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LEGEND

the Key & 4th Fundamental

The Seven Ray Cycles

Occult Cosmology

Science of the Antahkarana & Ray Words of Power

Esoteric Astrology
Superimposition

 

Cancer

On the Reverse Wheel

June 21st to July 22nd

And the word said:
I build a lighted house and therein dwell

Decanates

First decan            Moon                   June 21st to July 1st

Second decan       Mercury               July 1st to 11th

Third decan          Venus                   July 11th to 22nd

 

Please read the prefatory material before investigating your own Decanate Stage, as proper assignment is required. i.e., your birth date does not indicate the stage of development, rather, you must employ a subjective recognition of the state of consciousness (point of advance along the Path of Initiation) which you, or another, has achieved.

See this note on determining the decanate.

 

Step Four: Man the Aspirant

June 21st to July 1st

The Moon

For lifetimes you have been working with slowly increasing steadfastness within the tides of ebb and flow. When an aspirant for discipleship has worked with persistency for some lifetimes his life tendency becomes oriented towards the soul light and this becomes a fixed and steady habit. This fact should prove a solace during the moments of discouragement that you will experience under the extremely troublesome and difficult fourth step in the fourth sign, ruled by the non-sacred Fourth Ray force of the Moon.

There are within you in this series of lives, stirrings of revolution and rebellion that have in them the seeds of the liberation that you seek. Your link with your soul is real and stable. This link was not achieved in this life.

Your mind is of a high quality and is easily responsive to intuition and illumination. You have your emotional or astral body for the most part, well under control. The life demonstration of your personality is effective on the inner planes. You lead a faithful and progressive spiritual life—so much so that your vibration reaches upward intensively enough at times to sound within the periphery of the hierarchical sphere of influence.

The physical bonds to matter that the long process of your repeated incarnations have forged are now to be finally broken. Forget the past and all that it brought you of pain and of joy; forget the personal self and all that it has to give and all that it withholds, and seek simply to serve. Serve with a joyous heart and with equilibrium. You must struggle to become free from the dominating control that the mass form life has had over your inner subjective consciousness. The lessons of true spiritual humility and soul reticence are not as easy to learn as might appear, particularly when any residual lunar inferiority complex is strong in you, as may be the case. It is so easy to confound a natural self-depreciation with true spiritual humility; but hopefully you are fast learning the difference.

One of your great limitations is over-sensitivity. Your outer Crab shell needs hardening; you must learn to tune out and to leave unrecognized that which might disturb your life of spiritual practice and active world service. When sufficiently evolved you will overcome undue shyness, mildness and timidity. Be assertive. Forget your own self-definitions and also the ways others see you. Aspirants waste so much time in distress over the words, thoughts and deeds of co-workers and thus time is lost that could be more constructively employed. The minutes mount into hours as you struggle, agonize and wrestle with yourself in order to regain equilibrium.

You have an acutely sensitive receptivity to the mental and emotional life of others that causes an arresting of physical expression plus a mistaken interpretation of duty at times. Remember that all suffering due to super-sensitivity indicates personality self-centeredness, and this in turn militates against the needed inclusiveness which will eventually make your contribution to group work dynamically successful in outer service. You have had to wrestle with this during the past years and it has led to an undue focus upon the little self.

The Moon waxes and wanes, shines in bright radiance when full or suffers eclipse, but is ever constant in its rhythmic changes. In like manner you may need to retreat from company at times and shy from the light of publicity, later to emerge again.

Your immediate goal, having just reversed the Wheel of Life, is to become a master instead of a slave of moods, feelings, desires, imagination and impression. Why allow yourself to swing between the accentuated extremes of exalted moods or exaggerated periods of depression, morbid feelings and unreasonable fear? Do not succumb to fear. Why not free yourself from being in a psychological state of constant conflict and turmoil, inner and outer?

Your self-contradictory states of mind and self-absorption in suffering will have to be reconciled. You must learn to maintain confidence and composure at all times. You know that a state of confused combativeness with the environment or other people creates unnecessary interpersonal frictions, so learn not to prematurely take sides.

In critical situations examine your tendency towards weakness and over-eagerness for compromise. Your personality contradictions, eccentricities and inconsistencies will have to be recognized and intelligently handled. The torture of personality ridicule must be willingly undergone. Needless worries and agitations are to be eliminated, as are tendencies towards temperamentalism, ambivalence, indecisiveness, vacillation, unmonitored indulgence, unregulated passions, over-eating, exuberant sexual desires, inertia, indolence, moral license, cowardice and procrastination.

