Intension : Inner Tension : Initiation

When the disciple's eyes are removed from himself and his functioning in the three worlds is becoming spiritually controlled (or is in process of being controlled), then he is faced with becoming a truly mental being.

This does not mean that he is occupied with making his lower concrete mind active, directing and illumined; that is taking place gradually and automatically through the pressure of the higher influences pouring into and through him.

He is occupied with the task, through the thinking, to become aware of the activities of his higher or abstract mind and of the pure reason which controls and animates the buddhic plane, and which is itself susceptible to impression from the Monad.

That plane has to become the one toward which his mental consciousness looks and upon which it focusses its attention.

There it must be polarized, in the same sense as the consciousness of average humanity is today polarised on the plane of the emotions and of astral activity but is shifting with rapidity on to the mental plane.

This involves a dual activity; the lower mind becomes a potent factor in directing the service activities of the disciple. These activities become the major motivating potency in the disciple's life and at the same time, the higher mind is impressing the lower mind and drawing it into a higher fusion with itself.

This process of unfoldment creates certain major points of successive fusions, with consequent points of tension; these points of tension (when consciously attained) become the actuating energy which enables the disciple to take an initiation.

Periods of search, periods of pain, periods of detachment, periods of revelation producing points of fusion, points of tension and points of energy projection—such is the story of the Path of Initiation.

Initiation is in truth the name given to the revelation or new vision which ever draws the disciple onward into greater light; it is not something conferred upon him or given to him.

It is a process of light recognition and of light utilisation in order to enter into ever clearer light. Progress from a dimly lighted area in the divine manifestation into one of supernal glory is the story of the Path of Evolution.

It is the recognition of the varying "lights" upon the Lighted Way that signifies readiness for initiation. The initiate enters into light in a peculiar sense; it permeates his nature according to his development at any point in time and space.

Each initiation enables the disciple to perceive an area of divine consciousness hitherto unknown but which, when the disciple has familiarised himself with it and with its unique phenomena, vibratory quality and interrelations, becomes for him a normal field of experience and activity.

Initiation is, therefore, a constant fusion of the lights, progressively entered, thus enabling the initiate to see further, deeper and more inclusively.

As one of the Masters has said: "The light must enter vertically and be diffused or radiated horizontally." This creates the cross of service upon which the disciple is pendant until the Cross of Sanat Kumara is revealed to him.

It is at the centre of this cross of service that the point of fusion and the point of tension must be found. The point of fusion is created by the focussing of all the power, aims and desires of the disciple dynamically upon the mental plane.

The point of tension is created when the invocative power of this focal point becomes capable of evoking response from that which is invoked.

For the average aspirant and for the disciple, this is either the soul or the Spiritual Triad.

The meeting of the two focussed energies produces a point of tension.

Disciples should not focus their attention upon the task of producing a point of tension - but, rather the medium of the fusion of the appropriate dualities - antahkarana.

It is through the activity of pure reason that fusion with the Hierarchy becomes possible, and it is that which produces those points of tension which we call Initiations.

A/Bailey.