THE DISCIPLES OF THE MASTERS by Clement Acton Griscom

(Clement Acton Griscom, Jr. was members of the Theosophical Society in America and editor of The Theosophical Quarterly revue, and in this article he summarizes the theosophical information that was given about these special humans.)

Disciples of the Great Brotherhood of Masters divide them selves into two general grades: those who know themselves to be such and those who do not. The latter class is naturally very much the more numerous, for it includes all devout and religious minded people who are trying consciously to live a higher life, who believe in one of the many recognized religions, but who, as yet, do not have conscious knowledge of the Lodge.

Such persons may follow a Master, just as the Christian follows Jesus of Nazareth, and they may reach a very considerable degree of attainment before acquiring knowledge of the actual constitution of the spiritual world, its hierarchical character, their status therein, and the relation of their master thereto. This, after all, is unimportant until the point is reached where lack of such knowledge would be a barrier to further progress.

The first class of disciples, — those who know themselves to be such, — rank all the way from the ordinary man, who becomes a member of The Theosophical Society, who learns about the Masters, and about disciple ship, and who enters upon the Path in sincerity and earnestness, to spiritual beings of the greatest moral elevation and of tremendous power, who are but little short of the full stature of the Masters themselves. Of these latter all that need be said is that we do not know enough to distinguish between them and the full Masters. They are so far beyond us in development, in exalted character, in knowledge and in power, that they melt into the great mass of spiritual life that we can contact, but cannot segregate and classify.

There are presumably seven great divisions of these disciples, each with its appropriate powers and functions, each marked by some noteworthy achievement in self-conquest and attainment. We shall have to be content with the statement that the utmost limit of development that we can really understand anything about at all, would refer to the two, or at most, the three lower stages.

To give some idea of what perfection means, there is a tradition that at a certain point along the Path there is an initiation in which the candidate sinks into a deep and prolonged meditation, during which all outer functions cease. If there remain anywhere in his entire nature a single atom of selfishness, self-interest, or self-will, he passes on to other planes of existence and never awakes in, or can again come back to, this world. It is not a question of conflict, or of will; he has no choice; the Law works automatically. Fortunately this test is not undergone until the disciple is a very great person indeed; so it need not trouble us.

Real discipleship, or what in the East is called chelaship, begins when a man enters into conscious communication with his Master. Previous to that he is a lay-chela, or a probationary chela, or, to use Western terms, he is a “would-be" disciple. A Christian Saint may or may not be a real disciple in this technical sense. It depends upon whether or not he actually has acquired the powers or faculties which enable conscious communion with a Master to take place. It is a question of fact, not a question of judgment or opinion, and people cannot judge of it unless they too have the same faculty. Until then they may have beliefs or opinions about the status of others, but they cannot have knowledge. This theme must be elaborated, for it is the essence of discipleship.

First of all it should be distinctly understood that, while I have spoken of the faculty or power that enables one to communicate with the Masters, the question is one of character, or of moral elevation, rather than one of acquiring a faculty or power. The faculty or power is the result of spiritual attainment, the reward of self-conquest, the first great goal of the religious life. It would be a great mistake not to keep this basic idea in mind in all that is said about the mechanics or descriptive side of discipleship. Discipleship is a life, a state of being or becoming something which we were not before, and the means used in this “becoming" is the conquest of the lower self. The lower self, the natural man, the old Adam, cannot be a disciple. We have got to get rid of this lower self and become, to some extent, our inner, real self, before discipleship is a possibility. It is, in other words, the inner self which is the disciple.

Now the lower self and the inner self can, and always do, at this stage, exist simultaneously. That is what makes the struggle with which we are all so familiar, and the “peace which passes understanding,” is the surcease from this struggle, which can only come when the lower self is entirely eliminated as such, and we are our inner selves alone. This contest for mastery lasts a long time, for it covers the period from when the first awakening of spiritual life takes place, through all the stages of disciple ship, until the lower self is entirely dominated, purified and transmuted, or, in a word, until it has ceased to exist as such, although the forces and powers which were in it have become a valuable and essential part of the inner self.

