A Call to Service

In closing this treatise on the magical work of the individual aspirant I seek to do two things:

1. Indicate the immediate goal for students in this century, and summarise time steps that they must take.
2. Indicate the things which must be eliminated and overcome and the penalties which overtake the probationer and the disciple when mistakes are made and faults are condoned.

First of all, the immediate goal must be well recognised, if lost effort is to be avoided and real progress achieved.  Many well-intentioned aspirants are prone to give undue time to their registered aspirations, and to the formulation of their plans for service.  The world aspiration is now so strong and humanity is now so potently orienting itself towards the Path that sensitive people everywhere are being swept into a vortex of spiritual desire, and ardently long for the life of liberation, of spiritual undertakings and of recorded soul consciousness.  Their recognition of their own latent possibilities is now so strong that they over-estimate themselves; they give much time to picturing themselves as the ideal mystic or in deploring their lack of spiritual achievement or their failure to achieve a sphere of service.  Thus they become lost, on the one hand, in the vague and misty realms of a beautiful idealism, of colourful hypotheses, and of delightful theories; on the other hand, they become engulfed in a dramatisation of themselves as centres of power in a field of fruitful service; they draw up, mentally, plans for world endeavour to see themselves as the pivotal point around which that service will move; they frequently make an effort to work out these plans and produce an organisation, for instance on the physical plane, which is potentially valuable but equally potentially useless, even if not dangerous.  They fail to realise that the motivating impulse is primarily due to what the Hindu teachers call a “sense of I-ness”, and that their work is founded on a subjective egoism which must—and will—be eliminated before true service can be rendered.

This tendency to aspiration and to service is right and good and should be seen as forming part of the coming universal consciousness and equipment of the race as a whole.  It is steadily coming to the surface owing to the growing strength of the Aquarian influence which (from about the year A.D. 1640) has been gaining in potency and is producing two effects:  it is breaking down the crystallised old forms of the Piscean age, and is stimulating the creative faculties, as they express themselves in group concepts, and group plans.  As all of you well know, this is the cause of the present disturbed conditions, and these conditions can be summed up in the words:  impersonalization wherein the state, group or groups are regarded as of more importance than the individual and his rights; amalgamation, which is the tendency to fuse, blend, and cohere and to produce that interrelation which must eventually mark the intercourse of humanity and produce that “synthesis of all the single men”, which Browning so truly remarks is the goal of the evolutionary process and marks the conclusion of the journey of the divine prodigal; and sensitive intercommunication between units, groups and combinations of groups, both on the subjective and objective sides of manifestation.  In these three words—impersonalization, amalgamation, and intercommunication—you have summed up for you the outstanding phenomena which are appearing among us at this time.  Students are urged to consider the plan as it is thus expressing itself, and to study these growing tendencies in human affairs.  The fact that they are so prominent will appear, if the student will take the trouble to consider the panorama of history; he will then note that even the history of five hundred years ago will reveal to him the fact that at that time great individuals were the prominent factors, and that history is concerned largely with the doings of powerful personalities who cast their spell over their time and age; then isolation and separateness governed human affairs and every man fought for his own land and every man forgot his brother and lived selfishly; then there was little interrelation between different races or between human families, and there was no real means of communication, except that of personal contact, which was frequently impossible.

Students should therefore ponder on these words which will be found to become of increasing importance during the next fifty years.  This is far enough ahead for the average student to look and to plan, and in their recognition of this phase of the working out of the divine Purpose, they would do well to study their individual life expression and to ask themselves the following questions:

1. Are they wasting time in mystical dreams, or are they occupied in a practical application of the sensed spiritual truths, thus making them part of their daily experience?
2. Do they find that their reaction to the growing impersonality of the age is one of resentment, or do they find that this relatively new attitude of personal detachment is tending to solve their own personal problems?
3. Can they register an increasing ability to sense the thoughts and ideas of others, and do they find that they are becoming more sensitive and therefore more able to swing into the great tide of intercommunication?
4. How much is the faculty of dramatisation governing their daily life?  Do they find that they are the centre of the universe, which revolves automatically around them, or are they working at the problem of decentralising themselves and at absorption in the whole?

