Initiation connotes a wider and more inclusive consciousness. Spiritual initiation is entrance into something greater, into a spiritual life.
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 theme for today is initiation and I think as the show progresses, you’ll discover initiation as a spiritual term. All the dialogue that emanates from this show you will find in the works of Alice Bailey, as does this quote: “Initiation marks the passing into a higher grade of consciousness and the realization of an increasing unity with all that lives and the essential oneness of the self with all selves.” Well, there’s a lot said there and as usual, Alice Bailey needs some further explanation. Sarah, can you explain what the opening quote means?
Sarah: I’m not sure, but I can try. As I was listening to you make your opening remarks, I wondered how many people in our audience immediately conjured up a picture of a college fraternity entrance, right? Or some secret society where you put on silly hats and have to do goofy things. That’s not the kind of initiation we’re talking about. In fact, it’s a deeply sacred concept that is found in a lot of the world’s mystery traditions. It might not be called initiation, but the concept is well anchored in human spiritual consciousness. I suppose a parallel would be that in all aspects of life, as one grows in understanding, there are periodic recognitions and demarcations of the expanded understanding that are noted, and once one has passed into that wider realm, one is capable of more responsibility, more authority. For example, in traditional education the passing of exams and the achieving of degrees is a traditional rite of the young person. Well, in the life of the soul the initiation process marks certain forward movements, although that term isn’t really appropriate. The mind always tends to want to anchor these recognitions in a kind of form-oriented way, so we start speaking of moving upward or outward and yet we’re talking about consciousness, so one isn’t going anywhere. The best we can do is to say that initiation might be compared to tossing a pebble into a still pond. It sets up ripples that radiate out from where the pebble struck the water and forms concentric circles that then spread outward in wider and wider arcs. I like to think of initiation and the effect on consciousness in that way, that every initiation connotes a wider and more inclusive consciousness. What do you think?
Dale: Yes, that’s right. You mentioned about being initiated into a college fraternity— which is not what we’re talking about—but it’s like a commencement too, because initiation really means the marking of a beginning and that’s what a commencement is at college for the graduate. In effect, you are finishing college, but you’re commencing your real life into society, into the world. So, initiation is like that too, the spiritual initiation is entrance into something greater, into a spiritual life. The person who takes the initiation is one who has taken the first step into the spiritual kingdom, the Kingdom of God.
Sarah: It always marks a wider sense of identity, don’t you think? It isn’t that one moves out of one’s present being into another stage of being so much as I think it means that you incorporate or you expand your identity to include more and more of the whole.
Dale: That’s right. As it says in the quote there, it’s passing into a higher grade of consciousness and the realization of an increasing unity with everything that lives.
Sarah: Yes, I think that’s an important theme. It again is affirming that you don’t leave behind—well, you do and we’ll get to that in a while— but you don’t leave behind your capacity to identify with loved ones and with what one has considered one’s family and group, but that those concepts of family and group and the objects of one’s love and identification expand to include more and more.
Dale: Yes, you never lose touch with what you’re leaving behind, in effect; it’s always there, but you just understand it in the context of a larger whole.
Sarah: The idea of the essential oneness of the self with all selves is really the ongoing effect of initiation, which is a continuing process. We’re not talking about just one event; it’s a progressive series of events. According to the Ageless Wisdom, there are either five initiations or seven or nine, depending on spheres of consciousness that are so far beyond all of us that I don’t even think it’s worth going into them, because it results in theorizing and surmising about levels of consciousness that really, I believe, aren’t our business because we’re not ready to even venture into those territories. But my point is that it’s progressive and is not just one experience. The first two initiations, which we will talk about in a while, are within the experience of large numbers of humanity, and so that’s where our focus can be, but there are some ideas from the writings of Alice Bailey about initiation that I think are very thought provoking. One is that initiation is simplification, she says. That, I think, is an effect that anybody who’s endeavoring to tread the spiritual path can verify: that a developing spiritual consciousness, a spiritual approach to life, requires and also makes inevitable a growing simplification. I think one kind of pares down the different elements of life because they no longer matter so much.
Dale: Yes, the details tend to drop away. You begin to realize the underlying synthesis of life and all the outer patterns of life and the close connection on the inner side, and all the details tend to, as I say, pass away and become less and less important.