It is said that the complete process takes at least seven incarnations as a minimum; but in order that this should not be discouraging to aspirants, it can be pointed out that anyone sincerely in earnest at the present time has probably already spent several lives in the effort and is reaping the benefit now of previous attainment. The time element is not fixed; each plane of consciousness has its own time standard; there is no limit to the possible shortening of the period required.

Another important point to bear in mind is the relation between the lower self and the inner self or soul. In previous articles in this series it was suggested that the general object of evolution, at this point in the cosmic scale, and that means during this Manvantara, or the manifestation of the worlds of this chain, was the acquirement of self-consciousness. In order to become self-conscious the soul had to see itself reflected in a mirror — its personality — in which it could observe and study its own powers and gifts and qualities as they functioned in all the departments of human life. It therefore, slowly and painfully created the personality and trained and developed and “worked it up," until it was capable of manifesting something at least of every power the soul itself possessed, consciousness, will, desire, mind, emotions, and so forth.

With all these possessions, and many others, it endowed the personality out of its own stock; and in order to make this copy of itself complete, it also gave the personality freedom to choose between good and evil, or free-will. The creative, formative process takes half of an entire period of manifestation, and as it developed, the soul gradually learned to see itself as it really was, to see itself as others would see it, to see its powers and functions operating normally and also — alas — operating perversely and abnormally. For the personality, endowed with consciousness, a part of the consciousness of the soul, — possessing powers and abilities to do many things, and also possessing free-will, soon went off the track, as it were, and began to violate and disobey the laws of life.

I do not know whether it was necessary for this to happen or not. It is quite possible that the soul could not have acquired full self-consciousness without a personal and direct experience and therefore knowledge of evil; or it may be that disobedience was not a necessary experience. There is no doubt, how ever, that the rebellion of the personality went much further than necessary, much further than the universal plan contemplated, and that, there fore, evolution on earth is many hundreds of thousands of years behind the schedule.

To go back to the soul, therefore, it gradually gained the object of the whole evolutionary process, self-consciousness. Then the outward tide of expansion stopped and began to recede. This portion of the universe reached its uttermost outer or "lower" expression and began to in draw; the path began to lead back home; the souls of men, having gained self-consciousness, turned toward their divine source, enriched by their newly acquired gift. They had to undo what they had done; they had to reabsorb the forces and powers with which they had endowed their personalities, had to get back into themselves this personality which each had created for its use.

Discipleship as we know it is only a stage on this journey, and is of special interest to us because it is the stage we have reached and the next thing we have to do. I have said that it can be done in seven lives, but that does not really give a true picture of the general process, for the great mass of mankind will take hundreds, if not thousands of lives to complete this stage, and some may never do it at all. By this I mean that some personalities become so bad, so thoroughly wicked, so destitute of any redeeming virtue or grace, that the souls which are responsible for them are forced to give up the task and to cut themselves off definitely and forever. These souls have failed to accomplish the task of this Manvantara, and have to try it all over again at the next period of universal manifestation.

The personalities which are so abandoned by their souls, are the recruits of the Black Lodge, and live for a longer or shorter time according to the accumulated force and vitality which was stored up in them at the time of separation. They will gradually disintegrate in the course of a few incarnations, or they may last as powers of darkness and evil until the very end of the Manvantara; then, however, they will cease to be, for the planes of existence upon which they can function, themselves will cease. Immortality, therefore, when we are talking of it from the standpoint of the personality is not a certain thing at all. It has to be gained or earned by effort, by sacrifice, by obedience.

There are many soulless men and women in the world, particularly at a time like this, when materialism is rampant, and when selfishness and self-indulgence and self-seeking are the only mainsprings of action in so many people. It is said, however, that the soul never gives up the effort to save its personality so long as there remain in the personality a single spark of unselfishness or of aspiration or of good, which, by careful fanning, can be developed into a flame that will consume the evil.

