The Three Great Spiritual Festivals
Let us indicate the possibilities of such spiritual events and attempt to prophesy the nature of the coming world wide Festivals. There will be three such major Festivals each year, concentrated in three consecutive months and leading therefore, to a prolonged annual spiritual effort which will affect the remainder of the year. These will be:
1. The Festival of Easter. This is the Festival of the risen, living Christ, the Teacher of all men and the Head of the Spiritual Hierarchy. He is the Expression of the love of God. On this day the spiritual Hierarchy, which He guides and directs, will be recognised and the nature of God's love will be emphasised. This Festival is determined always by the date of the first Full Moon of spring and is the great Western and Christian Festival.
2. The Festival of Wesak. This is the Festival of the Buddha, the spiritual Intermediary between the highest spiritual centre, Shamballa, and the Hierarchy. The Buddha is the expression of the wisdom of God, the Embodiment of Light and the Indicator of the divine purpose. This will be fixed annually in relation to the Full Moon of May, as is at present the case. It is the great Eastern Festival.
3. The Festival of Goodwill. This will be the Festival of the spirit of humanity aspiring towards God, seeking conformity with the will of God and dedicated to the expression of right human relations. This will be fixed annually in relation to the Full Moon of June. It will be a day whereon the spiritual and divine nature of mankind will be recognised. On this Festival for two thousand years the Christ has represented humanity and has stood before the Hierarchy and in the sight of Shamballa as the God-Man, the Leader of His people, and "the Eldest in a great family of brothers" (Romans VIII: 29). Each year at that time He has preached the last sermon of the Buddha, before the assembled Hierarchy. This will, therefore, be a festival of deep invocation and appeal, of a basic aspiration towards fellowship, of human and spiritual unity, and will represent the effect in the human consciousness of the work of the Buddha and of the Christ.
These three Festivals are a part of the unified spiritual approach of humanity although they are not yet sufficiently related to each other. The time is coming when all three Festivals will be kept throughout the world and by their means a great spiritual unity will be achieved and the effects of the Great Approach, so close to us at this time, will be stabilised by the united invocation of humanity throughout the planet.
The remaining full moons will constitute lesser festivals but will be recognised to be also of vital importance. They will establish the divine attributes in the consciousness of man, just as the major festivals establish the three divine aspects. These aspects and qualities will be arrived at and determined by a close study of the nature of a particular constellation or constellations influencing those months. For instance, Capricorn (December) will call attention to the first initiation, the birth of the Christ in the cave of the heart, and indicate the training needed to bring about that great spiritual event in the life of the individual man. I give this one instance to you in order to indicate the possibilities for spiritual unfoldment that could be given through an understanding of these influences and in order to revivify the ancient faiths by expanding them into their larger undying relationships.
Thus, the twelve annual festivals will constitute a revelation of divinity. They will present a means of bringing about relationship, first of all, during three months with the three great spiritual Centres, the three expressions of the divine Trinity. The minor festivals will emphasise the interrelation of the Whole, thus lifting the divine presentation out of the individual and the personal, into that of the universal divine Purpose; the relationship of the Whole to the part and of the part to that Whole will be thereby fully expressed.
Humanity will, therefore, invoke the spiritual power of the Kingdom of God, the Hierarchy; the Hierarchy will respond, and God's plans will then be worked out on earth. The Hierarchy, on a higher turn of the spiral, will invoke the "Centre where the Will of God is known," thus invoking the Purpose of God. Thus will the Will of God be implemented by Love and manifested intelligently; for this mankind is ready, and for this the Earth waits.
To sum up therefore: on the basis of the fundamental truth already recognised, the new world religion will be built.
The definition of religion which will in the future prove of greater accuracy than any yet formulated by the theologians might be expressed as follows:
Religion is the name given to the invocative appeal of humanity and the evocative response of the greater Life to that cry.
Easter
EASTER FESTIVAL: ARIES
Love is the cause of all creation and the sustaining factor in all living.
