When ma has passed through mahat, ma will still be ma; but ma will be united with mahat, and be a mahat-ma.

—The Zodiac.

THE

WORD

ADEPTS, MASTERS AND MAHATMAS

(Continued)

THE adamantine rocks of the ages crumble. Color leaves form and forms vanish. Music goes out of sound and sounds end in wails of sadness and reproach. The fires are dead. Sap dries up. Everything is cold. The life and the light of the world are gone. All is still. Darkness prevails. The disciple in the school of the masters now enters his death period.

The inner world is dead to him; it vanishes. The outer physical world is also dead. He treads the earth, but it has the unsubstantiality of a shadow. The immovable hills are as shifting to him as the clouds and like so many veils; he sees through them into the beyond, which is emptiness. The light has gone out of the sun though it still shines. The songs of birds are as screams. All the world is seen to be in a constant state of flux and reflux; nothing is permanent, all is change. Life is a pain, though the disciple is dead to pain as to pleasure. Everything is unreal; all is a mockery. Love is a spasm. Those who seem to enjoy life are seen to be only in a delirium. The saint is self deluded, the sinner is mad. The wise are as the foolish, there is neither bad nor good. The heart of the disciple loses feeling. Time is seen to be a delusion, yet it seems to be the most real. There is no up nor down in the universe. The solid earth seems to be a dark bubble floating in darker and empty space. Though the disciple in the school of the masters walks about and physically sees things as before, the mental darkness thickens about him. Waking or sleeping, the darkness is with him. The darkness becomes a thing of horror and continually encroaches. Silence is upon him and his words seem to have no sound. The silence seems to crystallize into a formless thing which cannot be seen, and its presence is the presence of death. Go where he will, do what he will, the disciple cannot escape this dark thing. It is in everything and around everything. It is within him and around him. Annihilation were bliss as compared to the nearness of this dark thing. But for the presence of this dark thing the disciple is alone. He feels as though he is the living dead in a dead world. Though without a voice, the shapeless darkness recalls the delights of the inner world of the senses to the disciple, and when he refuses to listen he is shown that he may escape or pass out from this utter gloom if he will answer the call of men. Even while in the midst of darkness the disciple of the masters is aware that he should not heed the darkness, though he is crushed down by it. For the disciple all things have lost attraction. Ideals have disappeared. Effort is useless and there is no purpose in things. But although he is as dead the disciple is still conscious. He may struggle with the darkness, but his struggles seem useless. For the darkness eludes him while it crushes. Believing himself strong he throws himself at first against the darkness in his efforts to overcome it, only to find that it becomes heavier as he opposes it. The disciple is in the coils of the ancient serpent of the world against which human strength is as weakness. It seems to the disciple that he is in eternal death, though the life and the light have gone out of things and hold nothing for him and although his body is as his grave, yet he is still conscious. It dawns upon him that if he cannot overcome the darkness, yet the darkness has not quite overcome him, for he is conscious.

This thought of being conscious in the dark is the first glimmering of life for the disciple since he entered his death period. The disciple lies softly in the coils of death and does not fight, but remains conscious; the darkness carries on the fight. The dark neighbor urges the fight, but seeing that struggle was useless, the disciple no longer struggles. When the disciple is willing to remain perpetually in utter darkness if need be, and when he feels conscious in eternity, even though in darkness and will not yield, that thought by which things are known comes to him. He now knows that the utter gloom in which he is surrounded is his own dark faculty, a very part of his own being which is his own adversary. This thought gives him new strength, but he cannot fight, for the dark faculty is of himself though it eludes him. The disciple now trains his focus faculty to find his dark faculty. As the disciple continues to exercise his focus faculty and bring the dark faculty into range there seems to be a sundering of mind and body.