The Soul issues forth from the Divine; it is a ray from the Oversoul, and its ultimate destiny is to be absorbed back into the Divine. Its path thither is through the Master who is at the head of its ray. Therefore, union with one’s Master is the goal of every soul, of every disciple. For discipleship is only a name given to that part of this great agelong journey of the soul back to its divine source, which immediately concerns us. It does not immediately concern most human beings; they are not ready for it. That is one of the facts of life which it is wise for the beginner to understand, as it will save him much misguided effort, much disappointment, much discouragement.

Most people do not want to be disciples, do not want to try to be disciples. Only a few do. It is they who concern us and for whom this article is written, for whom this magazine is published, for whom The Theosophical Society was founded, for whom the Theosophical Movement is continued from century to century. I do not mean that the general mass of mankind do not concern us. They do. They must be our perpetual concern until they too become disciples and successful disciples; but that is remote, and there is comparatively little we can do for them until we gain power and wisdom by becoming successful disciples ourselves. The only effective way to help others is to complete our own regeneration as fast as possible.

That is another fact to be borne in mind. I do not mean that there is nothing we can do for others until we are successful disciples; that would be going much too far. Every one can and must help those who are below him in the evolutionary scale; this sort of service is a law of life, one of the basic rules of discipleship itself; but, none the less, effective service means knowing how to serve and having the power to serve; therefore a chief duty of the disciple is to acquire this necessary knowledge and power.

Previous to this, while our intentions are excellent and the law takes them into account, our actual performance is just as likely to do harm as good, and the beneficent and compassionate law must come in to correct and readjust the harm, and prevent our well-intentioned stupidities from doing real injury to those we try to serve. There is a period when it is inevitable that we lose all self-confidence and are afraid to do anything at all in the direction of helping others.

As an analogy, take the up-to-date, thoroughly modern settlement workers, full of a genuine and altruistic desire to help others, and also absolutely certain of just how to do it; for have they not taken courses in philanthropy and economics and social science! They are full of theories and preconceptions. Therefore the first thing they need to learn is that they really know nothing and that many of the things they spend their lives doing are positively harmful to those they are so earnestly trying to benefit. It is impossible to make 999 out of a 1,000 understand this. They see hungry people, and it is difficult for them to conceive of its ever being unwise to feed them. They quote the precepts: Feed the hungry, Visit the sick. Comfort the sorrowing. It is a complicated point, and perhaps I can explain it best by another analogy of an opposite implication.

Take farming; it is one of the oldest, and is the largest profession in the world. It is also one in which habit, custom, and hereditary and antiquated methods have had their freest sway. Until quite recent years a remarkably small amount of intelligence was spent upon the problem. The attitude of the practical farmer was that what had been was good enough. Now we have agricultural schools and colleges teaching scientific farming, many good books on the subject, and a rapidly growing mass of knowledge which is at the disposal of those willing to learn.

Most farmers are still content to continue their old methods and they scoff at the new knowledge and the book-taught tiller of the soil. An occasional one, however, realizes his ignorance and begins to investigate. He soon finds that he is doing nearly everything wrong. If possible, the sensible thing for him is to stop work and to go to school until he learns how to work effectively, for otherwise he may continue to rob his soil of necessary elements that it will take years of expensive work to replace. He corresponds to the newly awakened, would-be disciple. He knows enough to know that he does not know enough to do good work: therefore for a time, until he learns more, he confines his energies to the acquisition of knowledge; and, as he begins to understand the few fundamental principles, he tentatively and with care and prayers, makes his first timid experiments, gaining confidence with growing experience.

Now because all this is true and a right procedure for the exceptional farmer, we cannot make the general remark that all farming ought to stop until all farmers have mastered their subject. It is much better for the great mass of farmers to continue doing their best, with their ignorant and wasteful old methods, than to do nothing at all. So with the social workers.

