World of the Soul
Author's Introduction
Chapter 1: The Search for Truth
Chapter 2: The Soul
Chapter 3: Life and Form
Chapter 4: The Constitution of a Human Being
Chapter 5: Awakening to the Soul
Chapter 6: Masters of the Wisdom
Chapter 7: Spiritual Hierarchy
Chapter 8: Hierarchies of Life
Chapter 9: History of the Soul
Chapter 10: The Path of Initiation
Chapter 11: First Initiation
Chapter 12: Second Initiation
Chapter 13: Third Initiation
Chapter 14: The Continuity of Revelation
Chapter Seven
Spiritual Hierarchy
The Masters of the Wisdom have, throughout the ages, formed a subjective group or community which, for lack of better words, we call the Spiritual Hierarchy. This Spiritual Hierarchy has many names in many teachings, among them being the Brotherhood, the Holy Assembly, the Kingdom of God, the Invisible Order, and the Inner Government of the World.
The Spiritual Hierarchy is the sum total of all those units of the Kingdom of Souls that have awakened to their own true nature or who are seeking to express that true nature. While the Kingdom of Souls consists of all souls everywhere on the planet, the Spiritual Hierarchy consists only of those advanced individual souls who are awakening their own spiritual powers and disciplining their own personality natures. It also consists, of course, of those Masters of the Wisdom who have completed these tasks and who are fully occupied with service to all of the various kingdoms of nature and to the planet as a whole.
Throughout history various members of the Spiritual Hierarchy have appeared to humanity and the result has been the appearance of a new religion, a new science, a new world philosophy, a new revelation of beauty or art, and sometimes even a new city, state, or nation. It has seemed that these teachers, leaders, scientists, and philosophers have worked in isolation. We have seen only their appearance and the effect of their work and their service to humanity. Yet behind them and their work stands the the Kingdom of Souls. Behind them stands the Spiritual Hierarchy of the world, the united Love and Power of the Masters of the Wisdom. For while all these teachers, leaders, scientists, and philosophers are working in the outer world, they can also draw upon the joy, strength, and wisdom of the world of the soul. Thus they demonstrate a will and a purpose that is far more potent than what otherwise seems possible.
The members of the Spiritual Hierarchy work in all realms of human activity and should not be confined by our thought to merely the religious world. They have their representatives, disciples, and followers in every group and organization, in every nation and state, in every school of thought, and in every educational, political, scientific, artistic, and social movement. They see and express the spiritual aspect of all human activity. Above all they live a life of example in whatever marriage, family, group, business, religion, organization, and nation they may belong.
The representatives of the Spiritual Hierarchy have always sent their representatives out to humanity to present the principles and teachings of the world of the soul. Foremost among these appearances in our history has been those of Gautama Buddha, who demonstrated the energy of spiritual Light and illumination to humanity; and the Christ, who anchored the energy of Divine Love. Both the Buddha and the Christ belong not merely to their own religion, but to all humans of every faith and teaching. Both of these great Teachers provided the appropriate revelation for the time and place they were in, and both presented — by lives of example — the goal for human evolution. If we visualize the Buddha and the Christ, we see them as brothers, working together for the evolution of human and planetary consciousness. Their messages of Light and Love admit of no separateness or sense of superiority.
Many other teachers, leaders, healers, and philosophers have appeared, some to great fanfare and wide recognition, and some to utter obscurity and death. Yet all continued one process of revelation, one outpouring of the Spiritual Hierarchy — the revelation of the human soul and Spirit, and the revelation of the nature of the cosmos in which we live.
There are possibly many thousands of liberated Masters, though most of these have little or nothing to do with human life and human evolution. Most of the Masters are focussed upon the Path that stretches before them, and are oriented toward Shamballa, that mysterious realm situated "beyond the Himalayas" that constitutes the sixth planetary kingdom of nature. Only a few of the Masters deal directly with humanity, though in every case there are enough to perform the work necessary for the upliftment of mankind and all the other kingdoms of nature.
