| Before proceeding to study the final phrases of [39] Rule One,
I would call your attention to the fact that the initiate has faced two major tests,
symbolically described as "the burning ground" and the "clear cold
light." Only after he has successfully passed these can he - or the group, when
considering group initiation - move forward and outward into the wider reaches of the
divine consciousness. These tests are applied when the soul grips the personality and the
fire of divine love destroys the loves and desires of the integrated personality. Two
factors tend to bring this about: the slow moving forward of the innate conscience into
greater control, and the steady development of the "fiery aspiration" to
which Patanjali (The Light of the Soul, Book II, Sutra I, Page 119) makes
reference. These two factors, when brought into living activity, bring the disciple into
the center of the burning ground which separates the Angel of the Presence from the
Dweller on the Threshold. The burning ground is found upon the threshold of every new
advance, until the third initiation has been taken. The "clear cold light" is
the light of pure reason, of infallible intuitive perception and its unremitting,
intensive and revealing light constitutes a major test in its effects. The initiate
discovers the depths of evil, and at the same time is enticed forward by the heights of a
growing sense of divinity. The clear cold light reveals two things:
- The omnipresence of God throughout nature, and therefore throughout the entire
personality life of the initiate or of the initiate group. The scales fall from the eyes,
bringing about - paradoxically - the "dark night of the soul" and the sense of
being alone and bereft of all help. This led (in the case of the Christ, for instance) to
that appalling moment in the Garden of Gethsemane, and which was consummated on the Cross,
when the will of personality-soul clashed with the divine will of the Monad. The
revelation to the initiate of the ages of severance from the Central Reality, and of all
its attendant implications, descends upon the one who is attempting to stand "in
isolated Unity," as Patanjali (to quote him a second time) calls the experience. (The
Light of the Soul, Book IV, Sutras 24, Page 420 and Sutra 34, Page 428). [40]
The omnipresence of divinity within all forms pours in upon the consciousness of the
initiate, and the mystery of time, space and electricity stands revealed. The major effect
of this revelation (prior to the third initiation) is to bring to the disciple a
realization of the "great heresy of separateness," as it focuses in him, the
separated fully conscious individual - aware of his past, conscious now of his ray and its
conditioning power, focused in his own aspiration, and yet part of the great whole of
nature. From that moment onward he knows that divinity is all there is, and this he learns
through the revelation of the inherent separativeness of the form life, through the
processes of "the dark night of the soul" and its culminating lesson of the
significance of isolation and the freeing process which brings about the merging into
unity through the emission of the sound, the cry, the invocation, such as the cry of the
Christ upon the Cross symbolized. His exact words have not been transmitted to us. They
vary for each ray, but all bring about the recognition of divine merging, in which all
separating veils are "rent from the top to the bottom" (as The New Testament expresses
it).
- The omniscience of the divine Whole is also brought home to the initiate
through the medium of the clear cold light, and the phases of "isolated
experience," as it is sometimes occultly called, is forever ended. I would have you
realize what this can mean in so far as possible to your present consciousness. Up till
the present, the initiate-disciple has been functioning as a duality and as a fusion of
soul-energy and personality-force. Now these forms of life stand exposed to him for what
they essentially are, and he knows that - as directing agencies and as transitory gods -
they no longer have any hold over him. He is being gradually translated into another
divine aspect, taking with him all that he has received during the ages of close relation
and identification with the third aspect, form, and the second aspect, consciousness. A
sense of being bereft, deserted and alone descends upon him as he realizes that the
control of form and soul must also disappear. Here lies the agony [41] of isolation and
the overpowering sense of loneliness. But the truths revealed by the clear cold light of
the divine reason leave him no choice. He must relinquish all that holds him away
from the Central Reality; he must gain life and "life more abundantly." This
constitutes the supreme test in the life cycle of the incarnating Monad; and "when
the very heart of this experience enters into the heart of the initiate, then he moves
outward through that heart into full life expression." Such is the way that the Old
Commentary expresses this. I know no other way in which to bring the idea before you.
The experience undergone is not related to form, nor is it connected with consciousness or
with even the higher psychic sensitivity. It consists of pure identification with divine
purpose. This is made possible because the self-will of the personality and the
enlightened will of the soul have both equally been relinquished.
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