THE FIRST GOLDEN AGE ON EARTH
THE COMING OF THE "LAGGARDS"
THE GREAT SPLIT IN THE PRIESTHOOD
We have seen how the first group of mankind, "the Holy Innocents", under the guidance of their Manu and the Protective Presence of Archangel Michael, were given the opportunity to embody on Earth and develop God maturity. We, also, saw that they were accompanied by Seraphic, Cherubic and Angelic Legions plus the "Guardian Spirits" that volunteered from other Planets to come and assist man to fulfill his mission on Earth.
Under this protection and guidance, the beginning of the First Golden Age on Earth was inaugurated. It was a joyous and beautiful starting, the first subrace not knowing much difference between their present environment and the one they had just left in the inner Spheres. Man's God-given energy was properly used, and in his thoughts and feelings Divine Vibrations were flowing freely from his own "I AM" Presence. Free will, one of God's prime presents to man, allowed each individual to use his energy according to its own design, to add symphony to the music of the Spheres, and expand God's Will on the new Planet. It was a most auspicious beginning and in this "the Garden of Eden" - no lifestream used energy to create a discordant vibration. The Earth and its inhabitants were as harmonious as Heaven Itself, both being part of the great symphony, each man in complete obedience in the rhythmic radiation from his own Holy Christ Self and Presence. There was no static in the atmosphere and the Angelic Host, the Ascended Masters, the Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Devas walked with mankind. There was not the haze which is caused when vibration is set into motion, in discord and dissonance. Everything was clear and open to the eye. As far as the hands could reach, there was a self-luminous radiance, visible to the outer sight of everyone. Then people could not practice deception of any kind; because there in the radiance which they emitted was the indication to all of what was in their thought and feeling.
Manifestations of decay, disease and death, such as we know them today, were unknown to them. Through the use of his own thought and feeling, man consciously directed light rays to precipitate into form whatever he needed and this was done without effort or "the sweat of his brow". He had the God-given power to draw light substance from the Universal and convert it into desired form whatever that form might have been. Temples, homes, gardens, personal sustenance, or whatever else was needed; all he had to do was to invoke this light substance through thought and feeling and it was precipitated.
His life span was much, much longer than present day man's.1 "Death", as we know this transition today, was unknown then. Instead, there was the power of conscious etherialization - the returning of the elements composing the body to the Universal. And this did not happen very often. It covered cycles, ranging possibly once or twice every 2000 years - during the duration of each of the Seven Rays - and the training of one of man's major physical centers - "the Chakras". With the first episode in the rhythm of evolution having thus completed, the soul passed into the Inner Spheres to continue its Cosmic education, until it was time to return to new embodiment and assume his schooling in the world of form - on Earth. This process lasted seven times, at least, until the 14,000-year period ended - 2000 years for each Ray at the end of which major period, the man, following his Manu again, was to be Ascended to God's estate and had no need for further re-embodiment on Earth.
THE COMING OF THE "LAGGARDS"
This condition lasted for a long time - about one million years - during the First, Second, and most of the Third Root Races. And then something happened; something which was neither expected, nor were its consequences fully realized when it took place.
As certain Planets in the Universe were advancing then, to higher spheres and vibration2 there were among them members who, during endless re-embodiments, they proved themselves so retarding and involute to progress, that those who had charge of those Planets, in their upward movement, realizing that these individuals would only be impediments in the others' progress, refused to take them along with them. The result was that these "laggards" would become "Planetary orphans", without a place to, eventually, complete their evolution. The Earth then, comparatively young in its Cosmic Evolution, and feeling that in this situation there was an opportunity for Cosmic, Selfless Service, offered, through its Spiritual Hierarchy, to receive these "laggards". Needless to say, the offer was immediately accepted, but the result, as time went on, proved to be diametrically the opposite of what was expected and intended. The Earth and its people are still groaning from the effect of its impact and the thralldom that was imposed upon them, by that innocent "Cosmic Selfless Service".
