Extracts on the Arcane School

Extracts on the Arcane School from the public talks of Sarah McKechnie, International President of the Lucis Trust, the Arcane School and its Service Activities

The emphasis of the Arcane School is on impersonality and on group work, and you can't have one without the other. Impersonality has a bad connotation for many people in the “warm and fuzzy” tenor of these times, and this is very unfortunate. For impersonality is that healing balm which makes group relations not only possible, but nurturing, fostering and invocative. The soul is naturally, inevitably group conscious, for the soul knows no separation and recognizes no barriers. Impersonality means not coldness or isolation from others, but the benign indifference to the personality—the separated self. Impersonality is the capacity literally to overlook the lower self and all that divides us from each other, and to focus on our common ground, our unity in the one soul.

No obedience or loyalty is ever asked for or expected by the School, for the only school that matters is the inner universal school of occultism centered in Shamballa, where all true esoteric schools have their origin and foundation. All outer expressions belong to the one inner Wisdom School, and this subjective, vertical affiliation is always the important relationship.

No fees or charges are ever asked by the Arcane School, for there can be no price put on discipleship training, and it can never be withheld from one because he lacks the needed funds. But there are expenses to administering any project on the physical plane, and students are expected to share in the responsibility for financing the work of the School and its activities according to their ability to contribute. This view of money is a significant feature of the Arcane School, which encourages students and anyone else who is interested to participate every Sunday in a worldwide meditation service on the redirection of money for hierarchical purposes. It’s part of a two-fold meditation effort, the other being the special Thursday meditation done by many people throughout the world to aid in the preparation for the reappearance of the Christ. The redirection of money into the hands of those who would serve and share is a fundamental development needed in order to create the proper subjective atmosphere in which Christ can work, for it will indicate that a true sense of sharing has finally penetrated human consciousness. For sharing is a fundamental outer expression of love, the energy embodied by the Christ.

…Service has been defined as the right meeting of need on any level of consciousness, and it is a scientific process that leads, more than anything else, to spiritual development. Light can never be dammed up, retained for oneself. It is energy of the most potent kind and it must be shared freely, but also with wisdom, for service requires wisdom to be effective. Without wisdom, service can just be meddlesome interference. With wisdom, which is an expression of love, service can provide that spur to the indwelling soul that enables another living thing, be it a flower, an animal or a human being, to quicken and grow towards the light. Service is the effect of radiation, and it affects the heart center; “the seat of the life.”

…All living things evolve and grow in capacity and potency through the stimulating effect of the higher vibration of a more advanced form of life. Hierarchy serves humanity in this way, just as humanity in turn stimulates and acts as steward to the so-called lower kingdoms, animal, vegetable and mineral. Within a group of disciples this same principle applies, and thus, as I said, an ashram is a center in which relationship is tried out—where disciples empower and stimulate each other according to their levels of spiritual development. How grateful we should be for this fact, knowing that it's a sign of wisdom to recognize those who can so stimulate our spiritual growth, and those whom we in turn can aid in their development.

The new discipleship now being developed by esoteric schools is an experiment whose main objective is not the perfecting of the individual but the creation of a useful, productive group. This means that, in some cases, individual growth must be slowed to adapt to the group pace. For others, it means speeding up one's efforts—undergoing a forcing process—to meet the requirements of the group life. In the creation of an internally unified, telepathic group, criticism, analysis and judgment have no place and create only barriers to the free flow of love. In this aura of love each disciple finds it possible, finally, to lose sight of his own precious, unique identity—something utterly contrary to the present world tendency which is to enhance individuality and to focus on all the ways in which oneself and one's group are different and stand apart from the larger whole. Yet, in the release of an identity that is separate and unique, one finds a wider range of awareness and of identification that is truly liberating and expansive. For, we are told, inclusiveness is the key to understanding consciousness.

As I mentioned, a central feature of the training of the Arcane School is meditation, for this is the means by which the head center is awakened, leading to the fusion of soul and personality, of inner and outer man. The head center is the center of reception and the ajna center of distribution, and in their fusion the soul and personality are merged in complete synchronicity of purpose, consciously, willingly cooperating in the Plan of God. From this stage then follows the developing expression of the Monad—pure Life—through the spiritual Triad, and then one is on the way to becoming a Master. But for most of us, that is a long way ahead, and we must be realistic in our assessment of what is possible while, at the same time, developing an appreciation for the long-range goal and the span of the progression of Hierarchy. In this is no cause for discouragement—only for recognition of opportunity, for the Hierarchy depends on its disciples who function at the periphery of the one great Ashram, for they are those who have contact with and understanding of humanity and can give voice to the “cry of humanity” for the Hierarchy to hear.

