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Discipleship in the New Age I - Personal Instructions to Disciples - I.B.S.
March 1934 BROTHER OF MINE: What shall I say to you now as the time comes when again I can communicate with you? My heart is with you and I have an understanding of the way that you have come. Your very intensity and your strong aspiration have led you into difficulty and you are the victim of your virtues and of your occult inexperience. Do you not know, my brother, that the disciple [238] is ever balanced in endeavor and runs not to extremes of any kind? Yet balanced effort has not characterized your work the past few months. You have been swept by an emotional thought-form and the effect of the astral energy has been to increase the emotional devotion and the physical nervousness which have ever handicapped you. The effect of true teaching, emanating from mental levels, is to stabilize, to mentalise and to ground the disciple in spiritual being; to be is for you the goal. It is not the function of the true teacher ever to criticize. It is his function to watch over the chela and in the light of wisdom and compassion to aid him with instruction. I have today a few things to say to you and they must be briefly expressed because your fatigue is greater than you realize. You need rest and care. This is owing to excessive emotional stimulation which has been thrust upon you; this comes from a group of well-meaning aspirants gathered around a thought-form of myself to be found on the higher levels of the astral plane. It is only a thought-form which they see in a glamorous light and such thought-form of the teachers are often to be found and are purely astral and not real. First, I would say: Be not discouraged but admit the failure of your intuition. Be, however, true to yourself and if you feel, my brother, that the position is not as I have stated it to be, then abide by your own decision and be true to your higher self. That is the matter of the greatest moment - personal truth and integrity. This decision may lead you to continue to form part of my group of disciples - a cooperation which has been interrupted the past few months - or it may lead you to work in conjunction with the group which has lately so powerfully influenced you. But be true to the situation as, in sober meditation, you see it; no higher attitude can be expected of anyone. Have in mind, however, that your physical body is not strong enough to stand the pressure of two vibratory groups and (until such time as you make your choice) we will hold the work you do with me in abeyance. The choice is entirely yours; you are utterly free to act as seems wisest to you and there will be no criticism from us entailed in any decision you may make. Secondly, should you desire to continue with my [239] instructions, then discontinue acting upon the instructions which have been going to you from this group whose focus is on the astral plane. Resume then the work I outlined for you earlier which you have lately neglected and follow my instructions in detail and with meticulous care. In connection with the meditation work and the energy you gather, will you remember that this will not stimulate your nervous body at this time but can become a group asset. The effect of the work you have been doing with the group which is working under the influence of glamor has been to feed your devotional nature, to emphasize your development, your training, your work, your need and what is thought of you. None of it has been of any value to this group of disciples to whom you had pledged yourself or to your associates in service with whom you have been for so long affiliated or to those connected with you in your current daily life. It has indeed produced a separating effect between yourself, your group and your surroundings. This you know well and it is distressing you deeply. Your failure to conform to the requirements of my Ashram has not aided either, has it? All the work that I seek to do with you and my other disciples has been with the objective of intensifying their group relation, to deepen their group love and to bind them together as a group. For this is group work which the Hierarchy and those associated with it do, and my group is not one wherein personal training is given in order to bring about personal growth. Let me emphasize this again, my brother. I am not training you so that you can grow. I am training a group of disciples so that they may function as a unit, and as a welded totality. That subjective inner unity has been neglected by you whilst you wandered down a byway of high grade personality and emotional beauty but which in reality belonged to the world of illusion and not to the world of light and of vision. Your great sensitivity made this easy. Your latent love of power facilitated your delusion. Your failure to conform to group requirements precipitated the coming of the glamor. But your inner link is strong and your aspiration vital, if you will but see truly and act strongly. The next thing that I want to say to you is that your etheric [240] body (which expresses itself through the nervous body) is in a rent condition. Forget not that these thought-form of power sap and drain those who attach themselves to them. You have much ground to regain physically as a result of the past few months... Again I say: Be not discouraged. By our failures and our reactions to glamor, we learn to tread with confidence the Way of Light. By our falling into criticism, we can gauge our soul quality. Neither criticism of those who lead my group and with whom you have been affiliated, nor criticism of those who lead the group upon the astral plane which has brought you into the realm of glamor, will do more than reveal to you that personality reactions block the way of the soul. In the last analysis, your problem is not which of these two lines of teaching you will accept or which of certain guiding personalities are my representatives. Your problem is whether your intuition can discern between a soul vibration and the vibration of a high grade astral form. Your Tibetan brother and other individuals do not count. If they count with you, then you are in error. It is truth that counts and the associating of yourself with the highest truth you can contact. I have written to you thus, my brother, because I sense the tension of your nature and your bewilderment at the situation - one which you had not foreseen and which causes you deep distress. Relax and be at peace. Thus will you make right decision. In the light of eternity, these little happenings (and how small they are when looked at in the right light and - dare I say it? - with a sense of humor!) disappear. Go forward with fresh courage. Learn from the past but refuse to be held by that past. Do not let the words or the influence of anyone lead you. May the light of your own soul lead you from strength to strength and reveal to you a purity of motive which will flood your life with love.
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