The rulership of the Moon signifies the continual necessity for readjustment, alteration and change. Although you are extremely versatile, be careful to guard against any recessive tendencies to become too scattered, diffuse and negative. Interest yourself beyond simple amusements rather than being caught up in mere novelty, sensation or pleasure.

As an aspirant you need to develop the ability to make cyclic adjustments fluently and rhythmically in response to your soul; to the demands of the inner light hidden at the heart of outer forms. Harmony and balance will be found through the discernment between the true light and the false.

There are numerous glamours to be overcome at this stage of the Path, including identification with the physical body and the glamour of harmony aiming at personal comfort. There is also a glamour of ceremonial magical or occult work; a glamour of the mysterious and the secret, of hidden or submerged subterranean powers; and a glamour of psychic perception used instead of intuition. There is a glamour of the relation of the pairs of opposites, of sex magic. You must also guard against the glamour of war and conflict as an objective means to achieve righteousness and peace.

Your task is the hard and painful work of adapting and molding your personality, circumstances and environment in response to the plan of your soul. Continuous effort must be made to deliver the message of your soul counter to the still somewhat antagonistic and selfish inclinations of your personality.

You must simultaneously succeed in maintaining a constant direct dual alignment of personality and soul in spite of conditions of continuous cyclical physical change and constant psychological crisis. Try not to allow the things of the personality to upset your equilibrium in any way.

The tests of this decan concern your ability to demonstrate personality stability and harmony as a result of responsiveness to the overshadowing Egoic consciousness. Be assured that the steady reserve of strength that comes through constant conflict and struggle will eventually enable you to pass the tests of discipleship.

Persevere on the Path without discouragement and without undue pondering upon spiritual results achieved. As an aspirant you are not in a position to rightly gauge your own progress. Continue to serve and to work and allow realization to take place naturally without any forcing of the process. Your soul is active and just now its attention is turned in power towards its instrument; your vibratory rate, your effectiveness in service, are on the increase and your opportunity at this time is real.

Your soul's function is to indicate direction, but it is for you to understand rightly and then react. Your initial interpretation of soul impression may not be the right one in all cases. See intervening crises in the proper light. Preserve that inner silence that guards the secrets of the soul and the direction of your path.

The importance and right use of conflict must be correctly understood and this understanding must be intelligently demonstrated through a stable, balanced, well integrated, pleasant and harmonious personality expression. Without loss of balance a detached, reliable and steadfast position at the spiritual center will bring victory. A "righteous compromise" (EPII 143) will be brought about which adapts the old to the new. You are an agent of reconciliation taking your stand on principle. Refuse to accommodate evil; cultivate the ability to withstand the pain of dissonance, disharmony or friction.

You will pass through deep and troubled waters, as do all Cancer aspirants, and the lessons of decentralization are especially painful to learn. The non-sacred Fourth Ray force of the Moon produces chaos, anarchy and difficulty. To aid you in the development of detachment and to teach you that you are not the focal point of your small world, you have had to learn to walk alone. There is little that your group brothers can do when tests and deep distress and anxiety overwhelm you, except to stand by in love, send healing thoughts and evoke the inner strength of the soul so that the vehicles can be used.

Be prepared for loneliness and dangers, from which will be born self-purification, self-knowledge and self-reliance. Understand that the loving care and constant consideration of others can unwittingly emphasize your selfishness and make it hard for you to free yourself from the enveloping net of family life and social circumstance—a life which lays its emphasis upon material possessions.

Looking backwards perhaps you can only see the fogs and miasmas of the planes of illusion, but under no circumstance wander back into the cave of your earlier pronounced materialism or phenomenalism. It is very difficult for you to break the ancient bonds to matter. Notice how a crab, when once it has grasped an object and intends to have it, will rather lose its claw than let go, and having lost it will grow another to take hold again. Do not be like the crab.

You will be tested here to overcome your personal glamour and false illusions, especially your cherished sentimentalities and personal attachments. Your soul calls you to preparedness, and for freedom from the glamour of the familiar, family and surroundings. You have built a wall of small and unimportant events, of contacts, of monotonously regulated and determined duties carried forward year after year. Behind these you conscientiously and laboriously stand day after day, creating a static situation and a constant conditioning of your life expression. To this your soul at times takes strong exception, and will do so increasingly. You must be prepared for a certain feeling of nausea and frustration as your life proceeds along its predetermined lines. You will find no real understanding of this among friends, family or associates. You must be prepared to accept these feelings and not deny them in response to the criticisms of those who fail to understand you.

