One goal of the Plan is the achievement of unity and of the integration of the part with the whole.
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 today is the Plan. We have a thought from Alice Bailey, the founder of Lucis Trust. She wrote twenty-four volumes of books and all of the dialogue on this show emanates from those, as does this thought: “The one thing which humanity needs today is the realization that there is a Plan which is definitely working out through all world happenings and that all that has occurred in man’s historical past and all that has happened lately is assuredly in line with that Plan. Now, this is a bit cryptic; what exactly is the Plan? Some people might think that this sounds like interference with human free will. Maybe you could tell us more about this.
Sarah: The Plan is a concept that is absolutely central to the teaching of the Ageless Wisdom, which is the spiritual doctrine found in the books of Alice Bailey, but not limited only to her teachings by any means. Everything that we understand of spiritual teaching really arranges itself around an understanding that there is a Plan and that every human being has a place within that Plan, and yet to share with the listeners a few definitions from the writings of Alice Bailey can make it seem, if anything, even more cryptic. So, maybe a way to start out talking about the Plan is to say that it begins with the individual, that every human being is a part of the Plan and has a part to play in the Plan. The Plan, as the word suggests, is something that hasn’t been fully realized but that is in process of unfoldment, which is evolutionary, and that suggests that all of us who care had better cooperate if we want to see the Plan of God fulfilled on Earth. I came across a quotation just this morning when I was reading that seemed to touch on what the Plan is. It was from Victor Frankel, who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning. He was a psychiatrist who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust in the concentration camp and emerged out of it with an understanding of the meaning of life which he built his whole career as a psychiatrist around. He said, “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning …” His whole doctrine of psychological health was that life — any circumstance in life — can offer meaning and thereby become something that one can learn from and grow from, no matter how difficult the experience is. Well, in a sense, that’s the understanding of the Plan: that there is meaning and significance, and that every aspect of life — from the human level down to the vegetable, mineral and animal levels — has a place in the unfoldment of that life.
Dale: Yes, if you really think about the world it’s obvious that we’re not floating around in space on some uncharted course. There is a direction which this planet is taking, and the divine Creator, if you will, has some purpose in mind for everything that’s happening here, and humanity especially has a great part to play in this great purpose that’s working out. It’s difficult to see if we focus only on the individual and the small parts of the world, but one has to stand back and take in the whole big picture as much as you can, and then you begin to see the outlines of something growing and evolving and moving forward little by little.
Sarah: The Plan is something that is not imposed upon anyone. The question I think you raised was that it sounded like interference of human free will, but that is not the Plan. So, one doesn’t awaken to the Plan until one can begin to see meaning and significance and teachability in his own circumstances. If you think, why did God do this to me or why hasn’t God rescued me from this, you’re not understanding the Plan.
Dale: Well, it isn’t interference with human free will, because we are given free will for a very specific purpose: so that we will exercise our will and we will begin to make choices and even make mistakes, and by that way we learn what the correct way to proceed is.
Sarah: What is that saying? “Men learn by means of evil that good is best.” That’s part of the Plan, because God’s trust in human beings is such that He endowed us with a mind, and we are intended to use that mind and our free will to make choices. As we begin to see the choices we’ve made in our life, the experiences we’ve had, when we begin to see a pattern to them, and when we begin to see ourselves in relation to the larger whole — beginning with our group, our family, our nation, and finally, hopefully, ultimately with humanity and the planet — then we can put ourselves in the proper context and see that we’re a part of something great and evolutionary.
Dale: We might mention — even though the question was that this sounds like interference with human free will, and as we said it isn’t — we do have help in moving this plan forward. There is a group of great Beings on the inner side called the Masters of the Wisdom. They’re sometimes also called the Custodians of the Plan because it is their responsibility to help humanity. It’s what they do: they help; they don’t interfere with human free will, but they supply us with the needed energies and forces that will carry us through to work out this Plan in a correct way.
