#5 WHAT IS A MASTER?
Madam Helena Blavatsky, the founder of the nineteenth century movement Theosophy, claimed she had the answers.
She was guided by three men, she said, who dictated to her the philosophical concepts for her books. These men we called “Mahatmas”, a Sanskrit word meaning “Masters”. They communicated with her and her co-founders in person, by letter, through visions and in dreams. She claimed they were ‘mysterious sages from Tibet’, with extraordinary powers named El Moyra, Koot Hoomi Lal Singh and Djwal Kuhl. Later she was influenced by a fourth master whom she knew either by his French title of Comte de Saint-Germain or by his birth name of Count Rakoczi.
Blavatsky posed alone for a photograph and, when it was developed, three of her masters stood around her: Koot Hoomi, El Moyra and St Germain, who is dressed in eighteenth century French court regalia.
Besides introducing four masters by name, the Theosophists provided insight into what a master did. Masters, claimed Annie Besant, a co-founder of the Theosophical Society, were great spirits who ascended after many Earth lives when they have passed all of their tests. It was then they decided to return and teach others on Earth. Such beings are described by Mahayana Buddhists as Bodhisattvas. The Theosophists believed these beings had shed the limitations and weaknesses of their ordinary lives and, through pain and suffering, achieved adept-ship, ascending from Earth to a higher plane. From there the masters aided the progress of humanity, inspired every religion and transmitted advanced scientific thought to humans of genius to develop and disseminate. Meanwhile, they watched events, correcting and neutralizing negative currents, while strengthening the good and weakening the evil. Besant argued that their very existence implied we were not alone; there was help, a purpose to our lives and a divine inspiration for a grand scheme that stretched throughout cultures and nations. They had a plan and we were part of it.
The I Am Collection
In America, in the late nineteen twenties through the thirties, groups of spiritually aware people gathered around gifted channels (or “messengers”, as they called them) to learn from a larger group of disincarnate teachers. Led by St Germain, this group was described as the Great Cosmic Beings, and they taught followers about their “I Am” presence or their divine connection to God. One entity called Hilarion, for example, revealed he was St Paul, the missionary of early Christianity. The feminine energies were deferentially titled “Lady” and called Nada, Kwan Yin, Leto, Portia, Mother Mary and the Goddess of Liberty. They joined the masculine energies of Maitreya, Lanto, Sanat Kumara, Jesus and Serapis Bey. They discoursed on the meaning and purpose of love, harmony, joy, peace, truth and freedom and the evils of gossip and the self-destruction of hatred. These beings encouraged Americans to activate their connection to their “I Am presence”, their God within, to allow the masters to radiate enormous pulses of energy or white light to protect America in the lead up to World War II. Their most important books were Unveiled Mysteries, The Magic Presence and The I Am Discourses.
There was, even in these teachings, an ambiguity about whether these masters were living or dead, incarnate or disincarnate. It was unclear whether aspects of these masters were simultaneously exploring contemporary lives as another metaphysical writer Alice Bailey suggested. There was little or no explanation of who they were, how many of them there were, why these beings were teaching and not others, or whether some had greater power or knowledge than others. Nor was it explained whether the masters ever had special relationships with one another or why the being they called “Beloved St Germain” was leading the teachings. What they did demonstrate, however, was profound love and admiration for St Germain.
Intriguingly, included in this group of beings were identified masters who were religious figures: two Christian entities, Mary and Jesus, and two Buddhist entities, Maitreya and Kwan Yin, all were active participants in their discourses. This was the first time in the well-known esoteric literature that prominent religious leaders were included with other masters.
Mary, who was very much identified with Catholic religious devotion and celebrated in exquisite paintings and cathedrals as Our Lady, the Mother of God, was not usually associated with such occult activity. Kwan Yin, on the other hand, was one of the twelve bodhisattvas of Buddhism. She is one of the most universally loved of any of the beings in the Buddhist tradition, as the Goddess of Compassion and Mercy. Kwan Yin is also known as Quan Am in Vietnam, Kannon in Japan and Kanin in Bali and her qualities have a strong resonance with Mary and with the Tibetan Goddess Tara.
In the nineteen seventies and eighties, there was an explosion of activity and interest in the masters. Koot Hoomi Singh Lal reappeared in a shortened version of his name as Kuthumi. He was also being channeled in many countries as White Feather; as the Gentle Brother-Bartholomew; as Socrates, as Wotan, as Zoroaster and as Francis of Assisi. Serapis Bey, on the other hand, limited his appearances and lectured through J.Z. Knight as Ramtha. Meanwhile Lord Sananda, as Jesus, dictated the Course in Miracles, an inspiring life-changing teaching tool.
