The next word which we are to consider is one of the most difficult for me to explain. The reason for my difficulty is that you are all imbued with the ordinary ideas anent these familiar words, and therefore it is well-nigh impossible for me to convey their significances to you from the angle of the initiate-consciousness. Identified as you are with the form aspect and with life in the three worlds, it is hard for you to comprehend the state of mind and the type of awareness which distinguishes those who are free from these all-compelling forces in the three worlds which condition human beings, thus bringing about erroneous orientation and preventing what is really meant by spiritual perception. The attitude of the average man, and even of the average disciple, is that of one who looks in from the periphery towards the center, of one who is preoccupied with the shell of life and is not conscious of Reality as is a member of the Hierarchy.

Therefore, when I tell you that these words for initiates which constitute what I have called Rule XIV have a connotation quite different from that to which you are accustomed, I am propounding for you a most difficult problem. The true understanding is, I realize, not possible for you but much can be gained by your effort to comprehend. What you mean when you speak of the abstract mind is not exactly true to the facts; the effort to think abstractly is really an effort to think as far as possible as an initiate thinks who has transcended the concrete mind and thinks, or rather is aware, in terms of life and not of form, of being and not that which anchors being on the physical plane - or even in terms of consciousness, as you understand it. Forget not that I have elsewhere told you that consciousness (as grasped by the personality and the soul) has little relation to that form of living awareness which distinguishes the initiate who is essentially an expression of the Monad through the medium of the three aspects of the Spiritual Triad. This is peculiarly so in connection with the two [305] words which remain for us to consider: Destroy and Resurrect.