The Ashram as an Energy Field – Centre and Envelope
In his writings – particularly in Discipleship in the New Age and Externalisation of the Hierarchy – the Tibetan (D.K.) has left us a series of descriptions of what an ashram essentially is. These descriptions vary in emphasis, but together they form a picture that differs significantly from the common, mostly Blavatsky-influenced conception of an ashram as merely a group of disciples.
An ashram is, first and foremost, a subjective fusion of souls, not of personalities – individual beings brought together for the purpose of service, united by what pertains to the soul, not by what the personality brings with it in terms of reactions, limitations or self-serving thoughts. According to D.K.’s own formulation, the latter never penetrates the ashram. At the same time, an ashram is a magnetic focal point, a vortex of force and a centre of energy in which two forces converge: the group’s united impulse towards self-sacrifice on the mental plane and the magnetic pull of the Master at the heart of the group. It is also a reservoir of thought arising from the Master’s vision and aspiration and constantly nourished by the disciples’ contributions – a dynamic spiritual thought-form, not merely a place of assembly. And it is a centre of group activity and invocation, explicitly also a scientific laboratory in which forces and their effects are studied and managed. In this interpretation, the entire Planetary Hierarchy is essentially a single great ashram – the Ashram of Sanat Kumara – organised into seven major ray ashrams and forty-nine secondary ashrams, whose true reality lies on the higher planes, not on the physical plane.
These definitions confirm what has become ingrained over decades of study, more as an image than as a doctrine: an ashram is an energy field to which one can connect through energetic correspondence – in parts, gradually, not as an ‘all-or-nothing’ proposition. The centre of this field is energetically stable in itself and is represented by an ‘It’. A Master is no longer bound to cyclical reincarnation, but incarnates according to a necessity recognised by the Master themselves – and remains, as the same being, the centre of their ashram for correspondingly long periods. It is only with the sixth initiation, upon the transition to the higher paths, that a successor assumes the office and, with it, the energetic mantle left behind; only then is the transfer of the office to a new bearer complete, and only then is it correct to speak of another Master rather than of D.K. himself.
The nature of this energy field, which is itself in a state of continuous development, involves entanglement through adaptation. This is a different concept of entanglement from that known in quantum physics: there, a correlation is established upon the creation of a particle pair and remains fixed, regardless of subsequent influences. In the Ashram field, by contrast, the docking is gradual and variable – a resonance-based entanglement rather than a creation-based entanglement. Accordingly, the field is organised from the outside in, with the intensity of the vibrational character increasing: those who resonate more strongly are closer to the stable centre, not spatially, but in terms of vibration. This simultaneously answers a question left open by a purely physical analogy of entanglement – why there are degrees of belonging at all, rather than simply a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the connection.
One tension is deliberately left open here: if the centre is energetically stable, but the field as a whole is constantly evolving, how do the two relate to one another? Does the centre evolve alongside it, so that ‘stable’ is to be understood more as coherent despite change – or is it the immovable point of reference against which the development of the periphery is measured in the first place? The answer is likely to depend on the particular ashram and stage of development.
Here, a concept from Theosophy that speaks of the ‘mantle’ of an office proves helpful. One of the three great offices is that of the Mahachohan; the Tibetan notes that Master Rakoczy – of the Seventh Ray, also known as St Germain and the Rosicrucian – has ‘donned’ this mantle. The royal mantle of a ruler serves as an illustration: this subtle mantle, ‘heavy’ with responsibility, changes and grows over time through each bearer. When an office-holder leaves the office or the ashram, one of those close to the office-holder takes their place.
The mantle is thus neither the office itself, which remains stable, nor the respective bearer, who changes, but a third, supra-individual continuity – an accumulation of all previous bearers, which is passed on to the next bearer. Its growth is not growth in the sense of expansion, but an accumulation of experience and knowledge, which is derived from the initial impulse and returned to the core. This resolves an apparent tension: the core of every ashram – and, repeated fractally, every ashram group within a larger ashram – is the necessity recognised at the centre within the context of the times, and is therefore itself fluid, not rigid. Aligning oneself with this necessity is what ‘occult obedience’ actually means – not obedience to the Master as a person, but to a changing diagnosis of the times, recognised most clearly at the Centre. The Centre is the organ of perception of this necessity, not its originator.
This gives rise to a distinction that becomes important during the stage of withdrawal of an individual who has become self-sufficient, as described in the foundational text: in the ascending cycle of evolution, any activity aimed at expanding and maintaining one’s own position runs counter to necessity – even if it is very human. This is not a contradiction to the growth of the Mantle, but rather demonstrates that ‘necessity’ applies on a phase-by-phase basis: what applies to the Mantle – growth through successive bearers – does not apply to the individual bearer in their own phase. The mantle grows through shedding, not through clinging. What we describe in the ‘mantle’ is the essence of the evolution of a planetary, solar, cosmic Logos.