The exceptional one capable of acquiring better methods should be told the truth and be made to realize his ignorance, and the harm he is doing, and that he should cease active work until he has had his training. But at the same time it is quite right and proper, and in accordance with Divine Law, that the majority of such workers should continue to do their best and to carry out their ideals, even if those ideals are limited and their methods are faulty.

Both things are true and right, and they are not contradictory, as at first sight would appear to be the case. The spiritual life is full of just such paradoxes, for we are dealing constantly with successive depths of knowledge which make things which are right and true for one man, not right and true for another. The only final criterion is that each should be true to his vision of what is right. That is all the Universe and all the Spiritual Powers thereof, expect or require of anyone.

The sign of discipleship is ability to communicate with one's master. It must not be thought, however, that the problem is solved when this power is attained. It marks only the beginning of discipleship. There is a very long and arduous road to travel after that point is reached.

Fortunately for all of us we reach that point, not by any merit of our own, but by the divine com passion of the masters themselves, long before we are really purified, long before we have really mastered our lower selves, long before we have completed our self-conquest.

The masters are much more anxious to reach us than we are to reach them, and when they see a human being making even an initial effort, beginning to try to live according to his ideals, incorrect as those ideals may be and usually are, they at once differentiate that person from the general mass, and begin to give him individual treatment, care, and help.

They guide his life and his circumstances so as to nourish and water the little shoot of spiritual growth which is so precious. This does not mean that that person will have an easy, sheltered life from then on. It often means just the contrary. The masters are more interested in our Souls, than in our personalities. This point cannot be stated too often; we need to repeat it, in different terms, until it becomes a fixed part of our consciousness. A real belief in it, a full realization of it and of its implications, will save us much needless confusion, rebellion, and pain.

We resent suffering; we resent unpleasant circumstances; we resent hardships and discomforts; and we are very likely to discharge this resentment against Providence, against the divine powers which we believe to be guiding our lives — unless we have a very clear understanding of the fact that it is we, not the divine powers, who are responsible for all our troubles, and for the complications of life, and that they do their very best to help straighten out these complications as quickly and as smoothly as possible. Resentment and rebellion on our part are as foolish as they would be on the part of a man who swallowed a lot of typhoid fever germs, and then blamed the doctor who came to tend him, for his fever, disabilities, and pain. The doctor could give morphine until the patient would not suffer, but he does not do so because he knows it would retard the recovery, which he wants.

So the masters can manipulate events and even control our reactions to them, so as to prevent our suffering, but it would be harmful and not helpful, so they do not do it. But just as the doctor will give a man in intense pain a hypodermic injection, to tide him over a crisis, so the masters will, at times, give us help long before we deserve, or have earned it, in order to help our poor struggling Soul in its ceaseless conflict with the lower self.

Thus, long before we have reached the actual spiritual stage of discipleship, long before we have the true gift of inner vision, long before we have built up that portion of our inner self which is the normal means of communication, the masters will use their powers to come down to our own level and render us some aid of which we stand in need.

This type of communication, which takes a great variety of forms, while frequent in fact and perfectly genuine as a spiritual experience, is essentially different from the true and normal communication which exists between master and disciple; and it is governed by the very complicated law of reactions which must be carefully noted and guarded against by the master who gives the help.

Very often, no matter how desirous he may be, our condition is such that he cannot safely do anything of which we can be conscious. It is said that it is a constant crucifixion for the masters to be so infinitely desirous of helping us, and to have to stand by and see our misunderstanding, our confusion, our ignorance, our pain, and yet not be able to respond to our prayers in any way that we can understand — because to do so would actually make things worse instead of better.

The two or three lower stages of real discipleship are the only ones of which we can now get even a glimmer of comprehension; we have not entered upon them as yet; they are what we are working towards, but have not reached. Still, just because we are working towards them, we are intensely interested in them, and wish to know all we can about them and the rules and laws which govern those fortunate and rare individuals who have reached them.

