A White Eagle Teaching – The Aquarian Age 1

The Inner Teachings 20th September 1949 St Mary Abbots Place, London

Taken directly from www.whiteagleteachings.org – The White Eagle Teachings Database

Invocation: Let us lay aside all material thoughts and cares and seek the place of the Most High, Source of all being, Eternal Light; the Great White Spirit, Father, Mother and Son, the holy and blessed Trinity, God. We would come into Thy courts and bow down our heads in worship, praise and thanksgiving for the gift of life, and for the unfolding vision of the life of the spirit and the development of man* on earth. In Thy holy name we call upon the angels of the Christ Circle to draw near, that we may receive the outpouring of their love, their wisdom and their power. We pray that we may be touched by the life of the sprit, and may all that we do be blessed in the service of humanity. Amen. [*For editorial policy around gender, see the introduction to the teachings.] We ask you to surrender yourselves to the influence, the guidance of the Great White Brotherhood. May you be more than ever conscious of the invisible hosts, the messengers, the helpers, from the Great White Lodge. Some of you may have vision of these radiant and illumined souls. If only one man or woman can see, this is a demonstration that clear vision can be given to all God’s children. We are speaking to you thus because in the new age such vision will become a natural gift, and all will become aware of illumined souls walking and talking with them. You are passing out of a materialistic age—or, at least, entering upon a period which is between two ages. We are going to speak tonight on the coming Aquarian age, and as simply as possible. Some of you may have a good deal of intellectual knowledge about this new age, and others very little knowledge or maybe none. In order to help the latter we will give a short explanation of what we mean by the new Age of Aquarius. First, may we explain that there are twelve ages in a cycle of life. A great cycle takes about 25,000 years and in that cycle there are twelve ages, and these being divided equally will come to slightly over two thousand years in each age—we are not being too precise about the number of years. During each age the earth planet comes under a certain zodiacal influence, and this influence affects the thoughts, the spiritual development and also the material life, and in particular the spiritual development and the religious life of man. We have just left—or shall we say we are just leaving—the age of Pisces, the Piscean Age. As you know, the symbol of Pisces is the fish. On this account you will notice that in the teaching of the Master Jesus great emphasis was laid upon fishes. The disciples were fishermen. There were many parables about fishes. There were miraculous catches of fish. There was the great demonstration of the Master Jesus sleeping in the fisherman’s boat and stilling the storm. We have already given you the interpretation of that miracle—the arising of the master, the Christ spirit, who took command over the emotions, symbolised both by the storm at sea and by the storm in the emotions and psychic bodies of the disciples. We will not go deeper into this tonight. We just wanted to show how many indications of the Piscean age can be found in the teaching, the parables and the miracles of the Master Jesus.

