Initiation: The Perfecting of Man by Annie Besant

We have seen our man of the world taking his first steps deliberately towards the higher life; we have followed him as he sought for a Teacher; we have seen him succeed in the search, when the Teacher was found. Today we have to follow him through the first of the great Initiations, onward along the Path until he reaches the entrance to the fifth.

Now what does this Initiation in the Mysteries mean? Quite frankly, it means an expansion of consciousness. Initiation itself is a certain series of events through which the man passes; actual events and experiences taking a certain amount of time, not a vague indefinite series of feelings, but actual communications and thoughts and actions gone through by a man out of the physical body, in the presence of a great assembly of the Masters. The result is that the man becomes conscious of a new world, as though some great new sense had been given to him which opened to him a new world surrounding him. As a man born blind might know the world by hearing, taste, touch, but if his eyes were opened would see a new world he had not dreamed of stretching around him on every side, so is it with the man who, having passed through the great ceremony of Initiation, comes back into Iris body, into the mortal world of men. Another world is around him, a new phase of consciousness belongs to him. He sees, where before he was blind. He knows, where before he only hoped or guessed.

Of those great ceremonials on this Path there are five. The fifth is that of the Master, with which I do not deal today. Four are the Portals on the Path leading to that final divine Perfection of Manhood. It is to the study of those, then, that we turn. We can take four great events in the Christ-story related in the Gospels which, in the Christian symbolism, exactly represent that which has other names, but not other realities, in the Hindu and Buddhist descriptions of the Path. The first, as I have said, is the Birth of the Christ; the second, the Baptism; the third, the Trans­figuration; the fourth, the Passion. Let us take them one by one, showing what lies under the names, and seeing how they are expressed among our eastern brethren. He in whom the Christ is born, thy new Initiate, is ever spoken of, all the world over, as the “little child”. You remember the phrases you meet with in the Gospel: “Unless ye become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven”. The kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God, is the old name for the Path, and only the “little child” is able to enter there. The new Initiate, the Christ-­child, then, is born into this new life of the Spirit, and the expansion of consciousness he attains consists in his having opened to him, for the first time, that great spiritual world in which all truths are known by Intuition, not by reason­ing; in which the eyes of the Spirit are opened, and direct knowledge of spiritual truths is gained; knowledge becomes intuitive, instead of rational.

When the great ceremonial is over, then it is that, either by his own Teacher or by some high disciple to whom the work is delegated, the new Initiate finds open within him that new consciousness which is gradually to grow, so that he may master the knowledge which at first is only presented to him in a dazzling panorama. Because of that new world into which he is born, the first of the great Initiations is spoken of as “the second birth”, the “birth of the Spirit”. He has become now the twice­-born – born on earth indeed many times, but always born into the life of matter; horn now into the life of the Spirit, which becomes his for evermore. That is the key of knowledge which is said figuratively to be given to the new Initiate; it is a new faculty, a new power, a new sense, which has been gradually developing within him through the time of his training, and now bursts open into usefulness and comes under his control.

Then it is that that inner renunciation is made which you find typified in the three great vows that in the Roman Catholic Church, and in parts of the Anglican, are the vows which give admission to that which they call “the supernatural life”. You know the vows of poverty, of chastity, of obedience. They symbolise a great spiritual truth: the inner renunciation by the new Initiate of the whole of the possessions, physical, mental, which hitherto he may have regarded as his own. Not by spoken words, but by inner renunciation, he gives up all sense of property, all sense of ownership in anything which he is supposed to possess. He may have wealth; it is no longer his – it belongs to the Great Lodge into which he is entering. He may have mental ability; it is no longer his – he must use it only for the service of that to which he has now given him­self. And so from his heart departs all sense of ownership, all sense of property. And by a strange paradox, it is in that moment of utter renunciation that the Kings of the earth, the Wise Men, bring their treasures and pour them out at the feet of the helpless Babe; for where a man wants nothing, everything falls into his hands; and hands that are emptied in the service of the world are ever continually filled, although they never retain. So he not only renounces all possessions, and becomes thereby a steward able to administer in the work that lies before him, but he also renounces all pleasures of sense, the inner meaning of the vow of chastity. He surrenders also his own will, the personal will, the separate will, gives himself wholly to the one Will that is divine, and knows nothing save that Will hereafter, as the determinator of all he thinks, and hopes, and does. Such is the inner meaning of the great triple vow; renunciation of ownership, of all the pleasures of sense, of the separate will.

