DISCIPLESHIP

From Bailey, Alice, Initiation, Human and Solar

A Disciple described

A disciple is one who above all else, is pledged to do three things:

a. To serve humanity.

b. To cooperate with the plan of the Great Ones as he sees it and as best he may.

c. To develop the powers of the Ego, to expand his consciousness until he can function on the three planes in the three worlds, and in the causal body, and to follow the guidance of the higher self and not the dictates of his threefold lower manifestation.

A disciple is one who is beginning to comprehend group work, and to change his center of activity from himself (as the pivot around which everything revolves) to the group center.

A disciple is one who realizes simultaneously the relative insignificance of each unit of consciousness, and also its vast importance. His sense of proportion is adjusted, and he sees things as they are; he sees people as they are; he sees himself as he inherently is and seeks then to become that which he is.

A disciple realizes the life or force side of nature, and to him the form makes no appeal. He works with force and through force; he recognizes himself as a force center within a greater force center, and his is the responsibility [72] of directing the energy which may pour through him into channels through which the group can be benefited.

The disciple knows himself to be - to a greater or less degree - an outpost of the Master's consciousness, viewing the Master in a two-fold sense:

a. As his own egoic consciousness.

b. As the center of his group; the force animating the units of the group and binding them into a homogeneous whole.

A disciple is one who is transferring his consciousness out of the personal into the impersonal, and during the transition stage much of difficulty and of suffering is necessarily endured. These difficulties arise from various causes:

a. The disciple's lower self, which rebels at being transmuted.

b. A man's immediate group, friends, or family, who rebel at his growing impersonality. They do not like to be acknowledged as one with him on the life side, and yet separate from him where desires and interests lie. Yet the law holds good, and only in the essential life of the soul can true unity be cognized. In the discovery as to what is form lies much of sorrow for the disciple, but the road leads to perfect union eventually.

The disciple is one who realizes his responsibility to all units who come under his influence, - a responsibility of cooperating with the plan of evolution as it exists for them, and thus to expand their consciousness and teach them the difference between the real and the unreal, between life and form. This he does most easily by a demonstration in his own life as to his goal, his object, and his center of consciousness. [73]

The Work to be done

The disciple, therefore, has several things at which to aim:

• A sensitive response to the Master's vibration.
• A practical purity of life; a purity not merely theoretical.
• A freedom from care. Here bear in mind that care is based on the personal, and is the result of lack of dispassion and a too ready response to the vibrations of the lower worlds.
• Accomplishment of duty. This point involves the dispassionate discharge of all obligations and due attention to karmic debts. Special emphasis should be laid, for all disciples, on the value of dispassion. Lack of discrimination is not so often a hindrance to disciples these days, owing to the development of the mind, but lack of dispassion frequently is. This means the attainment of that state of consciousness where balance is seen, and neither pleasure nor pain dominates, for they are superseded by joy and bliss. We may well ponder on this, for much striving after dispassion is necessary.
• He has also to study the Kama-manasic body (desire-mind body). This is of very real interest, for it is, in many ways, the most important body in the solar system, where the human being in the three worlds is concerned. In the next system the mental vehicle of the self-conscious units will hold an analogous place, as the physical did in the previous solar system.
• He has also to work scientifically, if it may be so expressed, at the building of the physical body. He must so strive that he will produce in each incarnation a body which will serve better as a vehicle for force. Hence there is nothing impractical in giving information anent initiation, as some may think. There is no moment of the [74] day that that goal may not be visioned, and the work of preparation carried on. One of the greatest instruments for practical development lying in the hands of small and great, is the instrument of SPEECH. He who guards his words, and who only speaks with altruistic purpose, in order to carry the energy of Love through the medium of the tongue, is one who is mastering rapidly the initial steps to be taken in preparation for initiation. Speech is the most occult manifestation in existence; it is the means of creation and the vehicle for force. In the reservation of words, esoterically understood, lies the conservation of force; in the utilization of words, justly chosen and spoken, lies the distribution of the love force of the solar system, - that force which preserves, strengthens, and stimulates. Only he who knows somewhat of these two aspects of speech can be trusted to stand before the Initiator and to carry out from that Presence certain sounds and secrets imparted to him under the pledge of silence.
• The disciple must learn to be silent in the face of that which is evil. He must learn to be silent before the sufferings of the world, wasting no time in idle plaints and sorrowful demonstration, but lifting up the burden of the world; working, and wasting no energy in talk. Yet withal he should speak where encouragement is needed, using the tongue for constructive ends; expressing the love force of the world, as it may flow through him, where it will serve best to ease a load or lift a burden, remembering that as the race progresses, the love element between the sexes and its expression will be translated to a higher plane. Then, through the spoken word, and not through the physical plane expression as now, will come the realization of that true love which unites those who are one in service and in aspiration. Then love between the units of the human family will take the form of the utilization of [75] speech for the purpose of creating on all planes, and the energy which now, in the majority, finds expression through the lower or generating centers will be translated to the throat center. This is as yet but a distant ideal, but even now some can vision that ideal, and seek - through united service, loving cooperation, and oneness in aspiration, thought, and endeavor, - to give shape and form to it, even though inadequately.