In the following, our former Lord of the World, - now Regent - the Savior of our Planet, the Beloved Sanat Kumara, gives us a first-hand account of the events that led to that ill-conceived program which eventually brought the contamination of the Earth's atmosphere, caused "The Fall of Man", and retarded human evolution by millions of years. It was given to the students at the Retreat of the Royal Teton, on July 4, 1954, and was published by "The Bridge to Freedom" November, 1955.
SANAT KUMARA'S ADDRESS
"...Then, there came an opportunity for selfless service, when the Planet Earth was allowed to accept the "laggards" from other Systems who were not far enough advanced to progress with their own Planets into a more intense vibratory action of planetary and individual light. Those of you who were "Guardian Spirits" of Earth's evolutions, (long before the "laggards" came) were told that, in their coming, the knowledge and consciousness of Good and Evil would be brought into the atmosphere of this Planet and the consciousness of its people for the first time; to a Planet which was beautiful and to a humanity so innocent. The guardians then increased their spiritual application, calling for added illumination and strength of the Light, not even passing through the change called "death" for some time, so that they might be ready for the impact of these incoming consciousness who brought shadows and to guard the innocent lifestreams belonging to the Earth from contagion and contamination.
Finally there came to the Earth individuals who, (through destructive thought, feeling and experimentation with free will) had created patterns, forms and manifestations which were not in accord with the Divine Mind of God,3 not in accord with the beauty and perfection of the Presence of God. Then those upon the Planet Earth, looking upon these creations, accepted through their senses into their own consciousness, the seed of these patterns and forms of imperfection.
In the beginning, these lifestreams of the Earth had previously received directions only from their own Presence in the form of Divine Ideas, desiring only to manifest those Divine ideas in perfect form, invoking the Elemental Life that joyously rushed to make the "cup" (the clothing for that idea). Then, however, the first disobedience ensued in their rebellion against the fulfillment of the Divine Ideas. They then chose to take the creative centres of their own thought and feeling and draw out of their own energies and primal life the same patterns they saw externalized by the "laggards" of the System. Having taken the vow of obedience to man, Elemental life was required (by the authority of Life Flame in everyone's heart) to create and sustain these thoughts and feeling forms, even though they were imperfect. Thus the great veil of maya was woven and the Fall of Man began.
Although the consciousness of the "I AM" Presence is too pure to behold iniquity, the soul (outer consciousness) attached itself to miscreation by its attention and thus began to generate the same distortion of form which it saw. It was then that Archangel Michael, in all the Power of His Light4 fashioned from the substance of light by love, His Sword of Blue Flame, He then took the vow that as long as the creative centers of mankind would imprison Elemental Life in these distortions, He would remain and dissolve them by the use of that Mighty Sword, releasing that Life again and returning it to the Sun for re-polarization.
What happened to that magnificent Inner Presence (abiding within the Three-fold Flame of Life) which was the Director of the activities of the people of Earth, when the attention no longer rested upon the Presence? When the life, the primal essence, which belonged to the individual no longer gave precedence to God, the focus of light and life within the heart began to decrease in size and influence. That which life sustained (through attention upon it) began to grow larger. The human creations, the shadows, individual cocoons and mass Karma, began to increase. Thus, mankind came to the darkest time in the history of Earth's evolutions when the Flame Itself (the Immortal Presence of God) receded. No longer did the attention hold to the Divine Image and only a spark of the Immortal Flame remained within the heart. Truly could it be called the "UNFED" Flame...!
When this Flame had receded in the hearts of those on Earth until it was only one-sixteenth of an inch in height, great crises took place in inter-stellar space.
The Holy Christ Selves who had originally passed down, through the Silver Cord, the life and protective radiation enfolding the physical form, now in mercy, decreased the size and volume of energy pouring through that Silver Cord in order to minimize mankind's destructive creations. In time, the Holy Christ Selves of mankind were about to withdraw those sparks and endeavor to begin individualization again through newly created personalities. Even the Earth itself faced dissolution.