In the past you have regarded such moments as non-integrated episodes of personality rebellion to be immediately suppressed. Thus you stymied all aspiration towards change, seeking to believe that your choice of the stable, the safe and the familiar was entirely right. This is not always so, for it is often only outer circumstance and environment that hold you to the old, tried and familiar.

Unusually sensitive types will find themselves having to resist becoming embroiled in the conflicts that are raging in their lives. Misplaced affections and devotions must be correctly balanced in the light of reason. All residual traces of national, racial and local prejudices must be eliminated, along with any sense of pessimism or doubt. In the light of the One soul lesser racial, religious, social and orthodox distinctions and differences fade away.

Those who are aspiring to the stage of Accepted Discipleship are radiating centers of light. With you this potency of radiation is present, but is rendered ineffective by your reaction to the outer details of physical plane living and to the responses of those less developed than yourself. Reapply and reinterpret this virtue of detachment and much will be revealed to you. Detachment from the thoughts of others and steadfast illumination hold for you the secret of your ultimate liberation.

Your state of bondage will be overcome when you achieve and maintain a creative life-style based upon intelligent mental discrimination, but that faculty which is within you is not yet sufficiently developed. Thoughtlessness and other unconscious tendencies or subconscious conditioning psychological patterns of behavior are to be left behind. You must base your life on the tenets of harmlessness and abstention from theft, incontinence and avarice. You will know when you have become successful because all personal enmity ceases.

As an aspirant you must carefully guard against the premature development of psychic powers regardless of the fact that you excel in personal magnetism, intensity and imagination. Your developing spiritual intuition has become one of your greatest gifts underpinning all else. As your intuition is strong, you can fully seize the imagination of others and thereby project the full gamut and intensity of any purposeful thought, emotion or action to good effect.

Within your steadily waxing inner subjective consciousness the realization of the past and the future become at increasing intervals, as vividly real as the present. Seek at any cost to be alive to and eager for the future. Never hide behind the thought of past achievement or of achievement in some future life. Learn to recognize opportunity and be ready to change the stable rhythms of an adequate personality for the eager forward-looking attitude of a world disciple. Changes will then occur because your inner attitude has prepared the way. Will you see the open door leading to a fuller and a richer life in the Ashram?

Your progress will be greatly facilitated by the institution of certain physical disciplines. See to it however that they are real disciplines that require sacrifice in their application, and do not simply involve the elimination of those things that are convenient to let go or give up. Proceed with the purification of your astral desire along with the purification of your physical body. Finally, study the nature of purification from the angle of vision of the disciple and the formulation of those disciplines that will aid in purification.

Under the auspices of the lunar decan purity and devotion are to be fostered, thus be alert to false distractions and shadows of truth. Under this influence you have the chance to stimulate mass consciousness in the highest and most noble manner. Selfless care, sensitivity, compassion and a desire to serve, rescue or aid humanity are to be fostered. Idealism, devotion, aspiration and personality effort will lead to the purification and control necessary for you to enter the early stages of the Path of Discipleship.

Take care not to become lost in the clouds of your own devotion and self-awareness, or in the misty speculations of your own mind and desires, your own thought processes and fantasies. You will arrive at a standstill if you become lost in the fog of your own dreams and your own interpretations of what spiritual vision should be and it will elude you.

Recognize that you are exceedingly mystical, prone to visions or spiritual dreams, high moments of spiritual contact and inspiring aspiration. Yet your inner vision must still widen and grow, so that when fully awakened it will permit a flash of Reality to enter into your consciousness. You are beginning to develop the inner eye, with the ability to simultaneously turn it outward to the world of phenomena and inward into the world of Reality. As a result you will gain a sense of your divine objective and purpose, and receive a glimpse of the pattern and the Plan to which you must willingly condition your personal life. Be vigilant also that truth is not lost to sight in ritual ceremony, which must be used appropriately to reveal and not to obscure.

You have the highest ideals and standards. At the earlier stages hero worship or guru devotion may be a strong factor in your upward growth, and rightly guided and directed is of great aid. But see yourself less committed to the attitude of the devotee and more impersonal, and increasingly mentally free to offer yourself in world service rather than serving out of devotion to a guru, master or teacher, or to a cause or belief system.

