The Light of the Mind

All quotations are from the book "Telepathy and the Etheric Vehicle" by Alice a. Bailey.

Intuitional telepathy is one of the developments upon the path of Discipleship. It is one of the fruits of true meditation. The area involved is in the head and throat, and the three centres which will be rendered active in the process are the head centre, which is receptive to impression from higher sources, and the ajna centre which are the recipient of the idealistic intuitional impressions; this ajna centre can then "broadcast" that which is received and recognised, using the throat centre as the creative formulator of thought, and the factor which embodies the sensed or intuited idea. (p.19)

This is the triangle through which the Light of the Mind operates. It is of great importance at a time in world history when the social sciences are moving into a revolution destined to stabilize world peace, economic relations and international government. These three centres synthesize the power to conceive, to love and to speak. As the antahkarana develops, these faculties interact with dynamic effects. The disciple becomes aware that his thought and love act upon the planetary etheric body with universal results.

Such action strikes directly at the specific types of self-ignorance from which all the problems of humanity arise. The light of Mind destroys the personal-sensory-form consciousness which feeds materialism and holds humanity in chains. When science, education and religion understand the etheric body as the link between mind and matter, we shall have a new and powerful discipline for eliminating the power of "things" over men and revolutionary economic changes will result. Thus the "broadcasting" of lighted thought dissipates mass illusion, glamour and maya. This is perhaps the highest form of service available to man.

This telepathic rapport and response is a characteristic of the human soul working from mind to mind and from brain to brain. It is literally a state of consciousness which is sufficiently conditioned by the integrated mental person so that he is aware of and inclusive of the mental state and thought processes of another person. (p.27)

Synthesis of the higher centres opens an area of universal creative faculty which reveals the whole conceptual basis and limitations of personality. It shows us exactly how and why, the specialized intellectual shuts out the Light of the Mind, which is synthesis. The specialist is one who tries to understand special forms per se, either mineral, vegetable, animal or human. He grasps only fragments in the Great Design. To approach synthesis he has first, to transcend forms and then identify himself as the living progressive relationships between the Great Lives which generate forms. Because nothing in the universe exists separately, synthesis is necessarily formless, except on intuitive levels. This is why the Light of the Mind cannot penetrate any personal frame of reference; this is why telepathic rapport, either with individuals or groups, requires a sense of universal identity stabilized in the Light of the Mind. The light does not touch the lower mental and astral levels of man which may be dangerous and destructive. Thus only the innocent heart and pure mind can approach synthesis. For others the Fire means disaster. To include means to transcend.

The key to humanity's trouble (focusing, as it has, in the economic troubles of the past two hundred years, and in the theological impasse of the orthodox churches) has been to take and not to give, to accept and not to share . . . . This is the breaking of the Law which has placed humanity in the position of guilt. The war is the desire penalty which humanity has had to pay for this great sin of separateness. (p.45)

This interesting statement holds a basic clue to the current dilemma of the United States as leader of the free world against communist aggression and slavery. In this struggle which involves the destiny of the race, we Americans have been able to contribute, thus far, only money, materials and the blood of our youth. We have done this partly to save our own skins and protect our standard of living. We have learned that we inhabit one economic world; we have not learned that we inhabit one moral, intellectual and spiritual world. Materialism has taught us that freedom means freedom to make money; and we tend to think that money and military might will eventually destroy communist ideology. This is perhaps the major illusion of our time. As Russia is enslaved by force and fear, so we are enslaved by money. Before we can release the Russian people we must first free ourselves psychologically. The price may well be our precious American standard of living. Our historic situation demands world spiritual leaders; but they are not manufactured out of national resources.

It is this new Science of Impression which forms the subjective basis and the uniting element which binds together the entire realm of knowledge, of science and of religion. The fundamental ideas which underlie these great areas of human thought all emanate from intuitional levels . . . . This Science of Impression is the mode of life of the subjective world which lies between the world of life of the subjective world which lies between the world of external happenings and the inner world of reality. This is a point which should be most carefully taken into the calculation of the occult investigators.(p.47)

As the intellect understands personal, fact-value relationships, so does the intuition understands the larger life-energy relationships, within and between the Four Kingdoms of Nature and the Hierarchy. Impression operates at all levels; and what we know as public opinion is mostly solar-plexus mass impression. Intuitional impression requires a mind lighted by synthesis which embraces the living, energy relationships between man and the lower Kingdoms on hand and the Hierarchy on the other. This means that our awareness of God Immanent and God transcendent must advance along parallel, integrated lines. It means that intuitive sensitiveness to human need must balance the knowledge impressed upon us by the Hierarchy. This balance assures harmonious, rhythmical unfoldment of the centres. Therefore the major work of education and religion in the world struggle, is to study and define the intuition as the creative source of the coming social sciences. This will lead to discovery of the etheric body as the link between the mind and the nervous system and the revolutionize the present inverted relations between the physical and the social sciences, This organic energy will be known as the agent and instrument of the psychic energy and the intellectual basis of the current blind materialism will be destroyed.

