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The Externalization of the Hierarchy - Section IV - Stages in the Externalization
These subsidiary ashrams are already being attempted in various parts of the world. It is necessary for you to remember that the members of these ashrams will not all be on the teaching line, but will be composed of disciples upon many rays; the attempt to form coherent and integrated ashrams is based upon the recognition of the initial difficulty of the various ray aspirants to comprehend each other's point of view and mode of working, and to think in the many differing terms and modes of thought. There are, however, three fundamental requirements which must condition and color all the ashrams, no matter what the ray:
  1. An internal group unity, conducive to a synthesis of understanding between the various ashrams. There spring out of a unified group objective a sense of loyalty to the Hierarchy and a uniformly disciplined life. I said uniform, brother of mine, for the discipline is that of spiritual inclination and an inspired intention which produces a similarity in the [680] livingness of the units in the ashram; this is, of course, diversified by the ray quality of the aspirants and disciples and by personality tradition. Ponder on those last two words.
  2. Similarity of objective. By that I mean an apprehension and appreciation of the hierarchical Plan and of the contribution each ashram has to make for its materialization on earth; to this must be added an united ashramic similarity of instinctual and intuitive telepathic rapport with the senior Members of the ashram - the Masters and initiates of high degree, and through Them - with the Christ. I would here call to your attention that the mental inclination of all the esotericists in the world for the past one hundred years has been directed towards individual rapport with a Master, and this because of the necessity of discovering the ashram with which the aspirant must make contact.

This attitude has now widened in its approach mentally, by the many diversified disciples in the many different ashrams, into a group movement or a group inclination towards the Christ, the major and most important factor in the implementation of the hierarchical Plan. This mental approach is not the same thing as the constant aspirational preoccupation of the earnest Christian follower with the thought of Christ. It is something quite different.

It is a unified group endeavor, generated in each ashram and fostered by all alike, to bring the entire group - as a band of world servers - into the aura of the thought currents of the Christ, as He formulates His ideas, creates the thought-forms needed prior to manifestation, and makes His arrangements for His reappearing. This is not the same thing as establishing a telepathic rapport between an individual disciple and the Christ, for that is not needed or desirable. The unity of aim, the desire to serve, the recognition of the present focused intention of the Hierarchy (under the guidance of the Christ), become an invocative, magnetic state of group consciousness; this evokes from the Christ and His informed Masters an identification of Their united thought with the group aspiration. This is the higher spiritual correspondence of what is called in the three worlds kama-manas. [681]

This is not, I realize, an easy thing to understand when divorced from the usual Christian concept of the relation of Christ to the individual aspirant. The idea may perhaps be clarified for you by reminding yourselves that some who read these words know me and have found your way into my ashram, under the guidance of your own soul and my ready recognition. Others all over the world, through their spiritual intuition and their desire to serve and to know, have brought into their recognized area of consciousness the teaching which is given in my books. Their relation to me is symbolic of the type of relation which disciples and aspirants can and do establish with the Christ. Though the analogy is far from perfect, it is possible to recognize the correspondence in its many gradations of reciprocal sensitivity.

  1. A fundamental and basic similarity of sympathetic response by the units in all ashrams to the needs of humanity, to the quality of the program for their development which the objective demands, and to the nature of goodwill and understanding (intelligently applied); all these qualities are not handicapped by undue emotional sensitivity.

These three conditions will be found in all the ashrams and will unite the members within any ashram to those in other ashrams in a measure or rhythm of telepathic relation. From this unified and central position a rapidly deepening telepathic relation will inevitably be established and sustained by the group, with the ashram and with the Christ, on the one hand, and with humanity, on the other. With this as a foundational and conditioning quality, the work can proceed as required.

You will note, therefore, why I have so consistently emphasized, during the past thirty years of teaching, the necessity for the development of a truly spiritual and psychic sensitivity, plus the unfoldment of the faculty of a scientific telepathic rapport. I have thereby laid the foundation of the Science of Impression, with the illumined and rightly oriented mind as the interpreter, the analyzer and the transmitter. [682]
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