The Rays and the Initiations

by Alice A Bailey

  Russia has the same personality ray as the United [631] States and her seventh ray soul (conditioned by the Ray of Order) is closely related to the personality ray of Great Britain, the first Ray of Will or Power; the will aspect of divinity works out on the physical plane as the seventh Ray of Order or of conformity to the inner divine will.

  The interior problem of the U.S.S.R. is the conflict raging between the imposed, arrogant will of a handful of powerful dictators and the fluid, unstable and ignorant reaction of a people from whom the truth is constantly withheld; they therefore have to fight blindly for their freedom, to fight instinctively and without knowledge of the facts. They are not yet waging a successful fight.

  The point, however, which is of major importance to us is the recognition that each of these three nations is distinguished by:

  a. A similarity of problem.

  b. A battleground which is leading to the formation of a triangle of relationships brought about through the Principle of Conflict.

  The similarity of problems consists in the fact that each of these three nations is essentially composite in nature and is formed by an amalgamation of many nations, of many peoples speaking many different languages, and is consequently staging a great experiment in fusion.

  1. The U.K. is the nucleus or the living germ of the British Commonwealth of Nations wherein a great experiment in free government is being tried out; this gives complete internal freedom and choice to each related Dominion, plus an equally complete and free interrelationship. The Dominions are all of them independent nations, but belong to a united Commonwealth; a pattern is thereby presented for world consideration.

  2. The U.S.A. is a fusing centre wherein all nationalities are represented and are being slowly blended into a miniature One Humanity. A great experiment in right relationships is being undertaken and is making real progress. A culture and a civilisation will emerge which will be the [632] result of right human relations and which can provide a world pattern in relationships. I refer here to the presentation of democracy. There is nothing satisfactory yet in the presentation of the dreamed-of democracy. France and Great Britain are equally democratic, and more successful because more mature and experienced, but the “melting pot” of the U.S.A. will provide eventually the outstanding experiment in right relations because of its many races and nationalities—all blended together within the borders of one country.

  3. The U.S.S.R. is also seeking to blend and unite into one great national project many diverse nations and races—European and Asiatic—and the effort is still largely embryonic. In Russia a world ideology is being wrought out which (when proven) can be presented to the world as a model system; this, however, will not come as a result of dictatorship, nor can it be presented aggressively to the world. Russia is in reality—whether She realises it or not at present—undertaking a great experiment in education and, in spite of evil methods and sinning against the soul of human freedom, eventually this educational process will prove convincing to the world and provide a world model. This can only take place when the present group of dictators and arrogant men have passed away or been forced out of power by an awakening people.

  In these three great nations, therefore, the three major divine aspects are being brought into manifestation, thus laying the foundation for the new world order. All three are of equal importance.

  In Great Britain—right human government—Will or Power

  In the U.S.A.—right human relations—Love-Wisdom

  In the U.S.S.R.—right use of the mind—Intelligence

  This must be remembered and taught, and men of goodwill everywhere should work for a closer relationship between these three peoples. These three points of a divine triangle of energy should not be isolated points, each holding its own point of tensions they should be related points, each point distributing strengthening energy to the other [633] points and admitting a free circulation between all points around the triangle.

  These great world problems are also being worked out in each of these three nations:

  1. In Great Britain, the problem of socialism is being resolved and the sound judgment of the people will eventually balance the two conditions of a socialist programme and free enterprise; this needs doing, for the extreme position in either case is untenable. This today presents a conflict which all the world is watching. The transition period between group living (in the true and spiritual sense) and the present and past period of an intense individualism is not easy, and in Great Britain the whole matter is being put to the test. The bridge will be built.

  2. In the U.S.A. you have the problem of the relationship between capital and labour awaiting solution; the conflict is fierce but a compromise will eventually be worked out if capital concedes certain arrogant powers, recognises the rights of other human beings and demonstrates less selfish greed, and if labour will work with less selfishness, prove less exacting and evince a more understanding spirit. The bridge between these two great groups must and will be built.

  3. In the U.S.S.R. you have the problem of the levelling of the masses in all classes; this levelling has produced a low standard of living and the work to be done is to raise more than to bridge. This levelling produces serious conflict and one that is little realised by those who cannot penetrate into the sealed citadel which is Russia. It is really a conflict between the mounting human spirit and the force of the totalitarian regime which seeks to hold it down, killing individualism. The innate strength of the human spirit to rise has never yet failed, and this conflict will prove the agent in harmonising many factors.