A child-like urge to do good for others will release you from your feelings of unworthiness. You defend the rights of the downtrodden because you recognize the natural nobility of all human beings. You feel an instinctive sense of the common good of your fellow men. You brighten lives, render world service and are a true light-bringer; the strength of your message reinforces and supports others, empowering them to stand tall. You possess a wonderful sense of humor. Your joy and appreciation of life is transmitted through a radiant smile and beautiful open sparkling eyes. You have boundless energy. You demonstrate a real level-headedness and remain, in spite of obstacles, and even despite ridicule, misunderstandings or personal attacks, intact and true to yourself.

Goodness is threatening to people at the opposite end of the moral spectrum and they will always attempt to destroy your good work. Use your creative imagination to devise ways of avoiding being bound by tradition and convention. Your beauty (internal and external) and your uniqueness softens hard hearts and endears you to many. You are a beacon of hope. Your hard work and good deeds will be remembered. See yourself rising on the wings of compassion. Remember also that others may be lost without your guidance, faith, hope, love and shining example. Be strong and faithful knowing that your footsteps leave indelible imprints in the hearts and minds of your family, friends, co-workers and fellow men.

Let the song of your soul be sounded forth and the clear high notes bring peace and joy to others. Let the word of your soul go forth in strength to others with understanding. Continue to pour forth constant nourishment, love, support and nurturing to others in distress despite the counter-indications of pain, common sense and worldly wisdom. It should now become apparent to you that the faculty of love must become so strong and lasting that it recognizes no half or quarter measures.

Let the quality of your soul be demonstrated through love that does not express the little aspirations of your personal life but the One Self in all. You have quite a maternal instinct and naturally find many and varied ways to give and to serve; but remember, ask for little or nothing in return.

Discipleship will be attained when you are able to walk free in the world of illusion with the purpose in view of salvaging, saving and lifting your fellow human beings. Remember that no person is a disciple who is not a pioneer and a leader. To become a disciple it is necessary for you to obey the inward impulse of your soul, pay no attention to worldly consideration and live a life which is an example to others.

Let the vision of your mind be clear and sure. Train your eye to see beyond the fogs and miasmas to the center of your soul. Inner activities are not yet accurately registered in your physical brain, yet that is no indication that inner activity is not proceeding correctly. Continue to work hard to discriminate between instinct and intuition, higher and lower mind, desire and spiritual impulse, selfish aspiration and divine incentive. Study the means whereby your brain can be rendered sensitive to the higher impression of your soul and engage in the elimination of those habits which tend to cloud your mind and render it insensitive to higher contact. Seek to polarize yourself more definitely upon the higher sub-planes of the mental plane.

Your mind must ultimately reveal the light of your soul. Your soul light is dual and illuminates the unseen worlds as well as shedding its light upon your daily way. The light of your soul will present to you some new seed idea which will also resonate or reveal itself within your heart. When you truly understand that the world must be saved by ideas and correctly registered impression from the realm of the soul, you will proceed to the fifth step of active discipleship. Focus on the theme of illumination through ideas. You are beginning to grasp a little the significance of soul-registered impression. These ideas illumine your mind and thereby enrich your service.

The key to your release this lifetime is service. Let the glory of your soul, which is the master of your life, be seen in active service. You must learn to serve as a soul and not as a personality. You must now know your soul desire so deeply that you may emerge into greater freedom of life and expression and liberate yourself from any chains which may hold you back from a life of full and loving service—this refers to inner habits of thought and not to external responsibilities and contacts.

Your present need is the development of a greater spirit of service, and service upon a wider scale. Your service at present is vertical and concerns those who are with you upon the upward Way—your group brothers, your personal friends. You are also somewhat self-serving at this stage of unfoldment. You give yourself too much thought, too much care, and accumulate for yourself too many things. Your service must now become horizontal.

You are naturally a teacher; a teacher in training. Seize every opportunity to teach and to gather together those who can thus be served. Choose quality and not quantity, and teach from the angle of knowledge, carefully pondered upon in meditation.

Until now you have never served with a completely sacrificial spirit. You have acted with kindness and have made small sacrifices, but you have never yet served as a soul—possessing nothing and asking nothing for the separated self. This is your lesson in this series of lifetimes.

The way of considered unselfishness lies open to you. This is the lesson of a life given to service, to distribution, to self-forgetfulness — the life of full surrender, discipline, relinquishment and silence. Seek self-effacement and freedom from self-pity. Your co-workers and group brothers will now increasingly count upon your understanding and upon your acceptance, so endeavor to meet the need and to serve, not only on the subtler planes and levels of awareness but on the outer plane of tangible, material, physical life.

You can be trusted to accept your soul's demand, to carry out the fulfilment of your soul's obligation and the shouldering of the responsibility of service. This constitutes your highest spiritual hope and aspiration.