These and other questions which will arise may serve to indicate the responsiveness of the aspirant to the coming in of the new age.

In this treatise on individual development and on astral control, a vision has been given and a rule of life expounded which holds in it the needed instruction for the interlude between the two great ages—the Piscean and the Aquarian.  A part of the underlying purpose has been expressed in words—a purpose which is recognised by many all over the world and which is working out in practically every department of human life.  It is subconsciously registered and intuitively followed by many who know nothing of the technicalities of the plan.  Those who guide the human race are not particularly concerned as to the success of the emerging new conditions.  That is most definitely assured, and the growth of human realisation and of the spiritual consciousness of non-separateness cannot be arrested.  The problem is what means to continue to employ to bring these desired ends about in such a way that the form nature can be keyed up and prepared to handle its new responsibilities, and deal with its new knowledges without undue suffering and those painful cleavages and hours of agony which attract more attention than the more subtle and successful growth of divine awareness.  Every time there is a tendency towards synthesis and understanding in the world, every time the lesser is merged in the greater and the unit is blended in the whole, every time great and universal concepts make their impact upon the minds of the masses, there is a subsequent disaster and cataclysm and breaking down of the form aspect and of that which might prevent those concepts becoming physical plane facts.   This is therefore the problem of the hierarchical workers:—how to avert the dreaded suffering and carry man along whilst the tidal wave of this spiritual realisation sweeps over the world and does its needed work.  Hence the present call to service which is sounding like a trumpet in the ear of all attentive disciples.

This call to service usually meets with a response, but that response is coloured by the personality of the aspirant and tinctured with his pride, and his ambition.  Need is truly realised.  The desire to meet the need is genuine and sincere;  the longing to serve and lift is real.  Steps are taken which are intended by the aspirant to enable him to fit in with the plan.  But the trouble with which we on the inner side have perforce to deal is, that though there is no question as to willingness and desire to serve, the characters and temperaments are such that well nigh insuperable difficulties are presented.  Through these aspirants we have to work, and the material they present gives us much trouble frequently.

These latent characteristics often do not make their appearance until after the service has been undertaken.  That they are there, the watching guides may suspect, but even they have not the right to withhold opportunity.  When there is this delayed appearance the tragedy is that many others suffer besides the aspirant concerned.  As the human fabric makes itself felt and stands out of the mist of idealism, of lovely plans and much talk and arranging, many are in the meantime attracted by synchronous idealism, and gather around the server.  When the hidden weaknesses appear, they suffer as well as he.  The method of the Great Ones, which is to seek out those who have trained themselves somewhat in sensitive response and to work through them, carries with it certain dangers.  The ordinary well-meaning aspirant is not in such danger as the more advanced and active disciple.  He is in danger in three directions and can be swept off his feet in three ways:

1. His whole nature is under undue stimulation on account of his inner contacts and the spiritual forces with which he is in touch, and this carries with it real danger, for he hardly knows as yet how to handle himself, and is scarcely aware of the risk entailed.
2. The people with whom he is working, in their turn, make his problem.  Their greed, their adulation, and praise, and their criticism tend to becloud his way.  Because he is not sufficiently detached and spiritually advanced, he walks bemused in a cloud of thoughtforms, and knows it not.  Thus he loses his way and wanders from the original intent and again he knows it not.
3. His latent weaknesses must emerge under the pressure of the work, and inevitably he will show signs of cracking at times, if I may use such a word.  The personality faults become strengthened as he seeks to carry his particular form of service to the world.  I refer to that service which is self sought and formulated on a background of personal ambition and love of power, even if only partially recognised or not recognised at all.  He is under strain naturally, and—like a man carrying a heavy load up a steep hill—he discovers points of strain, and evinces a tendency to break down physically, or to lower his ideal so as to conform to weaknesses.