Sarah: There’s a statement along that line in a meditation that we work with in our practice at headquarters that has always intrigued me: that Hierarchy holds the Plan in solution. If I understand chemistry, something that is held in solution is preserved in its original state, not allowed to dissolve and disappear, or dissipate. So, the Hierarchy holds the Plan in solution for humanity, preserves it, keeps it viable until we grasp it with our own little minds and consent with our free will to co-operate with it. So, the whole idea of coercion and submission of the will is really not an accurate way to understand the Plan. It’s freely assented to.
Robert: I was intrigued before about what you said, Sarah, in regard to the psychological importance of one looking for and finding meaning in one’s life. Were you implying that it could also contribute to mental well-being and spiritual well-being?
Sarah: Well, yes, that was the great lesson that Frankel came away with from the concentration camp. He saw great suffering among his fellow inmates and the ones who survived and thrived were those who were able to find meaning in their life, regardless of what their outer circumstances were. Somehow their soul endowed them with a sense of purpose and probably an intuitive sense that there is more to life than the outer physical surroundings that enabled them to cope and remain psychologically healthy and even more productive. Those who could see that they were growing, expanding in consciousness, in understanding, in acceptance of God, of spiritual reality, who through their experiences were able to — oh, what’s that old saying? — out of lemons make lemonade. That’s so trite, but basically that’s what the healthiest ones were able to do. So, learning to find meaning in your life, to see something, a lesson in it, a teaching experience, will help you to survive the most awful events.
Robert: If we think we have no meaning in life, then I think it’s almost our moral obligation…
Sarah: To go look for it, because it’s there.
Robert: To go look for the meaning in life. I like that thought, I really do. Why does humanity play such a crucial role in the plan?
Sarah: Well, it’s said in the writings of Alice Bailey, time and again, that only through humanity can the divine Plan work out. I don’t know. Maybe you would like Dale to take a stab at why humanity is the linchpin.
Dale: Well, linchpin is probably a good term because humanity is the pivotal kingdom here on Earth. There are three kingdoms below the human kingdom: the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom. Then there are — as we read in the Bailey teachings — three kingdoms above humanity in terms of consciousness that we eventually would evolve into. The next kingdom that is in the process of working out is what Christ has set in motion, the coming of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of souls. So, humanity stands at a midway point, and it acts as a mediator between the lower kingdoms and the higher kingdoms, and that’s why it’s such a crucial position to be in.
Sarah: I think this is probably the essence of the meaning in the Bible book of Genesis, that man shall have dominion over the earth. That has been a much-disputed passage by the environmentalists and ecologists, but probably it’s touching upon that linchpin role of humanity. Dominion maybe isn’t the best word, maybe stewardship would be better. But apparently humanity, because of its mind, because of its free will, is given the decisive power by God for the evolutionary well-being of our planet. In fact, in the writings of Alice Bailey, it says that the Plan of God is that humanity should control matter on the physical plane. That’s kind of astonishing, that humanity should control matter on the physical plane. All of the lower kingdoms that Dale just mentioned—animal, vegetable, mineral—are part of the physical plane, and this is where we are supposed to have stewardship, supposed to be exercising a spiritual authority, and spiritual authority does not plunder the Earth but fosters the well-being of all the kingdoms on Earth. So that should give us an idea of how far we are from that goal.
Dale: Well, yes, it’s coming out already and it’s working out in having taken control over the genes, right down to the genes in the Human Genome Project and cloning and all of that. It may not be on the right track, or it may be; it depends on how we’re going to use it but we’re already fulfilling that kind of responsibility, perhaps not in a responsible way always, but it’s beginning to seep through that this is humanity’s responsibility to do this sort of thing.
Sarah: I suppose that’s why the discovery of radium was such a tremendous event, because it gave us great power to do evil and good. There have been medical benefits that have come out of the discovery of radium, and there’s also been horrible suffering. So, all of this knowledge that humanity is able to tap into can be used for good or ill, depending on human free will and choice. All of that is part of the Plan. I suppose it implies a great trust that the Creator has in our ultimate ability to learn from evil that good is best.
