August 1940

For you, as for all disciples at this time of world crisis, life has been exceedingly difficult. This is not a platitudinous truism - in spite of A.A.B. remarking sub rosa that it was. She knows me so well that for years her comments have proved a source of amusement to me and sometimes have proved most helpful in aiding me to understand the occidental mind. I am an Oriental of the fourth root race and although I have had two European incarnations I still at times fail to grasp or understand the Occidental reaction. But the [474] remark above is not simply fatuous, but contains in it the clue to your future. Your difficulties at this time stem largely from others more than from yourself; they are instructive more than karmic.

This thought gives me the chance to point out to you (and incidentally to your group brothers) that many disciples today - who, like yourself, are not engaged in any spectacular world work - are engaged in establishing those contacts, here, there and everywhere, which will form the nucleus of that group of aspirants and of younger disciples which every senior disciple and initiate automatically gathers around him. He does not, in any particular incarnation, go out into the world and say: "I will gather a group which will form my future ashram." If he does this, he will fail; if, however, he seeks to aid spiritually and to stimulate divinely those whom he meets in his daily round of duty, that tells a different tale. No one is then unimportant. Deliberately, he gathers people to him because he steadily loves and helps. Some of these may be just passing by to other goals, and with them he has no permanent link; others send out to him a responsive thread of understanding and request and - as his intuition develops - he recognizes them as his own; he esoterically [475] "intertwines the thread of his life with theirs," thereby assuming responsibility and forming a more permanent link, both in response and in karmic relationship. Both become indissoluble linked.

You have touched many lives in your life-work as teacher, and you know and understand in some measure those who have responded to you - to you as an individual and as someone to whom they can look for some measure of understanding. For the remainder of your life, I would ask you to have these thoughts in mind and begin to lay a planned foundation for the future. This is my definite work instruction for you at this time. It will entail a task of watchful observation, of a determined going out to help wherever that help may be needed. You have, in many ways, what I have referred to in my own mind as I have watched you, as a very well-managed inferiority complex - so well managed that you do not permit it to be a real hindrance; it is one which nevertheless exists and at times presents to you a problem. I would also ask you to ignore it increasingly, and in the decisions which you will have to make during the next twelve months please act with a positive belief in yourself and, without questioning, choose the field of largest opportunity.