Purification involves the elimination of all that hinders the nature of divinity from full expression.
Robert: Welcome to Inner Sight. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present, but not yet fully recognized. You have, within you, the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way, with new eyes, so stay with us and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Today’s topic is purification, but before we explore our theme, we must mention that Alice Bailey is the founder of the Lucis Trust Organization which sponsors this show. She wrote twenty-four volumes of literature and everything that you hear on this show emanates from those works, as does the following thought: “Purification involves the elimination of all that hinders the nature of divinity from full expression.” This is a sequel and follows the last show on purification, so I’d like Sarah to more or less recap what we’re talking about when we speak about purification.
Sarah: We were talking last time about purification being an elimination of all that is, I suppose you could say, the not-self—all that stands in the way of the expression of the inner divinity. So, it’s a stripping away. In fact, the word we said comes from the Sanskrit pur, which means free from all alloy and limitation. It’s unadulterated. This strikes me as indicating the difference between purification and the puritanical approach to life, which we also discussed last time. Traditionally, rites of purification and the general puritanical approach to living that we see among people has to do with a sense that the human being is contaminated, dirty, impure, unworthy of God’s gaze. This leads to a kind of hair-shirt approach to life that some religions encourage, where if you are a believer, you turn against the outer self—the body and the personality—and view it as a contaminated substance. It’s kind of a perverted approach to the human being and it flies in the face of the idea that each human being is created in the eyes of God. So, the puritanical approach emphasizes inhibiting and restricting the individual life and habits to the point of suffering, whereas purification regards elimination of all that stands in the way of divinity. The awakening to the need for purification is a recognition that indicates one is approaching the spiritual path. In fact, it becomes a very important issue as one prepares to really set foot on the spiritual path. It isn’t a concern that continues forever along the spiritual way. It’s an early stage that purification becomes important, wouldn’t you say? There are two symbols for purification that suggest this: water and fire, so they concern the early stages.
Dale: Yes, I think we touched on that last time, the effects of fire, the fire of mind. Mind is symbolically always considered a fire. Fiery energies of the mental body, and the watery association of the emotional nature. Whenever you bring fire and water together, it produces a lot of steam and vapor, which clouds the surrounding area. That’s exactly what happens in one’s own personal atmosphere. When the fire of mind combines with the emotional fluids of the emotional nature, then there are all these glamours and illusions produced through this interaction.
Sarah: The most familiar practice of purification probably has to do with this initial step onto the spiritual path. Probably a lot of people think of celibacy, of vegetarianism, of refraining from all kinds of physical practices like those. That has to do with what is called the first initiation, and we discussed not too long ago what initiation is. The first initiation tends to focus on the preparation of the individual, the outer person, to set foot on the spiritual path and the focus is on the physical life and the care and habits of the physical vehicle, so vegetarianism, celibacy can be major concerns. But beyond that, there’s the second initiation, which regards the control of the emotional body. So, when you think about purification on that level, then you get into purification of thought and attitude and emotional reaction.
Robert: There are so many constituents of the spiritual path. One of my favorites is harmlessness, but certainly purification is important too. At what stage of the spiritual path does purification become really important?
Dale: Well, that’s essentially what we’ve been discussing, that when one really begins to step on the path of initiation, having to deal with the first initiation and all the problems there, and essentially that’s sort of what Sarah was just alluding to. Do you want to recap some of those, Sarah? Maybe that would help to remind people again.
Sarah: Well, the practice of vegetarianism, physical fitness, toning and preparation of the body to be a fit receptacle for the soul. We can see this in the world today I think because we talked not too long ago that there are large numbers of human beings that are preparing for the first initiation, and that is why there’s such a concern about the physical body today: physical fitness, the development of a body that is strong and nourished and pure. So, there’s a lot of concern about ingesting pure water, eating only a vegetarian diet, to some extent celibacy, although that is generally confined to the monastic orders.
Dale: Also, emphasis on the environment: the air and the water and the land and the purification of food. Pure foods, pure air and pure water.
Sarah: Organic food.
Dale: All of that is indicative, I think, that humanity is beginning to reach that point in consciousness where they are facing these problems, not only for themselves individually, but for humanity as a whole, for the planet, for that matter. As you say, there are millions of people in the world today that are at that point in their consciousness where they can begin to step onto the path. So, all of these problems that we’re facing now, having to deal with the environment and with the water and with vegetarianism and with the health of the physical body in particular, all of these are problems having to do, I think, with the first initiation and also it involves the second initiation too.
Sarah: What I find odd is the mixture in today’s times of both an emphasis on purification—a kind of a puritanical strain—alongside a culture that is sex obsessed—if you look at the media—and often very vulgar and crude. For example, a number of people who watched the recent PBS series that was rebroadcast on the Civil War commented to me that they were struck by the articulate and refined correspondence that passed between human beings in those days, a hundred and thirty years ago. It isn’t duplicated today in our interactions. There’s a loss of refinement and of gentility, and yet, at the same time, we can see that humanity is, in fact, moving forward in its spiritual evolution. So, this is just really a question I’m posing to myself. Why is that? Why do we have these odd dichotomies of a kind of a puritanical strain and a vulgarity at the same time, and an emphasis on purification and yet a culture and a media that are becoming more and more crude? Nobody probably can answer that for me.
