Before one is ready for the first initiation, the soul and the personality* must ‘do battle’. The personality must ultimately submit to the influences of the soul for initiation to be possible. What is true of the individual is also true of humanity as a whole.
*According to the teachings of the Eternal Wisdom, the personality consists of the physical body (and its etheric double), the astral body and the mental body. It is this material aspect of ourselves that we must spiritualise.
What are we witnessing at present?
One section of humanity seeks to express the values of the soul (the Angel of Presence): sharing, justice, solidarity, cooperation, synthesis, Love… Another part still feels the need to express values linked to the past and to the ‘separate’ personality: greed, the need for domination, self-assertion at the expense of ‘others’, selfishness, conflictual relationships and competition…
At present, a president is revealing to us all the negative tendencies of his personality (the Guardian of the Threshold), but also those of humanity as a whole, acting as a mirror. He is trying to drag us along with him into wars, conflicts, divisions and ideologies.
We should be honest and acknowledge that these negative tendencies are also our own. Let us bring them into the open so that, at last, the soul may express itself and use our personality as a ‘vehicle’ for service.
Master D.K.:
The battle, then, is between the form aspect of life and the soul. The Keeper of the Threshold (the threshold of divinity, my brothers) is humanity itself, with its old habits of thought, its selfishness and its greed. Humanity today is confronted with the Angel of Presence, or the soul, whose nature is love, light and all-encompassing understanding. The great question facing us today is which of these two will emerge victorious from this conflict, and which of these two great agents of life will determine the future of humanity and point the way forward that it chooses to take.
The Guardian of the Threshold embodies within himself the evil tendencies, the accumulated limitations and the sum of selfish desires and habits that characterise the disciple’s material nature.
The Angel of Presence points to a future possibility and to the divine nature. (…)
The Guardian of the Threshold points to the past, with its limitations and evil habits.
Certain cycles in the disciple’s life present one aspect of this confrontation, whilst other cycles present another. Over the course of a lifetime, he may be entirely occupied with struggling against the Guardian of the Threshold or with turning towards the Angel of Presence, and allowing the divine, formative energy to flow into himself. He may succumb to the formidable weight of his evil and material desires, or he may gradually draw nearer to the Angel. But – and this is the important point – it is he himself who brings about one or the other of these manifestations. The same is true of humanity. The call of humanity’s soul, or that of its material nature, must elicit a response; it is in this way that an Avatar can manifest. It is the disciple’s magnetic call, or the collective intention of humanity, that brings about the manifestation. In other lives, the disciple may simply oscillate between the two poles of his being without conscious effort, without direct confrontation and without a clear understanding of the purpose of life. The same is true of humanity.
Ultimately, however, there comes a life in which the disciple is confronted with both the Guardian and the Angel, and the major conflict of his experience takes place. This is what is happening in the world today. The spiritual and the material are in conflict, with humanity itself serving as their battlefield.
Extrait d’Extériorisation de la Hiérarchie, d’Alice Bailey.