This science [of impression] is, in fact, the basis of the theory of relationships and will lead to the expansion of the idea of right human relations which has hitherto as a phrase been confined to an idea desire for correct interplay between man and man, group and group, and nation and nation; it has also hitherto been restricted to the human society and interplay, and remains as yet a hope and a wish. (p.48)

Discovery of the etheric body will introduce wide study of economic and social problems in terms of the self-concepts which control human thought and action and determine human qualities. Then we shall know for the first time what various groups and nations can understand and how to teach them. Today no one bothers to ask what man is really is, what he needs or knows. He is known and treated as an economic, but not as a psychological entity. His moral, intellectual and spiritual functions therefore are servants of his bank account, his house, his automobile. Economic, military and political pressures are now forcing him to discover and adjust psychological relationships. He is learning human interdependence on a worldwide scale.

This power to use the ray energies to attract and impress the constantly expanding revelation is the clue to all the work going forward today, and to this activity we give the name of the Science of Impression. (p.92)

The personality is always striving to adjust itself to the "world" and its environment; the disciple on the other hand attunes his aura to Hierarchical vibration or his own soul, and soon discovers that there isn't any "world" in the human sense of the word. The "world" is replaced in his consciousness by the "constantly expanding revelation". As the disciple deals with himself the "world" becomes illusion, glamour, maya. When the "world" is emptied out of his consciousness, then space is created to make room for the "revelation". Clarity of thought replaces the personal muddle; both impression and expression are greatly facilitated. "The world is too much with us; getting and spending we lay waste our powers." Thus synthesis involves a drastic process of elimination; the Fire will not tolerate the trivialities or petty concerns of personal existence.

The problem of the transmitter today is the density of human consciousness. Even our intellectuals, educators and churchmen with some exceptions, do not recognise the etheric body either in man or nature. Without this essential link between mind and matter the senses rather than the soul remain the measure of reality. Therefore impression, for many of the New Group, is far less difficult than expression in the present environment. However, the wide intellectual activity enforced by the world struggle between the free and slave states is preparing the way for wider impression of the New Group by the Hierarchy. This will help them to answer the big question arising around the earth "What is the real purpose of our freedoms economic, social, political, intellectual and religious? Freedom for what?"

The centres below the diaphragm, i.e., the solar plexus centre, are sacral centre and the centre at the base of the spine, are controlled by the four ethers of the planetary physical plane; the centres above the diaphragm, i.e., the heart centre, the throat centre, the ajna centre and the head centre, are controlled by the four cosmic ethers, to which we give the names of the energies of the buddhic plane, the energies at the atmic plane, the energies of the monadic plane and the energies of the logoic plane . . . . Little has as yet been given out anent the relation of the four physical ethers and the four cosmic ethers; there is nevertheless a direct relation between them, and this the initiatory process reveals. (pp.167-8)

Here, in the relation between the higher and lowers centres of man, is hidden one of the major mysteries of the solar system the relation between life and form between the three Aspects of the Trinity, or the Seven Rays. Here lies also the secret of man's capacity to transform animal into human nature, and human nature into Christ Consciousness. The ethers might be called the Operating Agents of the Solar Logos Who integrate the smallest atom and the highest Beings into one Dynamic Synthesis of Life, Quality and Appearance. Thus the ethers are omnipresent in space (they are in aggregate the Entity, Space), omniscient in knowledge and omnipotent in power at the various levels of manifestation. They are storehouses from which major Rays draw their creative materials for the evolutionary process.

Forget not that the etheric body is a material and substantial body, and is therefore an integral part of the physical plane; forget not that it is intended, first of all, to carry the energies of the emotional and of the mental plane in the unconscious experimental stage of incarnation; that it is also intended to carry the threefold energies of the soul in the stage of consciously gaining experience; and that also, as the antahkarana is built, it is intended to carry the energies of the Monad in the stage of consciously expressed divinity. (p.176)

As the cosmic ethers are invoked to replace the physical ones in the disciple and initiate, the physical body is refined, purified and strengthened to withstand the higher fires. Here lies the secret of that amazing correlation between body and spirit which has mystified so many thinkers through the centuries. As the psychic faculties develop the great differences between the physical bodies of animal man and the Master, will become apparent. Then we shall know more than is possible at present about the spiritual aspects of the medical sciences. Thought and feeling will be understood as factors in diseases; and the etheric body will be treated, as well as the physical. These developments are inherent in any understanding of the etheric body as the essence of organic life.

There is no possible separateness in our manifested planetary life . . . The concept of separateness, of individual isolation, is an illusion of the unilluminated human mind. Every form, every organisation . . . . is intimately related each to each through the planetary etheric body which substands all that is . . . . The table at which you write, the flower you hold in your hand, the horse at which you ride, the man to whom you talk, are sharing with you the vast circulating life of the planet as it streams into, through and out of every aspect of the form nature. (p.148)

The Tibetan points out that the four physical ethers which generates the forms of the Kingdoms of Nature are employed to build man's body and sustain his organic processes. In the spiritually developed man the four physical ethers are gradually replaced by the four higher ethers logoic, monadic, atmic and buddhic. Thus the physical body of man is slowly transmuted from a simple personal mechanism into a "divine temple" equipped to receive planetary and solar impressions.

When medical science recognizes the human body as an etheric device, the long cleavage between physical and metaphysical thought, between science and religion will be closed. The social sciences will then be infused with new spiritual meaning and direction. The energy release which has begun at the bottom with atomic power, will be extended into areas of human relations and faculties. The illusions and glamours of materialism including money, economic nationalism and sex, will be destroyed on the etheric levels where they exist. The atomic revolution in the physical sciences is preparing the way for the psychological revolution in the social sciences which must occur before peace, goodwill and international order can be stabilized.