Even this large number of Masters are but a small group compared to the billions that constitute humanity. Thus they have remained unrecognized and mostly unnoticed even when they or their representatives have ventured forth to pronounce their spiritual truths. Given the emphasis of humanity on selfish desire, upon separative thought, and upon material greed, it is no wonder that the message of the Masters has apparently gone unheeded. Yet over the decades, centuries, and millennia of time, their representatives have come and gone, presenting some aspect of spiritual truth to humanity, some teaching of light or love that uplifted hearts and illuminated minds.
The Masters work in the world of the soul, and their work concerns the Kingdom of Souls. Their whole effort for humanity consists of the stimulation of the soul aspect in all human beings such that they awaken to their own higher self. The Masters stimulate the soul aspect in every form so that the inner life may blaze forth more fully. They stimulate and work with the consciousness aspect in all things to achieve their ends.
The Masters, therefore, can only be contacted and approached insofar as we are living as souls and expressing soul qualities of love, joy, service, and sacrifice. The Masters can only be contacted when we have made an alignment between our souls, our minds, and our physical brains such that the soul's awareness and soul's consciousness can come directly through to us and be registered in the brain mechanism. The Masters can only be contacted when we are working to further the plans and purposes of the Masters — when we make a continuous effort to serve humanity and the planet as they so unselfishly and unceasingly do.
While the Masters are liberated from all human personality problems, this does not mean that they do not have problems and challenges before them. They have challenges that are much wider and broader than at the personality level. The challenges that might be understood easily might be divided into the following three areas.
The first field of activity the Masters of the Wisdom deal with is the problems of humanity. The Masters no longer need to deal with the limitations of any individual personality; for them as individuals, the personality is like a crystal — pure, transparent, and fit for service. But the Masters do need to deal with humanity. The difficulties, limitations, errors, mistakes, and problems of humanity form an obstacle to the success of the work of the Spiritual Hierarchy. These problems of humanity are, on a higher turn of the spiral, the same as the problems we face with our own personality. We do not know what it will take to discipline our lower nature. We do not know how long the path we are on will take, or how hard it will be. We do not know whether, in any given lifetime, we will respond more to the soul or to the call of the lower nature. The same is true on higher levels. The Hierarchy of Masters does not know which way humanity will go. While the triumph of good is sure and inevitable, humanity may choose to remain for a time in its current state of materialism, greed, and ignorance. The Hierarchy does not know when humanity will choose to discipline itself and establish right human relationships. For humanity is free to choose the path that it takes, just as all individuals are free to choose the path that they take. Nothing may be imposed by force, for the whole effort of the work of the Spiritual Hierarchy is toward human freedom.
The Masters also face the problem of awakening the consciousness aspect within all forms. The Spiritual Hierarchy is, therefore, focussed upon the development of consciousness in all forms and the unfoldment of the powers of the soul in all the kingdoms of nature. In the human kingdom, the Masters seek to inspire and uplift those individuals who respond to the call of their own soul and who are awakening their Spiritual Intuition. They seek to guide humanity toward an era of Light and Love, and they seek co-workers in every department of humanity — education, religion, science, business, politics, and the arts. Their agents and disciples work in every country, every culture, every religion, and every scientific discipline to bring forth the soul aspect within all elements of human living.
The Masters also work to benefit the three lower kingdoms of nature — the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. In this matter, the limitations that confront the Masters are primarily of the form nature itself. The matter aspect constitutes a great and massive attractive and magnetic force that eventually needs to be offset by the consciousness aspect. The consciousness aspect must be awakened for this to happen, in the animal, and in the plant, and in the mineral. Eventually the consciousness aspect will be awakened in the atom itself, and the whole planet will be raised to a new level.
The third task of the Masters is the problem of transmitting planetary qualities and energies. The Masters seek to contact those planetary, solar, and cosmic energies that are needed at this time for the evolution of planetary consciousness. Just as we seek to contact our own soul nature, and struggle and strive to perfect our contact with the soul, so do the Masters of the Wisdom seek to contact cosmic energies, register them, and control them. Having contacted these high energies, the Masters work at re-transmitting these energies to humanity and to the three lower kingdoms of nature.