Dale: What’s happening now is a realignment of humanity’s creative forces and energies to align with the vision of the soul, and the next step in the working out of the Plan is to align ourselves with the soul, the higher self, the spiritual self and bring that vision to manifestation in the physical world. The soul is the next stage in the evolution of the Plan and the manifesting of the qualities, values and principles of love and goodwill in the world; these are the main characteristics of the soul.
Sarah: Right. To me, the Plan really has to do with the unfoldment of consciousness, and that is the presence of the soul in one’s life. The soul is the consciousness aspect of being, and what that means is that the soul bestows within us a consciousness or an awareness of being but also of being part of a larger whole. It begins with a recognition that we belong to a group and it expands until we realize that we are a part of the whole, that we exist as a fragment within a great Life, and the Plan is the evolutionary unfoldment of this realization. So, the ultimate goal of the Plan is right relationship between all living things and all kingdoms on Earth. We’re not talking about something that will happen tomorrow, however, but it is step by step, stage by stage, what is working out through the Plan, this right relationship between all aspects of life.
Dale: It’s a right relationship that is both vertical — relationship with God, with the soul — and horizontal because this relationship has to work out in relationships with our fellow human beings, our institutions, across national borders, and all of that. So, each person stands at the centre of this cross — the vertical and horizontal arms of this cross — and works with energies.
Robert: I’m very intrigued by the idea of the Plan, but I’d like a way of recognizing the Plan and its progress that would really secure my understanding of the of the Plan. Can we recognize the plan in the outer visible world?
Sarah: Yes, the natural world, I think, depicts the Plan in certain ways. One goal of the Plan is the achievement of unity and of the integration of the part with the whole. If you look at the natural world, all of the systems are precisely balanced so that there is an essential harmony between all of the different elements. If you study for example a flower, if you look at it really closely, you’ll see that the arrangement of the stamens within the centre are arranged in a floral pattern that spirals from a central point. The integration of the arrangement of these things is absolutely perfect. And if you look at a fern, you’ll see that the pattern of the little fronds along the central stem follows an exact arrangement. Every tree has a pattern of leaves along its branches that follows an exact and similar numerical arrangement; regardless of whether the tree is big or small, each particular species has this similarity that it repeats. And a crystal, of course, is another example of the extreme organization that exists within the natural world. Can you think of others?
Dale: Well, sure, if you move up into the human kingdom we see the same patterns being repeated in every nation of the world. We have the pattern of the government. Every nation has a government and departments within the government. There are departments that govern teaching, education and religion. There are other departments that have to do with economics, labour, scientific discoveries, finance, and almost every country in the world has to display or manifest these same patterns, these same departments. These are not by accident; they are by design.
Sarah: You don’t think they might just be copying certain systems from each other, that one particular nation thought up and started out with?
Dale: Well certainly, as far as ideology, or whether they’re following an idealistic line, which could be based on copying of what other nations have experienced. The same in finance and education and in the world of business. But I think these are patterns that are working out and they’re being tried. There are the same patterns on the inner side, and these same energies are creating these patterns in the human kingdom as well.
Sarah: In fact, the book by Alice Bailey, Initiation Human and Solar, goes into the explanation of these patterns that you’re referring to, if people want to read about them. The patterns that exist on the inner side are duplicated in the outer world. Another area, I think, in which we can recognize the plan is in the study of history. The writings of Alice Bailey say that nothing so awakens the will as a study of the Plan down through history. I think, again, the meaning being that as you begin to see this evolutionary development that is unfolding through human experience, your own will to co-operate in it is awakened, your own sense of where you fit into that plan. Those who study history can see the growth of human consciousness. There was a book written just a couple of years ago by Jacques Barzun, who is now in his nineties, and he has written an overview of historical and cultural developments over just the past five hundred years. It’s fascinating to see the growth in human consciousness, the growth of relationship among nations and peoples, who at one point were completely separated from each other. Now, with the Internet and with media, we’re constantly aware of what’s going on in all parts of the world. Some of it’s bad news, but this is all bringing about interconnection.
Dale: Yes, and integration is another evidence of the working out of the Plan because this is what is called for: integration of human creativity and human cultures.
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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