What is the place of the White Brotherhood in the evolution of consciousness throughout history, and their place in the future evolution of consciousness?Just who are these spiritual helpers?
The Guide: All the separated beings – consciousness aspects that are split off from the whole – need assistance and guidance of those who are not split off, whose consciousness is connected with the all-consciousness. This is what is often, in spiritual literature, called White Brotherhood, which is just a name. We might also call these beings who have not split off or who are no longer split off, and who are therefore incorporated into the evolutionary plan.
This plan aims to reunite all split-off consciousness with the all-consciousness. And what you refer to as the White Brotherhood are beings who are connected with the all-consciousness, and who are therefore in truth and in love and in wisdom and in reality, and are therefore equipped to help. They belong to a greater plan, a plan of such tremendous orderliness and organization and beautiful structure, and yet the structure is a flowing one.
It is not antithetical to flow. It is not in the duality where structure is rigid and flow is unstructured. These are the dualities that confront mankind in its own split. But in reality, structure, order and flow are one. So these beings are inner structure of immense order, of a hierarchy that is of such harmonious beauty and meaning and significance, where every being fulfills his task in a perfectly fitted and meaningful and significant way.
Beings who belong to this greater order can at times incarnate, and do at times incarnate. Many times they spread their influence from a state that is not in the material body, and the influences are strong. Without these influences, mankind could not, by itself, achieve the goal. Individuals could not accomplish their tasks, because the temptations and the power of the negative forces within the man’s soul are too strong to overcome the difficulties, without such assistance.
However, the weight should not ever be put on other beings, although their existence is a reality. It always has been a reality for mankind and always will be a reality for mankind. Nevertheless, mankind is developing toward a state of maturity – it is not yet by any means mature, but it is going in that direction – where man can aim to make the connection with his innermost being. The spiritual helpers – the beings of the superior order, of what might be called White Brotherhood, or whatever name you may give it – help in that purpose, as I help you. And yet, the weight should not be on the personality; it should be on the contact with the innermost self.
In the history of mankind, these beings have always played a role – a very important role. In former times, they manifested as – and were called – the gods. When man worshipped gods, it was really nothing but higher-developed beings who manifested, either directly or through human instrumentations, as spiritual helpers and guides.
They were revered as gods because mankind, in its development then, was still so disconnected from the inner center of divine reality that everything was projected outward. Even the actual outward manifestation was taken as the, shall we say, salvation. Then, as mankind gradually, little by little, grew throughout the ages, gods were discontinued, and through the help of the higher teachers, it was realized there is but one God, the God that permeates all beings and all existence and all particles of existence.
The divine consciousness is to be found in everything that is, and it is not peculiarly, in an isolated way, in certain beings. This was a giant step in the evolutionary scale. This however, did not mean that the spiritual helpers ceased to be. They were given different names. Their function was the same, however: to help, to guide, to infiltrate the separated material world, in its delusions and in its illusions, with truth. These truths were always and invariably diluted and distorted. And it needed forever a new influx of spirit to set it straight.
Every religion that started out as a divine revelation that held its truth – that was, at particular periods, relevant and important – became distorted. It became distorted either by misunderstanding or because something that was relevant once or important or necessary at certain stages was rigidly maintained as an inflexible truth in periods when this was absolutely obsolete, and therefore became destructive.
Thus, all orthodoxies have lost contact with reality. And new religious leaders, either in the flesh or out of the flesh, had to come. Mankind – the orthodoxies – became antagonistic to the reformers or innovators who merely were concerned with bringing another facet of the truth that became more relevant.
Perhaps you can conceive of mankind’s development and make an analogy with an individual development. I have often made this analogy in the past. Take, for example, the child. A small child has to learn certain very basic things – the laws, the rules, the topics themselves – geared to the mentality of that child. Now, as this child grows into a bigger child, these topics are obsolete. They have no longer any meaning for the age the child has reached. It needs a new curriculum. It needs new topics. It needs to expand. Its mind is capable of absorbing more. And it becomes increasingly more capable of taking more responsibility and of seeing things in new ways.
If such a child were insistent on maintaining what it learned in the first grade, when it becomes older and older and finally goes into the state when he should be in the university, his development would be arrested. It is the same way with religious organizations which want to maintain verities that were once functional, but that now arrest development at the present state of development.
What you call the White Brotherhood are the beings in the flesh. They exist – rarely, but they do exist – but if they do exist, they’re often not recognized, for they seldom give themselves airs, if ever. They are like all other people. They even have their own tasks, in their own spiritual development, because coming into the flesh creates a dimness that may bring out forgotten, residual, unpurified matter. So there is usually a task, in that respect, connected.
But most higher teachers do not manifest in the flesh. They manifest indirectly, through their influences on man’s psyche, through inspiring man in a more-or-less strong way. And they will always exist, until mankind has reached its final state of unity.
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