The source, the beginning, and the initiator of the New Age
Aries initiates a new cycle in the spiritual year and, now, the inauguration of the New Age. Aries embodies the will-to-create, and a fundamental truth is that all creation begins with thought. “God thought, God visualized, God spoke and the world was made and is sustained”, the writings of Alice Bailey affirm. So, too, does the human being create a micro-universe; as she wrote, “Man’s tiny world is the result of his own thought power. The whole world of form is the result of the thought activity of some life.” “All that we are is the result of what we have thought”, the Buddha decreed. “It is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with an evil thought, suffering follows him as the wheel follows the hoof of the beast that draws the wagon. If a man speak or act with a good thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.”
This realization touches upon the cause of the pain and limitation of life in form, but it also holds the possibility for creative change, for “Energy follows thought” is the great and fundamental law. The human being in the three worlds (mental, emotional, and physical) is a creator, not only of personal reality but of effects which can and do make impact on other human beings as well as on the animal kingdom. All this is implied in the keynote of Aries: I come forth and from the plane of mind, I rule.
Aries is the sign of beginnings and renewal, of periods when the soul changes direction through spiritual regeneration. The words of the Apostle Paul, “Be ye therefore transformed by the renewing of your mind”, express the power of the mind, of thought, to create—for better or worse—and to change course. The divine Plan is said to be the ordered direction of God’s thought; there is no true direction apart from thought, and thus thought is power. Humanity’s role in the Plan is to function as a midway point in the consciousness of the Creator, to serve in effect as the brain of the planetary Deity, a growing realization already sensed by such thinkers as Peter Russell, author of The Global Brain. To this awakening process, Aries “at different points along the Path of Life forces the soul on to the burning ground” using the fire of mind to clear a path through the “jungles of experience”, as the Ageless Wisdom expresses it.
What is going on in the world today is the working out of ideas, we’re told. The fire of mind is stimulating the burning quality so clearly seen in human relationships today, where ideas about the future direction of humanity are generating intense conflict—essentially because the direction is not yet widely seen as collective, as a shared destiny. Oneness is the major characteristic of the Universal Mind, the mind of God, but “the fire of mind today has to be reckoned with in conjunction with the water of desire, and it is owing to this that much of humanity’s problem develops”, in Alice Bailey’s words. Millions of people are beginning to think, and desire remains a potent qualifier of their thoughts. At the same time, the initiating potency of Aries is creating conditions of the New Age as seen in the countless group efforts to relieve human and animal suffering, in the growing awareness of the interrelationship of the human kingdom with the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, in the advances of science and psychology, and in the international coalitions working to preserve peace and justice. The best way to offset the global trend to authoritarianism seems to lie in the power of human minds on an aggregate level. “The forms by which the new ideas must manifest will be built by educating public consciousness until that consciousness becomes confirmed conviction and demonstrates as “immovable public opinion”, Alice Bailey wrote. Each individual human being has a vital part to contribute to that project.
