Contact
The great need of many people is the search for contact with the spiritual world. The digital media use this need for diverse offers of “aids” and business is done with them. In some respects, there is a comparison with an event about 2000 years ago when Christ overturned the tables of the merchants in the temple with divine wrath. Now, in digital terms, this temple is the whole networked planet. The search to attain this contact is understandable and legitimate, but how is it to be realised if, from the point of view of the inhabitants of the spiritual world, the free will of the human being may not be violated?
The search to attain this contact is understandable and legitimate, but how is it to be realised if, from the point of view of the inhabitants of the spiritual world, the free will of the human being may not be violated?
Questions:
The following questions arise for the seeker/needy person:
What are you looking for, or what are you in need of?
What do you expect from a contact?
What interest should there be in the spiritual world to make contact with you?
What interest should there be in the spiritual world to make contact with you?
Asked in general terms: Is there an urgent reason for the spiritual world to make contact, which is of considerable importance for the place and the interconnections of the seeker in planetary life for the Brotherhood?
At this point we leave the questions and give some basics:
Personal matters are a reason for contact for the Brotherhood. Should a contact exist through the taking on of a task of super-personal importance, the Brotherhood can help to a prudent degree in the sense of the task. First the task must exist, then the contact. The idea of a seeker being called (by himself) for a great task evaporates into nothingness.
Danger:
The danger of self-deception in relation to contacts is enormous. R. Steiner gives a principled hint on the question of the reverberation of prayers and invocations. He says that the supposed reaction that is felt is almost always a reaction of one’s own guardian angel and thus not the hoped-for contact with “God” or a Master. This is how misconceptions easily arise. Books have been written and religions founded on the basis of such a misconception.
When does contact succeed?
If, in the sense of the plans of the Brotherhood, a self-chosen task arouses the interest of the spiritual group and fateful/karmic directings have helped to realise it , a mental contact may first arise which shows itself in the form of transmitted ideas to the existing supra-personal project. Consider: Thousands of benevolent and humanity-loving inward seekers are active in the sense of the spiritual brotherhood without seeking or demanding contact. They know their task and act. There is no order of precedence with regard to the quality of action, each according to his possibilities.
If, nevertheless, the impression arises that a contact is in the offing, it should be noted that all stirrings in centres below the centre, i.e. beginning with the solar plexus centre downwards, cannot represent a mental contact through the Brotherhood.
It should be noted that before the age of 30, the higher centres for stimulation as a basis for contact cannot yet be actively stimulated if overstimulation and damage are to be avoided. Experiences of young children are recollections that usually fall out of memory after the age of 3.
Obstacles:
Often, tense meditative efforts aimed at quick results are rather an obstacle to contact. After Blavatsky, the Brotherhood decided not to take a path of contact through mediumistic persons. Neither H. Roerich nor Alice Bailey were mediums.
The longing for quick salvation from the wheel of rebirth contained in the more Eastern teachings is an unsuitable path with an extreme aspiration.
If the overarching, comprehensive thought of reincarnation as a process of many successive lives as the basis of growing inner life is missing, a real, lasting contact is a lost effort from the Brotherhood’s point of view. The Brotherhood in both centres benevolently but rigorously examines the necessary inner soul prerequisites before a contact.
The dangers of astral images of deception must also be pointed out. These images are often self-produced and illusory contact possibilities that do not exist in reality. The astral emotional life cannot open up contact possibilities without the control of the higher thinking faculty and without a sound knowledge of esoteric contents. The addiction of many seekers to the realisation of their own spiritual meaning and knowledge of previous incarnations is also a barrier.
A current example of the misused image is the depiction of the Master Jesus on the cross.
This image of the past unconsciously pushes itself in front of the events behind it of the great moments of crisis of the world teacher Christ in the parallel inner and higher events.
Jesus attains the fourth initiation here at the same time as the spiritual process that the Christ undergoes, and can since then be regarded as a master. But the emphasis on death in the picture and the depiction of the agony of Jesus prevent the view of the drama of the Christ taking place behind it, who at this point reaches a spiritually far higher level. The resurrected Christ, who then continues his instruction of the disciples in the ethereal world, loses his prominent significance in the consciousness of the many people who constantly look at the image of the cross. In only a few churches of Christianity are there plastic representations of the Risen Christ. In the humble minds of many believers, the image of the cross is an unconsciously fear-producing power tool of the church, coupled with the unholy contents of the Old Testament about a punishing God.
This consideration could be extended to other religions and philosophies and their symbolic/image representations.
It is often the everyday effects in pictures or the cross on the wall of schoolrooms that shape consciousness and later make contacts with the spiritual world difficult.
Prerequisite:
The teachings of Agni Yoga, Tibetan and R. Steiner given through the Brotherhood are the prerequisite of a first mental contact through their continuous study over decades. A further intensive and continuous contact with the ashram one is striving towards is extraordinarily rare and the result of striving over many incarnations. Incidentally, first contact with an ashram will almost never be with the Master directly. The path for all aspirants is to work for the common good, wholeheartedly and with goodwill. In this way the soul gathers life after life of lightful growth, and then finds touch and approach to the Brotherhood. Those who have worked out the prerequisites are not rejected but gently drawn in, but the necessary work remains.
Is this information meant to frustrate and disillusion? Of course not, it is meant to turn the focus of the aspirant back to the problems of humanity and to generate activity in that direction.
