1. His statement to His parents in the Temple, "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" I would have you note that:
   1. He was twelve years old at the time, and therefore the work upon which He had been occupied as a soul was finished, for twelve is the number of completed [314] labor. The symbolism of His twelve years is now replaced by that of the twelve Apostles.
   2. He was in the Temple of Solomon, ever a symbol of the causal body of the soul, and He was therefore speaking on soul levels and not as the spiritual man on Earth.
   3. He was serving as a member of the Hierarchy, for He was found by His parents teaching the priests, the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
   4. He spoke as an expression of the substance aspect (He spoke to His mother) and also as a soul (He spoke to His father), but He was controlled by neither; He now functioned as the monad, above and beyond yet inclusive of both.
2. His statement to His disciples, "I must go up to Jerusalem," after which we read that He steadfastly set His face to go there. This was an intimation that He had now a new objective. The only place of complete "peace" (the meaning of the word Jerusalem) is Shamballa; the Hierarchy is not a center of peace in the true meaning of the term, which has no relation to emotion but to the cessation of the type of activity with which we are familiar in the world of manifestation; the Hierarchy is a very vortex of activity and of energies coming from Shamballa and from Humanity. From the standpoint of true esotericism, Shamballa is a place of "serene determination and of poised, quiescent will" as the Old Commentary expresses it.
3. The exclamation of the Christ, "Father, not my will, but Thine be done," indicated His monadic and realized "destiny." The meaning of these words is not as is so oft stated by Christian theologians and thinkers, a statement of acceptance of pain and of an unpleasant future. It is an exclamation evoked by the realization of monadic awareness and the focusing of the life aspect within the Whole. The soul, in this statement, is renounced, and the monad, as a point of centralization, is definitely and finally recognized. Students would do well to bear in mind that the Christ never underwent the Crucifixion subsequent to this episode, but [315] that it was the Master Jesus Who was crucified. The Crucifixion lay behind Him in the experience of the Christ. The episode of renunciation was a high point in the life of the World Savior, but was no part of the experience of the Master Jesus.
4. The final words of the Christ to His apostles, gathered together in the upper chamber (in the Hierarchy, symbolically) were, "Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the age," or cycle. Here He was speaking as Head of the Hierarchy, which constitutes His Ashram, and also speaking as the Monad and expressing His divine Will to pervade or inform the world continuously and endlessly with His over-shadowing consciousness; He expressed universality and the ceaseless continuity and contact which is the characteristic of monadic life - of life itself. It was also a tremendous affirmation, sent forth on the energy of the will, and making all things new and all things possible.

The word Express, in its deepest meaning and when given at the second initiation, does not mean the necessity to express the nature of the soul. It means (behind all other possible meanings) the command to express the will nature of the monad and to "feel after" and embody the Purpose which lies behind the Plan, as a result of the developed sensitivity. Obedience to the Plan brings revelation of the hidden Purpose, and this is a phrasing of the great objective which impulses the Hierarchy itself. As the initiate learns cooperation with the Plan and demonstrates this in his life of service, then within himself and paralleling this activity to which he is dedicated as a personality and soul, there is also an awakening realization of the Father aspect, of the nature of the will, of the existence and factual nature of [316] Shamballa and of the universality and the livingness of whatever is meant by the word "Being." He knows and is beginning to express that pure Being as pure will in activity.

At the fourth initiation the destroying aspect of the will can begin to make its presence felt; the soul body, the causal body, the Temple of the Lord, is destroyed by an act of the will and because even the soul is recognized as a limitation by that which is neither the body nor the soul, but that which stands greater than either. The awareness of the perfected man is now focused in that of the monad. The road to Jerusalem has been trodden. This is a symbolical way of saying that the antahkarana has been constructed and [317] the Way to the Higher Evolution - which confronts the higher initiates - has now opened up.

The three aspects of the will, as focused in the Spiritual Triad, are now in full expression; the initiate is animated by Purpose, but faces still greater evolutionary developments; of these I do not need to speak, as they concern divine aspects as yet unknown and unregistered by man. The reason for this complete ignorance is that the vehicles of any man below the third initiation contain too much "impure matter" to record the impact of these divine qualities. Only the "created body" (the mayavirupa) of an initiate of the fourth initiation can begin to register these divine impacts; it is therefore waste of our time to consider even the possibility of their existence. Even I, a Master, and therefore an initiate of a relatively high degree, am only faintly sensing them, and that because I am learning to obey the fifth word which we will briefly, very briefly, now consider.