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The Externalization of the Hierarchy - Section I - Introductory Remarks
The Work of the Seed Groups

January 1938

We have been endeavoring to apprehend a little more intelligently the work of the new age seed groups, their [47] interrelation and their work as part of the new age "set-up," if I might employ such a term. We considered with some care the three major groups. We saw that each of them had three tasks to perform and we attempted a slight analysis of their planned undertakings. Now we can do the same with the remaining groups, particularly with the fourth and fifth which have education and political work as their projects. And then we will only briefly indicate the triple intended purpose of the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth groups. We will not take time to consider the tenth, which will be composed of the key people in the other groups, beyond stating that when its twenty-seven members (three from each group) are chosen and put in rapport with each other, there should come to all the groups such a quickening of their life that they will become one living vibrant organism.

The fourth group has ahead of it a rich and most interesting course of study and an illuminating objective. Its instructions (See Education in the New Age) will evoke more interested response from a larger group of readers than perhaps will be the case in the instructions of any of the other groups, except those of the sixth whose subject is religion in the new age, and the third (See Esoteric Healing). I give them in the order of their importance. They will be more definitely popular and meet a more general need. The interest which the teaching on education will evoke will be owing to the fact that education is today widely recognized as the major molding factor, next to economic pressure and circumstance, and there is a widespread interest in progressive education and in the new ideals which should - and will - eventually govern educators.

There is a definite stirring among the masses and the life of the mind (note that phrase) is now more active and potent than ever before. For this there is an occult reason of a most interesting nature.

Those of you who have studied The Secret Doctrine will remember that in that momentous period wherein animal-man made the great transition into the human family and [48] humanity came into being, developing the germ of individuality, the seed of self-consciousness and embryo intellect, we are told that this event was brought about in three ways:

  1. The seed of mind was implanted in some of the aspiring animal-men by the Hierarchy, and these animal men became human beings, of a very low order to be sure, but still men. They were "sparked," if I might so express it, and a point of light appeared where before there was none. Before there was only a diffused atomic light but no central point of light within the head, and no indication of the higher centers. These individuals, along with the more advanced humanity which came to the planet in Atlantean times (having individualized elsewhere), constitute the most advanced humanity of our present period. They represent culture and understanding, no matter where it is found, or in what class or race.
  2. The instinctual nature of animal-man (found active among those who had not reached the stage of any conscious aspiration) was suddenly stimulated or vitalized by the coming into expression of the first group and the directed attention of the Hierarchy, working under the ancient Law that "energy follows thought." Thus gradually, with a remarkable rapidity, instinct became blended into, or resolved into, its higher expression - the intellect. Thus in due course of time a large group of animal-men became human beings. They today represent civilization and the masses of ordinary intelligent people, educated under the mass systems of the present time, able occasionally to think and rise to mental emergencies, yet not highly cultured. They constitute the so-called general public which we designate by the words "upper and lower middle class" people, the professional classes and the bourgeoisie everywhere.
  3. At the same time there is to be found a vast number of people who are human beings but who are not the result of either of these two processes. They are the product of the slow moving influences of life itself, of what we are apt to call the evolutionary urge, innate in matter itself. They [49] have painfully and with infinitely slow processes evolved out of the animal condition into that of human beings, with an awakening conscience, an urge to betterment, and an embryonic mind of such a nature that it can respond to simple educational processes, when available, and is so responding. They are the illiterate masses, the still savage races and the low grade human beings who are met with in their millions on our planet.
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