The devotional books of all religions are efforts to set forth the Way towards true discipleship, but we are told that there is no essential difference between these rules and the rules of discipleship itself save in the degree of perfection in which they must be lived. Take one example; — meditation. The neophyte is told he must meditate; as he progresses, the length of time he must devote to this necessary spiritual exercise is lengthened and lengthened; the actual disciple, of the higher grades at any rate, must be in a state of constant meditation, whatever that may mean. So too with Recollection.

We must practice recollection, at first at our prayer time, then more often; then as often as we can; but the disciple must maintain an attitude of continuous recollection that has no breaks, not only from morning until night, but day and night, forever. Needless to say that he does not do either of these two things with our ordinary human faculties, for that would be impossible; he does them with parts of his nature, or with latent faculties, which his manner of life has aroused, and with which the ordinary man has such slight acquaintance that he frequently denies their existence altogether.

Discipleship, as has been often said, is becoming something, and one of the things we become is a being capable of doing more perfectly those things we are all trying to do. As Pope Boniface said: Holiness consists not in doing heroic things, but in doing common things heroically well. The Rule of Life of a disciple, therefore, is not essentially different in kind from the Rule of Life of a would-be disciple; it differs only in degree; in the perfection in which it is lived. That is very fortunate, for it means that every effort we make now is training us in the most direct and positive manner, in just those qualities and virtues which we must have to reach our ultimate goal. Nothing is wasted, no effort, no self-conquest, no sacrifice, however small.

Those who have read the earlier articles in this series will remember what was said about the hierarchical system; that each individual is "on the ray” of a master. That means, among other things, that they have — the master and the disciple-certain common possessions. Each also has other possessions which both do not share. The master has an infinite range of powers and qualities which the disciple cannot reach, and the disciple has a lower nature, with its powers and qualities, which is his own creation and for the making of which he alone is responsible.

The point where the two natures merge is above the plane of the personality, is in fact in the manasic principle. This is not easy to explain, for various reasons, one of which is that we have no English words for these things, and another, that we are talking about states of consciousness, or activities of the Soul itself, which are outside of the range of ordinary experience. Put in another way, it is said that the manas of the disciple is merged into the manas of the master; the master therefore knows instantly everything the disciple says or does or thinks. The converse, however, is not true.

The manas of the master is not merged into the manas of the disciple; the disciple contacts only so much of the manas of the master as can be contained in his type and character of vehicle. His general purity and progress determines this. He therefore knows very little of what the master does, says and thinks. But he does know that little; there is a very real identification of consciousness, which becomes increasingly widened in scale as the disciples advance along the Path.

True communication with one’s master, therefore, only becomes possible after this identification of manas has begun, and it can only begin when the disciple has equipped himself in many different ways. One of the things he must have accomplished is such purification of his mind that he no longer thinks thoughts, he is no longer capable of thinking thoughts, that would be in dissonance with the master's nature, for any thought he thinks will instantly be in the master’s consciousness also.

Another thing, — he must have so trained himself in obedience that he is no longer capable of disobedience, for disobedience would mean a rending of the nature, a house divided against itself. Of course he must have acquired such control of his lower nature, — no, that is not it, — he must have so changed and transmuted his lower nature, that in one sense he no longer has any lower nature left; in other words, he must be so good and pure that he is incapable of the lower desires and passions. He must be safe in all those respects. Of course there are whole ranges of less base but still ignoble activities which are no longer possible for him; they will be evident if we simply catalogue the list of human faults.

It must not be understood that the disciple, in these lower stages, has already made a complete conquest of his lower nature, and is no longer capable of sin; but it does mean that very real and substantial progress must have been made in that direction. The disciple can fall from his high estate so long as he has any personality left at all, and when he has none left, he is no longer a disciple, but has “attained,” and enters a new cycle of progress beyond our ken. Even the very highest disciple can fall back, and so very terrible are the consequences of such a fall that the utmost precautions of divine wisdom are used to prevent it.