  Within the comity of nations, certain of them have ever been prime agents for producing conflict. This is largely owing to their fiery temperament and their strong [634] emotional bias and condition. The Poles and the Irish are prime “catalysts of conflict” and are constantly instigating difficulties between peoples. Such has ever been their history. French aggression in the Middle Ages has also caused difficulty, and in later days, Germany became the prime agent of conflict. Today the Jewish people are engineering trouble, and it is interesting to note that the main contention in the past of Poland, lately of the Irish, and today of the Jews, is territory, thus evidencing a most distorted sense of values. There is in the last analysis but one world and one humanity, and in a shorter time than you may think boundaries and territories will mean but little. World citizenship will be the only factor of importance.

  The Jews are governed by the third Ray of Active Intelligence, the energy which permeates and controls matter or substance. They were also, during the years immediately following the war, under the control of a glamour imposed by the Zionist Dictators, who were attempting (somewhat unsuccessfully) to be to the Jewish people what Stalin and his group, and Hitler and his gang, have been to their people. They worked through the same methods—terrorising, withholding information, browbeating their opponents, making false claims and bribing and corrupting. They were and are a minority, but a powerful minority because of their great wealth and their being in positions of power. They are claiming a land to which they have no possible right and which the Jews have ignored for two thousand years. Their attitude is perhaps the culminating aggressive action of the age and marks a climaxing point; it has produced a serious world tension, but out of this good may come and a “point of emergence for mankind” be reached. The issue of aggression can be more clearly seen because of their activities. Very few lands today are in the possession of their original inhabitants, and if restoration is made to all original inhabitants (which is not possible) an impossible situation would be brought about just as legitimate as the Zionist position. If the Zionist claims are to be considered (and they have been) they in their turn [635] should realise that (if The Old Testament is to be believed) they originally took the land of Palestine away from its original owners nearly three thousand years ago, at the point of the sword and through an unprovoked aggression.

  This conflict which the Zionists have precipitated is basic and usefu
l. It constitutes a test case, being based upon physical plane aggression, being fought with the most violent emotional disturbance and being founded upon completely illogical premises. The Jew has ever been (could he but usefully remember it) the symbol of humanity—evolving, seeking, restless, materialistic, separative and greedy. He is the symbol of the mass consciousness, presenting this consciousness in an exaggerated form; he is ever seeking and searching a home and is the true Prodigal Son of The New Testament.

  Curiously enough, the Jews have never been a fighting race since the time of the sorry story of the conquest of the early tribes in Palestine; they have been persecuted and repudiated down the centuries, but have retaliated simply by moving on—the wandering Jew seeking a home, wandering humanity, saying always, “I must arise and go to my Father.” The motive given to the Prodigal Son in the Gospel story is a strictly material one, and we have here an outstanding instance of the prophetic knowledge of the Christ.

  The Jewish people have not only repudiated the Messiah (which their race produced), but they have forgotten their unique relation to humanity; they forget that millions in the world today have suffered as they have suffered and that—for instance—there are eighty per cent of other people in the concentration camps of Europe and only twenty per cent Jews. The Jew, however, fought only for himself, and largely ignored the sufferings of his fellowmen in the concentration camps.

  I have enlarged thus upon the Jewish conflict because it is the symbol of all past conflicts in human history, based upon universal selfishness and the greed of undeveloped humanity, and because the crucial test of the nations and [636] of the United Nations Assembly is to be found in the decisions which they made and may make concerning Palestine.

  The test, as far as the nations are concerned, lies in their willingness to give refuge to the Jews, and such a refuge would have been offered if the partitioning of Palestine had been refused. The unwillingness of the nations to admit the Jews (though many have willingly offered), and particularly the refusal of the United States to admit them, is separative, wrong and based upon political expediency. The test, as far as the United Nations is concerned, was whether they would endorse partition, and thus perpetuate the spirit of aggression and territorial greed, against which the Forces of Light were arrayed in the last war. The United Nations has already made a major mistake by their original admittance of Russia—a totalitarian power, as was Germany—to their councils. Now they have made another. In the first mistake they precipitated into the United Nations the element of conflict and that spirit of “fanatical imposition” which is distinctive of the totalitarian ideology; in this second case, through the endorsement of partition, they perpetuate the ancient technique of taking what is wanted (with force of arms, if necessary) from the rightful owners. It was a test for the United States, for it is the American Jews who have created the situation, with relatively little help or endorsement from the Jews of other nations. The United States, urged by expediency, by the financial weight of the Zionists, and by the strategic position of Palestine, have thrown the weight of their influence into the conflict on the side of aggression and of territorial theft. They could have worked for the Principle of Harmony and permitted time and the non-separativeness of the nations to adjust and solve the Jewish problem.

  More I will not say; the symbolic nature of this basic world problem and its dynamic importance to humanity have led me thus to enlarge. The decision anent the Jews is one of hierarchical importance, owing to the karmic relation of the Christ to the Jewish race, to the fact that they repudiated Him as the Messiah and are still doing so, [637] and of the interpretive nature of the Jewish problem as far as the whole of humanity is concerned.