I was among Those Who heard of Earth's crises at the Great Cosmic Council. I was the One Who said that I was sure, if some wholly Free Being would come and nourish those tiny sparks, keep them alive and fan them with all the power of His Divine Love, some day the attention of mankind would return to its Divinity. Some day, Primal Life which had been pressed into the distortions that have caused the excess weight upon this Earth, would again feed that Flame.
When I returned to Venus and saw the beauty and magnificence of My Star; when I remembered the original beauty and perfection of the Earth, I was more determined than ever that a Planet created in Divine Love, sustained for so many ages by the Masters, Angels, the beings of Nature and Virgo Herself, should have opportunity for redemption. When My Beloved (The Great Being Venus), in all the renunciation which is Divine Love in its deepest aspect, said: "If the Cosmic Law will allow You to go, you are free to do so!" - grateful I was for the opportunity---."
In the following, Lord Maitreya (now The Buddha) gives us additional details to this all important subject of the "laggards". The address was given to the students on September 27, 1954, and was published by the "The Bridge to Freedom", February, 1956.
"...Then the Earth offered to accept certain lifestreams who had not attained the development required to progress with their Planets and Systems. Those Systems had to move on in a great forward push, something like what the Earth is going to do within the next eighteen year period. (The address was given in September, 1954.) The whole Creative Scheme had been delayed because of these "laggards". The Earth and her evolutions, being of a more condensed (and therefore slower) vibratory action than the successive Systems, offered to take on these "laggards", hoping by contagion and by the pressure of purity within the Earth's people and their Guardian Spirits, to redeem these "laggards" quickly.
For a hundred years, the priests and priestesses in the Temples made continuous application for the protection of the consciousness of the masses of Earth's people against contagion through proximity, by which imperfect forms might register within their consciousness. Up to this time, Earth's people had seen nothing less than perfection. How did these "laggards" get into the evolutions of Earth? They came through the pure bodies of women belonging to this perfect, harmonious, innocent evolution, who offered to give them an opportunity for incarnation on the Earth. These women were chosen because of their tremendous spiritual strength, so that the Body Elemental might have all the assistance possible and the heritage of good and evil in the consciousness of these egos might be mitigated, you may say, by the pressures of Light in the consciousness of the mother during the period of gestation and the early Earth life.
These individuals were born.
The parents of these "laggards" performed one of the greatest sacrifices known in any Galaxy, taking into their physical bodies, consciousness and homes, these individuals whose radiation was such that it has drawn the Earth to its present condition today. Now, what happened? Here is the point where you left the "I AM" consciousness, beloved ones. After birth, when these egos grew to a certain age, the Holy Christ Self had to release a certain amount of their Karma, with opportunity for redemption. However, instead of redeeming it, they yielded to its malign influences and began to create secretly in thought and in feeling forms of an impure and distorted nature. These began to spread into the atmosphere, just like a smog over a city, and were picked up by the sensitive consciousness of the race. Previously these were used to drawing only beauty from the Presence and externalizing Divine perfection. While the temptation could have been repelled and the mind not allowed to accept or entertain those thought patterns and feelings, some among the race, in secret, opened their consciousness to those thought patterns and played with their feelings until finally there began to be externalized imperfections of them.
Curiosity, rebellion against holding true to the Divine Pattern and the use of thought and feeling in creation of imperfection, began the building of what you call the "Soul". It is a consciousness apart from the full purity of God. The first thought a man had that was imperfect and impure, energized by a secret feeling, was a cause and that, sent out into the atmosphere, created an effect. Like a boomerang, the effect came back into the consciousness and made a record. That record was the beginning of an impression. Energy sent out in a certain manner returned to affect the lifestream who had sent it forth and there began to be created a shadow between the "I AM" Presence, the individual would find these "tramp" thoughts and feelings flowing through that line of contact until more and more imperfect was the conscious use of them. Finally, those centers got completely away from the control of the ego and acted independently. Anything the individual saw registered on the mind, was energized by feelings and manifested. Acting independent of the Presence, thought and feeling created most of the conditions in which you are functioning today.