 

Step Five: Man the Disciple

July 1st to 11th

Mercury

Your present state of active discipleship warrants recognition. You are developing a spiritual self-respect that prevents you from standing anywhere upon the Path except in your rightful place. You have discarded a false humility which in reality bordered on a lack of truthfulness, which previously kept you from clear-eyed recognition of your spiritual status. This recognition requires intelligence and sounds out no call to personality ego or pride. There is no false pride in affirming that you are a disciple.

Recognition of disciple status however, is purely a private and personal matter; it should be faced and accepted and then followed by silence. Your ancient connection with the Ashram is strong in your consciousness. You have known for some years that such a connection exists. Recognizing your link with the Ashram and knowing that your long-standing aspiration is bearing fruit, take your focus off yourself, off the personalities of your co-disciples, and even away from your Master, and forget everything but the need of those you meet daily. Then serve.

With a tender heart of love and compassion serve all you meet, knowing that "each heart hides its own bitterness." (DINAI 562) This constitutes your major lesson on the Path at this time, my brother—the lesson of utter self-forgetfulness.

Ask yourself what lies at the very depth of your personality in this life? What is the particular hidden personality aspect that has been struggling for expression throughout your entire incarnation? Also what is your essential soul quality? The outstanding quality which, given due process of experience, will radiate from your life and thus constitute your major working asset. What lies at the depths of your being, seeking revelation? What is your predominant need in this life? What should be the unique realization which this particular incarnation should help you to express? What is your outstanding contribution?

Reduce all this to the requirements for initiation, for which you are being prepared, and you will discover the fundamental things that must be manifested prior to that tremendous step forward upon the Path. Do not be unduly preoccupied with your mistakes or failures. These are inevitable and are relatively unimportant. The rhythm of your soul—indeed of all life—pulsates in time and space, and in that rhythm you must find the note that will liberate. Ponder on the work of the Destroyer; upon why there is destruction and loss of beauty. The fulfilment of your soul task in life should make that knowledge possible. Armed with this knowledge, work, construct and build. Your major life theme is the attainment of freedom. Ponder on this. It is the goal for all.

Recognize and reinterpret your inner life pattern—the inner program which your soul undertook to follow when you first set your foot upon the Path of Accepted Discipleship. There is now need for a more dynamic following of your soul purpose and a definite negation of all personality impediments that seek at this time to obstruct your progress.

This does not refer to outer relationships and contacts. They exist and have their purpose. All responsibilities must be rightly met. But concentrate rather upon the inner, active, spiritual life that you are increasingly cultivating, and the simultaneous dual activity of personality and soul. You are at the point where you can—if you so will—achieve a higher and more potent rhythm. Its potency and vibration must be felt outside the home circle and outside your relationships with your group brothers. In what manner that extension of service must demonstrate is for you to discover. However it will certainly come through a deepening of your meditative life, and not through an outer search for such contacts. It will come through the development of a true spiritual understanding which will make the magnetic beat or tempo of your soul note of such potency in your life that you will not need to move from where you are because those whom you can aid will come to you increasingly.

Your dual life under the Fourth Ray of Mercury embraces the world of your deepest inner relationships, of subjective attitudes, but it also embraces the life of outer service and those relationships that you have assumed as your physical plane dharma. Clear vision as to these outer relations in the world of professional activity, friendships and family relations is a necessary requirement for treading the Path, and until you see these relations in their true and right proportions your mind will remain frequently disturbed and your service handicapped. You must bear in mind that you are a disciple because of a capacity to serve and not because of any karmic links per se. Cut deep into the roots of your life seeking freedom from your ancient karmic past, yet do not move from where life has placed you or from the role that you have been given to play. Your past is embodied in your present life. Your spiritual future depends upon the clear seeing of the immediate vision. Forget the past and proceed into the glory of your future.

Every link made on Earth does not necessarily entail the recognition of a soul connection. We frequently start new lines of karma and of dharma. You have learned right judgment as to the relative soul age of your co-workers and associates. You have discovered that these vary, and learned then to recognize those whose wisdom and knowledge surpass your own, to cooperate with those who stand with you upon the Path, and to work for those whom you can help but whose evolutionary status is not equal with your own.

Dare to trust yourself to see your co-workers as they really are, with no fear of a critical spirit. Develop the true practice of loving understanding which sees every person in truth with their faults and their virtues, their pettiness and their grandeurs, and loves them even more. You now include many people within the range of your daily thought.

