The image of a water pot that pours forth a flood of water that never empties is service as the soul: an ever-replenishing source of life-giving energy.
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 the value of service-part one. Our thought for today comes from the works of Alice Bailey, the founder of the Lucis Trust organization, who sponsors this show. Alice Bailey has written twenty-four volumes of literature and all the dialogue that you hear on this show emanates from the works of Alice Bailey as does the following thought: “Today we have a world which is steadily coming to the realization that no one liveth unto himself, and that only as the love about which so much has been written and spoken finds its outlet in service, can one begin to measure up to his or her innate capacity.” Very often we hear about service and I hope you’re one of those people who like the idea of service for the intrinsic value of service and not so much because one is going to achieve another end as a reason for doing it. Alice Bailey refers to the Law of Service, and I don’t know how many of us think of service as a law, but it is. Is service what we think it is or something different to the soul?
Sarah: Well, I think the reference to the Law of Service gives away the fact that the view of the Alice Bailey writings about service is quite a different view than what probably popped into the minds of our listeners when they heard the topic of service. No doubt we think of the military, we think of charity or we think of obligation. There are probably all kinds of connotations attached to a word like this, and some of them might even be a bit negative, depending on people’s experience. But there is a Law of Service in the sense that like so many areas of life, service is governed by spiritual principles when one really approaches it as the soul does, as the higher consciousness views service. There are laws, principles and certain fundamental rules that govern true service as a soul. So, probably we could say that service as an activity, as a doing good, is quite different from the service of the soul, which we’ll get into in this program. The personality views service as activity, doing something to make the world a better place. And there’s nothing wrong with that; we should all be trying to do that. But don’t you think that, to the soul, service is more a state of being than of doing?
Dale: Yes, it’s the ideal which the soul reacts to. Service is not a sentiment or an ideal, it’s an effective soul contact, and the spontaneous effect of soul contact allows the life and the quality of the soul to pour through into the outer physical personality life.
Sarah: So it’s not something that has to be worked up from below. It sounds like something that happens in a natural way.
Dale: It happens naturally from the soul’s point of view, because probably that law — the Law of Service — is one of the basic laws to which the soul reacts. It is so fundamental to the existence of the soul because that’s what it’s on Earth to do: to carry out the Plan of God and to serve the Plan of God that is working out in the world. Therefore, it is our duty and as we begin to come in contact more closely with the soul and the soul qualities, this impulse to serve really begins to come through, and it affects the way we conduct our lives.
Sarah: So, when you say that it’s an effect that the soul reacts to, I think what you mean is that when the soul is able to get a really good grip on its mechanism—meaning the personality, the outer person with a mind, emotions, sensitivity, physical body, a presence in the world—when the soul, the higher consciousness has its grip on that equipment, then service just kind of spontaneously pours through. Is that what you’re saying?
Dale: Yes, it’s been described in the Bailey writings as: service is a life demonstration. That’s essentially what we try to bring through into our lives, so that everything we do, think and say in our life is some kind of a demonstration of these soul qualities, which are basically to do with service.
Sarah: So, it’s that which reveals the quality of the soul. The quality of the soul within a human being can be revealed in every situation they are in, no matter what it is: within the family, within the business life, the community life, the way they handle their physical plane affairs, the way they treat the environment, the way they handle strangers and people who are of less power than they are, children, the weak, whatever. All of these are aspects where service is demonstrated if the consciousness is attuned enough to soul values, which are love, compassion, sacrifice, unselfishness.
Dale: Yes, and it’s this urge to serve that we all feel from time to time. Some people feel it more strongly than others, but that is one of the early indications that the soul is beginning to make use of you, of your physical personality life.
Sarah: What if one took this idea of service and applied it to their life just as it is now? In other words, you don’t have to go out and become a nurse or a teacher, or a doctor or whatever to serve. Try imagining applying service to your life right now. If you’re married, try thinking of your marriage as a place of service, serving your spouse. What can you do to make that person’s existence uplifted? If you have children, how can you serve them? How can you draw forth the inner spiritual being that exists within even the tiniest child? If you work in an office, how can you serve the atmosphere of the office? How can you make it a place where there’s real group contact, real group collaboration? That can occur no matter what the office is for. If you work in a school, what can you do to make the school more of a collaborative group effort? All these are aspects where you can start to serve right now; you don’t have to change anything. You have to be different, I guess we could say. You have to think differently.
Robert: Now, from what I understand, we evolve as human beings, we’re not really born with soul qualities. It’s a matter of personal evolution where we evolve into adopting or taking on soul-like qualities. I guess that once we adopt soul-like qualities, service or the idea of service is more or less a constituent of soul qualities, just what ordinarily happens with adopting the soul qualities. Is that correct?
Sarah: Yes, except that I would say some people are born with more of an expression of the indwelling soul than others are, depending on their state of evolution. We’re not all at the same point on the path, and some even very young children are just normally attuned to a kind of natural giving of themselves. Others are quite selfish, so it varies with the individual.
Dale: Yes, I think that’s true. It all depends on where we stand in terms of consciousness, where your consciousness is focused, and if it’s focused pretty much on yourself, then the service you do is going to be pretty much self-service. All your impulses to serve will be reflected through that self-focus.
Robert: Of course, there are many people out there who are involved with jobs that have service as a component of the job. Could you contrast ordinary service with service of the soul?