  The Results of the Fourth Ray Activity upon the individual Disciple

  The disciples of the world today are submerged in an ocean of warring energies; the Principle of Conflict touches every life, is potent in the consciousness of each individual aspirant, and is conditioning the mass consciousness of mankind. Emotionally and physically, the masses in every land are roused by this conflict; the disciples on earth and the thinking people everywhere are aroused mentally, as well as emotionally and physically, and hence the intensity of their problem. The points of crisis in the lives of disciples have—during the past few decades—been many; a point of tension has now been reached of an extreme nature; how rapidly can this tension bring about the needed point of emergence?

  It is not my intention to deal at length with the effect of this conflict in the life of disciples. It deals with the most familiar story to all of them; the aspirants and the disciples are, from the angle of evolution, the most strictly human beings to be found in the fourth kingdom in nature, for the reason that mind, emotion and physical activity are integrated or are in process of integration into one functioning whole. The disciple knows, however, that—as a result of conflict—the complete harmonising of his entire nature will be brought about; the fusion of soul and personality will be consummated, and for this he works. The same principle can also be applied by him in his consideration of general human affairs; he needs to see in all world conflict the needed steps towards an eventual harmony—a harmony based upon a true mental perception and a sound idealism. It is this process of developing mental understanding and a sound rational yet spiritual attitude which is now going on; the emergence of the many ideologies are the guarantee that the true idealism will eventually appear and control—the ideal of right human relations; it is the [638] struggle between emotional control and a steadily developing mind control which is conditioning mankind at this time. When a mental, an emotional and a physical conflict are raging simultaneously, the results must necessarily be difficult, but they are surmountable.

  Today, the conflicts are numerous, vital and unavoidable; they are present in the individual consciousness and in the mass consciousness; they present constant points of crises and are today bringing about a point of world tension which seems well-nigh unbearable. But ahead of the individual disciple and of humanity lies a point of emergence.

  What must the disciple do whilst the point of tension is dominating him and his fellowmen? The answer is a simple one. Let each disciple and all groups of disciples develop the ability to think sanely, with right orientation and a broad point of view; let them think truly, evading no issues, but preserving always a calm, dispassionate and loving understanding; let them demonstrate in their environment the qualities which will establish right human relations and show on a small scale the behaviour which will some day characterise enlightened humanity; let them not be discouraged, but let them hold firmly to the conviction of the inevitable spiritual destiny of humanity; let them realise practically that “the souls of men are one” and learn to look beyond the immediate outer seeming to the inner (and sometimes remote) spiritual consciousness; let them know that the present world conflict will be terminated.

  The perfect outcome of the conflict will necessarily be lacking, for perfection is not yet possible to man; nevertheless, a situation can be brought about which will permit the return of the Christ into objective relation with mankind, and which will enable Him to set about His task of resurrecting the human spirit, out of the tomb of materialism into the clear light of spiritual perception. For this, all men must work. [639]

  A Summation and Forecast

  Let me now summarise for you some of the points of importance in this instruction:

  1. The fourth Ray of Harmony through Conflict is a controlling factor in human affairs at all times, and peculiarly today.

  2. The Principle of Conflict is the agent of the Principle of Harmony and produces the strains and the stresses which will lead, finally, to liberation.

  3. The great initiation of the Renunciation, plus the many smaller renunciations, is the result of inner conflict and ever precedes liberation into harmony and peace.

  4. Conflict produces: War-Renunciation-Liberation.

  5. Humanity is subjected to crises of discrimination, leading to right
choice. That is the problem confronting humanity today, leading to a crisis within the United Nations.

  6. The Hierarchy is subjected to crises of decision, leading to perception of the Plan, participation in the Purpose, and the prevention of evil.

  7. The Principle of Conflict is today active in all nations, in all religions, in all organisations, leading to the emergence of the New Age.

  8. Conflict produces points of crisis, then a point of tension, and eventually a point of emergence.

  9. This Principle of Conflict is preparing the way for the return of the Christ, Who will inaugurate the new era of harmony.

  10. Christ will come in three different ways:

  a. Through the overshadowing, on the mental plane, of all disciples and aspirants.

  b. Through the pouring out of love or of the Christ consciousness upon the masses on the emotional plane.

  c. Through His recognised physical Presence upon Earth.

  11. Certain nations are today torn with conflict but are [640] moving toward harmony. Other nations are focal points of discord and thereby serve the Principle of Conflict.

  12. The U.S.S.R., the U.S.A., and the U.K. constitute a governing triangle of energy which, when right relations have been established, can and will create and foster right human relations among men.

  13. The Jewish race is a symbol of humanity in its mass sense; in the resolution of its conflict and in the taking of right action, a great step forward in human liberation will take place.

  14. As the individual disciple learns to harmonise himself through conflict, he sets an example which is of definite aid to humanity as a whole.