And so he comes out again into the world. The Wanderer, the Hindu calls him, for he has nothing left to own. He wanders about, in the words of the Lord Buddha, “free as air”, only vowed to the one service, and able to go anywhere where he is needed for the work. And the Buddhist calls him: “He who has entered the stream”. He has stepped into the great stream of which the further side is Masterhood. He can never again step out of it, never again leave it; that stream rolls between the other world and this, and he who has once entered upon it must go to the other shore.

And three weaknesses he must get rid of now before the second Portal may be approached, get rid of them entirely, completely, utterly, for he can never again tread this Path. Ever onward lies his way. They are called three fetters, because they hold him back until they are broken. First, thy sense of Separateness. He must see all around him as part of himself, feel with their joys and with their sorrows, look at things from their standpoint, understand their feelings and be able to sympathise with them judge none, criticise none. They are all himself, part of his own life. The sense of separateness must utterly pass away, for a Saviour of the world must feel identity of nature with all. Hence, no feeling against any as lower than himself, no judgment of any as despicable or contemptible. He sees all as fragments of the One Life, and identifies himself with each in order to help and save.

He must get rid of all sense of Doubt – not that rightful attitude of the mind to be doubtful of that which is doubtful, because at present unproved; that remains ever necessary, else were there danger of credulity and folly – but doubt as to certain great facts in nature. The fact of Reincarnation he cannot doubt – for now he knows his past; the fact of Karma, the great law of action and reaction, he cannot doubt – he can look back and see its working in the past and trace it in the present; the fact of the Existence of the Masters he cannot doubt – he has stood in that wondrous circle when he was initiated; the fact of the Path he cannot doubt – he is treading it. Those make up the doubt that for ever is left behind, the fetter, which might prevent his progress.

The third great fetter is Superstition; the belief that a particular rite or ceremony is necessary for the attainment of the result that by it is sought. He no longer needs the bridge which a ceremony is intended to be to those who cannot yet reach the higher worlds by their own power, by their own knowledge. He realises that the ceremonies of all the religions are equally useful for the adherents of each, but that none are necessary for him. He knows he can no longer depend upon any ceremony; he depends only on the God within. Useful, beautiful, helpful, as they may be to those who have not passed the Portal, their value is over for him, for he sees unveiled the realities of the worlds which they can only symbolise, and to which they bridge the way.

When those three fetters are utterly cast aside, when they no longer have power to hold him back, then he has grown to young manhood, when he is ready to pass the second of the great Initiations. In the Christian drama it is called the Baptism. It is written that the Spirit of God came down upon Jesus, and abode with Him. That is the Christian form; the Spirit comes down, the Spirit of Intuition, and before he can go further, to the third Initiation, he must learn to bring it down, through his enlarged causal and mental bodies, to his physical consciousness, so that it may “abide on him”, and guide him. Hence the Hindu calls him the Builder, the builder of the vehicles that he requires; the Buddhist: “He who shall receive birth, once more”, looking onwards to the goal towards which the aspirant is pressing.

After this Initiation, the man has not to get rid of weaknesses but to add powers, all those superphysical powers which belong to the per­fection of the superphysical bodies the man has now to create in himself, in order that he may more perfectly serve; for that great spiritual world, the intuitional world, is being conquered step by step, and he must be ready to serve in that, as in the mental and the emotional worlds. During the time that he stays in this stage of his progress, he is perfecting all the bodies, building them for the great work in front.

Short, as a rule, is that stage. And then he approaches the third great Portal, that which in the Christian story is called that of Trans­figuration, among the Hindus the Swan, the bird of heaven, the symbol of the recognition of the ‘I’ as one with God. In that the manifest Deity shines out, illuminating for a moment the Path in front, which is to go down into the depths of suffering, which is to lead him through the valley of the shadow of death; for you may remember that in the Gospel drama the Transfiguration on the Mount of Olivet is immediately followed by the steadfast turning of the face to Jerusalem, to the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Calvary, the divine light shining on the darkness, that the human heart may be able to pass on, undaunted.

