself.  You seldom consider it as an effect of the inner purpose of Sanat Kumara.  The emphasis hitherto has been on the aspect of revelation, making it an effect of what the disciple has done with himself and by means of which he is enabled to be the recipient of revelation.  Yet behind all the successive revelations of divinity down the ages is to be found one significant purpose; all of them are and will prove themselves to be aspects of the Great Revelation.  It is through the processes of revelation that divinity is slowly dawning upon the human consciousness.  It is a sevenfold revelation; each of the seven kingdoms in nature reveals one aspect of it, and each of these seven reaches revelation in seven or fourteen lesser revelations or phases.

Ponder on this and learn to distinguish between vision (which is as much of the divine current revelation as a disciple can grasp in time and space) and revelation which is the synthesis of the divine expressive purpose.  This is related to the will-to-good which is, in its turn, a complete expression of the love nature of Deity.

c. The (as yet) unrecognised purpose which evoked the creative activity of our Planetary Logos.  This brought the [Page 242] third aspect of the divine Trinity into play.  The usual reasons brought forward by the finite mind of man to account for what is called by us "manifestation," and to explain the dualism of all existence and the relation of spirit-matter, are by no means the real explanation of the divine purpose; they are based on man's own essential dualism; they are the highest explanation of his own divine nature which he can achieve at this time.  This is a point to be remembered.  They are his response to the second Ray of Mutual Attraction, which the Ray of Love-Wisdom is sometimes called.  They are not an expression of his response to the Will of God, and only indicate the limitations of his definition of divine purpose.  As you will note, they really define nothing.  Nor can I help you to recognise this third aspect and the eternal purpose of the Lord of the World.  Just as a soul seeks incarnation in order to carry forward some fixed design and to take one of the higher initiations, so Sanat Kumara came into incarnation through the medium of this planet in order to carry forward His fixed designs (known to Him as a cosmic Soul on cosmic mental levels), and to take one of the higher initiations which mark the Path of Initiation for these great informing Lives of planetary spheres.  He could take this particular initiation through the experience to be gained in a vehicle constituted, expressive and at the special state of consciousness of our entire planetary manifestation.  It required an instrument in which the cells and atoms of His body (all lives in all kingdoms), and the integrated organisms within that body (the various kingdoms of nature), were at the peculiar point in evolution at which they are all now to be found.

That is as far as I may go in giving you a hint, and you can see from this that in order to grasp more and comprehend more of His divine purpose you also will have to be in preparation for that particular initiation which for you-on your tiny level of awareness of fixed design-is the microcosmic parallel of His cosmic intention.  Which that initiation is I may not state.  The only service which these hints can render (as to the sevenfold divine purpose and [Page 243] the consideration of them) is to develop in you, the disciple, the power to think abstractly-a much needed capacity before you can begin to tread the Way of the Higher Evolution; for this the five initiations open to humanity (as today constituted) prepare the human spirit.

d. The mysterious purpose which has necessitated the calling into activity the Principle of Pain.  Suffering and Pain are essential requirements in order to carry this purpose to completion.  The capacity to suffer, which is distinctive of humanity, is the outstanding conscious reaction to environment of the fourth kingdom in nature, the human.  It is related to the power to think and consciously to relate cause and effect.  It is a process on the way to something undreamt of today.  And when I say this, my brother, I mean just exactly that.  This same ability to respond through pain is not to be found (in the sense in which the human being comprehends it) in any of the subhuman kingdoms, nor in the superhuman kingdoms, any more than it was found in the previous solar system or will be found in the next.  It is related to an aspect of the creative intelligence, an aspect and characteristic peculiar to humanity.

This aspect was not found in the previous solar system, in which the other aspects of the creative intelligence functioned.  In this solar system, it has been developed and brought from latency to potency in connection with the substance of the human bodies through which the human soul is gaining experience.  It holds the secret of beauty in manifestation, and its first expression can be seen in the creative perfection of certain phases of art for which man, and man alone, is responsible.  No other kingdom in nature creates forms, produces colour and sounds in harmonious relation, except the human; all of this type of creative art is the result of aeons of conflict, pain and suffering.  The Jews, as a product of the humanity of the previous solar system, and as constituting the incarnating residue from that solar system, have run the gamut of suffering and are in the forefront of the creative arts at this time, particularly [Page 244] in group production such as certain of the great motion pictures and in the field of scientific discovery.

