Theos-Talk Archives (May 2005 Message tt00629)

Dear Nigel,

My muse or intuition led me to these pages in regard to your recent posting on be-ness.

"There are actually ten degrees in the initiatory cycle, but only the seven that pertain to the seven manifested planes of the solar system need concern us.

These seven degrees are the seven great portals through which the pilgrim must pass before he attains quasi-divinity. Between each of these portals there are seven smaller doors through which one must pass, each being a step in training, in schooling, so that all in all there are forty-nine stages, just as there are forty-nine planes in our solar system: seven great planes and seven subplanes or minor spheres or kingdoms in each of the primal seven.
Cass: I think HPB calls them the 49 fires.

The first three grades or degrees are concerned with study, with unceasing aspiration to grow spiritually and intellectually, to evolve and become greater; and also with living the life. There is likewise teaching about recondite secrets of nature, teaching which is rarely given in a reasoned and consecutive form because that is the brain-mind way, but suggested by a hint here, an allusion there. The method is not to fill the mind of the learner full of other men's thoughts, but to arouse the spiritual fire in himself which brings about an awakening of the understanding, so that in very truth the neophyte becomes his own initiator....The whole process is based on nature's laws, on the natural growth of understanding, of interior vision.

With the fourth initiation begins a series of inner unfoldings. From that moment the initiant starts to lose his personal humanity and to merge into divinity, i.e. there ensues the beginning of the loss of the merely human and the commencing of the entering into the divine state. He is taught how to leave his physical body, how to leave his physical mind, and to advance into the great spaces not alone of the physical universe, but more especially to the invisible realms as well. He then learns to become, to be, to enter into the intimate consciousness of the entities and spheres he contacts.

The reason for this is that in order fully to know anything, one must BE it; temporarily, at least, one must BECOME it, if he would understand precisely what it is in all its reaches. His consciousness must merge with the consciousness of the entity or thing which he is at that instant learning to know the meaning of. Hence the quasi-mystical stories of the descent of the initiant into hell in order to learn what the life of the hellions is, and what their sufferings are; and also partly in order to bring out the compassion of the one's experiencing what these entities go through as the karmic result of their own misdeeds. And equally, in the other direction, the initiant must learn how to become at one with the gods and to confer with them. To understand their nature and their life, he must for the time being himself become a god; in other words, enter into his own highest being.....He learns how to control nature's forces and become able to accomplish such wonders as
consciously leaving the body, leaving our planet in order to pass to other centers of the solar system.
Cass: How exciting eh, inspiring enough to keep plugging away at it.

Fifth initiation the man becomes a master of wisdom and compassion. In this degree there comes the final choice; whether, like the great Buddhas of Compassion one will return to help the world, to live for it and not for self; or whether like the Pratyeka-Buddhas, one will go forwards on the pathway of self - merely self development.

Sixth initiation and Seventh initiation comprises the meeting face to face with one's divine self, and the becoming-at one with it. Cass (The Atonement). When this occurs, he needs no other teacher. It also includes individual communication with the supreme Mahachohan, who is practically identical with what has been called the Silent Watcher of the human race.

What a phantasmagorical trip, it is my understanding that at the Fourth Initiation, we come face to face with the Dweller on the threshold, but others in the group, see this differently.

What is really interesting is that we never come face to face with our higher self until the 7th initiation, does that mean until that initiation, it only has a voice but no presence?


All of the above have been taken from Fountain Source of Occultism, I will now try and search out what HPB said on the subject. 

Cass


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