Let your influence, welling forth from your steady and radiant soul, be felt in ever widening ranges of contact. Your ability to act as a stable, loving, integrating force is a wonderful contribution to your group of co-workers and fellow disciples. Let humility, illumination, soul control, spiritual beauty and strength be your gift to your brothers. Seize each opportunity for a more expanded interplay, touching the lives of others wherever you can, and thus achieving that Mercurial fluidity of response that will carry you forth upon an increasing tide of service.

You have developed tremendous strength through a life process characterized by constant conflict, personal warfare and epic struggles. Battle-hardened at this point, your life of mystical effort has ended and the disciplined process of personality-soul fusion begins. You know yourself to be a complex aggregate of differentiated energies through which the consciousness of your soul plays. Your task is to bring the diverse forces into relation with each other and produce organized activity, synthesis and a fuller expression of your inherent divinity.

Mercury indicates that the salient task of discipleship is to master the process of dual thinking. You must preserve a continuity of mental impression as well as constant activity connected with daily living and service. In other words the double life pattern is cultivated. Your lower and higher mind function simultaneously. The outer pattern of your life unfolds with ever-increasing usefulness while the stream of inner spiritual thoughts consciously flows.

Hold the point of anxious Mercurial tension, for the initiation planned by your soul can be taken in this life so that you can enter your next incarnation with initiate consciousness of a particular grade, and thus begin with greatly increased assets for world service. Give of yourself to the utmost, and thus gain the sixth rung of the ladder of ascent. You have before you a life of selfless service. Serve with no thought of self and in a spirit of joy; give of your strength and love with no self-reference in your heart, no words and no thought in your mind of the little self, and then you will stand initiate.

Under the fifth decan a keen intuition, acute sensitivity and a great ability to sense what other people will say or think will increase. As you develop true intuitive perception and the ability to be impressed, harmony with the form side of life evolves, and the cleavage existing in consciousness between the subjective and objective worlds is bridged. As the soul factor becomes increasingly active the environment is interpreted in new terms, producing a fusion between the two kingdoms in nature—the human and the spiritual.

You have already shown that you are beyond frivolous and vain desires or pursuits. After the successful negotiation of many tests, the evolved Crab demonstrates high morals and a refined ethical code of conduct. Under Mercury the disciple will prove and demonstrate intelligent comprehension, the wise solution of difficulties with which he is continually confronted, and a correct interpretation of the peculiarities of life in any situation. All forms of disturbed, exclusive, self-centered, distorted, deceptive and erratic behavior must be harmonized. All forms of personality depression and unhappiness must also be sublimated in order to demonstrate a real capacity to take initiation. The establishment of a sense of unity, balance or wholeness is essential in order to overcome all sense of distressing personal cleavage.

The process of at-one-ment or union with the soul is aided by Mercury which allows the changing of old conditions of the personality life and provides the resources and vital reservoirs of sustenance, life and hope.

In the final analysis, it is the basic cleavage between the physical plane life and the spiritual recognition of divinity which must be bridged. The ordered pattern of your life has taken on definite forms and you have worked with intelligence.

Mercury's rulership here indicates that the right use of the intellect is essential to the bridging process between personality and soul. The energy of Mercury is essentially a healing force and when properly channeled leads to the intelligent use of the mind so that it can become consciously aware of the higher Self. Mercury indicates that your task is to hold your mind unwavering and steady in the light, demonstrating accurate interpretation and correct response to the instructions communicated from the soul.

These instructions must then be transmitted as thoughtforms to the waiting quiescent brain. As the direct line from soul to brain is established, you recognize yourself to be the great mediating principle.

Your mind is rightly used now in two directions, to record and interpret the world of phenomena and the world of the soul. Cancer disciples display a wonderfully enhanced sensitivity to the three worlds of human endeavor and equal sensitivity to the kingdom of souls. All sense of duality is overcome when the soul is fully recognized to be all that is, all that has been and all that will be. Joyfulness, keenness of spirit, abundant vitality and ease of activity now distinguish you, the successful disciple.

Also do not be afraid of loneliness because the soul that cannot stand alone has naught to give. Advanced initiation is taken alone. Thus your soul has led you in this lifetime upon a lonely path spiritually and mentally speaking. Yet in a deeper sense you are not alone. The spiritual life is full of paradoxes. We set out to develop a sense of unity and of oneness with all beings, yet at times we must learn the lessons of loneliness and isolation. A great "aloneness" is the supreme test of the Fourth Initiation. (DINAII 759)

It is, in the last analysis, ever simply a question of successive identifications and developed recognitions. Life has its constant points of revelation, some of which we recognize while others pass by unnoticed. Spiritual loneliness is a test of that occult detachment which every disciple has to master. Solitariness faced and understood results in two realizations: first a realization of your exact stage upon the Path of Initiation, and secondly an intuitive perception of the point in evolution of those you contact along the way.