During the time which intervenes between the third and the fourth Initiations, two more weaknesses have to be got rid of for ever, attraction and repulsion to all outer things. Attraction; you may see in the gospel allegory how the attraction was thrown aside of all that would hold the Christ back from the approach­ing Passion. And you may see how all repulsion had ended, when “the woman who was a sinner” was allowed to approach Him to bathe His feet with her tears, to wipe them with her hair; for attraction and repulsion for all external things must die before the last great trial comes, else would the road remain untrodden, else would the last ordeal be too great. And so the disciple learns in this stage to rise above attractions and repulsions, to cast them aside for ever; they no longer have power to touch him.

He prepares himself for the going to Jerusalem, for the betrayal by one Apostle, the desertion by all, the loneliness in which the last great sufferings have to be faced; for between the third Initiation and the fourth there is that gulf of silence, where the disciple hangs alone in the void with nothing on earth to trust to, nothing in heaven to look to, no friend whose heart can be relied upon – nay, even the vision of the Supreme blurred and dimmed. It is symbolised by the Agony in the Garden, where the human heart cries out “If it be possible, let this cup pass away”, and still the human will arises, strong in renuncia­tion: “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done”.

Onward he passes through the stages of the Passion; sees his beloved flee; sees himself betrayed, denied, rejected, until at last, upon the cross of agony, he is held up for all men to mock at, for all men to despise; sees at last no friend, but only a ring of enemies triumphant; hears the taunt: “He saved others; himself he cannot save” – the deepest truth of all; utters at last the cry of the break­ing heart: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” and in that uttermost loneliness finds himself for evermore; losing the God without him, he finds the God within. For when the great darkness comes down, and nothing can be seen, then arises the light of the Spirit in the human heart, and then through the darkness are heard the final words of triumphant success: “It is finished”. Those are the words that ring out from the assembled hosts of Men made perfect and of Angels, when the great trial is over, and the agony of the cross is past.

Then the fourth great Initiation, that of the Arhat, the Paramahamsa – “He who is beyond the I am He,” – is accomplished; he it is who has become the Christ crucified, and therefore the helper of the world; he has trodden the wine-press alone, and found in himself the strength divine to do it; he then awakens to the exquisite truth that loneliness for him is over for ever, for he has found the One Life and knows it evermore. He has conquered; and the rest of the path is comparatively smooth and easy.

After that fourth Initiation, the Passion, there remains only the Resurrection, the Ascen­sion, which is the Initiation of the Master. And in the hidden life which intervenes between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, the last weaknesses of humanity have to be cast aside. No longer can he desire life in any world, for he is life, and all outer desire passes away; from him also disappears that sense of being in any way ‘I’; he is all, and all forms are equally his own. No longer can he be shaken, for what can shake the life that knows itself? All may go, but all had gone before, and he had not perished. He knows there is nothing that can touch him, nothing that can shake him; he has become invulnerable to every weapon that might wound. He has become as the diamond, which nought may cut nor break.

And so from his eyes fall away the last remnants of the veil of ignorance. From him pass the last remnants of weakness, and he lives for the rest of that life in which he has become the Arhat, free as the birds in the air, his path trackless, his motives not understood; but what matters that to him on whom the light eternal is ever brightly shining? He lives as part of a mighty Order, part of a mighty force; he knows his work, and does it, and knows that the end is sure.