The dark faculty spreads if possible a deeper gloom. The focus faculty brings into range the disciple’s thoughts of the ages. Great strength is needed by the disciple to continue the use of his focus faculty. As some old thought is thrown up from the past by the dark faculty, the disciple’s attention is momentarily diverted by the thing of the past, the child of desire. Each time the disciple turns his focus faculty to bring into light the dark brother faculty, the thing of the olden time uses a new device. When seemingly within range and about to be discovered, the thing of darkness, like a devil fish, emits an impenetrable blackness which surrounds it and darkens everything. While the darkness prevails the thing again eludes the focus faculty of the disciple. As the disciple brings the focus to bear steadily into the blackness, it begins to take on form, and out of the dark gloom there come most loathsome forms. Huge worm-like creatures ooze themselves out of the blackness and around him. Giant crab-like shapes crawl out of the blackness and over him. Out of the blackness lizards waddle up and project slimy and fork-like tongues at him. Hideous creatures which were nature’s failures in her early attempts to produce living things, swarm around the disciple from out of the blackness which his focus faculty makes known. They cling to him and seem to enter him and would possess his being. But the disciple continues to use his focus faculty. Out of the seemingly impenetrable darkness and in the range of the focus faculty there crawl and squirm and hover and brood things with and without form. Bats of incarnate blackness, wickedness and malice, with human or misshapen head flutter about and flap their noxious wings around him, and with the horror of their dread presence there come male and female human figures expressive of every human vice and crime. Creatures of loathsome and sickening loveliness insinuate themselves around and fasten to the disciple. Composite male and female reptilian, vermin-like human creatures beset him. But he is fearless until he discovers that they are his own creations. Then fear comes. He sickens in despair. As he looks at or feels the awful things, he sees himself reflected in each. Each looks into his heart and brain, and looks to the place it had there filled. Each cries out to him and accuses him of a past thought and action which gave it form and called it into being. All of his secret crimes through the ages rise up in the black terror before him.

Each time he ceases using his focus faculty he finds relief, but not forgetfulness. Ever he must renew his efforts and must uncover the dark faculty. Again and again he seeks out the dark faculty and as many times does it elude him. At some time, it may be in one of the darkest moments or one of relief, the one thought of the disciple comes again; and again he knows things as they are. They are the children of his past thoughts and deeds conceived in ignorance and born in darkness. He knows that they are the ghosts of his dead past, which his dark faculty has summoned and which he must transform or be borne down by. He is fearless and wills to transform them, by the one thought which he knows. He begins this, his work. Then he becomes aware of and awakens and uses his image faculty.

As soon as the disciple comes into possession of his image faculty he discovers that the dark faculty is unable to produce forms. He learns that the dark faculty had been able to throw up before him the past in forms by means of the image faculty, but as he has now taken possession of it and learns its use, the dark faculty though it still remains elusive, cannot create form. Gradually the disciple gains confidence in himself and learns to look fearlessly on his past. He marshals the events of that past in order before him. Through his image faculty he gives them the forms in which they were, and by the one thought which he knows he judges them for what they are. By the image faculty he holds the matter of his past as represented by the forms, and he returns it to the matter of the world or to the dark faculty, from either of which it came. That which is returned to the world is given direction and order and a high tone. That which is returned to the dark faculty is subdued, controlled, refined. By his image faculty the disciple is able to give form to the darkness and to image the dark faculty, but he is still unable to know the dark faculty in itself. As the disciple judges, transforms and refines his matter of the past he is able by his image faculty to inquire into the earliest forms of nature and to trace matter through its various forms from the earliest periods of involution into form, through its consecutive stages, link by link, through the entire chain of its evolutionary period to the present time. By use of his image faculty the disciple is able to trace by analogy of the past and the present the forms which will be evolved from nature and by the use of the faculties of the mind. By his image faculty and with his focus faculty he may make forms large or small. By the use of the image faculty the disciple can trace all forms to that of the mental world, but not within or beyond it. By use of the image faculty the disciple knows of the processes of the formation of present man, of his metempsychoses, transmigration and reincarnations and is able to image the processes by which he as disciple will become master of his faculties in the mental world.

The disciple may try to image to himself who he is and what is his form. But by his one thought which he knows he will know that he is as yet unborn and that though he knows of his “I” he is unable to image himself. The disciple finds that from the very first of his attempts to center the focus faculty on the dark faculty, even though it were possible, he could not have discovered the dark faculty because his attention had been diverted from it by the creatures which it made present to him. As he learns this he knows that he has stilled the dark faculty. He knows himself to be unborn, like a foetus.