The illumination of the Fourth Ray of Mercury reveals to you the essential oneness which exists on the inner side of life and negates all outer appearance of separativeness. When the soul is placed in complete control no sense of separativeness is again possible.

Your readiness for the sixth step rests upon the attainment of occult solitariness and not upon any spirit of separativeness. It is the solitariness of an initiate who has shut none out, but has carefully withheld the secrets of the Ashram from those who seek to penetrate them out of inappropriate motivation. Certain treasures are too valuable and frail to be exposed to the sight of others. Keep them within the Ashram and within the locked seclusion of your heart. It is precisely your state of solitariness that has succeeded in opening wide the door into your Ashram.

Your soul is endeavoring to convey to you the attitude of all disciples in training for initiation. This attitude is one of extreme personal reticence, of withdrawal from those verbal contacts which reveal too much of individual soul growth.

Let inner silence and peace reign—not as a result of closing anything out, but as a result of your heart being free from undue self-questioning. This is one of the first lessons in the silence which initiation entails. It is also one of the first steps towards comprehension of that "isolated unity" which is distinctive of the Master. (DINAI 710)

In the Hierarchy there is complete unity based upon a recognized isolation of spirit from matter. This should provide you with a theme for much profound thinking.

 

Step Six: Man the Initiate

July 11th to 22nd

Venus

The essential quality you radiate is a soul understanding of all those for whom you are spiritually responsible. This is a quality of loving, dynamic potency. Your body and soul gleam with the blended radiance of perfection. You have a magnetic attraction and a radiation which infuses others, attracting light, warmth and love.

It is your pure heart, regenerated and transmuted, which enables you to pass through the portal and walk on hallowed ground sanctified by the veneration of the ages. You have amply demonstrated the power to hold others steady through your love, kindness and understanding. Even if you do not always overtly express it, this loving energy is sensed by others. It remains subjective.

Your binding power, forceful and enduring, carries its limitations as well as its blessings. Co-workers and younger brothers can be held too closely to you for their own good, and it is ever the weaker and the less advanced who are thus held. So people can become dependent upon you and thus fail to express themselves, and again their weaknesses and negative tendencies are developed. Nevertheless the beneficent aspect of your power predominates, so work to deliberately increase this to positive effect.

Liberation is what you seek. This is not freedom from incarnation or liberation from the pressures of life, but the freedom to be in the three worlds unsupervised by aught but your own soul. It is this new-found state of freedom within you that enables you to give your time to others and provide them with mental and emotional support. This support is not evoked by habit or by the demand of others, but is the free contribution of your soul to current need. Ensure that your response is always to need.

The inner keynotes of the sixth decan are unity, freedom, salvation and release. Here you are tested until you are capable of walking completely free in the world of illusion for the purpose of saving and lifting your brothers and sisters. As you have fulfilled your outer obligations in the various fields of life expression there has been a simultaneous freeing of yourself from the "pulling hands" (DINAI 310) of friends and acquaintances. This has been necessary to preserve an inner freedom.

You have also fast learned the lesson that freedom is a state of mind and not a condition of being. For you the development of a more clearly realized detachment is a major objective, because you know that it will result in the parallel formation of a deeper attachment to humanity.

In the sixth decan Venus indicates the successful development of psychic sensitivity in its highest aspect, and also the ability to bring soul intuitions into mental awareness. This rulership shows that the pull of matter has been superseded by the free choice of your soul. You have successfully released the hidden beauty that lies in real self-forgetfulness, and let your devotion—tried and proven—and your sincerity stabilize your ashramic group field.

You are not preoccupied with the non-essentials of personal living but are generous with your time, skills, gifts and abilities, and able to give to your group brothers with a clear impersonality that asks nothing for the separated self. Indeed you have successfully produced an illumined, sublimated, imaginative and inspired life demonstrated through specific forms of lovingly inspired world service.

Your soul holds out before you no illusions of a great work to be performed for which you are divinely predestined. The great work is the work toward the initiations. You have made yourself fit for this through your steady expansion of consciousness and by your achievement of decentralization, demonstrated through constant compassionate and understanding response to the needs of your 'younger brothers' on the Path.

