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Discipleship in the New Age I - Talks to Disciples - Part VIII
3. The general group objective. This is the shifting of consciousness of all integrated human beings in increasingly large numbers on to the etheric levels of consciousness and activity. This entails conscious work on those levels as energy units, each contributing his individual share and his special quota of energy to the sumtotal of available etheric energy and doing this both consciously and intelligently. When this is done, the man is then ready for the first initiation [81] and is a true occultist - working with energy under hierarchical guidance. 4. The individual objective. This necessitates the preparation of the life and consciousness for this new process of group initiation. This group initiation is itself of real import and is dependent upon the unit in the group fitting himself for initiation and at the same time learning to subordinate his spiritual ambition, and desires to the group pace and to the necessity of right timing where his fellow disciples are concerned. It involves, therefore, a dual attitude towards the processes of initiation: the adapting of oneself to the needed integration and, secondly, to the development of spiritual responsiveness to impressions from the level of the soul and of the spiritual Hierarchy. It also involves the cultivation of judgment and of wisdom in the establishment of a right interrelation with the group of disciples so that the group - in this case my group of disciples and definitely a group entity - may move on together. This necessitates the same conditions for the group as always exist for the individual: right integration on the three personality levels and also on soul levels, plus right group impression or responsiveness to the spiritual and higher psychic "gift waves" - as Tibetan occultists call them. This will take many years and the work of achieving finished group attitudes and relationships through individual understanding and true impersonality can go forward upon the physical plane whilst in incarnation, or it can go on out of incarnation with the same facility. You must always bear in mind that the consciousness remains the same, whether in physical incarnation or out of incarnation, and that development can be carried on with even greater ease than when limited and conditioned by the brain consciousness. The attainment of these objectives will involve clear vision and a keen and intelligent understanding; it will require the steady and conscious intensification of group love and group interplay; it will lead all disciples to live lives full of wise purpose and planned spiritual objectives and, at the same time, the service rendered will assume a definite and an automatic technique of expression. [82] You might here ask me if there is one single mode or means whereby a disciple can begin to approximate this seemingly impossible goal. I would reply: By the steady practice of impersonality with its subsidiary attitude of indifference where personal desires, contacts and goals are concerned. Such an impersonality is little understood and even when cultivated by well-intentioned aspirants has a selfish basis. Ponder on this and endeavor to achieve impersonality through self-forgetfulness and through the decentralization of the focus of consciousness from the personality (where it is usually centered) into the living, loving soul. There are four things which frequently hold back a group of disciples from achievement and from satisfactory work: Lack of vision, incident to a lack of mental keenness. Personal glamor. This involves the astral plane. Individual problems, involving a pronounced preoccupation upon the physical plane with its circumstances and difficulties - in this most difficult of worlds. Inertia or slow reactions to the imparted teaching and to the presented opportunity.
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