Sarah: The “extensions of life,” as Alice Bailey calls them. You can either lead a life that’s really oriented towards spiritual growth and spiritual realization, or you can allow yourself to diverge into tangents, and those are what she calls “extensions.” They take you out just like an extension cord running away from the main line does, they take you away from the central theme of the developing spiritual consciousness. So, simplification I think, people can visualize in that sense. It’s a honing in on and a unifying of one’s energy and consciousness on what one understands is reality, and that idea of what reality is, is ever unfolding of course. But there’s a great deal about life on the outer material level that one realizes has very little to do with reality. Those things drop away, and that’s where simplification comes in.
Robert: Didn’t Alice Bailey say that Christ’s life is a reenactment of initiation?
Sarah: Yes, in fact, she wrote a book, From Bethlehem to Calvary, that traces the stages, the major stages and achievements of the life of Christ and relates them to the five major initiations that culminate in mastery.
Dale: Yes, these are stages that most everybody is familiar with, like the birth in Bethlehem: that’s the first initiation. That’s an obvious one that we celebrate at Christmas every year.
Sarah: But how does it apply to one of us? We know that Jesus is said to have been born in Bethlehem, but how does that apply to the spiritual seeker?
Dale: Well, it’s being “born again.” The new person, the new man is born again. Unless you’re born again, you cannot seek the Kingdom of God.
Sarah: Then you become a fundamentalist Christian?
Dale: Perhaps, if that’s your calling, yes.
Sarah: What if you’re, say, Jewish or Muslim or Hindu?
Dale: Well, you have to take this as symbolic, in the symbolic understanding, the symbolic meaning. The birth doesn’t mean necessarily the birth of a child or the birth of the Christ. It’s called sometimes the “birth of the Christ within you.”
Sarah: Or the conversion to Christianity; it doesn’t mean that.
Dale: No, it doesn’t mean that. It’s simply the awakening of the soul basically within the person. The first initiation really has to do with awakening of the soul and that first impact, that first contact with the soul.
Sarah: We’ve talked about that in other programs: about the Christ principle that abides in every human heart, not just in the Christian, but in everyone.
Dale: It doesn’t have anything to do really with Christianity or with any religion, actually. That may sound blasphemous, but it’s really the awakening of the soul and the qualities of the soul within the heart, within the person. This is a definite stage of awakening that every person will go through or has gone through at some time in the life cycle of the soul.
Sarah: What about the other initiations?
Dale: Well, then after that the second initiation is called the “baptism.” In the life of Jesus that came at around the age of thirty.
Sarah: Really, did it? I thought it came when he was about twelve.
Dale: No, that’s when he preached in the temple. Baptism was in the Jordan, where John the Baptist baptized Jesus. This is also a major stage. This represents the time when there is a need for purification in the life. The emphasis is upon purification and recognition of the Holy Spirit within and the clearing away of the impediments to the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God.
Sarah: One thing that’s interesting in what you’ve just said is that initiation covers a vast period of time. The fact that the first initiation of birth in Bethlehem was followed only much, much later by the second initiation, underscores the fact that there’s a very, very long time between the first initiation, when one kind of turns one’s life around and really orients oneself to the spiritual path. There is a very long period where one gets one’s bearings, so to speak and stabilizes oneself in this new direction. Only much later does one prepare for this second initiation, which is the purification of the emotions, the clearing out of all the emotion and desire that colour our attempts to think.
Dale: That’s one of the most difficult initiation stages to get through because it does involve so many of the deeply seated emotional feelings and thought forms that we carry around with us that shape and condition our outer life, our personality life.
Sarah: So many people think they think when in fact they basically react to emotion and desire, and that includes all of us. We don’t realize how our world and our consciousness are just permeated by the emotional stuff of life, of the world, not only our own emotional stuff, but the world’s—humanity’s stuff.
Dale: Yes, it’s a great testing period and it’s a long period that takes a number of lives to get through, because it does involve all of that clearing away of all the debris that we’ve been carrying around all these lifetimes.
Sarah: Yes, and moving right along the third initiation–
Dale: The third initiation gets a little bit more obscure. It’s the experience that’s called the “transfiguration,” which happened in the Garden of Gethsemane when the Christ made contact with the Will of God, with the Father aspect.
Sarah: He was transformed before the eyes of the three disciples. The lower life is transformed and made radiant by the divine Will.
Dale: Right, and that’s the stage where the emphasis is on perfection. The statement comes, “Be therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect.” That’s where the emphasis on reaching and striving for perfection comes in, with those words of Christ. Then following that, of course, was the Crucifixion.
Sarah: The fourth initiation. Renunciation is another name for it.
Dale: That’s one of the more painful, and it’s called in esoteric terms, the Great Renunciation, because at that stage it’s where one renounces or lets go of the body of the soul, what’s called the causal body.