To all this must be added the strain of the period itself, and the general condition of unhappy humanity.  This subconsciously has its effect on all disciples, and upon all who are now working in the world.  Some are showing signs of physical pressure, though the inner life remains poised and normal, sane and rightly  oriented.  Others are breaking up emotionally and this produces two effects according to the point of development of the aspirant to service.  He is either, through the strain, learning detachment, and this curiously enough is what might be called the  “defense mechanism” of the soul in this present period of world unfoldment, or he is becoming increasingly nervous and is on the way to become a neurotic.  Others, again, are feeling the pressure in the mental body.  They become bewildered in some cases and no clear truth appears.  They then work on without inspiration, and because they know it to be right and they also have the rhythm of work.  Others are grasping opportunity as they see it and, to do so, fall back on innate self-assertion (which is the outstanding fault of the mental types) and build up a structure around their service, and construct a form which in reality embodies what they desire, what they think to be right, but which is separative and the child of their minds and not the child of their souls.  Some, in their turn, more potent and more coordinated, feel the pressure of the entire personality; the versatile psychic nature responds both to need and to the theory of the plan; they realise their truly valuable assets and know they have somewhat to contribute.  They are still, however, so full of what is called personality that their service is gradually and steadily stepped down to the level of that personality, and is consequently coloured by their personality reactions, their likes and dislikes, and their individual life tendencies and habits.  These eventually assert themselves and there is then a worker, doing good work but spoiling it all by this unrealised separateness and individual methods.  This means that such a worker gathers to himself only those whom he can subordinate and govern.  His group is not coloured by the impulses of the new age, but by the separative instincts of the worker at the centre.  The danger here is so subtle that much care must be taken by a disciple in self-analysis.  It is so easy to be glamoured by the beauty of one’s own ideals and vision, and by the supposed rectitude of one’s own position, and yet all the time be influenced subjectively by love of personal power, individual ambition, jealousy of other workers, and the many traps which catch the feet of the unwary disciple.

But if true impersonality is cultivated, if the power to stand steady is developed, if every situation is handled in a spirit of love and if there is a refusal to take hasty action and to permit separation to creep in, then there will be the growth of a group of true servers, and the gathering out of those who can materialise the plan and bring to birth the new age and its attendant wonders.

To do this, there must be courage of the rarest kind.  Fear holds the world in thrall, and no one is exempt from its influence.  For the aspirant and for the disciple are two kinds of fear which require to be especially considered.  The fears that we dealt with in the earlier part of the treatise, and the fears that are inherent, as you know, in existence itself are familiar to all of us.  They have their root in the instinctual nature (economic fears, fears arising out of the sex life, physical fear and terror, fear of the unknown, with that dominating fear of death which colours so many lives) and have been the subject of much psychological investigation.  With them I do not seek to deal.  They are to be overcome by the life of the soul as it permeates and transforms the daily life, and by the refusal of the aspirant to accord them any recognition.  The first method builds towards future strength of character, and prevents the coming in of any new fears.  They cannot exist when the soul is consciously controlling life and its situations.  The second negatives the old thought forms and brings about eventually their destruction through lack of nourishment.  A dual process is therefore carried forward, producing a genuine manifestation of the qualities of the spiritual man and a growing freedom from the thralldom of age-old fear concepts.  The student finds himself becoming steadily detached from the prime governing instincts which have hitherto served to weld him into the general scheme of the elementary planetary life.  It might be valuable here to point out that all the major instincts have their roots in that peculiar quality of the planetary life,—fear reactions, leading to activity of some kind.  As you know the psychologists list five main and dominant instincts, and we will very briefly touch upon them.

The instinct of self-preservation has its roots in an innate fear of death; through the presence of this fear, the race has fought its way to its present point of longevity and endurance.  The sciences which concern themselves with the preservation of life, the medical knowledge of the day, and the achievements of civilised comfort have all grown out of this basic fear.  All has tended to the persistence of the individual, and to his preserved condition of being.  Humanity persists, as a race and as a kingdom in nature, as a result of this fear tendency, this instinctual reaction of the human unit to self-perpetuation.