Dale: Well, we’re not all at the same stage in consciousness and I think that may be one real defining reason behind it all. There are those that are striving to reach some state of integrity in their creative works and there are others that are just out for whatever they can get for themselves. So, I think you have this great pull of values going back and forth, and maybe that’s one reason why the world is in such a sense of struggle we’re facing.
Robert: What are the most difficult aspects of purification?
Sarah: I suppose it depends on what stage one finds oneself, because there are different types of purification. There’s physical purification, there’s moral purification, there’s mental purification, and there’s something called magnetic purity. That is a concept that I think is kind of fascinating. It’s the achievement of a state of vibration or of magnetism that makes one a channel for spiritual force. So, these are all different levels of purification, and I think depending on where an individual finds himself, each stage has its own challenges. You can imagine that physical purification is challenging but think about the achievement of mental purity in the quality of one’s thought life, the ability to inhibit certain strains of thought that lead towards separatism or toward cruelty or pride or hatred. The elimination of that type of mental creation has to be achieved before one can really be pure in one’s mentality, and it’s not easy.
Dale: No, it’s not easy and I think the way to do that is what we’ve alluded to before: through substitution and this is what comes out in the writings of Alice Bailey too. That really is the only way that one can effectively create or undergo this transformation in one’s character and one’s nature. It’s substituting soul values and soul qualities for those lesser qualities of the personality. You mentioned the limitations like pride and self-centeredness and the tendency to criticize and all of that. Well, there are ways that you can substitute more soul values. You can substitute greater love and understanding for the tendency to criticize someone, but you have to first know that you’re criticizing and be aware of yourself and stop it before it happens—cut it off at the pass kind of thing—and then substitute a greater degree of love and understanding before you let these critical remarks pass your lips. It’s gradually building into your nature, to your life, these new more refined soul qualitative patterns of thinking, acting and doing; that’s a difficult thing to do.
Sarah: I think there’s a lot going on in today’s world that works against the achieving of this kind of purification. For one thing, we are so overloaded with information input, the media, the internet, the pace of life. The amount of material that we have to deal with mentally and emotionally is so overwhelming for so many people that I think they probably feel they don’t have control of what’s going on in their minds and their emotions, and yet that’s where we have to do our work, most of us. On the emotional level, we have to find the purification of a quiet and peaceful, still emotional body. And as you say, substitution is the solution to it. Building in images or visualizations that work to create that kind of stillness and peace within one when one is in an agitated state can be a help. That’s why meditation is so important.
Dale: Yes, I was just going to mention meditation because the whole purpose behind meditation is to create that sense of quiet and peace within the mind and within the emotional nature.
Sarah: It’s also a way to begin to see what is going on in one’s mind. You start to realize the train of your thought on a habitual level.
Dale: What you’re really doing is trying to synchronize your whole being, your whole outer life, with a higher, more refined state that is embodied in the soul qualities of love and light. If you keep at it and work at it, there is an actual transformation that takes place within the physical body and in the emotional nature and the mental nature at the very atomic level. The very atoms of these bodies change and the lower atoms are thrown off and the more purified atoms are drawn in. So, one is gradually rebuilding oneself, one’s bodies, one’s emotions, and one’s mind.
Sarah: There’s another level at which purification can be approached. We’ve been talking about the individual level, but there’s also something that’s happening to humanity as a whole, you could say, over this past century that has had to do with purification. I’m thinking about the world war that extended from about 1914 till 1945 with an interlude between the two wars, when vast numbers of human beings were subjected to purification through the fire of war, through the abstinence that was caused by wartime deprivation, the hardships and the suffering. It was acute suffering on the outer level, and yet, when you look at it from the angle of the soul of spiritual development, we’re told in the writings of Alice Bailey that humanity made tremendous strides in consciousness through the deprivation and the suffering, the fire-and-water experience of war. It had a very purifying effect on humanity and probably is responsible for many numbers of human beings moving through the portal of initiation due to that experience. Now I wonder, and I wouldn’t be able to say, where we stand because in some ways it seems as if humanity has slipped back from that attainment of purification through deprivation and sorrow into a more selfish, self-serving place.
Dale: Well, I suppose we take two steps forward and one step back, but we do progress little by little. I think all in all, as it says in the Bailey teachings, humanity did make tremendous strides, and the mind of human beings really opened up, and it has led to a tremendous creative period that we’ve experienced in the last sixty years since the war. The world has changed tremendously because of that. I think all of that is part of the purification that’s going on.
Sarah: There’s another element to purification that’s kind of interesting, and it has to do with something that happens on the purely physical level, but it has an analogy too, I think, and that’s fever. Fever is a means of purification. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Fever is literally a fire that’s burning within the physical body, and it’s said that when it doesn’t run amok, fever can be quite productive. It’s the body’s way of alerting you that there is a problem, and also of dealing with the problem on the level of heat, of combustion, as long as it doesn’t get out of hand. Maybe we could say that the whole fever pitch of life today—especially in the Western world—is so noticeable because it’s a sign of the burning away of something that needed to be eliminated. We’re right in the middle of it so we can’t say where it will lead but I think that makes it seem a little more hopeful.
Robert: You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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