Up to the present time and at the present time the disciple in the school of the masters has met with masters and knows of their presence, but only through their physical bodies. The disciple is not able to perceive a master body independently of a master’s physical body and though the disciple is able to know when a master is present yet he cannot perceive distinctly of a master body; because a master body is not a sense body and cannot be perceived through the senses. And the disciple has not yet learned the use of the motive faculty independently of the senses and by its use only can a master body be known. While the disciple struggled with the dark faculty a master could not help him because the disciple was then testing his own strength, proving his steadfastness of purpose, transmuting his own matter, and to have given assistance at such time would have caused the disciple to remain mortal. But when the disciple by his own steadfastness and courage has proven himself true to his purpose and by the use of his focus and image faculties and by the one thought which he knows, has stilled the dark faculty, then the disciple is shown by a master the difficulties through which he has passed and the purpose which it has served. He finds or has shown to him that that with which he has struggled is the uncontrolled and blind desire of his human kind and that by subduing desires he aids and stimulates mankind to so act with theirs.

As yet the disciple has not overcome sleep; he has not overcome death. He knows that he cannot die, though he is in a womb of death. He no longer struggles. He awaits the maturing of time which will bring him to birth. He cannot see nor sense the processes which are passing within his physical body, though he may follow these processes in thought. But soon there comes a new movement within him. There seems to be a new influx of intelligent life. He takes mental life within his physical body, as when a foetus takes life in the womb. The disciple feels as though he might rise out of his physical body and soar where he pleases and at will. But he does not. There is a new lightness and buoyancy throughout his body and he is mentally sensitive to all things within his sphere. His thoughts will take form before him, but he knows that he should not yet give matter the form of his thought. As his time of birth approaches, the one thought which he knows is ever present with him. His focus faculty is fixed in this one thought. All things seem to blend into this thought and this one thought which he knows is through all things. He becomes more conscious of this one thought; lives in it, and while his physical body will perform its functions naturally his whole concern is in his one thought which he knows. A calm joy and peace are within him. Harmony is about him and he quickens according to his thought. Power of motion enters him. He wills to speak, but does not at once find mental voice. His effort sounds a note in the song of time. The song of time enters his being and bears him up and up. His one thought is stronger. He tries again to speak and again time responds, but he has no voice. Time seems to flood him. Power comes and his speech is born within him. As he speaks, he ascends out of the dark faculty as out of a womb. He, a master, has risen.

His speech, his voice, is his birth. It is his ascension. Never again will he pass through death. He is immortal. His speech is a word. The Word is his name. His name, his word is as the keynote of a song which is sounded throughout the time world, surrounding and permeating the physical world. His name is the theme of the song of life which is taken up and sung by every particle of time. As the harmony of time is understood, the disciple perceives himself to be a mental body. His mental body is a body of faculties, not of senses. His focus faculty he uses readily. By it he finds that he, his mental body, is the one thought by which he became a disciple in the school of the masters, the same thought which guided him through all difficulties and by which he knows things as they are; it is his motive faculty.

The master seems to have always existed. His immortality seems not to have just commenced, but to extend indefinitely into the past. He is not a physical body, he is not a psychic or astral body. He is a master body, the matter of which is thought. He thinks and time adjusts itself by his thoughts. He is in the heaven world of humanity, and finds that all humanity are there represented. He finds that though all humanity are represented in his world, the heaven world, the mental world, the world of the masters, that humanity are constantly appearing and reappearing in some new aspect. That the heaven of one is changed by that one and enjoyed differently with each reappearance and that the heaven world of anyone is changed with the changing of the ideal of that one. The master perceives that this heaven world is dimly perceived by mankind, even while they are on earth, though they fail to realize their heaven while on earth. He perceives that the heaven of mankind is made of their thoughts and that the thoughts of each build his own heaven which each realizes when the power of his mind leaves the physical body at death and is united with the ideals which are his heaven world and which he experiences between lives. The master perceives the individuals of humanity coming and going from the heaven world, each extending or limiting the period of his experience according to his ideal and according to the motive by which he learns from his experience and the causes of his experiencing. The master perceives that the mind of the personality of a life thinks of itself in connection with the highest thoughts, as its personality, but does not realize the different periods of incarnation while in the heaven world. But the master does not yet follow the minds in their coming and going from the heaven world.