One rule often referred to is that a disciple must have shown, by actual practical experience, his ability to live according to the rules of a higher degree before he is endowed with the rank, prerogatives and powers of that degree. That means that until life has tested and tempted him in all fundamental ways, he cannot be trusted; — not because the masters are unwilling to take the risk, but because they are unwilling that he should take the risk.

It stands to reason that if a disciple reaches the point where his consciousness is merged with the consciousness of the master, even in the smallest degree, there comes to him a great influx of power, of force, of knowledge, which is really the master’s and not his own. But he and the master are both responsible for the use which is made of increases of power. The master cannot afford to have his force degraded or misused, while the disciple now has a double responsibility, his innate responsibility for his own spiritual welfare, and his newly acquired, his hardly earned privilege, of being responsible for some of his master's spiritual essence, which has been poured into him.

Woe to the disciple who fails under this glorious burden. He has proved himself unworthy of his divine heritage, and Karma wreaks a terrible vengeance. He falls to depths which correspond to the heights from which he fell, and it takes him long ages of suffering and effort to struggle back to the point-he had reached before. Therefore discipleship, with its responsibilities, is a very serious thing and not to be lightly undertaken. There must be no turning back, once the hand has been set to the plow, and the first furrow turned.

The Eastern books are full of descriptions of the “powers” which are the concomitant of discipleship, and those who are curious about this phase of the subject can read about them in such a book as Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Not so much stress is laid on this side of the subject in Christian literature, and the Western scholars have not studied the psychology of discipleship as has been done so thoroughly in the East. But still, Christian records are full of accounts of the “miraculous" powers of the saints, and when analyzed it will be seen that these powers do not differ from those treated of from such a different point of view and called by such different names, in the books of the East.

Clairaudience and clairvoyance are common, and normal marks of discipleship. When the soul of man is no longer “cribbed, cabined, and confined" by its personality, it simply cannot help having these powers on the higher planes of consciousness, for they are part of its very nature, but they may find expression farther down. You do not have to cultivate these powers, and you should not try to do so. They are innate, natural functions of the Soul, and when the time is ripe they cannot help coming into activity.

It will not be a healthy and normal activity if they are developed, as they can be, before the rest of the nature has also been developed to the corresponding degree. The moral nature in particular should have reached the proper level, for otherwise these powers, which can function on several planes, will awaken to a dangerous and pernicious activity

Anyone who cares to do so can find examples among Christian Saints and mystics of any, or of all the phenomena described by Eastern psychologists. The laws of the universe are quite the same whether in India or in Europe.

The really important thing about these “powers” is that their development increases one’s ability to help others. For the first time in the aspirant's career, he is beginning to acquire the ability really to render effective and intelligent service. He commences to understand himself, and through that understanding to understand others. His sympathy is aroused. I do not mean his emotions, or his pity; I mean the real quality of sympathy, — the ability to put himself in another’s place and to under stand what that other is experiencing, and therefore what he needs. His power truly to love also awakes.

He gradually acquires real knowledge of human nature and of the constitution of man. He sees life, for the first time, in proper perspective; he can give circumstances and events their true place in the table of values, and be free himself from the glamour of worldly possessions. In a word, he begins to accumulate a little fund of wisdom, and so is equipped to handle life and people with growing hope that he will not do more harm than good. He acquires the “gift of tongues” and the “healing fire," which does not mean the ability to speak all languages and to cure diseases, but the ability to discern what is really the matter with a sick soul, and to announce the remedy, to speak to its condition, and to bind and heal its wounds. The disciple’s privilege is the privilege of service, there fore his gifts are those powers which enable him to render more and more effective service.

(Theosophical Quarterly, 1916, vol. 14, pp. 64-69, 186-190)