The instinct of sex has its main root in the fear of separateness and of isolation, and in a revolt against separative unity on the physical plane, against aloneness; and it has resulted in the carrying forward of the race and the persistence and propagation of the forms through which the race can come into manifestation.

The herd instinct can easily be seen to have its root in a similar reaction; for the sense of safety and for convinced assured security—based on numerical aggregations—men have always sought their own kind and herded themselves together for defense and for economic stability.  Out of this instinctual reaction of the race as a whole, our modern civilisation is the result; its vast centres, its huge cities and its massed tenements have emerged, and we have modern herding, carried to the nth degree.

The fourth great instinct, that of self-assertion, is also based on fear; it connotes the fear of the individual that he will fail of recognition and thus lose much that would otherwise be his.  As time has progressed, the selfishness of the race has thus grown; its sense of acquisitiveness has developed and the power to grasp has emerged (the “will to power” in some form or another) until today we have the intense individualism and the positive sense of importance which have produced much of the modern economic and national troubles.  We have fostered self-determination, self-assertion and self-interest until we are presented with a well-nigh insuperable problem.  But out of it all, much good has come and will come, for no individual is of value until he realises that value for himself, and then with definiteness sacrifices the acquired values for the good of the whole.

The instinct to enquire in its turn is based on fear of the unknown, but out of this fear has emerged-—as a result of age-long enquiry—our present educational and cultural systems and the entire structure of scientific investigation.

These tendencies, based on fear have (because man is divine) acted as a tremendous stimulation of his entire nature, and have carried him forward to his present point of wide comprehension and usefulness; they have produced our modern civilisation with all its defects and yet with all its indicated divinity.  Out of these instincts carried forward into infinity, and out of the process of their transmutation into their higher correspondences the full flower of soul expression will emerge.  I would like to point out the following:

The instinct of self-presentation finds its consummation in assured immortality, and of this the work undertaken by the spiritualists and psychic investigators right down the ages is the mode of approach and the inevitable guarantee.

The sex instinct has worked out and finds its logical consummation in the relationship-—consciously realised-—of the soul and the body.  This is the keynote of mysticism and religion, which is today, as ever, the expression of the Law of Attraction, not as it expresses itself through physical plane marriage, but as it finds its consummation (for man) in the sublime marriage carried forward with conscious intent between the positive soul and the negative and receptive form.

The herd instinct finds its divine consummation in an awakened group consciousness, which is evidenced today in the general tendency towards amalgamations, and the widespread fusing and blending which are going on everywhere.  It demonstrates in the ability to think in terms of internationalism, of universal concepts, which will eventually result in the establishing of universal brotherhood.

The instinct of self-assertion, in its turn, has given to our modern civilisation its intense individualism, the cult of the personality, and the production of ancestor and hero-worship.  It is leading, however, to the assertion of the Self, of the divine inner Ruler, and out of our newest science, psychology, will emerge a knowledge of the assertive and dominant spiritual Self, and lead finally to the manifestation of the kingdom of souls on earth.

And what of the instinct to enquire?  Transmuted into divine investigation and transformed by the application of the light of the soul in the realm of enquiry, we shall have humanity carried forward into the Hall of Wisdom and thus man will leave behind the experiences of the Hall of Knowledge.  Our great educational centres will become schools for the development of intuitive perception and of spiritual awareness.

The following table should be carefully studied by the student:

Instinct	Correspondence	Mode
1. Self-preservation	Immortality	Spiritualistic Research.
2. Sex	Spiritual union	Religion.
	At-one-ment	Mysticism.
3. Herd	Group consciousness	Brotherhood.
4. Self-Assertion	Assertion of the Self	Psychology.
5. Enquiry	Intuition	Education.

Thus the fears which beset humanity, having their roots in instincts, seem nevertheless to be divine characteristics, misapplied and misused.  When, however, they are rightly understood and used, and transmuted by the knowing soul, they produce awareness and are the source of growth and that which conveys to the dormant soul-—in time and space-—the needed impulse, impetus and urge to progress which have carried man forward from the caveman stage and the prehistoric cycle, through the long period of history, and can be trusted today to carry him forward with increasing rapidity, as he now arrives at intellectual comprehension and can apply himself to the problem of progress in full awareness.