…Many sincere esotericists seem to feel that to be spiritual, one must turn away from the world, from the problems, stupidities and all too often horrors of life on earth. Yet, where shall the solution to the world's problems, the healing, come if not from the trained esotericists—from those who have cultivated the capacity for “dual vision”? They are those who can look into the world, into humanity, and see both its divine origin and the source of its failures in the glamour, illusion and maya of the three lower worlds. The development of the esoteric view enables the disciple to see the meaning and significance behind the outer apparent reality, and thereby point the way to the solution to the world's problems, so many of which were created by humanity itself.

(from “The Esoteric Training of the Arcane School”—a talk given at a conference in San Diego, California in April 1997)

…in pondering on the next stage of teaching to come in approximately 25 years, we should consider what is it that D.K. has placed his focus on in the second phase of the teaching. The newer truths that DK was responsible for, in his work with Alice Bailey, include: the teaching on Shamballa; the new discipleship; the seven rays; the new astrology; information on the new group of world servers, the attempt to form an esoteric branch of the inner ashrams; and the teaching on the new world religion; in that order. The teaching on Shamballa was number one on his list of truths to anchor in human consciousness. “The theme of the Way into Shamballa requires reflective study and esoteric understanding, he said. In this concept of the new and future section of the way or path with which the modern disciple is faced lies the secret of the coming revelation”.

The training of the Arcane School includes all seven of these truths, as the student progresses through the meditation practices and studies of the various degrees. But it is noticeable, to those of us who oversee the progress of students, how few, comparatively, persist into the upper degrees of the School, where the real “guts” of the work--the building of the antahkarana--is undertaken. The antahkarana is the bridge in consciousness which links the higher and lower mind and puts the soul-infused personality in touch with the plane of buddhi, where the ashram is found and the intuition is developed. Through the antahkarana, the “three doors in to Shamballa” are revealed: reason/intuition, spiritual will, and essential duality. Of these three I’d like to focus for a moment on reason/intuition, and its relation to revelation.

…The Tibetan teacher said “status and title, place and position count for nothing. It is the teaching that counts--its truth and its intuitive appeal.” We are reminded of this in the Tibetan’s statement that appears in the front of almost all of the books: “The books that I have written are sent out with no claim for their acceptance. They may, or may not, be correct, true and useful. It is for you to ascertain their truth by right practice and by the exercise of the intuition. Neither I nor AAB is the least interested in having them acclaimed as inspired writings, or in having anyone speak of them (with bated breath) as being the work of one of the Masters.”

… In a letter to the School the Tibetan said,“Read your newspapers with care and with an acute discrimination and hasten your efforts if the needs of humanity and the demands of Hierarchy (on behalf of humanity) mean anything real to you. If they are not real, then we shall have to look elsewhere for help.”

If we read the newspapers and pay attention to the present state of the world, we might begin to hear the “silent invocative recognitions of the masses” who may not be able to articulate their recognitions but who sense them and will respond to leaders who have the vision, the compassion, the sense of shared humanity, and the proper terminology to express those recognitions and thereby invoke cooperation and willingness. The very name for man means “one who thinks” and we must trust this capacity in our fellowmen. The experience of the past age and particularly the last 100 years has developed in humanity an intelligence and capacity to respond to the truth when it’s presented to them. The role of the esoteric group is to carry the deeper, spiritual truths into human consciousness through all the avenues available to them—the many areas in which the new group of world servers works. In this task, each one of us has a place to fill, and each of us is needed.

(Extracts from “The Coming Revelation”, an address given at the Arcane School Conference in New York, May 20, 2000)

For over 75 years, the Arcane School has filled a critical need of esotericists, I believe. In the last fifty years, especially, there has been an expansion of esoteric training throughout the world, in the form of schools that offer methods of spiritual development, and that diversity of approach can only be a positive development. But to my knowledge the Arcane School is unsurpassed in its training in occult meditation techniques. Such a group, interiorly related by the soul, not bound by personality ties, and trained in occult meditation, which means the capacity to use the mind to direct energy and force for spiritual purposes, is surely a great tool for the use of the Hierarchy.

(Extract from “Freedom in Unanimity”, an address given at the Arcane School Conference in London, June 17, 2000)