Sarah: As you say, some people are in positions of service whether they like it or not, and anybody who’s taught, for example, in the school system is probably familiar with people who are, in a sense, captive in jobs in which they have to serve, but they don’t really have the right temperament for it. The same with policemen, with firemen, with all kinds of people who have to work with the public and meet human need, but they don’t necessarily realize it’s a place of service or like the idea. I heard on the radio just today: there’s a protest of policemen saying, “If you like what we do, don’t give us praise, give us more money.” Well, in some ways I can understand the attitude, but you can’t really say the temperament is quite right in that point of view. Ordinary service is doing what you are obligated to do, or what you feel a responsibility to do. It’s the “should” aspect of life; I should do this, therefore I will. The sense of duty and obligation, and goodness knows that takes a certain spiritual development just to be able to sense what we should do and not give in to our lowest impulses, so I’m not putting that down. But the service of the soul is on a higher, more intuitive level. I think a lot of people think of service as a kind of an emotional gut reaction to human misery. In a way that’s a sign of an evolving human sensitivity, that we can feel that sorrow and that pity for human misery. But the service of the soul is more from the heart and the head than from the gut. It requires intelligence, the head, and it requires identification with others, which is the heart.
Dale: Yes, that’s a good point to bring out: the point about identification with others. Too often the urge to serve might be, as I said before, just a selfish impulse, and so the thought is for serving in a way that makes me feel good. Everybody is familiar with the ordinary kind of service because our whole society is still governed by ordinary service. The bus driver, the policeman, the fireman, the social services or the welfare workers, all of those people are working in a service capacity. They may not see it that way, they may see it as just a job, and that’s probably what it is to them and they do this for so many years of their life and then that’s it. That’s a start, that’s okay if you see it as just the ordinary kind of serving. I think that’s where it begins. The impulse begins to build into your character, into your consciousness of service because you’re dealing with the public, perhaps you’re always serving with trying to help them in whatever their needs are. This has a very subtle way of working on one’s consciousness, I think.
Sarah: Service of the soul is not so much about doing what you think is right for another or what you feel obligated to do for them. It’s an intuitive responsiveness to need, even when it isn’t verbally expressed or even recognized by the person who needs to be served. Real service as a soul senses that inner need within another that they may not even be aware of and helps to meet that need. It’s a heart-to-heart kind of contact that evokes the spiritual power or the inner divinity within another, so that it never takes credit for doing something for someone. What it does is bring forth their own spiritual power that exists within them.
Dale: Yes, I think when the reaction to service is a spontaneous reaction from the individual, that is the true indication that service is coming by way of the soul. It’s a soul impulse because the basic impulse of the soul itself is to serve, and the stronger that that comes through in the individual life, then that’s going to result in a more spontaneous reaction to serve in the world.
Sarah: Yes, there is a good definition from the teachings that defines what service as a soul is: it’s the right meeting of need on any level.
Robert: Who are the group of world servers mentioned in the books of Alice Bailey?
Sarah: It’s a central concept of her teachings and is a phenomenon of the past century. You could say that all through the past centuries we’ve seen great individuals who have made an impact on world evolution, but it’s only in the last 100 years or less that there is emerging a group of individuals throughout the world, in all fields of life, in all cultures, in all religions and all social strata, who share in common a commitment to the good of the planet. This is known as the new group of world servers. It’s not an organization; there’s no outer structure. It’s not a formal affiliation, just as there’s no membership. You qualify by the quality of your life, not by claiming that you are a member of such a group. We belong to it in so far as we identify with what it does.
Dale: Yes, it’s just that impulse to serve that brings these people into the group of world servers.
Sarah: They are affiliated at the soul level, which implies that they know what they need.
Dale: I suppose they do anyway, because they may have a similar note that each individual recognizes. They are in all professions and of all nationalities. They’re dispersed all over the world. No matter what their profession is, they work towards the towards the greater good and not for themselves. It’s difficult to identify these people sometimes because often such people are behind the scenes.
Sarah: This feature is their signal quality, and the way they approach change—they don’t attack, they don’t blame, they don’t undermine. They don’t pit their forces against what they consider to be enemy. They work for good rather than against what we call evil.
Robert: We’ve talked a lot about the spiritual path and about adopting soul qualities, and service is an essential requirement of being on a spiritual path.
Sarah: It is because that which is received must be shared. You can’t develop spiritual powers of any sort for selfish purposes. What you receive has to be then in turn shared. That’s the law. The idea of how to share is changing. I think in olden times service was seen as a means of self development, becoming a better person, becoming spiritually more realized as an individual, and then it kind of evolved into a sense of obedience to a master or a spiritual superior—doing God’s will, so to speak. Now I think we’ve reached a point where, as Jesus put it, service is seen as whatever we can do to uplift any aspect of the planet. Christ said, “In as much as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me,” and I think that’s the real essence of service now. Whatever is done, even to the least of Christ’s brothers, has been done unto him.
Dale: Also, it’s essential to the spiritual path because it opens the heart and the heart centre. I don’t mean the physical heart but I mean the heart centre, the centre of love in each one of us. To be a servant, one gives of himself or herself to the needs of others and that opens you up, that opens an inlet for the energies of the soul to pour right through you into the world. That is the very impulse that opens the heart centre and brings out the soul.
Sarah: There’s a wonderful image that really describes this kind of service you’re explaining. It’s the image of a water pot that pours forth a flood of water that never empties, which is somehow continually renewing itself from an invisible reservoir. This is service as the soul: an ever-replenishing source of life-giving energy.
Dale: Yes, and that water pot is in fact the symbol of the law of service.
Robert: That’s about all the time we have for our discussion today. You have been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with the 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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