The master sees in the heaven world that those who come and enter it after death and were by their ideals represented in it during physical life, do not know of the heaven world as he knows it. The unborn men yet resting in the heaven world, enjoy heaven as they had known of it in their physical lives. Though there are beings who live consciously and throughout time in the heaven world, yet mortal men resting in this heaven world do not know these beings, and during their stay they are unaware of the presence of masters, unless the thought of masters had been part of their ideals in physical life. The master sees that in the heaven world man is a thought body, stripped of his physical body; that man’s heaven is a transitory state though a state more real to him than was his physical life; that as a thought body without his physical body, man uses his image faculty and thereby constructs his heaven-world; that the kind of a man’s heaven world is decided by the motive of the mind who made it.

Of all this the master had known while he was a disciple; now it is known by him. The heaven world which is to the mind of a mortal an immense expanse of years, is, to a master, a brief dream only. Time in the mental world when conceived by the mind of a mortal is endless eternity as compared with the time of the physical world. The mortal in his heaven state cannot use his time faculty; the master does. The time faculty of the master is brought into use, by his motive faculty, as he thinks. As he thinks, the atoms of time group themselves and are related to each other as his thought, and that is determined and caused by his motive. The master thinks of time, its comings and goings. He follows time and sees the circulations from the beginnings of time, its constant flow from the spiritual world, its flooding and turning back into the spiritual world. The motive causes its comings and decides its goings, in periods necessary for the realization and working out of its ideals.

The master thinks of his motive and his motive faculty makes known to him the motive which prompted his becoming a master. While he seems to have always been a master, he knows that his becoming one is the fullness of his time. The beginnings of this, though far removed in the lower time worlds are present in the mental world, his world. He knows that the completion of his beginning is his becoming, and its uniting with the beginning. But he knows that the processes of the becoming are not here; they are in the lower time worlds.

Other motives than the motive which caused him to become what he is, are made known to him as he thinks and uses his motive faculty. He has followed time in its beginnings and in its completions, but he does not see all the processes of his becoming a master. He thinks of the processes and uses his image and focus faculties. The flowing of time continues. He follows it in its groupings and formation of the worlds. The worlds take on form as form-time, which is form-matter, and forms appear upon them. The atoms of time fill in the forms, which are the time molecules. The atoms of time pass through the form molecules; they pass through the form world, and while they are flowing on the forms become physical. The physical world, as the form world made visible and concrete, is seen to be a constant flowing on of time and not to be concrete and solid. Forms appear and disappear like bubbles, and time which flows on continues through the forms which are thrown up on it and borne away on it. These throwings up and drawings in are the lives and deaths of things which come into the physical world. The human forms are among them. He sees a continuous line of forms, graduated in perspective, stretching over the bounds of the physical world and ending in himself. These forms or bubbles lead into himself. By his focus faculty he lines them up and sees that they are the forms or the shadows of himself. He focusses them, and all end now and blend into and disappear in the physical body, his present physical body, from which he has but just risen, ascended as a master.

He is immortal; his immortality is the whole of time. Though the whole becoming has extended throughout time, it has been lived through while he has taken voice and given name to himself, and during his ascension. His physical body is in the same position and, according to physical time, not many moments seem to have lapsed.

The master now is in full possession of his physical organs; he is aware of the physical world; he is in full possession of five of his mental faculties and uses them independently of his senses. His physical body rests; peace is upon it; he is transfigured. He, the master, as a master body, is not of the form of the physical body. He is in the physical, but he extends beyond it. The master is aware of and sees other masters about him. They speak to him as one of them.

The disciple who was and who has now become a master, lives and acts consciously in the physical and mental worlds. His physical body is within the master body, as the physical world is within and permeated by the mental world. Through or by use of the physical body the physical world is alive to him. Everything in the physical world is more pronounced. The sun shines, birds sing, the waters pour forth their melody of joy, and manifested nature greets the master as her creator and preserver. The world of the inner senses which beckoned him as disciple now gladly offers obedience and submissive service to the master. That to which he did not yield as disciple he now will guide and direct as master. He sees that to the world of men, which had offered him glory and had asked his aid, he may now render service and he will give it aid. He regards his physical body with sympathy and compassion. He looks on it as the thing through which he has come into his own.

(To be continued)