The Master Jesus is also the master at the head of the sixth ray, that of the higher mind, of philosophy and healing, and of the philosophy of love. From the Piscean age we move forward to the Aquarian Age. A great deal of controversy has arisen as to whether we have actually passed into the Age of Aquarius. In this connection you must understand that time, your time, appears to you to pass very slowly. Or else, so far as you are concerned, it passes very rapidly. So much depends upon, shall we say, your feelings and your wishes. It will take a long time for the influence of the Piscean age wholly to fade and for that of the Aquarian age to be really felt by the earth; but as far as we understand truth—and we would point out that we make no claims at all; we are speaking now from our innermost spirit and say what we feel to be the truth—the Aquarian Age is already here. That is to say, the influences of the Aquarian age are beginning to be felt, and we say this because we can give you illustrations of the truth of what we say. The Aquarian age is becoming active or this Lodge would not be in existence, because this is a Lodge of the Aquarian Age, and therefore we would say that the Aquarian Age is here. You have touched, you are on the fringe, the cusp of the Aquarian Age. As the Piscean Age had the symbol of the fishes, so the Aquarian age has the symbol of the white eagle. The eagle is the higher aspect of Scorpio, and in this we see symbolised the arising in man of the power and the wisdom of kundalini, or the arising of the divine fire. In the new age the power of kundalini will be stimulated by influences from the heavens. Messengers—angels you may call them because an angel is a messenger from the heavens—will be coming bringing a ray of light and knowledge which will teach man how to rise, how to develop his wings. You see, as a symbol of the new age the white eagle soars into the heavens and sees far and wide. Another symbol of the Age of Aquarius is that of the man carrying the water pot. He pours forth the waters of the spirit, the living waters, upon the earth. You remember the Master Jesus telling his disciples to follow the man carrying the water pot, who would lead them to an inn and there take them to an upper room—which interpreted means man’s higher state of consciousness—the head centre is the upper room, the upper chamber. There they were to make ready against the coming of their master. So the higher mind is to be made ready for the incoming of the Christ spirit, or illumination by the divine. The sun is the divine fire within the soul of every son and daughter of God. So the higher mind has to be prepared before the Christ can enter in. You see the symbolism of this? Man has first to train himself in pure thought, pure living. Then he has to aspire to higher and better forms of worship, higher and better forms of life; as he does this he makes ready for the incoming of divine illumination. We would also point out that the white eagle is the symbol of the great mystic St John. The church of the new age will be known as the church of St John. In the early Christian era the church of St Peter was established, which church, we are told, was built upon a rock—the rock being the mentality of the mind of the people. The church being built upon a rock of this nature, its teaching concentrated upon the practical or material mind and was applied to the material life of the people. There were no great flights of aspiration in the Christian religion, which became ever more solid and materialistic as it became firmly established and grew. You can truly say that up to a point this was a materialistic religion because the people concentrated upon the word and not the spirit, and seemed to have very little idea of how to translate the letter into the spirit and the power. Today people are saying, ‘What is wrong with the church? Why do people not go to church as they used to?’ Some folk even suggest that the orthodox church is dying. What they really mean is that there are worshippers and even preachers in the church who remain bound to the materialistic doctrine, even going so far in some cases as to say they do not know if there is an afterlife. They will provide you with an ethical teaching but as to spiritual realisation and the coming into the many mansions spoken of by the Master Jesus, they say nothing. They do not know. Not knowing, they cling to the purely mental and ethical teaching. In the new age that is upon us the psychic and spiritual forces within man will be stimulated, and he will be taught in due time by the messengers, the teachers or the spirit beings. He will learn how to open the windows of his soul, how to open the chakras and go forth like a winged being into the heavenly spheres. A spiritual unfoldment of man’s inner faculties will take place and will progress to great heights. Remember also that these powers of the divine fire have been used in past ages to the detriment as well as the blessing of the human race. As we said before, time moves very slowly (though you may disagree) and your conception of time is erroneous. Likewise, spiritual development takes place very slowly. ‘God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.’ Man has travelled a very, very long journey in matter and each life cycle lifts the human race a little higher up the spiral of light. All the time the pace is slow and all the vehicles of man have to be slowly developed. Nevertheless, there are no slipshod methods in the grand scheme, the grand plan of spiritual growth. Every lesson of the soul has to be well learned and man has to build his future temple upon a very sure and solid foundation. He, as we say, takes a long time to absorb the wisdom of the gods and man makes many mistakes; and as man makes mistakes he has to retrace his steps and learn his lesson over again. This applies to individuals; it applies to groups and to religions; it applies to races and to countries. With exactitude and precision the spiritual lessons have to be absorbed and mastered. So, beloved brethren, if you look back into past ages you see what appears to be a falling back, or a falling down of the human race. Remember then that this is only one facet of the beautiful jewel at which you are looking. There can be no failure in the development of the cumulative soul of humanity. Many, many facets exist in a perfect and beautiful jewel, and the more facets, the more beautiful the jewel, the more lovely its colour and light. Past ages have been cutting and polishing these facets in the soul of humanity. When you see the decline of a race or hear of the sinking of a continent, remember that that particular phase of life had finished its usefulness. Although that race appears to have fallen into error and appears to have been wiped out, something remains which is never destroyed—something which that race has extracted from its experiences, and is thereafter represented as a facet in the collective jewel of the human soul. As man passes through these phases, through these different ages, he is developing some part of the soul, and remember that the soul of man when viewed from the higher spheres is very beautiful. You only see through a glass darkly and you judge in the dark, but you should not judge at all. Yes, we know that reason is yours and you think that you have earned the right to judge. No man has any such right. He can examine, he can discover certain aspects of truth, but he cannot judge the whole. He can discern what his spirit tells him is beauty; he can discern truth; he can discern the false from the true; he can discern but not judge. There is a difference, you know. The Master Jesus said, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’* [*Matthew 7 : 1] So let us come back again to our Aquarian Age. You are now on the cusp and are receiving certain stimulation from the Aquarian teachers and masters. The result will be that in the new age religion will take an entirely different form. It will not be the old priesthood, the orthodox form of worship. It will be a religion which will help each man and woman to develop the God within himself, and man will learn that the best way to stimulate this divine power, this God power within himself is through group work. A few will be drawn together. ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,’ said Christ through Jesus the Master.* Religion will take the form of group work, or in other words, will take the form of true brotherhood of the spirit. Some lower aspects of brotherhood are being forced upon the world today; more powerful and dominating leaders are forcing ideas upon people that later become distorted. Younger souls seize upon such ideas of freedom without having the deeper knowledge and wisdom to comprehend the divine truth that brotherhood must be of the spirit, and the spirit teaches man to respect his brother man, to revere the dignity of human life and human work and human worship. This is the true form of brotherhood which will come from the heaven world, through spiritual rays stimulating the heart-centre of man. Man will then look out upon the world with broad and humane vision. As we say, he will have a great love of beauty, a love of the arts and music and all things which will help him to develop soul powers, and he will have his vision opened to the inner, to the spiritual planes of life. He will learn that thought is a very powerful tool of the master mason. [*Matthew 18 : 20] You are already beginning to have some idea of the power of thought. When the Aquarian age becomes really established man will be very careful how he uses his thought power because he will learn that he can manipulate etheric substance with his thought. In this manner he will come into the occult realms of life and begin to understand ceremonial magic and true ritual. Many people dislike ritual. They say they have no use for it, that it is all sham. Only ignorance says that, because all life is ritual. You cannot get up in the morning and go through the form of dressing and preparing yourself for your day’s work without going through a daily ritual. Your dressing is ritual; your eating is a ritual; your recreation is ritual; everything you do is ritual. You do not think of it as being ritualistic, yet ceremony plays a great part in the life of the human race. You have only to look at your own royal family* and the court procedure to know that all this is ritual and that it all has an influence upon the lives of those who take part in it, and upon those who are looking on. It is working with subtle inner forces.

