Excerpted selections from THE FOUR SACRED SEASONS
By G. de Purucker
There are four turning points of the year: the solstices of winter and summer, and the equinoxes of the spring and of the autumn. The cycle of the year among the ancient peoples was always considered to be a symbol of the life of man or, indeed, of the life of the universe. Birth at the Winter Solstice, the beginning of the year; adolescence -- trials and their conquest -- at the Spring Equinox; adulthood, full-blown strength and power, at the Summer Solstice, representing a period of initiation when the Great Renunciation is made; and then closing with the Autumnal Equinox, the period of the Great Passing. This cycle of the year likewise symbolizes the training in chelaship. At the time of the Winter Solstice, two are the main degrees which neophytes or initiants must pass through, to wit, the fourth degree and the seventh or last: the fourth for less great men, although they are great men nonetheless; and the last or seventh initiation, coming but at rare intervals as the ages cycle by, being the birth of the Buddhas and of the Christs.
During the initiation of those individuals of less grandiose spiritual and intellectual capacity than is the human material out of which the Buddhas are born, during this fourth initiation, the postulant is taught to free himself from all the trammels of mind and from the lower four principles of his constitution; and being thus set free he passes along the magnetic channels or circulations of the universe, even to the portals of the Sun, but there and then he stops and returns. Three days usually are the time required for this, and then the man arises a full initiate, but with a realization that ahead of him are still loftier peaks to scale on that lonely path, that still path, that small path, leading to divinity.
As regards the seventh initiation, this occurs in a cycle lasting some 2,160 human years, the time which it takes for a zodiacal sign to pass through a constellation backwards into the next constellation; in other words, what is called among mystics in the Occident the Messianic Cycle. When the planets Mercury and Venus, and Sun and Moon and Earth, are situated in syzygy, then the freed monad of the lofty neophyte can pass along the magnetic pathway through these bodies and continue direct to the heart of the Sun. For fourteen days the man left on Earth is as in a trance, or walks about in a daze, in a quasi-stupor; for the inner part of him, the real part of him, is peregrinating through the spheres. Two weeks later, during the light half of the lunar cycle or month, that is, when the moon stands full, his peregrinating monad returns rapidly as flashing thought along the same pathway by which it ascended to Father Sun, retaking to itself the habiliments which it dropped on each planet as it passed through it......Then for a while, shorter or longer according to circumstances, the neophyte's whole being is irradiated with the solar spiritual splendor, and he is a Buddha just "born." All his body is in flaming glory, as it were; and from his head, and from back of his head in especial, as an aureole, there spring forth rays, rays of glory like a crown. It is because of this that crowns in the Occident and diadems in the Hither East were formerly worn by those who had passed through this degree, for verily they are Sons of the Sun, crowned with the solar splendor.
In these initiations the man dies. Initiation is death, death of the lower part of the man; and in actual fact the body dies but is nevertheless held alive, not by the spirit-soul which has flown from it as a butterfly frees itself from its chrysalis, but kept alive by those who are watching and waiting and guarding. It is due to this holding of the bodily triad alive that the peregrinating spirit-soul is enabled finally to return as a bird to its nest, where it recognizes its former bodily home, and is "reborn," but in this case reborn into the same body.
......There are cases where neophytes fail, yet those who fail have another chance in other lives; but the penalty for failure in this life is either death or madness, and the penalty is very just. Solemn indeed are the warnings given to those who would fly like the birds into the ethers of the inner worlds and follow the tracks of those who have preceded them along the circulations of the universe.
Initiation is the becoming, by self-conscious experience, temporarily at one with other worlds and planes, and the various degrees of initiation mark the various stages of advancement or of ability to do this. As the initiations progress in grandeur, so does the spirit-soul of the initiant penetrate deeper and deeper into the invisible worlds and spheres. One must become fully cognizant of all the secrets of the solar egg before one can become a divinity in that solar egg, taking a part, self-conscious and deliberate, in the cosmic labor.
Prepare yourselves continually, for every day is a new chance, is a new doorway, a new opportunity. Lose not the days of your lives, for the time will come, fatally come, when it will be your turn to undertake this sublimest of adventures. Glorious beyond words to express will be the reward if you succeed. Therefore practice, practice continuously your will. Open your heart more and more. Remember the divinity at your inmost, the inmost divinity of you, the heart of you, the core of you. Love others, for these others are yourself. Forgive them, for in so doing you forgive yourself. Help them, for in so doing you strengthen yourself. Hate them, and in so doing you prepare your own feet to travel to the Pit, for in so doing you hate yourself. Turn your backs on the Pit, and turn your faces to the Sun!
{The above article was reprinted in KYR by permission - copyright Theosophical University Press, all rights reserved}