Sacrifice: the impulse to give
One of the treasures of the Aquarian experience of group life is the increasing expression of sacrifice as an ideal if not yet a common reality. Pisces is governed by the great Law of Sacrifice, which is the impulse to give—an impulse so powerful that it can be traced throughout every kingdom in nature. The willingness to sacrifice is well documented in the animal kingdom, and a recently published book by a German forester titled The Hidden Life of Trees is a fascinating depiction by a scientist of the extraordinary ways in which the principle of sacrifice governs a member of the vegetable kingdom.
Sacrifice is the underlying story of evolution, the governing principle of life itself. The Law of Sacrifice means salvage and underlies all the evolutionary processes, Alice Bailey wrote. It impels life, the spirit or Father aspect, to progress down into matter, the Mother aspect, producing the immanence of God. Sacrifice or salvage stimulates the consciousness aspect of all forms, but Humanity as a whole is destined to serve as the world Saviour for the lower kingdoms. This achievement is expressed in the keynote of Pisces, the final or culminating sign: I leave the Father’s home and turning back, I save.
The Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam, meaning the repair of the world, is a vivid expression of the task confronting humanity. And perhaps no kingdom is in greater need of repair than the human kingdom, for its impact upon all the lives that share our planet is immense. In a curious sense, Alice Bailey wrote that the human kingdom in nature constitutes, in a mysterious way, the eye of God. Through the five senses we contact the material realm. Through the mind and, later, the intuition we contact the inner realm of spirit. What does it mean to serve as “the eye of God”? A hint might be found in the words of the former Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjold when he wrote “You are merely the lens”. Both these images, the eye and the lens, seem to suggest a two-directional vision, implying that through the intuition humanity can register the divine Plan, and through humanity’s capacity to see, to recognize, and to respond, the vision of Deity is projected into the world.
Humanity is in reality the brain of the planetary Deity, its many units corresponding to the brain cells in the human brain. As yet, most of those cells remain unused, but the spiritual aspirants and visionaries within humanity represent those cells that are beginning to awaken and respond. We’re given the analogy that, just as the human brain, made up of an infinite number of sentient responsive cells, can be impressed when quiescence has been achieved, and can become the medium of expression for the plans and purposes of the soul, so God or our planetary Deity can impress humanity with divine purpose and produce consequent effects in the world of phenomena.
I leave the Father’s home and turning back, I save. When we realize that the soul takes on a form, which we call birth, in order to redeem matter, we begin to grasp the vast potential of incarnation. World Saviours such as the Christ fully comprehend Their mission, but every awakening human being can begin to register the responsibility of being an inhabitant of Earth. The goal of spiritual attainment isn’t for personal illumination but rather to become a conscious center of life giving force to all the lives within one’s care, whether they be fellow seekers or an animal or a garden. “Every human being who reaches the goal of light and wisdom automatically has a field of influence”, Alice Bailey wrote, “which extends both up and down, and which reaches both inwards to the source of light and outwards into the ‘fields of darkness’.” This long journey begins right where we find ourselves now. Let us work in meditation.
