candidate, and he was to tell the initiator what they were. He also had
to distinguish between the astral bodies of a living man and a dead
man, as well as between a real person and the thought-image of a mas-
ter or: an exact imitation of him. Up to the first initiation the candidate
is described as working at night in his astral body.Then, to show him-
self on the physical plane, while still functioning in his astral body, he
had to materialize a physical body,"a performance requiring a consid-
erable expenditure of force."
Everything, says Leadbeater, that takes place in the second initiation
is done on the mental plane, and all those involved are worlung in their
mental bodies, not in the one used on the astral plane. Operating in
one's mental body, one would have to materialize a temporary astral
body.
If the initiator is the Lord Maitreya-the bodhisattva or world-
teacher, leader of the Great White Brotherhood-the ceremony is de-
scribed as taking place in his garden or the great room in his house,
where he presides in his physical body, all others, with the exception of
the candidate, being present in their astral vehicle for a first initiation
and in their mental body for the second.
"The Great Ones present," says Leadbeater, can focus their con-
sciousness with ease at whatever level is required, but on the astral and
mental planes there is a perfect counterpart of everything physical; "so
the accounts given are perfectly correct.The positions taken up in re-
lation to physical objects are as described."
All the true and higher initiations are described as taking place out
of the physical body. During the stages following the first, second, and
third initiations, the candidate is gradually developing his buddhic con-
sciousness; at the fourth initiation he enters the nirvanic plane.
European Orientalists have translated nirvana as annihilation, be-
cause, says Leadbeater, the word means "blown out,'' as the light of a
candle is extinguished by breath. Nothing, according to Leadbeater,
could be more antithetical to the truth, except that the annihilation is
of man down here. "There, he is no longer man but God in man, a God
among other Gods, though less than they."
For those who attain to adeptship and choose as their future career
to remain upon this earth and help directly in the evolution of hu-
joyce
(Joyce)
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