Vol. 52 No. 2 - Elizabeth Clare Prophet - January 15, 2009
Discipleship: Five Steps of Initiation
under the Living Word
Part 2
Chela
So being a student must come to an end. The student studies to the place where he recognizes that he could study forever and what he needs is the flame of God-mastery. How to get it? He must become a chela. That is stage two of affiliation with the Great White Brotherhood, the phase of the servant, the chela, or the disciple. All these terms are synonymous. The chela stage can be defined as follows:
The individual desires to enter into a bond with the master—to be taught directly by the master rather than through his published writings alone. The servant or chela receives initiations in the course of his service to the master. His heart, mind and soul have begun to unfold a greater love as appreciation and gratitude for the teachings received in the previous level of student. This love is translated into action as self-sacrifice, selflessness, service and surrender to the Christ. When this step has been accelerated to the level of the “acceptable offering” and the chela is engaged in balancing his threefold flame and his karma, he may be considered for the next step.
The Hindu root of chela, as we know, means slave. And those who attack the Guru-chela relationship love to bring this up because they point to the false gurus, how they truly do enslave their chelas, with no love whatsoever. These gurus make their chelas obedient to themselves and often engage in brutal and cruel practices.
What being the servant truly means is that the master is largely karma-free but the chela yet has karma and this is what makes him a slave. He is a slave to his own karma. And one day he gets the bright idea: “As long as I am a slave to my karma, why shouldn’t I be a slave to a master who will help me carry this karma? I would rather serve the dharma of my Guru than be the servant or the slave of the corruption of my not-self and my karmic coil.” So it is truly enlightened self-interest to become the servant, the chela, of the master.
Serving the Master
When we therefore serve the master who is ascended, who may have some karma left, and we are assisting him through world service to balance that karma, we are of all people most blest. We balance our own karma in the process and we inherit the good karma that accrues to the master himself. We are putting on his mantle day by day, his Christhood, because we have said, “O master, I will help you to fulfill your karma” or “I will help you to fulfill your dharma, which is your mission and your duty on the planet.”
The master is grateful because he needs hands and feet on earth. And so, if he decides that it is a good risk and someone that he can have a relationship of trust with, the ties are established and the light of the master flows to the servant.
This was spoken about recently in the dictations that I gave to you during the July conference, how by dispensation and sponsorship a person is taken on as a chela, his karma is left at the door and he’s called therefore to give service.1 The master was actually speaking about those in this organization. They no longer feel the weight and the burden of that karma and they do not have the memory of how it used to be when they carried such a burden.
Spiritual Pride
So the problem at this level of chelaship, when the chela has karma that is being set aside in favor of world service, is that he now becomes vulnerable to spiritual pride. He begins to think that he is privileged, which indeed he is. But he thinks he is privileged in the sense of being a favorite son or a favorite daughter. And so he begins to believe that it is because of his decrees, his own innate spirituality, a grand person he’s been in previous lives or the very fact of his longevity in the organization that he’s a special person among others and among those upon the planet, forgetting that were it not for the sponsorship of the master, day by day he would be plowing through the dregs of his own karma and carrying a great burden.
In a sense you might say that this is what has happened in the situation of El Morya. He said he has lost the opportunity for dispensations to his chelas because they have not made good use of all that has already been given.2 If we don’t make good use of the gift of the Guru, we’re taking that gift for granted and we’re taking for granted that our comfortability is an earned level of attainment.
I know people who have had their karma set aside in previous embodiments and have accomplished noble purpose and great service. And not a few among you can be counted in the category of world servers where you may have performed a great service in the past, going before the Lords of Karma, offering to do it. The karma was set aside for an embodiment. You went forth, you completed that service, you were triumphant. Nations were assisted. You did some work of import on the planet.
Now you reembody in what is intended to be your final embodiment and all of the karma that was set aside comes down. So on the one hand, you have the memory, maybe conscious, of having achieved great, good things and that gives you the sense of spiritual pride. And on the other hand, because of that, you deny the level of karma where you are today.
Balancing Personal Karma
I have not emphasized this in the past, but it is apparent to me that not a few among us have a very heavy karma. And when, in counseling sessions, I may say this to people, they are absolutely astonished. They think that automatically because they are chelas, their karma must be light. The case may be entirely to the contrary.
What I also have noticed is that some people who are Keepers of the Flame or on the staff here, and who work hard for the Brotherhood, do not take into account on a day-to-day basis that they are working out their karma. So when calamities happen or they have accidents, they cannot understand. They think their religion has failed them, the masters have failed them: “Why should this happen to me when I am a student and a servant of God?”
The principle of the Law is that every man must bear his own burden.3 No one said that simply because you have sponsorship and you may have left some karma at the gate, you are totally exempt from balancing that karma on a personal basis. There is health karma that comes from previous lives and this one. There is the karma of the out-of-alignment state because you have not slain the wrong desire, and those desire momentums within you spring up. There is all kinds of karma.
The Disdainful Commentator
People have had accidents, severe accidents, sometimes even when they were giving their Michaels before it happened. They may have had a situation where they could have died. Maybe the car was overturned. And in some cases they had some injury. In other cases they were totally spared injury.
Along comes an all-wise fellow chela who says to them, “Well, if you had really done your decrees correctly, you wouldn’t have had this accident at all.” This happens so often, I wanted to cover it in this talk that I am giving to you today.