Through the ages, blessed children, the creation of thought forms and the energizing of these forms by feeling as well as the action that follows through the flesh, has built an etheric consciousness. The "soul" is the accumulated consciousness resulting from your experimental use of life, action and reaction.
The tendencies, habits and nature of your "soul" are determined by the ways in which you have used life through the centuries and what life has returned to you, age after age. Your "soul" endures in embodiment and between embodiment. Your "soul" will continue to live until it is transmuted by the Flame in your heart and there is no longer
this shadow self that thinks and feels apart from the Christ. Your "soul" lives through every personality (embodiment) that you use. Today you have a name; you were born into a family; you live if fortunate - approximately three score and ten years and then you "pass away" as a personality. That personality is no more, but the "soul" of you in the etheric garment, influences each personality which you become in each succeeding incarnation. If you were to look at an unbroken stream of one hundred of your Earth lives, you would find that the "soul" was more or less the same through each personality...."
THE GREAT SPLIT IN THE PRIESTHOOD OF LEMURIA OVER THE "LAGGARDS"
In the preceding, Sanat Kumara and Lord Maitreya gave us an ample account of the coming of the "laggards" and the effect it had on the then innocent humanity. Their coming, however, was not signalized with perfect accord in the entire body of the priesthood in Lemuria, and this eventually led to their splitting into two factions.
In the following, the Head of the Seraphic Host of our System, the Mighty Serapis Bey, is giving us a first-hand information of what took place at that time.("Bridge", April, 1961)
WHO WERE THE "LAGGARDS"?
"...You have some little idea of the powers of contagion in those souls you have spoken loosely of as "laggards", who came from other Systems. What were they? They were consciousness, just like yourselves, consciousness with the capacity to think and to feel; consciousness who had not maintained a vibratory action of perfect harmony, beauty, purity, and perfection and therefore could not, or would not, accelerate the vibratory action of their inner vehicles to move forward with the Planets to which they belonged.
It took a great deal of time and a great deal of thought before the Guardians of the Planet Earth offered this gift of mercy. The priests and priestesses of Lemuria were gathered together after the Cosmic Law made the decision and for many, many years before the Lords of Karma would allow the first lifestreams through the gates of birth, the priests and priestesses within the Temple, schooled in the powers of invocation and radiation, under the Mighty Zadkiel, (Archangel) made the call for the purification of the soul light of these lifestreams and for the amplification of the pressure of Light from within the embodied mankind and the Earth people so that they could withstand the subtle suggestions of every kind.
The priest life on Lemuria was a magnificent activity. These individuals, most of you among them, had learned how through the powers of magnetization to draw every blessing from the Sun and from every God Virtue to form a radiant Sun through their Temples and send that out into the atmosphere, qualified with whatever the priesthood itself had consecrated themselves to externalize. This Priesthood, radiating and externalizing these pressures of Light increased the harmony, beauty and perfection of the Earth and made the atmosphere even more luminous, and the spiritual selves of men were more nourished by the reason of these foci. They were what you would call masters of this "darshan", which is merely, in Western parlance, the capacity of the soul to rise into contact with the Presence, draw the light from the Causal Body consciously back through the emotional, mental, etheric and physical bodies and keep a positive radiation of some constructive quality, and master of all the energy that is contacted by the individual. An individual who is the master of this activity of "darshan" is never subject to the vibratory actions of distress.
These priests and priestesses, belonging to the House of Zadkiel, rendered this service and the Earth was progressing very, very rapidly. The Root Races and the subraces completed their courses quickly in the outpouring of magnetized Light. When the souls, who had within themselves the germ of disintegration, the capacity through thought and feeling to create a discord, when they took embodiment and reached enough maturity to control consciousness, they began to let that out in thought and feeling, and it filled the invisible atmosphere. Some among mankind who had come into a false sense of security through the radiation of the priests and priestesses, began to rely upon them and they began to absorb through contagion some of the thought forms and feelings, and playing in secret with them, they too began to create them. Eventually, as a result of that, there was externalized much of distress, and the veil of maya began to cloud the light and the Great Ones were no longer visible to the masses but only to the priests.