Students need to realise more deeply that the whole process is a divine one, and that evil, so-called, is but an illusion and an inherent part of duality, giving place in time and out of time to a divine unity.  Evil is due to wrong perception and erroneous interpretation of that which is perceived.  The achievement of true vision, plus right understanding, brings about freedom from the instinctual reactions and evokes that inner detachment which enables a man to walk at liberty in the kingdom of God.

But what of the two fears with which the aspirant has peculiar concern?  What of the fear of public opinion, and fear of failure?  These are two potent factors in the life of service, and hinder many.

Those who are beginning to work in cooperation with the plan and are learning the significance of service are prone to fear that what they do will be criticised and misjudged, or fall a victim to the reverse idea that what they do will not be sufficiently liked, appreciated and understood.  They demand liking and praise.  They gauge success by numbers and by response.  They dislike to have their motives impugned and misjudged, and rush violently into explanation; they are unhappy if their methods, the personnel of their group, and the way in which their service is rendered comes under the tongue of criticism.  The false objectives of numbers, of power or of a formulated doctrine control them.  Unless what they do measures up to the standards or conforms to the technique of the group of minds which surrounds them or appeals the most to them, they are unhappy and consequently frequently change their plans, alter their viewpoint, and lower their standard until it conforms to their immediate mass psychology, or their chosen counsellors.

The true disciple sees the vision.  He then seeks to keep so closely in touch with his soul that he can stand with steadiness whilst he endeavours to make that vision a reality; he aims to achieve what, from the standpoint of the world seems to be impossible, knowing that the vision is not materialised through expediency and undue adaptation of the suggested ideas of worldly or intellectual counsellors.  Public opinion and the advice of those who are Piscean in their tendencies and not Aquarian are carefully considered but not unduly so, and when advice is found to be separative and tends to eliminate harmony, and produces a lack of brotherly love and understanding, it is discarded at once.  When there is evidenced a constantly critical attitude towards other workers in the field of world service and where there is a capacity to see only selfishness and fault and to impute wrong motives and to believe evil, then the true aspirant refuses to be swayed and goes serenely on his way.

In the coming cycle I emphatically tell you that the true work will be carried forward (the work of spiritually welding the world into a synthesis and the production of a recognised brotherhood of souls) only by those who refuse to be separative and whose words are watched so that no evil is spoken; these are the workers who see the divine in all and refuse to think evil and impute evil; they work with sealed lips; they deal not with their brothers affairs, nor reveal that which concerns them; their lives are coloured by understanding and by love; their minds are characterised by a trained spiritual perception and that spiritual awareness which employs a keen intellect as the corollary of a loving spirit.

May I repeat in other words this theme, for its importance is vital and the effect of the work of these instruments on the world is immense.  These men and women whose mission it is to inaugurate the New Age have learned the secret of silence; they are animated ceaselessly by a spirit of inclusive love; their tongues lead them not astray into the field of ordinary criticism, and they permit no condemnation of others; they are animated by the spirit of protection.  To them will be committed the work of fostering the life of the New Age.

To those who have not yet reached this point in evolution and whose vision is not so clear, nor their natures so disciplined, there remains the important work, on a lower level, of working with their kind.  Their attributes and qualities bring to them those who resemble them; they do not work in such loneliness and their work is more outwardly successful, though not always so.

It must be remembered that all work, in the sight of the Great Ones, is of equal importance.  For those souls who are at the stage where a home or office provides sufficient experience, that is for them the supreme effort; their attempt to work is-—on its own level-—as great an achievement as to fulfill the destiny of a Christ or a Napoleon.  Forget this not and seek to see life truly and not with its distinctions-—men-made and dangerous.  A disciple who has not yet the fuller vision of a more trained worker and who is only just learning the ABC of public work may, with all his failures and dense stupidities, be doing as well as an older disciple with his wider knowledge and experience.

(From A Treatise on White Magic, p. 618-632) by Alice A. Bailey