The time of Easter is imbued with the initiating energy of Will powerfully flowing through the sign of Aries and bringing the spirit of Renewal into our lives. The Christ was first to anchor the divine principle of Love, an alchemical process that continues to impact the hearts and minds of people of all faiths and cultures and is leading humanity into an age characterised by Love.
Esoterically, this time is known as the Festival of the Risen, Living Christ, and we meditate on its principle of resurrection into greater Life. “Christ in us, the hope of glory” becomes a touchstone of our deep reflections. Gradually, through such systematic and rhythmic efforts, the individual escapes the confines of the lower self, and is reborn to the inspirational life of the soul. As with all Enlightened and liberated beings, the personality’s subjective crucifixion and death leads to the renewal of consciousness and a life of spiritual purpose and expression.
Today we search for Truth by an intelligent approach to the world we live in, but there is also a danger in an overly mental and analytical approach which distorts the true nature of “themind that is in Christ”. The mind is the great revealer of truth but until it is calm and reflective, it remains “the slayer of the real”. It stands in stark contrast to the simplicity of Christ’s message of Love. When this healing remedy is used, heart and mind are lifted into something so spiritually majestic that all lower concerns and distractions bow before it. It allows entry into a stream of liberating energy where we can stand united with all who Love and become attuned to the power that makes all things new.
Wesak
WESAK FESTIVAL: TAURUS
Wesak is widely celebrated throughout the East as the Festival of the Buddha. For esotericists it is the high point of the spiritual year when forces of enlightenment flow from the higher worlds into the mind of humanity.
While Buddhists celebrate Wesak as the time that marks the birth, death and enlightenment of the Buddha, ageless wisdom students regard it as a living event. At the exact moment of the Taurus full moon, the Buddha is said to return momentarily to earth, appearing to those gathered in a secluded valley in the Himalayas who are able to see him. Some have dreamt of being present at the ceremony. The Christ stands before the Buddha and, in a moment brimming with vitality and significance, receives the Buddha’s blessing on behalf of humanity, before turning and radiating this blessing out to the assembled gathering and to all human beings.
The Buddha has always been known as a great Revealer, rendering the mind as a “clear sheet of glass” in order to see the reality of Oneness. His techniques of dispassion, detachment and discrimination help to sweep away all that veils and hinders recognition of this reality. The underlying message is simple: before we can truly see we have to free ourselves from the many forms of desire that impede our vision.
A new world is now being conceived by many – it is being actively looked for, and when the eye of the soul is opened, it will be seen to be more real than the world that is revealed by the five senses. The new light is on its way. The annual Wesak blessing plays a crucial role in the coming of that light.
Christ
CHRIST’S FESTIVAL: GEMINI
The higher interlude of the spiritual year culminates in the Gemini full moon – in a Festival which celebrates the spiritual potential of humanity to unify the personal will with the Will of God. On this day the Christ stands before God as the representative of humanity, the “eldest in a great family of brothers,” and focalises the united aspiration of humanity into an invocative demand for more Light and Love. Through Christ, the response of deity pours forth into humanity, uplifting human consciousness and establishing a culture of goodwill and right human relations on earth.
This invocation and evocation of deity circulates life throughout creation and provides the evolutionary impulse by which the Divine Plan works out. This Plan requires that the Principle of Life mount upon the shoulders of matter through the development of human consciousness. Thus, humanity is vital in the working out of the Divine Plan.
Today, however, humanity remains divided and so cannot stand as the lighted house through which spiritual consciousness finds expression. This Festival augments the Principle of Unification which brings the higher and lower aspects of humanity into closer relationship; the light of the soul waxes and increases while the light inherent in matter wanes. This facilitates the expression of a spiritual unity and the annihilation of separatism.
This Festival marks the culmination of the work of the Buddha, focalized through Christ and expressed through Humanity. It also initiates a future approach to divinity wherein invocation – the conscious focalization of one’s spiritual aspiration – is paired with the expression of spiritual consciousness through right human living. It is for this reason that World Invocation Day, a time when we are asked to do all we can to promote the widest use of the Great Invocation, occurs on this day.