Esoteric Schools

An esoteric school teaches the disciple to learn to recognize spiritual laws and to cooperate with them. The concept of discipleship is the conscious undertaking by a human being to work out and commit himself to a course of evolution, particularly in terms of spiritual consciousness.


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. Our topic for today is esoteric schools, and we’ll find out what that means as the show progresses. We have an opening thought from Alice Bailey: “Up to now the so-called esoteric schools have dealt with aspirants on the path of probation or purification. The schools now forming, such as the Arcane School, are concerned with training disciples and preparing them to tread the Path of Discipleship.” What is the Path of Discipleship? 

Sarah: Disciple in its root meaning literally means: learning boy; one who learns; a pupil. This is related to the idea of the Masters being Great Teachers, and disciples are those who voluntarily put themselves under the tutelage of these Masters, which are also known as the spiritual Hierarchy. So, the concept of discipleship is the conscious undertaking by a human being to work out and commit himself to a course of evolution, particularly in terms of spiritual consciousness. A disciple is one who is seeking to expand his or her spiritual understanding, and thereby become a more co-operative worker in the Plan of God for our world. I don’t think you can talk about discipleship without immediately bringing in the idea of the Plan, which is the design of divinity for our world, the intended purpose that God seeks to see revealed on Earth and which depends significantly on the cooperation of humanity. Humanity is always the questionable factor in this working out of the divine Plan; it’s the unknown quantity of contribution, and yet the Plan utterly depends on humanity’s cooperative efforts to work out God’s will. Disciples are those who seek to understand that Plan and to prepare themselves to cooperate with it. 

Dale: Yes, discipleship marks a particular stage in the evolution of human consciousness. It’s a stage when the soul, you might say, begins to make a direct impact on one’s outer life and the values that one takes on and lives by. So, the phrase “the Path of Discipleship” is the moment, the stage in one’s life, when one begins to take the path and the requirements for walking this path very seriously, and essentially step on to the path, and it begins to transform the way they look at life and the way they live their own life. Nowadays the term discipleship doesn’t mean that one has to go live in a monastery like it might have been in the past. It’s now being involved in the world, and that’s very much different than it used to be. 

Sarah: Another thing to point out about discipleship is that it spans a very wide range of spiritual development, and it’s not an elitist term. There’re certain claims that a truly spiritual person would never make for himself, such as to be an Initiate or a Master. Anyone who claims those titles for himself, you can be pretty sure they’re not one. A disciple doesn’t imply a particular level of attainment; it’s more a declaration of commitment, of a willingness to cooperate. 

Robert: Is it more or less a way of saying that my primary focus in life is to be on a spiritual path, so then we say we are a disciple? 

Sarah: Yes, and there is a particular stage of discipleship in the writings of Alice Bailey called the Pledged Disciple: one who has pledged himself or herself to consciously take themself in hand and get themself together, honed and buffed into a more usable instrument. We’re talking about a long, long period of development after you make that pledge. That’s just the beginning of what’s sometimes called the “Endless Way” (not to discourage everybody….) 

Robert: I would imagine that an esoteric school has a lot to do with bringing a disciple further on the road of being on a spiritual path. What is a true esoteric school? 

Sarah: Well, the word “esoteric” means that which is hidden or removed from outer sight. It doesn’t mean secretive, but not trotted out for public mass consumption. The esoteric can pertain to all kinds of topics; it’s that inner, more sequestered or hidden layer of truth. Most of the world’s religions have an esoteric strain. There’s esoteric Christianity; esoteric Islam is called the Sufi teaching, esoteric Judaism is the Kabbalah. Most of the great world religions have that hidden inner side of teaching and an esoteric school is one that teaches these inner truths, inner doctrines. The opposite of esoteric is exoteric. Exoteric pertains to the tangible, the outer, the observable, the measurable, the quantifiable. 

Dale: Esoteric is related to the phrase you used at the beginning of the show to describe our show: “seeing that which is always present but not yet fully recognized.” Our esoteric studies are just that, and that’s largely what the writings in the Alice Bailey books deal with — the esoteric presentation of the understanding of the world that we live in, but from a side that we can’t yet see. It’s always present, always there; it’s just learning to see what is there in a new way. 