And so he works in this world and in other worlds – for now all worlds are open to him – ­having died to earth he has passed into Eternity, and the light is ever upon him, and the way is open. He only labours that others may share what he has gained, having won that most splendid of all rights, the right to help, whether the help be seen, or recognised, or not. What is that to him? He has risen to that point where all men are open to him, and he can pour down strength, help, know­ledge into all of them from that higher stand­point that now he has reached. And that it is to have become a Christ: to know the identity of nature which makes yours the weakness of the weakest, as well as the strength of the strongest; which makes yours the sin of the guiltiest, as well as the purity of the highest; which makes you share the foul­ness of the criminal, as well as the spotlessness of the saint. That is the true glory of Christ­hood, that the lowest is as loved as the highest, as much part of himself as the loftiest and the purest. For only those know the One Life, who can feel themselves in the worst as well as in the best, to whom all are as himself, all that he possesses theirs to take

THE long steep Path is trodden, and He who has climbed it, who has passed and assimilated all human experiences, He who has nothing more to learn in this world-system, who has faced the agony of isolation, who has passed for the last time through the gateway of death, He stands triumphant, with the door of the fifth great Initiation open before Him, great vistas of glory stretching beyond it. Nirvana, as it is called in the East, that all-embracing consciousness, that extinction of the lower self, and the full expansion of the Spirit, that stretches before Him, all-embracing, all-power­ful, and there break from His lips the triumphant words: “Lo, I am He who liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore”. Master of life and death, freed from every fetter that can bind, all power given to Him in heaven and in earth, He stands the Perfect Man, the cycle of humanity accomplished, the ideal of Divine Manhood fulfilled; in the language of the East, He who is liberated; in that of the West, He who has attained final salvation. The one of whom it was said that the Christ was born in him has now attained the stature of the fulness of Christ. He stands among the many Brethren of whom the Christ is the Firstborn. He has “become a pillar in the temple of my God who shall go out no more”. You catch in Christian and in Hebrew Scriptures from time to time a glimpse of such mighty Figures, as you read in the Hebrew Old Testament of that mighty One who was met by the patriarch Abraham, of whom it was written: “Without father, without mother, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, made like unto the Son of God, He abideth a priest continually”. Such is the mighty triumph of the man who now has reached the Perfection of Humanity; the long past lies behind Him, with its struggles, its failures, its successes. He has been born for the last time; over Him death has no longer power; He has become one of the Masters of the Wisdom; He has gained eternal life.

As He stands there, across the exquisite music which surrounds Him there sounds a sob of pain, a wailing from the earth that lies behind. He hears the cry of humanity in bondage; He sees the gropings of the ignorant, the helpless, and the blind. He sees the suffering that He has transcended, the weakness that in Him has turned to strength, the helplessness that in Him has been crowned into power. His race has cast around Him the only fetters that still have power to bind the enfranchised, the liberated Spirit; they are the fetters of compassion; they are the bonds of love; the old sympathy for the humanity of which He is the flower; for those who still he in darkness and the shadow of death while Light Eternal is radiant around Him. And then He turns back­ward to the world that He had left. Then, instead of casting away the burden of the flesh, He takes it up and bears it still, in order that He may help mankind. The body which was the body of humiliation, and has become the glorified and spiritual body, He still is willing to wear, that He may not lose close contact with the humanity that He loves. And so, holding the mighty consciousness that He has won, but bearing still the burden of the flesh, He remains in the world that He has the right to leave, in touch with the humanity that cries out to Him for help. And so He becomes what we call a Master, a liberated Spirit who still bears the burden of the flesh. He it is, and such as He, rising in grade beyond grade of superhuman wisdom and power – He and such as He form the Occult Hierarchy, which consists of the Guardians of the world. They it is who, remaining with us, remain to help, to guide, to strengthen, to uphold, so that humanity may not be without its Guides along the Path, may not be left to wander unhelped, unaided, in the difficult ways of human evolution.

He has become a Saviour of the world; He has gained the right and the power to help; for just as the sun pours down upon the world his light and life, as all life on earth is stimulated by his rays, as his warmth causes the seed to germinate, enables the plant to build up its substance, gives vigour and strength to the animal, and makes possible the life of man, so do these Suns of the spiritual firmament pour down upon earth Their strength, Their wisdom, cause to germinate all seeds of good in human kind, pour down life and strength that enable us to grow. They do not take our place; They cannot substitute Themselves for us; but by identity of nature, by the height at which They stand above us, They can pour down Their life to stimulate our growth; and our weakness becomes strength by the stimulus of, Their power.