Students must not proceed on the assumption that in the process of externalization there is a general moving forward of the entire Hierarchy onto the physical plane. Such is not the case. The whole effort is as yet (and will be for some time) experimental, and only a few of the Ashrams and a certain number of the trained disciples and initiates will be involved at first. It still remains to be proved how ready humanity is for this attempt. The Christian concept of the return of a triumphant Christ, coming in the clouds of heaven to Jerusalem, there to reign for a thousand years, is true in one way and utterly false as to design, location and method. Christ will return; the Jerusalem referred to (literally “the place of peace”) is not the chief city of a small country called Palestine or the Holy Land; the word is simply symbolic of a peaceful world – a world which, through its own self-initiated efforts, has attained a general quietude and has acquired a certain measure of right human relations. His coming in the air might be interpreted literally to mean that at the right time He will come by plane from the place on earth where He has been for many generations, watching over the sons of men; the words “every eye shall see Him” might mean that, by the time He comes, television will have been perfected and He will then be seen, by its means, from even the most distant spot on earth. To the orthodox Christian, the above will sound like the rankest blasphemy, but the question immediately arises: Why should it be blasphemy for Him to use modern methods? Whilst on earth before, He conformed to the customs of His time. “Riding on the clouds of Heaven” may sound more picturesque and apparently require a greater expression of divinity, but why use such a means when a plane will equally well fulfil the purpose and carry the prophecy to completion? A great deal of reactionary stupidity will have to be eliminated before He can come, and it will be as the new generation assert their hold over human thinking. But it is not the event or the stage of Christ’s appearing with which we are now dealing, but with the preparatory stages and with the task of fitting the world (which means, in this case, preparing the human consciousness) for the presence in physical activity and manifestation of the Hierarchy – in full force and with its esoteric equipment.

In the early stages, the task of preparation is arduous and difficult. Things will be relatively easy for the senior Members of the Hierarchy when They find the right time for Their appearance. In the meantime, the world disciples have to take the world – as it is at this time – and slowly and laboriously instill the new ideas, incite to better methods of human relations, help dissipate the aftermath of war, hold before the eyes of distraught humanity the new vision of hope and of spiritual enlightenment, offset the scheming of reactionary and conservative politicians and churchmen, and teach the youth of the age the new modes of living, indicating to them the better values, and thus slowly and gradually bringing in the new order.

Among the seven major Ashrams and their subsidiary and affiliated Ashrams only a few have undertaken to send their disciples and their initiates at this time to carry out this initiatory task. The three major Ashrams so engaged are:

• The Ashram of the Master K.H. This is the second ray Ashram and – with that of the Master M. – the most powerful in the Hierarchy; it controls the building forces.
• The first ray Ashram, that of the Master M. He is the custodian of the principle of synthesis, the work of which is that of organic fusion, and this is ever needed to supplement that of the building agents.
• The Ashram of a Master on the fifth ray, the custodian, among other things, of science and of that which relates and brings into expression the duality of spirit-matter. This Ashram has an important part to play in the work of preparation, for it is through the scientific use of energy that the world will be rebuilt and the factual nature of the Hierarchy be proved.

Through the pressure of education (second ray energy), through the growth of the concept of synthesis (first ray energy), and through the correct use of energy (fifth ray energy), this world can be brought into a condition of preparedness for the externalization of the Hierarchy.

The efforts of the disciples coming from the Ashram of K.H. will be largely directed towards the general public, but they will work primarily through educators in all countries and through those concerned with the teaching of religion. Educators touch those preparing for all types of activity. The task will be necessarily slow, particularly at first, but the second ray endowment of these disciples (as that of all disciples on this ray) is a steady persistence which brooks no discouragement, even when discouragement makes its appearance. Such disciples refuse to discontinue their effort or to change the spiritually-ordained plans, even when the obstacles to accomplishment seem insuperable. Disciples will come deliberately into incarnation and will take office in institutions of higher learning and in the churches, and will exert such pressure that old and obsolete methods, ancient outworn theologies and selfish and competitive techniques will be ended and the sciences of cooperation, of right human relations and of correct adjustment to life through meditation and right vision will supersede the present methods of learning; this will lead to no damage to the acquisition of academic knowledge or the right apprehension of spiritual truth. The vision will be different and the goals of a higher order, but the best that is now taught along the lines of art, religion and science will still be available; they will, however, be presented with a greater enlightenment and a better emphasis. They will meet the people’s need. The churches, being today headed towards failure and lacking vision, will eventually and inevitably crash upon the rocks of unwarranted and abused authority, yet out of the wreckage will emerge those true and spiritually enlightened churchmen who – with vision and sure knowledge, free from dogmatism and hating ecclesiastical authority – will develop the new world religion.

Paralleling these activities (and disciples on this ray are already taking the needed steps) will come that of the disciples and initiates who are working under the direction of the Master M. Their work lies in the field of right human relations and in the production of that synthesis of effort which will create a new intuitional consciousness and – consequently – a changing political consciousness and situation in which the family of nations will stand together for certain basic values. These are fundamentally three in number:

• The freedom of the individual. These freedoms have been voiced for us in the words of that great first ray disciple, Franklin D. Roosevelt. They are the four essential freedoms.
• Right international interplay, necessitating finally the abolition of war.
• Clean political regimes, free from graft, selfish ambition and dirty political maneuvering.

In the achievement of these ends (and only major issues will be considered, leaving the lesser and unimportant effects to be dealt with later) the disciples of synthesis and the instigators of right political relationships will work in close cooperation with disciples upon the second ray whose task it is to educate the general public in the truer values. A trained and enlightened public, shouldering right responsibility, will elect only those men whose vision is in line with the new ethics, the new science of right human relations, and who recognize as a basic political tenet the equality of all men – an equality founded on a universal and basic divinity.