Sarah: Opens oneself to pure spirit, pure divine life.
Dale: Right. The pure divine life of the Monad or the Father aspect, and then of course, after that, three days later, Christ experienced the resurrection. So those represent the five stages that every human being will have to go through.
Robert: Why do you think there is so much mystery and misunderstanding surrounding the idea of initiation?
Sarah: Oh, I think there are probably a number of causes. For one thing, initiation pertains to areas of experience and understanding that, unless one has direct personal experience, really cannot be explained and yet here Dale and I are trying to do this program explaining initiation. You run the risk of venturing into territory about which very little can or should be said, so that’s part of the mystery because it has to be experienced directly and personally through one’s own conscious, dedicated effort. Another reason is that it’s been held up in kind of a spiritually glamorous way as a sign of attainment and of spiritual status, which is really wrong. It is an approach that a lot of not very good writers and teachers have contributed to—this idea that spiritual status is confirmed by initiation, and if you claim to be of a particular initiation, you are then entitled to look down on those who are lesser. A true initiate of any degree never makes a claim regarding status. Never. That breaks a fundamental spiritual law. Those who know don’t talk about it and don’t claim it. As we said in the opening comments, the idea of initiation is that the consciousness becomes more and more inclusive, so why would you then take the step of separating yourself and of creating a barrier between yourself and the rest of your fellow human beings, which is what you do when you claim status? You’re saying I know something you don’t know. I’ve achieved something you haven’t achieved. That goes directly against the whole idea of initiation, which is to incorporate larger and larger realms of life within your consciousness and within your identification. So, that’s a sign that they don’t know what they’re talking about. (laughter)
Dale: I also think there’s maybe some confusion about some of the words, some of the terms used, like Christ consciousness. Immediately you hear the word Christ consciousness and you can think well, that has to do with Christianity, when in fact it doesn’t. I mean it can, but it’s really about a state of consciousness and not about a person. It’s not about this being of Christ or of Jesus. It’s about a state of consciousness that Jesus Christ demonstrated in his life, which was an all-inclusive expression of the divine love of God. This is what is meant by the Christ consciousness. It has nothing to do with any particular religious affiliation, really. It’s a consciousness of the soul essentially, the pure radiant loving consciousness of the soul. That is open to everyone, no matter what your religious affiliation is or is not. This level of consciousness, this quality of consciousness has not to do with being, it has to do with the quality of love, essentially.
Sarah: Another problem I think that has obscured the understanding of initiation is that it’s so often associated with ceremony, and we talked about initiation rites and fraternities. That’s one truly goofy example of initiation. There’re certain men’s clubs that I think involve initiation rites, and we’ve all probably seen hilarious comedic routines on those rites. Jackie Gleason, I think, used to enact them and they’re funny. When you put so much emphasis on ceremony, you run the risk of contributing to the travesty of an essentially deeply sacred and spiritual event, because the human mind is so caught up by the form world that when we try to convey these spiritual experiences in ceremony, they become kind of absurd. One ceremony I can think of that might give us some sense of initiation in a more pure sense: any of us who have seen the film footage of when Queen Elizabeth was coronated in 1953. That’s an example in a worldly sense of essentially an initiation rite, I think. Would you agree?
Dale: Yes, I think that the British have this very strong tradition of ceremony because they understand more of the meaning behind it.
Sarah: Behind all of that outer paraphernalia with the scepter and the crown and all that, there are deep spiritual implications. So, the point is the outer shouldn’t obscure the inner meaning, and unfortunately the emphasis on ceremony gets in the way.
Robert: Is initiation something completely beyond most of us?
Sarah: I don’t know. I think that, in my opinion, would have to be answered by every person individually. We’re told in the writings of Alice Bailey that large numbers of humanity are preparing for or have taken the first initiation. Maybe we can talk about that in our next program. Certainly, anybody who is oriented and serious about the spiritual life should gain some understanding of what lies ahead of them, and we’re talking about a very long road.
Dale: I think we are ready to understand this concept. Now, the actual spiritual meaning behind some of these higher initiations like the fourth and the fifth initiation—and incidentally, there are more beyond that—that gets into the real esoteric teachings and does take a while to grasp. But certainly, the experience and the meaning behind the first two initiations would be within the realm of possibility.
Sarah: Mainly, I suppose, the concluding point to have in mind is that initiation is the result of self-effort and not something that’s conferred upon someone by some outside source. It’s self-effort.
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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