PREVIOUS | HOME | TOC | ABR | NEXT
One of the points which it is essential that students should grasp is the deeply esoteric fact that this Antahkarana is built through the medium of a conscious effort within consciousness itself, and not just by attempting to be good, or to express goodwill, or to demonstrate the qualities of unselfishness and high aspiration. Many esotericists seem to regard the treading of the Path as the conscious effort to overcome the lower nature and to express life in terms of right living and thinking, love and intelligent understanding. It is all that, but it is something far more. Good character and good Spiritual aspiration are basic essentials. But these are taken for granted by the Master Who has a disciple under training; their foundation and their recognition and development are the objectives upon the Path of Probation.
To build the Antahkarana is to relate the three divine aspects. This involves intense mental activity; it necessitates the power to imagine and to visualise, plus a dramatic attempt to build the Lighted Way in mental substance. This mental substance is—as we have seen—of three qualities or natures, and the bridge of living light is a composite creation, having in it:
It is essentially, however, an activity of the integrated and dedicated personality. Esotericists must not take the position that all they have to do is to await negatively some activity by the Soul which will automatically take place after a certain measure of Soul contact has been achieved, and that consequently and in time this activity will evoke response both from the personality and the Triad. This is not the case. The work of the building of the Antahkarana is primarily an activity of the personality, aided by the Soul; this in time evokes a reaction from the Triad. There is far too much inertia demonstrated by aspirants at this time.
Therefore, self-will, desire and those intelligent activities which are dually motivated are seen and recognised as only the lower expression of the three divine aspects, and the effort is to express these in terms of the Soul and not, as hitherto, in terms of a dedicated and rightly oriented personality. This becomes possible in its true sense only when the focus of the life is in the mental vehicle and the head as well as the heart is becoming active. In this process, the stages of character building are seen as essential and effective, and are willingly and consciously undertaken. But—when these foundations of good character and intelligent activity are firmly established—something still higher and more subtle must be erected on the sub-structure.
Knowledge-wisdom must be superseded by intuitive understanding; this is, in reality, inclusive participation in the creative activity of divinity. The divine idea must become the possible ideal, and this ideal must become unfolded and manifested in substance upon the Physical plane. The creative thread, now somewhat ready, must be brought into conscious functioning and activity.
Desire-love must be interpreted in terms of divine attraction, involving the right use or misuse of energies and forces. This process puts the disciple in touch with divinity as a progressively revealed Whole. The part, through the magnetic development of its own nature, comes into touch gradually with all that IS. The disciple becomes aware of this sum total in increasingly vivid expansions of consciousness, leading to initiation, realisation and identification. These are the three stages of initiation. The consciousness thread, in cooperation with the creative thread and the life thread, awakens to a fully aware process of participation in the divine creative Plan—a Plan which is motivated by love and intelligently carried forward.
Direction-Will (which are words describing the orientation produced by the understanding of the two processes of knowledge-wisdom and desire-love) must produce the final orientation of the personality and the Soul, fused and blended and at-one, towards the freedom of the Spiritual Triad; then the conscious attempt to use these three energies eventuates in creating the Antahkarana upon the Mental plane. You will note that at this early stage of the process I am emphasising the words "orientation" and "attempt." They simply indicate the final control of substance by the initiate.
366