3.
The Sabian Orientation

The Arcane Dedication

Immortality consists of a living without beginning or end, and in consequence it is necessary for the individual aspirant (1) to establish the roots of his personal awareness anciently enough in the evolution of the race to endow himself with the stature he needs for his aspiration and (2) to project the branches of his faith far enough into the future to fulfill all possibilities of divine consummation. By the same token the Sabian Assembly in undertaking to sustain the initiatory progress of the seeker must activate (1) an unbroken continuity of group consciousness from a phase of human experience back sufficiently in racial development to embrace the beginnings of all who may seek unfoldment under its auspices and (2) an uncompromising or total and impartial respect for every possible aspect of man's self-expression now to be found or yet to be made manifest. Because the initiate-to-be and his invisible fellowship must serve each other equally and in an identity of creative potential if the Sabian project as a whole is to have any spiritual actuality, or is to remain a valid initiatory body under the Solar Mysteries, the tie to original source must be ever beyond question. Obviously any attempt to locate this too definitely in objective global history would be defeated [81] through its literalism. What constitutes eternity is not so much the absence of beginnings and endings as a creative and free sustainment in what is both prior and subsequent adequately for a given manifestation. Eternal reality provides a functional zero in duration, or a practical comprisement in successiveness from which time never needs to be projected in either direction. Here is the proposition kept simple in general occultism by presenting all ultimates of progress as circular or cyclic. And also and by the same token the concept of absolute integrity as poise at the core of itself involves the parallel convergence or convenience of all-potentiality in space relations. The term in the esoteric tradition for this point of unimpeachable reference in which any given manifestation has its dynamic self-impetus under any and all possibilities of existence, with never a relationship that can be conceived behind or beyond it in any sense, is laya center and it has been given preliminary description in the opening section of this manual.

The concept actually identifies no more than the illimitability of interweaving realities throughout all existence, but it is this phenomenon of spiritual independences in mutual sustainment that constitutes the higher or one-and-only reality forever eluding language. Thus the initiate increasingly becomes a laya center for the new and truly eternal destiny of himself, as well as of all with whom he may share its inner and absolute stability, and the invisible fellowship of the Sabian project and of the Lodge by which it is chartered is a laya center of which these others are all a special manifestation without in any way compromising their identity or its own. In lesser outer [82] dimension but fully a part of the whole in an equal absoluteness are the projects of all the workers in the occult tradition. As each of these develops a characteristic task of spiritual potentiality, in which he may fulfill himself, he constitutes himself a laya center for the eternal contribution through its accomplishment. The foundation of all Sabian work in consciousness is effort directed to the spiritual sustainment of the vision in its various details, and this means the maintaining and strengthening of these superficially mysterious zero functions through a continuous rehearsal of the differentiations of experience for which they serve as causeless origin. In Sabian usage the term is not restricted to primeval points of source, since an absoluteness of beginning is recognized as the basis of all true choice. The fact that this absolute of self-act may be found in the smallest or most immediate context no less than in one of immeasurable remoteness reveals the spiritual source at the core of everything.

A life elevated to the level of avatars and adepts becomes more the laya center of a group reality than the individual of immortal personality that establishes and strengthens it from incarnation to incarnation. It develops the outer poise and universality of realization characterizing the great souls everywhere. In time there may be uncounted millions who will find a peace and an enlightenment for themselves by dwelling within its potentiality, and in this they may gain the salvation promised by most religion. To varying degrees the less evolved seeker becomes a species of incarnation of the more exalted one, and thus helps provide the illuminated server with the vicarious embodiment he can use in his higher [83] self-sustainment for performing the tasks to which he is dedicated. The faithful are saved because they are enabled to live an eternal plussage of selfhood, and in doing so to help others to do as much in turn. And under the Solar Mysteries this is fellowship rather than a hierarchy.

The Masters or Brothers are men who have developed and held an immortality by a continuous maintenance of conscious personality, quite apart from the fleshy embodiment of their regular incarnations, and in this unbroken chain of unending activity or service they have created the primary laya center of occult vision and effort through which the great Lodge continues in its effective existence. In their various normal lives during recent millenniums these individuals have proved their inherent stature by the achievements or contributions of weight sufficient to sustain the tradition in its outer manifestation, and each of them on the inward and eternal side is the creator and sustainment of some special laya center by which his own consciousness keeps its identity. Twelve of these long-experienced initiates serve as the invisible and administrative council of the Sabian Assembly, and ten of them are associated with the vision permanently and have been for generations. The other two are revolving members of the circle, but for simplicity's sake they are given fixed identification in the Sabian system of letters, that is, each letter in these two cases referring to a different individuality at different times. Three of the total group are identified, as in Theosophy, as H, K and M. For the others A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J and L are assigned quite arbitrarily.

In Sabian practice all personal information about the Masters is restricted along the lines already explained, and [84] whatever literalistic detail may be needed at times is provided in the oral work on the legate level. As pointed out it is not the individual who is likely to have any significance to the Sabian aspirant, but rather the laya center that actually represents his participation in the common vision. In order to help each seeker get the ever-intangible feel of the fundamental zero points of creativity constituting the general project, as these represent a basic division of labor established by the Great Ones in sponsoring the Assembly, all lesson material and rituals or other details of the procedure are given letters of imprimatur to identify the one of the twelve with whom the author has worked consciously and particularly in preparation or research. What may be a further aid for this sort of intuitive outreach is that since October, 1934, all Sabian effort has been patterned in aspects of function or group ordering known as the Twelve Plans.

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