I am so bemused by this—the all-wise, all-knowing commentator, who sounds like Job’s friends, coming along and saying, “Our God is just. If calamity befalls you, it must be your karma. It must be your lack of attainment.”
Mark tells some funny stories about people who said the same thing of him because he didn’t have much money and they did. They assumed they had greater attainment than he did because they had produced more money in their life than he had, and they would look down upon him with great spiritual pride and disdain.
The Satisfaction of the Law
It’s true that you are not spared your karma. But the wonderous thing I learned is this: When you are on the Path and diligent in all ways, and the Law must be satisfied because you come to a certain place on the Path where that karmic record is due, God may give you 10 percent or 15 percent of that karma—a calamity that could have been much worse but enough of a calamity to keep you on your toes, to keep you sharp.
So this problem comes upon you, this accident, this loss. And by facing it with humility toward God, with boldness toward the negative force and toward the situation, and showing that you will manifest equanimity, self-mastery, gratitude to God for the lesson, and so forth—not rebel against it, become angry, take it out on others, blame others for everything that happens to you—by going through that, what is written is that the Law is satisfied.
You need to remember that concept, the satisfaction of the law of karma—that because of your daily service and your attitude toward light, life, your advancement on the Path and all the good you do, you are exempted anywhere from 75 to 85, 95, even 98 percent of that karma. But some of it befalls you to make you realize that you are on a path of karma yoga and you must be conscious that every day there is karma to be balanced.
I would like you to think of it this way. If you serve and decree and you are conscientious in your self-discipline, as you balance more of your karma you are lightening the load of the one in heaven who has sponsored you. As you lighten the load of the karma that he is carrying for you, what do you think he does? Why, he blesses you. He initiates you. He raises you up. He gives you a portion of himself.
You have the most all-loving, wondrous Gurus there could ever be. They are God in manifestation. So not taking for granted one’s status as a chela is extremely important.
Mastery of the Seven Rays
What is dangerous in going from step two to step three is the assumption that one has passed from step two to step three. I have noticed how quickly individuals assume that they have been elevated to a level when they do not have the attainment to be elevated to that level. They assume this by fantasy (they just fantasize a relationship with a master that they do not have) or spiritual pride or ignorance—some sort of out-of-alignment state.
A chela must understand that he is earning God-mastery on each of the seven rays. Just one of these rays will not suffice. We have to have the balance of the seven rays to move on. We have to have friendship, love, interaction and a figure-eight flow with the Lords of the Seven Rays. They each embody a specific ray and the law of that ray. They initiate us in our chakras. We can’t simply neglect one of our chakras and expect to be elevated to the next level.
So let us not assume so quickly that we have passed all of the tests of the seven rays and therefore elevate ourselves to a position that we do not have. To falsely do so means that we will neglect our tests on the previous rung of the ladder and find ourselves in a kettle of soup like we find ourselves today—chelas who, desiring sponsorship from El Morya, will not receive it from him because the gift given has not been maximized.
The Joy of Being a Chela
To serve, then, as a chela is important. There are ascended masters today who yet consider themselves chelas of other great cosmic beings. And we know that any ascended master we would consider—those who are sponsored whom we know, whose dictations we receive—surely must have greater mastery than we have in conscious manifestation in embodiment.
There is no reason ever to feel that you are not a chela, even as you go on to the next levels. It is a tremendous joy to be a chela. Of all the roles you could possibly have, it ought to be your favorite. It is simply a wondrous life to sense that the Guru needs the chela4 and you can perform a service for the one who has unlocked the fire of God within your being.
Continued in Part 3, published in Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 52, no. 3.
“The Summit Lighthouse Sheds Its Radiance o’er All the World to Manifest as Pearls of Wisdom.”
Elizabeth Clare Prophet delivered this lecture, “Discipleship: Five Steps of Initiation under the Living Word,” on Sunday, August 14, 1988, during the Sunday service “Mother’s Response to El Morya’s Dictation: ‘Free El Morya!’” which was part of a prayer vigil for El Morya. The other four parts of this lecture are published in Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 52, nos. 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
1. See Gautama Buddha, July 3, 1988, “Concerning Maitreya’s Mystery School: The Line Is Drawn, the Standard Will Be Kept,” in 1988 Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 31, no. 67, pp. 507-20. The other dictations from the 1988 July conference are also included in the 1988 Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 31, nos. 56-76..
2. El Morya lost the opportunity for dispensations. In his dictation on August 8, 1988, El Morya announced that there would be no new dispensations for his chelas or for his world service from the Lords of Karma. In short, he was “benched” until karma incurred by dispensations misappropriated or unappropriated by chelas and world servers might be sufficiently balanced. On August 8, 1989, following a year in which the messenger and Keepers of the Flame worldwide joined together in an intense effort to balance this karma through decrees and service, El Morya made the announcement that he was “unbenched.” This, the master said, was by the grace and intercession of Mother Mary and Kuan Yin as well as the extraordinary devotion of the messengers and the chelas. (See 1988 Pearls of Wisdom, Book II, pp. 581-82, 583-84, 585, 586, 601, 619-20, 621-22; 1989 Pearls of Wisdom, pp. 553-54, 473-86.)
3. Gal. 6:5.
4. When the word chela has a capital C, it indicates that the Chela is sharing a relationship of coequality with the Guru, wherein the Guru represents the Alpha polarity and the Chela represents the Omega polarity. Such a Chela is capable of holding the balance for the Guru in the earth. The Chela who has earned a capital C holds a high office opposite the Guru.
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