Question 6: How can I contact a representative or legate of the Great School?
Answer 6: The earthly work of the Great School has always been and remains focused upon locating those persons capable of hearing and awakening to the Voice of God Within. In modern terms, the goal of the Great School is providing Teachings and Encouragement useful for awakening the conscious awareness of a seeker sufficiently so he or she can begin to build a ladder and successfully cross the Great Abyss separating mechanical evolution and conscious evolution. No seeker nor tyro (candidate for initiation in an mesoteric school under the sponsorship of the Great School) can initiate nor establish direct and personal contact with the Great School by his or her own efforts, regardless of sincerity. All preliminary contact must be made through the representatives of earthy, mesoteric schools. The leaders of all legitimate and serious mesoteric schools will have physical communication with an incarnating legate of the Great School, though who this person is may well be hidden to all those involved in the day-to-day operation of the preparatory school. It is particularly auspicious for the members of any school when they are interacting with a physically incarnating Initiate. When appropriate, communication between an Initiate of the Great School and those legitimately involved within a sponsored school or path, teacher or student, will occur through the higher cognitive and affective centers functioning through the human brain.
Direct contact between the Great School and an individual student is initiated by the Great School and only occurs after the student is properly prepared by active and serious involvement and participation in one or more of the mesoteric or worldly schools currently extant. Direct contact is not physical, but only occurs through those centers of the human brain called ‘psychic’ by the commonality of humanity.
Question 7: Are the inner Teachings of today’s Great School the same ancient Teachings as those promulgated thousands of years ago?
Answer 7: The teaching methods of the mesoteric branches of the Great School are always pragmatic in nature, being continuously readapted to the cultural and intellectual needs of the times. Therefore, the teachings being presented now cannot be expected to be exactly similar to those presented to past generations of seekers.
Often, both teachers and students populating existing mesoteric schools attempt to restrict their studies to the theoretical and philosophical formulas and diagrams created hundreds and thousands of years previously by earlier seekers. While the information contained within such documents may remain completely accurate, modern understanding will fail since modern students lack sufficient familiarity with the ancient languages, idioms and metaphors assumed by the original seekers. The proper method for utilizing ancient formulas and diagrams begins by studying the basic elements, definitions and cultural underpinning of the language of the creators of these documents and images. Once a seeker has familiarized himself or herself with the language, symbols and important historical events surrounding the formulation of the ancient teaching aids, he or she can attempt to understand and apply the ancient knowledge.
Mesoteric schools are more than repositories for sacred knowledge. These schools are important and necessary experimental crucibles for retesting and expanding the application of ancient formulas and doctrines by assuring that they are consistent with new scientific and mathematical discoveries. The Initiates are well aware of the fact that many of their previous discoveries and speculations arose from deep explorations into the inner mind, explorations beyond the processing abilities of the serial conscious awareness. They are also aware that secondary verification of some of their findings about the material world would have to await better measuring instruments and mathematics. Also, the Order and School recognize that many occurrences now called psychic will someday be shown to arise out of the operation of physical matter. The Great School teaches that ‘knowledge to be useful, must remain fluid and expansive.’
However, this should not be taken to mean that the majority of the knowledge possessed by the Great School is incomplete. The basic principles operating within life were established thousands of years ago and continue unchanged to this day. The truths that have been taught for many thousands of years, especially the details and efforts which are necessary to take during one’s travels upon the ancient path for attaining conscious evolution and spiritual growth, remain just as vibrant and meaningful today as they were 40,000 years ago.
This brings us to the close of this lesson. When I had students, my promise to each was: ‘give me an hour of your time each week and I promise you a fuller and more remarkable life.’
Hopefully, you are beginning to see that attaining to the first stages of “making a soul” requires concerted efforts to hear, absorb and process knowledge about the Work. Being sloppy in speech and mind is unacceptable. For us to generate mutual and pragmatic understanding of the Work requires agreement in the proper employment of specific words and phrases. This is why it is important to listen or read new material with what the ancients called, “silent mind.”
If you listen as a mundane person does all day and all night, that is, with “monkey chatter mind,” you will make no progress in the Work; but will remain within you own biased and imaginary world of “waking sleep.” As the old Zen Master demonstrated to the student during a Tea Ceremony . . . your cup of knowledge, or mind, can only be filled with Work Ideas after emptying it of imaginary and unverified thoughts and feelings.