Welcome to the Festival of Wesak, the second of the Three Linked Festivals of Spring, held on the eve of the full moon in the solar month of Taurus. This evening’s celebration is starting a bit early, to allow us to be in meditation by 8:37 p.m., the exact time of the Taurus full moon. Not only is this the time that the most intense spiritual transmissions are available for reception, through silent group meditation, but this evening those energies are further enhanced by a full lunar eclipse that will last about an hour, with its most complete phase being at the exact time. A full moon, as you know, is the apparent result of the direct alignment when the Earth passes between the sun and the moon each month. With the sun shining on one side of the Earth, and with its light being reflected back to the other side of the planet from the moon, this is the time of maximum light in our little corner of the cosmos.
 

An eclipse is the result when that alignment is nearly perfect, and a full eclipse occurs when the alignment is so perfect that, for a brief instant, the Earth completely blocks the direct rays of the sun from reaching the moon. An eclipse, or rather the relative perfection of the alignment from which it results, is believed to make the contact between the Hierarchy and Humanity particularly acute.
 

For a variety of reasons, both practical and symbolic, these solar-lunar alignments are the times that have been chosen for rhythmic energetic contacts between Humanity and those Elder Brothers who have, since time immemorial, guided our spiritual evolution through transmission of subtle impressions that may be perceived by the human mind under certain conditions. Creating those conditions is the entire purpose of the method that we refer to as occult, or spiritual, meditation. This is an elegantly simple process of alignment and receptivity, requiring only that the meditator—a human being or, preferable, a group of human beings—sit quietly and still the awareness of those physical, emotional and mental activities that “normally” preoccupy our perceptions. In the silent state of profound stillness created by this alignment, the consciousness of the meditator comes to a focus in the higher mind, where we know ourselves as a soul, a part of the divinity within each and all of us that is sometimes referred to as “God Immanent.” With the aid of a seed thought, the meditating group mind becomes receptive to impression from the minds of the Masters of the Wisdom, whose own group meditation emanates from Shamballa, the “Center where the Will of God is known.”
 

In Aries, at the Festival of Easter, we invoked the spiritual aid of the Planetary Hierarchy and received from them, through our meditation, the initiatory energy needed for Humanity’s progress during this new annual cycle. For the past month, we have been holding that energy steady in preparation for the next step in this annual ritual of spiritual cooperation between these two great spiritual centers: The Hierarchy and Humanity, whose responsibility it is to make the Hierarchy’s plan of love and light work out and thus to “seal the door where evil; dwells.”
 

Taurus The Festival of Wesak

Now, in Taurus, at this Festival of Wesak, that energy will be augmented by another rhythmic contact, to be further refined, more deeply focused, and held, once again, for the third step to be accomplished a month from now. In Gemini, at the Festival of Humanity, the Hierarchy’s third contact will again augment the energy, which we will blend with the energies we have been gathering and holding, for distribution throughout the human kingdom.

This tri-partite annual ritual has been enacted for untold centuries, at first by a small, secret and elite network of advanced souls, during the time that the Ageless Wisdom Teachings were entirely occult, due largely to the suppressive efforts of the religious institutions of the time and the primitive state of education that had yet to prepare the minds of most human beings to begin to comprehend its insights or to shoulder the awesome responsibilities incumbent upon a human being once he or she comes to know themselves as a divine soul. At present, the Ageless Wisdom is available through many private and public sources, and many have thus been lead to understand the essentially divine nature of the human being and to learn to make effective soul contact through the science of meditation. As a result, those who have responded to the Hierarchy’s call for disciples in service to humanity have swelled in number to include countless groups, like ours, who gather around the world at the time of the full moon for this exalted purpose.
 

These Festivals recognize and celebrate humanity’s relationship with two of the great spiritual avatars—some will say the two greatest of those avatars—who have brought profound recognitions into the hearts and minds of Humanity. The first is the Christ, whose message of boundless and unqualified love for all is celebrated at the Easter Festival. Indeed, a central purpose of this work is to prepare Humanity for the anticipated “return” of the Christ and the resulting salvation of Humanity.
 

This process, of which the externalization of the Hierarchy is a part, is misunderstood—and one purpose of these Festivals is to shed light on its true nature and purpose. One of the most fundamental of the misperceptions is that the Christ is an exclusively Christian being, whose purpose is the salvation of individual human souls in a static and eternal never-never world known as Heaven. Those who practice occult meditation come to understand, through rhythmic contact with their own souls—and through their souls, with the Hierarchy—that the Christ is a truly Universal figure, whose spiritual mission is to redeem all of Humanity and to make a heaven of the Earth—which it will truly become when Humanity fully comprehends the Christ’s radical teaching of love and the brotherhood of all human beings.
 

The Wesak Festival, in particular, focuses on another relationship that is largely misunderstood, and in many cases not perceived at all—the integral cooperation between the Christ and the Buddha. Ours is a third ray planet, in a second ray solar system. The “second ray” is a term from esoteric psychology that refers to the energy of love-wisdom upon which our solar system is based. The Christ, whose teaching was initially directed to humanity living on the “western” half of the planet, as the avatar of love, appeals directly to the human heart. The Buddha, whose teaching was given to the “eastern” world, is the corresponding avatar of wisdom and thus appeals directly to the human mind. The Christ taught to Humanity a new way to pray, directly to God, bypassing the intermediary of a priest. The Buddha, on the other hand, taught Humanity a new way to think (silently and without attachment), called meditation, that surpasses the limitations of normal thought and leads to what the Buddha called “enlightenment”—the direct perception of truth that occultists call “intuition.”

Neither of these great beings themselves ever claimed to be God, another point that is often either unknown or ignored. We note that they are called the Christ and the Buddha, which implies that these are not personal names for mere individuals; rather, they are the names of Hierarchical “offices” that are filled by exceptionally great eternal souls whose spirit, for a time, overshadowed the men who walked among us as human beings during their brief periods of public service: the humble Jewish carpenter known as Jesus of Nazareth, and the renunciate Indian prince known as Siddhartha Gotama.
 

The Festival of Wesak recognizes that the work of these two great, indeed universal, souls—like the obverse faces of a single coin—are only complete in combination with one another: Love and Wisdom; Heart and Mind. When, in the coming New Age, Humanity at last embraces the central concept of the New World Religion, that all of Humanity’s spiritual traditions are based on common roots (the spiritual teachings that esotericists call the Ageless Wisdom), the complimentary, unified nature of the service of the Christ and the Buddha will be universally recognized. It is toward that glorious day that the Festival of Wesak stands as a guidepost.

Jeriel Smith, Taurus 2003