Sarah: That’s interesting; you know, yesterday I went to the ophthalmologist and she gave me a field vision test. Then she showed me the pictures of my two eyes as they were demonstrated in this test, and there was a big dark spot in my eye. She said, “That’s your blind spot. Everybody has one.” Well, I suppose the blind spot is what the esoteric training of a school strives to overcome—the blindness that causes us not to see what is right in front of us. When we talk about an esoteric school, we’re not talking about the weird and wonderful side of life that the psychic people and the UFO people like to consider. It’s not that. It’s what’s right in front of us but we don’t see it because we’re not sensitive to it. It’s a much higher level than UFO’s and so on. 

Dale: Yes, it doesn’t really deal with phenomena like that of astral phenomena. We recognize the existence of astral phenomena and all of that stuff that so many people get caught up in, but we recognize also what place it has in the whole scheme of things, and it’s usually pretty much of a low profile and its importance is not terribly high. We begin to make judgments like this and evaluations in the way that we look at the world. 

Sarah: The difference between an esoteric school and a phenomenal school might have to do with spiritual values because the esoteric school trains the disciple to recognize spiritual laws. We did a whole series of programs a few weeks ago on spiritual law. If some of our listeners remember, one of the great laws of the spiritual path, for example, is the Law of Karma or Cause and Effect. An esoteric school teaches the disciple to learn to understand these laws and cooperate with them. Most of them have to do with energy and force and learning how to wield spiritual energy for the good of God’s Plan. 

Dale: Yes, and it’s learning how to use the energies of the mind in meditation and how to use meditation as a service. It’s manipulating energies not for one’s own personal benefit, but for the Plan, as you said. It’s for the furthering of the Plan and bringing the new values of the soul into the world because that’s the great value of meditation. 

Sarah: When we talk about manipulating energies, what we’re referring to is the invocation of light and love and the will to good. 

Dale: It’s not manipulating other people’s minds; it’s using one’s own mind and working with energies of love and light and distributing them into human consciousness. And that’s the way meditation, as it’s taught in many esoteric schools, can be used as a service. 

Sarah: One of the great laws of the spiritual path is that it’s absolutely wrong to interfere with the freedom of another human being or to overcome their will or to coerce them in any way. So, when we talk about manipulating energies we’re talking about, through meditation, invoking light and love and the will to good to permeate human consciousness so that the minds that are capable of responding and ready to respond can be stimulated by those energies. That’s not an interfering or a misuse of a person’s free will, and that’s an important thing to distinguish. 

Robert: I’ve heard about the Arcane School. Is it an esoteric school and also who founded it and what kind of training does it provide? 

Sarah: Alice Bailey founded the Arcane School in 1923. The training of the school is now offered in eight languages: English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Italian, Russian and Greek, and we have students literally throughout the world. It’s a correspondence school, meaning that people are provided with written instruction in meditation and study lessons based on the Ageless Wisdom, mainly on the books of Alice Bailey, but many other great spiritual writers as well. The focus of the Arcane school is three parts: study on a daily basis, if possible, of spiritual scriptures and texts; meditation on a daily basis according to instruction by the school; and service, the reason for that being that it’s a spiritual law that spiritual energy received must be grounded and distributed. In other words, it must be shared. It cannot be kept for one’s own spiritual development; that violates the spiritual law that energies are universal and meant to be freely shared. So, every student is encouraged to apply his spiritual understanding, whatever it is, in building better relationships and learning to wield energies of light and love in his or her environment, starting with the home and the workplace. “Arcane” maybe we should define. 

Dale: Well, arcane is similar to the word esotericism. It simply means that which is hidden.  

Robert: So, they’re synonymous, those words? 

Dale: Kind of synonymous, yes. 

Sarah: So here we are talking on a public radio program about something that’s hidden. Why are we doing that? (laughter) 

Dale: Well, it’s hidden in the sense that it’s there, but you just can’t see it. 

Robert: And I guess part of the job of the Arcane School is to reveal it. 

Sarah: Yes. We don’t mean to be secretive, but we also feel that when the student is ready, they will find us. 

Dale: We should point out, too, that these teachings may have to do with that which is hidden, but they’re not hidden away for only the elect, only for the selected few, only for you and not for you. They’re for anybody who’s ready in their consciousness to partake and to delve into these teachings and into these books. 

Sarah: Wasn’t there a movie or a book a few years ago called “Hide in Plain Sight”? That’s really what esoteric truth does. It’s right there in plain sight, but we don’t see it because of our blind spot. 

Dale: What else we can we say about the Arcane School?  