There will be, as you can well see, a close relation between this fourth purpose of Sanat Kumara, the fourth kingdom in nature, the human, and the fourth Ray of Harmony through Conflict.  It is the balanced relation of these three, consummated at the fourth initiation, which produces the full beauty of the creative fixed design of the individual soul, or-on a different level of initiatory process-of the fixed design of the universal soul of the Lord of the World.  The fourth ray being temporarily out of full incarnation at this time is the reason for the relative interlude in the production of human creative art of a very high order.  The cycle of suffering is nearing its close, and we shall later see-when the fourth ray again swings into full objective activity-a recurrence of the arts on a turn of the spiral far more exalted than any lately seen.

e. The fifth great secret underlying the purpose of Sanat Kumara 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 [Page 245] 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.

Here again is another reason for the changing plans of the Hierarchy.  The Masters have to prepare Themselves for this intended and imminent emergence.  They are faced with the necessity of changing Their techniques of work in order to meet adequately the demands upon Them.  It is far easier for Them to work, as illumined Minds, upon the mental substance of Their disciples than it will be for Them to work down upon the physical plane, relating the minds and the brains of advanced human beings.  People are apt to forget that with each forward advance of humanity, the demands upon the Hierarchy change, new needs must be met, new techniques used, new and experimental methods must be employed.  As I write for disciples and initiates, I call this to their attention.  Their work of mental training does not end as they attain certain spiritual initiatory goals.

This fifth purpose is therefore closely related to the whole theme of "the garment of God" and to the emergence into manifestation of His "robe of beauty" as it is created and brought into being by humanity, acting as the medium for ideas from the superhuman kingdoms, and then influencing and swinging into creative cooperation the subhuman kingdoms.

f. It is difficult for me to give any idea whatsoever of the purpose with which we are now concerned, because it is expressed in the relation existing between the significance of Desire, Will,  Plan and Purpose.  All these words are symbols evolved by man in his attempt to grasp logoic purpose.  He recognises the impulses of desire, and in the course of the evolutionary process learns to transmute them [Page 246] into aspiration; he passes on to a vague groping forward in an effort to understand and acquiesce in the "will of God," as he calls it; as long, however, as human approach to that will remains negative, submissive, and acquiescent (as it does under the influence of the theological approach and in the manner inculcated by the Churches), no real light on the nature of that Will will be seen.  It is only as human beings enter into relation with the Hierarchy and are gradually absorbed into the hierarchical life and begin to take the higher initiations that the true nature of the divine Will will be grasped and the purpose of Sanat Kumara be revealed by an appreciation of the plan, followed by a consequent cooperation with that Plan.

All this will be done through the transmutation of desire into aspiration, and then into fixed determination.  When, however, the initiate has related these phases of consciousness in his own inner experience, and has permitted those inner realisations to affect his outer experience and daily living, then the underlying Purpose will shine forth and he will no longer be working in the dark.  You see, my brother, that all that I can do in these abstruse matters is to indicate what you can do, as an individual, to fit yourself to grasp divine purpose, and thus see the divine design and patterns as they are in reality.  Once you have taken the needed steps and complied with the requirements, the mystery disappears.

g. The final phase of the divine purpose is the most difficult of all to indicate, and when I say indicate, I mean exactly that, and nothing more definite and clear.  Does it mean anything to you when I say that the ceremonial ritual of the daily life of Sanat Kumara, implemented by music and sound and carried on the waves of colour which break upon the shores of the three worlds of human evolution, reveal-in the clearest notes and tones and shades-the deepest secret behind His purpose?  It scarcely makes sense to you and is dismissed as a piece of symbolic writing, used by me in order to convey the unconveyable.  Yet I am not here writing in symbols, but am making an exact statement [Page 247] of fact.  As beauty in any of its greater forms breaks upon the human consciousness, a dim sense is thereby conveyed of the ritual of Sanat Kumara's daily living.  More I cannot say.

Here are hints, therefore, as to the divine purpose; each of the seven supplements and completes the other six.  Only by attempting to grasp the whole inner synthesis will we arrive at the merest hint of the nature of that exalted consciousness which has brought our planet and all that is within and upon it into being.