The Glory of the One
Articles By Mary W. Turner
The occult path cannot be followed blindly. Intelligent thought and appraisal are necessary. Yet the results must oft be held in abeyance pending that clarification which can come only through release into love of humanity.
Even those who are 'saturated with the teachings' can experience new revelations and succumb to unsuspected blind spots. Therefore, those who are still painfully picking their way through the extreme fluctuations of the thorny path of discrimination into the heart of the teaching, can be temporarily baffled and lost in the paradoxes with which the wisdom-teaching abounds. How irritating to the concrete mind to discover statements mad by the same source which are apparently in direct opposition to one another. Unless there is the capacity to keep going, and to hold contradiction, much time can be wasted while the lower mind sinks deeper into the morass of its own creation under the weight of its own preoccupations.
Mental detachment is a difficult thing for many to achieve. A certain quality of mind demands the assurance of a clear passage and the complete mastery of one step before another is attempted. Yet on the occult path this is seldom possible. And the teaching if we have confidence in it reveals a golden thread which we can learn to follow through a maze of unresolved mental problems, watching them drop off or recede into nothingness as we go. The unimportance of perplexing things to the unfolding consciousness of true values achieves perspective as we learn to distinguish between problems of growth impinging on the mind as the soul takes control, and the ceaseless searching of the concrete mind for a satisfactory means of hurdling the immediately impossible. There are a multitude of questions arising along the path that can only be answered by moving beyond them, and looking back.
One of the most perplexing adjustments for many lies within the resolution of the 'inner' spiritual life to the mundane 'outer' world of daily living. We are told to 'look within', and we are told to 'serve without'. And as we endeavour to balance this duality in effective spiritual living, we tend to tip one way or the other to the changing emphasis of our thought life. The dual life includes many apparently opposite factors upon the cross-formed by the so-called vertical and horizontal life. One familiar mental block revolves around the concept of service, and its relation to the technique of meditation. Our confusion may be increased as we delve into the teachings given on meditation and service, only to find each displayed as the supreme value. So we read: 'The technique of meditation is the outstanding creative agent on the planet', 'All that is, is created by meditation.' 'The technique of meditation governs all expansion of consciousness, all registration of Plan and Purpose and, in fact, the entire process of evolutionary unfoldment' and so on. And then, by contrast: 'Service is the scientific mode par excellence, to evoke spiritual integration and to call forth the resources of a divine Son of God'. 'The science of service takes priority over the science of meditation.'
Plane into Sphere
And as we think about it, and try to decide which of the two is the cause, and which the effect, we may come to the point where we recognise meditation and service as two sides of one coin. And for a period, during a stage on the path subject to the analytical faculty and two-dimensional thought of the concrete mind, they may be so. But as the higher aspect of the mind impinges, and the individual approaches the point of discipleship integration of soul and personality, the dimension of depth transforms the flat-planed coined into an inclusive sphere in which the common identity of life and experience is known. At the same time, the even-armed cross of vertical and horizontal life renounces separation as a duality, to the synthesis achieved through the free circulation of life and the consciousness from point to point. Again, the whole sphere is formed in which there is naught but the centre and the periphery, and the relationship in conscious identity between the two.
So in time we begin to understand, through a living experience of its reality, that service and meditation are one and the same thing, different only in the same sense that the right hand and the left hand are used differently with any musical instrument. Similarly, we can understand that meditation and service, the vertical life and the horizontal life, become one as alignment, or relationship, is experienced in consciousness between the periphery the personality expression and the field of service and the centre the emanating source of life and dynamic intent.
Seen with this sense of synthesis and identity, meditation all formal meditation, individual or group, for any purpose whatsoever becomes a supreme service in helping to create synthesis and conscious alignment within the planetary life; and service is seen as the contemplative life of those whose minds vibrate to the Plan in the creation of right human relationships. Then we may remember that the New Group of World Servers are the lowest correspondence of the Nirmanakayas the Divine Contemplatives. And the jigsaw pieces in the channel of alignment and relationship between man and God, fall into place in our minds.
The Touchstone of Release
At this point we see that there is no higher or lower, inner or outer. There is only one common centre of life and its area of experience. Having placed our emphasis first on one fragmental aspect of wholeness, then on another; having 'meditated' and 'served' struggled for self-mastery and then for self-forgetfulness, we find the touchstone of release in 'love of humanity'.
Love of humanity is the transcendent motive behind spiritual creativity, transforming a son of man into a Son of God. The motif 'love of humanity' is the crest jewel on the brow of the serving disciple, directing a beam of light along the path we all must tread, adding a strand in consciousness to the golden cable of life relating our planet to the Heart of the Sun.
Keywords: The Glory of the One, Mental detachment , occult path, Mary W. Turner, Intuition, Intuitive, Articles, UK, South Africa, Cape Town,