While the Theosophists limited the physical presences of the masters to the rarefied energies of the Himalayas, Alice Bailey (in “Initiations Human and Solar”) claimed they were alive and living in the most unlikely places, participating in various roles, influencing religions, sciences and philosophies. Djwal Kuhl, working through Alice Bailey, provided detailed information about how these Cosmic Beings were organized and their relationships with humans.
But it was through the Summit University teachings, over a thirty-five year period, that a picture emerged of who actually made up this circle of beings, what they did, why they did it and how they were related. Mark and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, as founders of the University in the foothills of Mount Shasta in Montana, USA specialised in the teachings of the ascended masters apparently again under the direction of St Germain.
In 1962 Elizabeth Clare Prophet channeled and published a book dictated by St Germain on Alchemy. In later editions she included an excellent index, which identified three of the Masters: El Moyra, Kuthumi and St Germain providing a thumb nail sketch of a few of their lives.
St Germain had the longest entry and eleven of his lives were identified including the Hebrew prophet judge Samuel; the father of Jesus, St Joseph; the first English martyr, St Alban, the enchanter of Arthur’s court, Merlin; a thirteenth century English scientific philosopher, Roger Bacon; the Italian re discoverer of America, Christopher Columbus; the Elizabethan essayist, lawyer, scientist and philosopher, Francis Bacon and Comte de Saint-Germain. It was an intoxicating mix, and well worth exploring further. But while the lives attributed to St Germain over the last two thousand years showed a diversity of purpose, superficially they did not fit my idea of a person working towards adept-ship or spiritual advancement, moving in a progression towards enlightenment. Instead, I saw him peaking as St Joseph and sliding downhill ever since.
So what was a master? The sources agreed that masters were beings who had become perfect; ascended to a higher realm where they continued as divine teachers, inspiring others to believe that similar perfection was within their reach. They took students to coach, motivate, energise, mentor, guide and teach. Many of them had spiritual retreats like monasteries or ashrams, in a different dimension from ours, where followers could study or learn from them while they were asleep or between their lives. Together the Masters formed a group called the Great White Brotherhood; a title far more appropriate to another age rather than our own and one I found personally distasteful … with an ominous resonance from Big Brother and overtones of both racism and sexism in the terms of “white” and “brotherhood”. But the title comes from those who can see clairvoyantly from their dress in white robes, emitting white light and forming together a circle and describing their close relationship as a fraternity, or a brotherhood or a lodge. Elizabeth Clare Prophet in her treatise on the White Brotherhood (Prophet: 176) defined them as:
“A spiritual order of hierarchy, an organization of ascended masters unified for the highest purpose of God …The word “white” refers not to race, but to the white light of the Christ that surrounds the saints and sages of all ages …”
Once I asked the question through Dr Litchfield, “What is a master”, and received a succinct response, “A cosmic executive”. I followed it up with a second question of Paolo, a merchant from Sienna, who died in 1549, asking him what the White Brotherhood was?” to which Paolo replied:
“It is like the governing body of a vast university … each soul group has levels of initiations, as in the Masonic Lodges. There are three levels: Initiate, Adept and Master. These are similar to three levels that students pass through as undergraduate, Bachelor and Master. There are no steps, but there are levels. There are nine levels from each point of initiation. Having achieved Master in a particular college, you can be invited to join another. The Masters about whom you speak are all members of the White Brotherhood. One transfers from level to level once you are offered this chance by a circle of grand masters. You rise a level by fulfilling totally all that is necessary for that level. You rise like a cork in water, sometimes experiencing bodily discomfort like an illness when it happens. There is no degree of superiority with a particular level. Nor does it confer seniority. It is an acquired power which is earned through relinquishing it. Two other similar colleges are the Sisterhood of the White Flame convened by Asteroth, who you would call Our Lady or Mary, and the Order of the Rosy Croix, convened by Lord Sananda who had lives as Jesus and Buddha. The overseeing point of light of the White Brotherhood is Malachi – the holder of the blue sapphire of Solomon previously the fierce some warrior Judeus Maccabeus, the zealot of Zionism who led the unsuccessful revolt against Rome. You know him as El Moyra and as St Peter, one of the leaders of the apostles. He is also the Angel of Death. St Germain is an officer of the White Brotherhood. In a few years of your time when you explore the building of Solomon’s Temple and Roslyn Chapel the Gatekeeper will explain further.” (Litchfield, 2003)
Paolo’s few years would stretch and did not eventuate until we discussed St Germain’s life as Hiram Abiff, the architect of Solomon’s Temple. In the meantime, Paolo referred me to the Pistis Sophia, a collection of teachings in the Gnostic gospels which were rediscovered by two peasants at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1949, two years before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this dissertation, the newly arisen Jesus gives an intensive teaching to his twelve apostles and to Mary Magdalene and to his mother, Mary. During it he refers to a heavenly “treasury” in which a group of “twelve saviours” reside.
I would eventually come to recognise the twelve saviours as a circle of twelve masters.