Here you have the first great split in the priesthood and it is the reason for which I am bringing this to your attention. At the time when the priesthood began to realize that the masses were creating and sending forth those qualities of impurity and dissonance, there came a school of thought to the foreground that had agreed with reluctance to allowing the "laggards" from the other Systems into our planetary scheme and who now felt justified in objecting to the pollution of the race by allowing them to remain.
These beings were well-schooled in the powers of invocation and there you began those fiats and decrees that have come down to your present day. When they stood separated from the school that believed in sublimation and transmuation, and within the secret recesses of their own Temples, decided to blast them all from the Earth. What purpose would there be in blasting these lifestreams off the Earth into the discarnate realm where they would have to stand before the Karmic Board and as soon as possible be placed back on the Earth? It was a rebellion against the decision of Cosmic Law. If the Law and the Powers of Light felt that the priesthood and the illumined could sublimate and by radiation redeem those recalcitrant members, if the priesthood had remained ONE, the sinking of Lemuria would not have taken place! Think about this...!
With the breaking of the priesthood into the two factions, the masses followed one or the other and confusion ensued and the final release of the purifying powers of the water element became necessary....
After Lemuria, then Atlantis and again the priesthood, the same individuals, for the priesthood has always been made up, more or less, of the few. On Atlantis, again there was great Light - I was there great Light and great Beauty, great Perfection and hope for a permanent Golden Age through which every Root Race and subrace yet to come, would quickly find their way back Home. And again, the misuse of the Powers of Light, and again cataclysmic action. The Flame that I carried to Egypt, burning there as the Power of the Ascension, that very Flame brought Egypt to her greatest height and yet within Egypt, no more corrupt priesthood has ever been...."
FOOTNOTES-CHAPTER 11
1. "...In the early Biblical days, men and women lived from seven hundred to a thousand years in one body. Some of you achieved this yourselves on many occasions. The people of that age were trained to look constantly to God, the Flame of all Life, in the heart. Thus, when looking with heart, mind and spirit, they opened the door to the re-charging from the Heart of the "I AM" Presence. As the Light poured through the bodies, the vibratory action was kept at a fast enough rate to naturally repel the disintegrating vibratory action of the Earth-plane. Such individuals were immune to the diseases and appearances, and they remained in a state of acceleration and exhilaration until they chose to withdraw consciously from the bodies and allow the substance of those bodies to return to the Universal for purification...."(The Maha Chohan, "Bulletin", Vol. 5, #29)
2..Exactly the same thing is taking place, at present, hence the frantic efforts of the Spiritual Hierarchy to "push up" the Earth to meet the needed requirements.
3. Referring to the "laggards", in one of His comments, the Great Divine Director said the following:
"...It is not so well known that these "laggards" were accompanied by some who were not invited. Some of these brought knowledge to mankind and to the Earth, and some of this knowledge was degenerative and destructive. In addition they also brought with them strange creatures of their own creation - seemingly intelligent beings, not created by God, however, but by advanced scientists on other systems of worlds. The extent of the evil of these hordes and that of their mechanical creations has been very great and the oppression they have wreaked upon mankind has been terrible to behold - More of this cannot be given out - I do not bring forth this information in order to frighten any, but to warn mankind that there are beings among them who are not the Creation of God, who are not possessed with the same beautiful Electronic Pattern and Causal Body with which a manifestation of God is endowed..."("Pearls of Wisdom", Vol. 8, #15, p. 5-6)
4. Speaking on the subject of the acceptance of the "laggards" and the impression that acceptance had on His Divine Self, the Elohim of Purity said the following to the students at the Retreat at Luxor, February 16, 1957:
"...Oh, I love you, blessed Earth. When, on that day thy people didst say they would accept the "laggards" from the other Stars, if an Elohim could shudder, seeing what might result from giving so innocently, and yet which would cost Life so much..."("Bulletin", Vol. 5, #48)