The Masters, therefore, work at continuing the process of human evolution and the unfoldment of the Monad and Spirit. Evolution has no ending point. Just as humanity is not the summit of natural evolution, so too is the Spiritual Hierarchy only at the beginning of a cosmic evolutionary path. Their problems in this matter are hardly describable to us, but nevertheless exist, for all life is growth, and all growth occurs by the surmounting of obstacles. Thus even though the Masters of the Wisdom are liberated human beings, they nevertheless are not omnipotent or all-powerful beings. They have their work set before them just as we do, the difference being that they are liberated from personal cares and faults. The form or matter aspect does not hold them back in their progress as it does for us. They cannot be distracted by personality faults or limitations, by the illusions of the mind or the deceptive glamors of desire. They are free of the limitations of the personality form altogether, but have not yet perfected their contact with the myriads of cosmic energies that exist in the universe. Nor do they as yet perfectly direct these cosmic energies into their specific cycles of planetary manifestation, nor perfectly apply these energies to humanity and to the three lower kingdoms of nature.
The Masters can, however, work intelligently with these energies, whereas we can barely work with the forces of our personality and the energies of the soul. We have not yet learned to contact and consciously direct the planetary and solar energies that the Masters habitually work with. The Masters can, in addition, work perfectly with individual human beings, guide and direct them wisely, and offer profoundly useful suggestions for their spiritual growth.
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The Masters of the Spiritual Hierarchy are today present among humanity, but they remain unrecognized. They do not pronounce their status, or make claims of being highly spiritual people. They do not impose their ideas upon anyone or demand any obedience except that of the obedience to our own soul. They simply present the teaching, and adapt it to the time, the place, and the people to whom it is being presented. It is up to us to recognize them, perceive who they are, and cooperate as much as we can in their work.
Over the last several hundred years there has been an increasing awareness and perception of the Masters among humanity, and the Spiritual Hierarchy is now more present than ever before. A momentous event in world history is occurring in this day and age. The result is what we call "the externalization of the Hierarchy" and the "reappearance of the Christ." This is an inner and outer process of revelation.
There is an inner reappearance of the Christ in the hearts and minds of people everywhere. People are approaching their own souls more closely. Through pain, suffering, and inner growth, humanity is moving toward the light. This process is and has been slow — painfully slow in many respects. But the process of unfoldment is sure and inevitable, and great effects have been seen in the world today. In addition, the souls of mankind are being ever more stimulated by the Spiritual Hierarchy and are making their impression upon each human being. The energy of the soul is strengthening in every human heart, and the result will be the transformation of the world.
Outwardly the Spiritual Hierarchy has and is in the process of externalizing, and is sending its representatives to humanity to carry the message of the one soul and the One Life, of unity and brotherhood, of sharing and cooperation, and of unselfishness and sacrifice. They work with little recognition or reward for the salvation of humanity. This work is but the beginning of an ongoing process of externalization that started over the last hundred years and will continue for several more hundred years. The high point of this effort will be the reappearance of the Leader and Teacher of all the Masters, the one who we call the Christ — or whatever other name we may choose. This appearance will be as natural and as inevitable as any other appearance of a great teacher of humanity in the past.
Insofar as each of us comes into contact with our own soul, we come into contact with the Masters and the Spiritual Hierarchy. We find them by looking within.
Previous — End of Chapter Seven — Next
Author's Introduction
Chapter 1: The Search for Truth
Chapter 2: The Soul
Chapter 3: Life and Form
Chapter 4: The Constitution of a Human Being
Chapter 5: Awakening to the Soul
Chapter 6: Masters of the Wisdom
Chapter 7: Spiritual Hierarchy
Chapter 8: Hierarchies of Life
Chapter 9: History of the Soul
Chapter 10: The Path of Initiation
Chapter 11: First Initiation
Chapter 12: Second Initiation
Chapter 13: Third Initiation
Chapter 14: The Continuity of Revelation