Your mind wields knowledge with complete assurance of correctness. The outstanding virtue of your mind is detached objectivity. Knowledge accumulated from your studies is wisely mastered in all of its details. In the final analysis Venus shows that it is the correct use and function of the mind which makes possible both illumination and release from the thralldom of form existence. You have many strengths including a facility for mathematical calculation, power to verify through experimentation, the discrimination of truth from error, detached objectivity, accuracy and precision in thought and action. You possess an unusual clarity and lucidity of mental explanation because you know and truly appreciate the common sources of human limitation, error and confusion.

As an initiate your ability to utilize your mind as the instrument of final release, transcendence and liberation is being supremely tested. At this advanced stage it becomes possible to encompass and synthesize a greater amount of specialized knowledge in any chosen field with true sophistication and an interdisciplinary understanding. Highly developed powers of analysis and discrimination enable you to penetrate behind the outer veil of appearance and intuitively seize the hidden inner Truth.

New teaching skills, training methods and educational procedures flourish in your specialized field of work, along with the growth of a proficient and precise technical expertise. Even though your thinking is virtually incomprehensible to the uninitiated, a highly disciplined methodology ensures the practical implementation and progression of the acquired knowledge through definite and specific forms of group work and service.

Your glorious opportunity is to be a facilitator of the growth of others, and your service to them comes before everything else. You kneel at the seat of mercy, a faithful servant of the Spirit within, and by virtue of your achievement of self-control have earned the right to some control over the lives of others, to the greater good of all.

A teacher par excellence, you know how to evoke understanding in others. You have a tremendous self-assurance because your understanding is based on a very broad and tolerant point of view. Fully developed faculties of creative expression enable you to inspire and vitalize the youth of the world as well as those of your own generation. You have the power to seize the imagination of your pupils through imagery and intensity of feeling and thought.

The purpose behind your fundamental teaching method is always the evolution of humanity by the raising of its standards and ideals. The whole gamut of human action, feeling and thought lies open to you because by the time you reach this decan you have already experienced joy, compassion, sorrow, horror and despair. You become expert at sharing intuitional insights and can open others to a wider range of sensitivity and feeling. You hold aloft the torch lit by past experience to illuminate the way for others. You teach through the example of your own life, standing forth a living proof of the Eternal Plan.

At the sixth step the fact of God's vision becomes a reality in the initiate consciousness; true spiritual insight is gained as to the objective of the Plan, and is expressed in plain and formulated outline. Through Venus the fire of love inspires you, and this evokes the service of creation as an expression of that love. The Venusian power inspires you to be a dynamic agent in your physical environment. An increased livingness and a tremendous inflow of spiritual life directly pour through you on to the physical plane. You have overcome all forms of glamour, and your spirituality does not over-emphasize the physical side of life. Lifetimes of generated merit, trust, unwearying efforts and dogged persistence have now culminated in your ability to escape the intricate labyrinths of the form side of life and the traps of the material or sensuous world.

Under Venus both the form aspect and the psychic nature eventually reach concrete perfection and become perfect instruments of world service wielded for the purpose of salvaging lives. Undaunted by suffering, sorrow or death, you have achieved a constant state of joy in facing responsibility and solving all problems encountered. Opportunities far beyond the reach of most people are presented, but the only joy in your heart is that of seeing the fruits of your selfless handiwork.

A life of fuller expression in outer service on the physical plane is required and would further aid you towards your goal of initiation. Your outer influence—radiating from a controlled inner center—and the development of a wider range of service and teaching activities has come slowly, but your intention and thought are rightly directed towards these ends. The wisdom that you have developed within the furnace of pain and suffering can now be used, as the Way of Light and of Joy opens up before you.

How deep is your comprehension of your own nature, and how well do you understand your problems, your limitations and your assets? Every initiate needs to have such an understanding and to know infallibly what is in his heart and mind; he must understand what motivates all action. You have no personality as we commonly understand the term, because the conditioning factors of your existence are increasingly the three Aspects of the spiritual Triad. These three creative Aspects have built the phenomenal apparatus or mechanism by means of which you make contact with the three worlds. You see people truly. You see life truly.

Depend upon yourself and on your soul with greater confidence; move forward with surety towards consummation of this life's initiatory effort. Endeavor to gain the needed endurance and poise, the required enthusiasm or dynamic purpose, so that you may be trusted to handle with wisdom the power conferred upon the initiate.

Thus proceed upon the outward way with humility and caution. Ponder and act upon this, strengthening the Ashram and presenting yourself to the Masters as a wise server and a trained companion on the Higher Way.