Allied to the efforts of these two groups of disciples and initiates will be those disciples on the fifth ray, whose task it will be to lead mankind into the benefits of the atomic age. The occultist has ever proclaimed that the field wherein the Hierarchy works is that of energy; they have taught that there is nothing in existence but energy in some form or other, and that all we see, all with which we daily work (including our own material natures, mental, emotional and physical), and all that produces phenomena is energy in relation to forces, or forces as they are directed by energy.

This the emerging group of disciples will incontrovertibly prove; by their efforts the new civilization will be created, in which humanity will have time for freedom, for the deeper educational considerations and for a political activity of the spiritual kind; science will produce a world wherein labor (as we now know it) will be abolished and every phase of man’s life will be implemented by science – not in order to make him more comfortable or more like a robot or more selfish, but as an aspect and outgrowth of true freedom; men will be free to think, to establish new modes of cultural interests, and free also to unfold the higher abstract mind and to interpret its conclusions through the medium of the trained lower concrete mind.

The united work of these three groups of disciples initiates and prepares the way for the externalization of the Hierarchy; this preparation is already under way and taking definite form, though as yet the efforts are embryonic and the workers very few in number. A beginning has nevertheless been made and great changes will take place during the next twenty-five years; these will indicate the general structure of the new world of culture, will emphasize as normal the higher concepts of the so-called “visionary” world planner and lay the foundation for the work of the other Ashrams, when the time for an expanded effort arrives.

When the three major Ashrams have done their work, and this work – in spite of the difference of ray – is largely educational, then the other Ashrams will slowly send in their representatives to cooperate and to continue with the task. The first Ashram to do so will be that of the third ray; by the time disciples appear from that Ashram the world will be ready for an all-over financial adjustment; the “principle of sharing” will be a recognized motivating concept of the new civilization. This will not involve beautiful, sweet and humanitarian attitudes. The world will still be full of selfish and self-seeking people, but public opinion will be such that certain fundamental ideals will motivate business, being forced upon business by public opinion; the fact that the new general ideas will in many cases be governed by the expediency of interplay will not basically matter. It is the sharing that is of importance. When the “adjuster of finances” (as an advanced disciple from this Ashram is called in the Hierarchy) appears, he will find conditions greatly changed from those now prevalent, and this to the following extent:

• The principle of barter and of exchange (to the benefit of all concerned) will control.
• Owing to the development of atomic energy on behalf of human welfare, national currencies will have been largely superseded, not only by a system of barter but by a universal monetary exchange – representative of the bartered goods when they are relatively small and unimportant – and by a planned scale of related values. National material assets and the needed commodities will all be provided for under an entirely new system.
• Private enterprise will still exist, but will be regulated; the great public utilities, the major material resources and the sources of planetary wealth – iron, steel, oil and wheat, for instance – will be owned in the first place by a governing, controlling international group; they will, however, be prepared for international consumption by national groups chosen by the people and under international direction.

Upon this subject I have no time to give, and besides this, anything I could say would be regarded as visionary and impractical in a world which has not yet been subjected to the educational processes of the disciples and initiates on the first, second and fifth rays or to the fundamental changes which the new generation of young people (now growing up) will shortly inaugurate.

Upon this threefold condition of the basic control of the products of the planet, these third ray disciples, working under the senior initiates above mentioned, will build the new structure of material relationships – a most difficult task, owing to the evil “pull” of the substantial assets and the continued control, even though greatly lessened, of human selfishness. This “pull” is regarded esoterically as evil because it embodies the principle of imprisonment and has, for untold aeons, engrossed the attention of the human being, to the exclusion of all true values.

Later, disciples and initiates of the seventh ray and of the sixth ray will come into physical incarnation. The only Ashram which will be then unrepresented – and this for a long time – will be the fourth. As the fourth ray is, however, the constant ray of the human family, its influence is consistently present, and this Ashram is equally constantly aware of and influential in human affairs; it will come into full expression when the intuition of the human being, emanating as an energy from the fourth or buddhic plane, has been evoked by the human soul and is a recognized asset in human consciousness. The fourth ray will come into manifestation before many generations have passed, but only from the angle of its incarnating Monad, and not from the angle of its active Ashram.

Once the contact – in physical manifestation and physical recognition – has been established, a system of “appearances and of abstractions” will be instituted by the Hierarchy, producing what might be regarded as a circulation of its life and representatives between the two major planetary centers, the Hierarchy and Humanity. According to the need upon the physical planet, and upon the acceptance of certain designs, will an Ashram be prominently active or relatively inactive.

The ancient activities of the Hierarchy will still persist – the activities of preparing disciples and initiates for initiation and for participating consciously in hierarchical effort; the Schools of the Mysteries (as outlined by me in Letters on Occult Meditation) will come into being and practice, but this will be temporarily a secondary activity; the full expression of ashramic energy will be directed to practical world affairs and to the education of the general public, and not in the early stages to esoteric matters. In the last analysis, there is for the Master and His disciples no such thing as esotericism, except in so far as Shamballa is concerned. There is only definite and planned work with the consciousness of all forms, and – where humanity is involved – this is regarded as a process of education, leading to an expansion of perception and the changing of acquired academic knowledge into an over shadowing and conditioning wisdom. The implementing of human affairs to bring about this unfoldment in consciousness is in the hands of disciples who are undergoing the process themselves, and it is not in the hands of the Masters, Whose consciousness is fully expanded – a consciousness entering a higher and greatly different phase, connected with Being and Life and the purposes of Shamballa.

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Excerpted from “The Externalization of the Hierarchy – Section IV – Stages in the Externalization”

By Alice Bailey and Djwhal Kuhl – 1957