THURSDAY AND SUNDAY MEDITATIONS

Dear Fellow Student:

In ARCANA the student is trained to become a conscious creator in order to serve the higher purpose of the Larger Life which enfolds him. Meditation is creative use of mental energy. It brings spiritual energy into the personal consciousness in the form of new ideas or insights, and the insights gleaned from meditation are intended to be applied in service through group work. Group service provides a constructive outlet for spiritual energy and also protects the individual from over-stimulation.

These two meditations are simple to do and are of great significance and usefulness. These group service meditations use two special meditations every week, one on Thursday, the other on Sunday, in place of your regular meditation.

The Thursday and Sunday meditations are found in DISCIPLESHIP IN THE NEW AGE, Volume II. Much of the meditation work described in that volume is neither intended nor recommended for the reading public at large, nor suitable for individual experiment outside the safeguard of membership in a meditation group. However, these particular meditations were designed by the Tibetan for all who are willing to participate in the indicated service".

It is important to remember not to do two meditations on the same day; if you choose to use the special meditations on Thursdays and Sundays, then do not use your regular meditation outline on these days.

Always read a new outline carefully until you know it accurately. Meditations are designed for a definite purpose therefore we continuously stress the importance of following them carefully, without changes or embellishments, in order to achieve the planned objective.

The soul is ever group conscious; and it is the soul that meditates and has chosen to be in incarnation in this particular world cycle and in company with fellow souls, to work out some portion of the divine plan. Cooperation with fellow souls in meditation will tend to raise the conscious thinking state of humanity from personal to group objectives, which is part of the great creative and evolutionary process of redemption. The task is, through meditation, to establish the knowledge and the functioning of those laws and principles which will control the coming era, which are the laws of the soul and of group endeavor.

Dedication to Hierarchical (soul) intention and definite effort to channel spiritual energy through group meditation is part of our work in helping to prepare the way for the Coming One.

Your fellow travelers,

The Staff of ARCANA

MORE FROM THE TIBETAN ON THE

THURSDAY AND SUNDAY MEDITATIONS

In giving you these two meditations, I would remind all who undertake to use these meditative forms that they will not prove effective and of the needed vital potency unless the one who thus meditates identifies himself with the purpose and objective of the meditation, dedicates himself to cooperation with this objective and redeems all aspects of his own life in conformity with the focussed desire expressed in this spiritual appeal. It is useless, my brothers, to meditate along lines which will aid in preparing the world for the coming of the Hierarchy and for the reappearance of the Christ unless, again, that preparation is an integral part of your own constant daily endeavour, and is not just simply wishful thinking and the formulation of a hopeful theory anent the future of humanity. It is useless for you to meditate in order to reorient money, for instance, towards spiritual work (and by spiritual work I do not here refer to the work of the churches and of the world religions) unless all the monies which you individually have to handle are dedicated to right usage, the fulfillment of your right obligations and the covering of your karmic responsibilities, plus the constant recognition of the relation of all money to the spiritual future of the race and the requirements of the hierarchical Plan. There must always be, in your consciousness, a recognition of the needs of all men, and this must be true of all spiritually-minded people, of all true esotericists and of the religiously inclined man whose heart and understanding are more divinely inclusive than are the hearts of the average followers of any religious doctrine, enunciated by the theologians of any faith.

It must be realized that money is the energy which can set in motion and make possible the activities of the New Group of World Servers -- no matter what their colour, caste or church. Money does not yet lie in their hands. Their need for it is great. Millions are needed to spread the required knowledge of the hierarchical Plan; millions are needed to further the work of men of goodwill; millions are needed to educate the masses in the fact that He for Whom all men wait is on His way back to ordinary visibility. The billions which are spent at present on luxuries, on expensive and unnecessary objects of desire, the billions (and, my brother, it is billions, as world statistics show) which go towards the purchase of candy, liquor, tobacco, Jewelry and expensive furs, the millions which go in the violent search for excitement and for ceaseless nightly pleasure and, finally, the billions which go the way of armed conflict in all nations must be deflected towards those expenditures which will make the plans of the Hierarchy possible, which will aid humanity in its search for the new, spiritual and free way, and which will therefore bring into being the new civilisation. Billions are required to overcome the materialism which has dominated mankind for untold aeons, billions are also needed to bring about the reconstruction of human affairs and thus purify and beautify our modern world to such an extent that the 'Christ can appear among men; through the wise expenditure of the financial resources of the world in the many fields of human betterment and uplift, the Christ will be enabled to "see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied.

You might here ask: What's the value of the meditation and contribution of a new disciple, unaccustomed to ashramic patterns of thought and unable to carry much weight in the general group meditation? That is a question worth answering and of great encouragement to the neophyte. The various grades and ranks of initiates and disciples are so constituted that the result of their meditation upon the Plan is that the many needs of the varying masses of humanity (from those of the advanced intelligentsia down to those of the unskilled laborer.) can be adequately met and the great mass of men swung accurately into line with evolutionary purpose.

Have you ever stopped to think that the meditation of a Master upon the Plan of which He is custodian, and His formulation of what He can do along the line of effective cooperation, is of no service or usefulness to the illiterate inhabitants of our great cities and agricultural areas? The need of these unthinking masses must be met by disciples of less spiritual development) and probably their greatest appeal is through the application of economic help; the task of these lesser disciples is to prove to the ignorant masses that as the centuries slip away -- spiritual living and true spiritual understanding include every aspect of physical, plane expression and not simply the religious or the philosophic modes of thought. The meditation therefore, of every grade of disciple and initiate has its use, for by their meditation (carried forward on their own level) they can adapt the Plan to the widely differing masses and thus the hierarchical Plan can reach from the Masters of the Hierarchy, through the Ashrams to the New Group of World Servers, and thus to the whole of the human family. I would like you to grasp the true simplicity of this picture, if you can, for you can have a share also in this great meditative task.

I ask you, therefore, to follow these two meditations at least once a week and upon different days. These two forms of invocative appeal can be used by all who are willing to participate in the indicated service..

Excerpted from "Discipleship in the New Age", Vol. II: 224-234