[*White Eagle was speaking, of course, to a primarily British audience.]

Man in the new age has to comprehend the powers of ritual and the power of thought because thought power is a working with, is handling or using invisible forces to bring them into action upon the life and soul of man. In the past this ritual has been used before the soul of man was sufficiently developed. When ritual is used ruthlessly, without love and without wisdom, it causes destruction. You see that this has happened in past ages, but when ritual and the power of ceremony is used with knowledge and with wisdom it becomes constructive. Look back into the ages past; contemplate for a moment those vast stone temples that are a puzzle to your present-day students. They do not know how these huge stones were put into place. They will remain a mystery so long as man has not tapped the source of knowledge of true ritual and ceremonial, because those temples were built by the power of ritual, or by occult power. This may seem a sweeping statement but we remind you again that ritual is a process of using invisible forces to construct and to build. In a masonic lodge, in a church—anywhere where ritual is used—if your eyes were opened to the inner vision you would see that these subtle mental forces are very real. They appear to be like whorls of light, almost like illumined smoke, and you would see these forces whirling round and round and building into etheric pillars of light, sometimes of exquisite beauty. The temples of the past were built in this way—built first with etheric substance by occult power, by the power of ritual and ceremonial; for we look back down the ages and we see the priests and the people perambulating the hilltops and we see them forming these great pillars of light. As time passes these pillars of light, you must realise, become more tangible, and the etheric substance of which they are created eventually becomes a material substance, for etheric matter crystallises and in time solidifies. I think you will find that is quite scientific. That is how the great temples of the past were erected, and behind this erection was ceremony, the use of ritual and occult power. This kind of thing will be better understood and taught in the brotherhood of the Aquarian Age. Education will be entirely different from what it is today. Instead of forcing a mass of so-called knowledge into the brain, it will take the form of unfoldment. Instead of a process of cramming, education will be so applied that it will strike into the very innermost of the soul and will open out and bring forth knowledge which is within. Make no mistake: knowledge and wisdom come primarily from within, and with the right process, with the correct motive and aspiration, the soul can tap the fruits of all knowledge and all wisdom. For on the etheric plane are grand libraries in which the soul can search. This again will happen in the Aquarian age. There is so much that can be said but we do not want to tire you. Remember these points: you are on the cusp of the Aquarian Age. The symbol for the Aquarian Age is both the white eagle and the man carrying the water pot, the divine waters. In the new age, every man will become his own priest; religion will come from the heart and will teach man to unfold his own God-qualities and God-powers. Until man has unfolded his God-qualities he cannot be entrusted with the greater knowledge. Hence the teaching of the Master Jesus which was so clear, so emphatic, and which the world still ignores, ‘Love one another.’* Until man can love his neighbour he cannot receive the wisdom of the gods. So the Piscean age was to teach man the value of a good life, a pure life, in preparation for the next age of Aquarius, which is going to put into his hands very great powers of the mind and the heart. So he must be led to use those powers for constructive purposes and for the upliftment of the whole human race.