Sarah: Alice Bailey wrote about it in her autobiography. It was her main discipleship task as a soul when she came into incarnation. Even as a young girl, she started preparing for it, and it was her project, you could say, on behalf of Hierarchy, to establish an esoteric school. She never claimed that it was one of the true mystery schools. It’s not. There are levels of esoteric schools from the probationary, that emphasize character development and tend to focus on the physical disciplines like vegetarianism, celibacy, and yoga practices. There are many different spiritual paths and people who want to take up one of these paths have to do a lot of inquiring and investigating to find the right path. 

Dale: And the Arcane School is a school for work, it’s not just a reading course. It requires definite work, and it’s kind of like college level study, you might say, because it involves meditation reports each month and the writing of study papers. 

Sarah: But you don’t get a degree or a diploma. 

Dale: No, you don’t get any of that, but you get the benefit of walking, standing on the path. This is for people who are really serious about discipleship training. If they’re at that point in their life when they can make the commitment and take a pledge to their soul to undergo this training, then it’s for them. 

Sarah: I can remember years ago hearing about the Arcane School — it’s mentioned in the back of every book by Alice Bailey — and I remember reading that little announcement and saying, “That’s for me,” because I knew I needed training. I knew I needed something to help me get my mind under control and in disciplining my lower nature. The instinct to serve was there, but the inability to really focus mentally and to think my way through the problems that were confronting me made me realize I needed training. I think a lot of people get to that point where they say, “Help me!” What develops is that you have to help yourself and the training of an esoteric school gives you the techniques to apply yourself to yourself. 

Dale: That’s another point to bring out: you don’t have a teacher that leads you by the hand. You don’t have a guru in the Arcane School. The only guru is your own soul; it’s you that you have, it all goes back to yourself. A lot of the questions you have to begin to understand and answer by yourself. You do the study and you can; you’d be surprised. So, there isn’t any guru that you have to obey or pay allegiance to or any of that sort of thing. 

Sarah: No, that would be considered a quality of the old method, and the newer method of the present time is for people to take themselves in hand, like you say, and obey their own soul. At the same time there’s a unique quality about the Arcane School: it’s group training. Although people work on their own and study and meditate as individuals, not attending classes of any sort, still the meditation and lessons are shared by students all over the world in eight languages. It’s quite amazing the development of this sense of the inner subjective group that comes about, and it’s an absolutely wonderful thing. The Arcane School is above the level of cultural differences, so that we have students in Africa, in the Far East, in South America, Europe, North America. We have students in Israel, we have students in the Philippines, in Colombia, and we all have this shared spiritual view. 

Dale: And there’s a large group in Russia; there’s tremendous interest in Russia, and that’s the amazing thing, that all over the world you find this interest in these teachings and these people come from different cultures, different religions. It’s the oneness of the soul that speaks to them, and that’s what is stimulated by these teachings, the soul factor and that’s what begins to work upon you. 

Robert: I think it’s important to say at this point that Lucis Trust is not a religion. People come from all backgrounds, walks of life and varieties of religion. I guess to best put it we’re a spiritual philosophy organization. Sarah reminded me of one of my favorite thoughts or quotes, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” and perhaps that’s what the Arcane School is about. Does an esoteric school have specific relevance in today’s world? 

Sarah: More than ever, I think, particularly because of the two purposes of an esoteric school as emphasized in the Arcane School. One is the development of the path in consciousness or the bridge called the Antahkarana, which develops and expands the mind, and the other being the sense of synthesis, the recognition of the wholeness and the pervasive oneness of all life. Surely this sense of the integrity and the wholeness of life is needed now more than ever. 

Dale: Yes, and the emphasis is upon integration and alignment with the soul, and that is a tremendous preparatory work for the coming World Teacher, which we have talked about. It depends on each individual making this alignment with the soul and the school provides excellent training for that because it goes on for a number of years. It’s not just a short course. 

Sarah: Should we say how many years? 

Dale: Maybe around fifteen! 

Sarah: Depending on your pace and then you don’t get a diploma. (laughter) 

Robert: I would think it would go on for many lifetimes, actually. 

Dale: Well, it does with a lot of people; for the rest of their lives. 

Sarah: This is just a start. This is just a baby step. We’re not talking about an advanced school. It’s intermediate, and in fact, it’s said that humanity isn’t really ready for the real true mystery schools. Those will come later, and all this teaching that we call esoteric now will then be exoteric and perfectly obvious. 

Robert: That’s about all the time we have for our discussion today. 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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