Where do we go from here -1
In the 27 years of its existence DKF-K has been involved in two different phases of Western spirituality. We are now preparing ourselves for the Third.
DKF-K was set up at the tail end of the New Age and is part of the Bailey lineage. Although our focus has always been the individual, which is not that of Alice Bailey’s Esoteric Astrology, we have always used Master DK’s presentation of the cosmic order as the backdrop for our Astrological work.
The New Age and Theosophy in particular, which in England began to unfold and gain traction at the turn of the Twentieth Century, was a determined attempt to close the widening gap between science and religion.
The New Age is to be defined by its presentation of the Universe as a spectrum of Being, to borrow the term used by the Sufi writer Ernest Scott, something that had been suppressed by the early Church to put worshippers in a direct relationship with God, the Universe’s ultimate, and Transcendent source. Only the Angels and the Communion of Saints survived the culls of the 4th Century A.D.
By way of the restoration of these forgotten levels of Being, New Age thinking encouraged understanding of the process of the development of consciousness in the phenomenal Universe, which is unfolding ceaselessly from its centre, sustained by the passage of energies between its many constituent levels of being. This presentation was deemed appropriate for the intellectual Western mind.
Within our solar system, Humanity, like all other levels of Being, is both a receiver and a doner of energy. In this setting God is no longer Transcendent but immanent in the Life of our Solar system, wherein are agents responsible for the evolution of Humanity. These agents are not abstractions; they are part of the etheric body of our planet and have been for time out of mind. For the Buddhists they are the Bodhisattvas; in the West, during the New Age, they were called the Masters and, collectively the Hierarchy, but they are recognized by their work not their name. It was their decision to reveal themselves once again to humanity that brought about the New Age
The nature of their involvement with Humanity changes according to many factors active in our solar system which affect including the receptivity of Humanity, When the bulk of Humanity is survival mode as it was perceived to be in Europe’s Dark Ages, for example, they will step back. The Masters are not saviours or guides; they are influencers, facilitators, and initiators of ideas who may not interfere with Human choice. As Master KH said in The Red Letters ‘Man is writing his own story, and it is written every day with every life’.
Through Theosophy they made themselves known in the Twentieth Century in what was called The Externalization of the Hierarchy but have stepped back since to work behind the scenes, from which they operate in a line-management arrangement which ends with members so the human family receiving help from them to develop their creative contributions considered to be of value They have a high regard for human ingenuity and a pragmatism would shock any serious Ray 6 aspirant out of countenance.
Their focus is the human family collectively, not their individual workers. They must be able to look after themselves.
Whatever the differences in approach and presentation of knowledge, the development of the New Age remained under the conditioning influence of Ray 6¹ upon which Christianity has unfolded from its beginning, and so the Aim of New Age teaching, was essentially the same as that of Christianity. The Aim was to refine our emotional being open the human heart center. What New Age thinking also shared with Christianity was the understanding that to achieve this Aim, spiritual aspirants had to hold down and clean up the lower self² in order to be able to develop the higher principles and give expression to them. This was known as the inner work.
In the Twentieth Century, because of New Age ideas there was much enthusiastic emulation of Asian devotional traditions which were more suitable for inner work than church-controlled Christianity, and much talk of transformation of the kind which enables a conscious individual to escape the need to reincarnate.
But Western spirituality has never been truly transformative because we do not make ourselves available to be transformed. Our personalities are too strong and our intellectual faculties too well developed and over-stimulated. We Westerners hold onto our egocentric perspectives which define and hold us and will call time on teachers and teaching systems which try to move us past them.
By design or default – who knows which? - this has become the Way of the West, and it essentially different from the way of the East, something that is not expected nor generally recognized by aspirants when they first embrace spirituality. Eastern systems taught by Western teachers in the West are doing no more than introducing the ideas and practices which will have to be followed through in their native setting. We cannot deconstruct the Western mind in the West any more than we can jump over our own knees, to borrow the words of G.I Gurdjieff³, but we can tidy it up most usefully.
If the New Age did not achieve the kind of transformation that takes us out of incarnation, its teachings increased awareness, both of self and the Universe, so that we could at least give ourselves a makeover and begin the process of opening of the heart centre in our everyday lives
The Western Way is not to transform ourselves and escape the Three Worlds but to refocus our personalities and make our lives useful to them. This remains the case and gives the point to the idea of using an Astrological chart to identify an individual’s purpose, which was the work which Master DK required of us esoteric Astrologers to prepare individuals to handle Spiritual Will4
¹A Ray is a quality of consciousness and Theosophy considered to be seven major types. The quality Ray 6 is devotional and puts the physical and material development of the higher self: Manisfestign the Ideal.
² Chakras below the diaphragm.
³ G I Gurdjieff, born in Central Asia, did much to bring ideas from his part of the world to the attention of the West in the early Twentieth Century, and the efforts of his sometime student, PD Ouspensky temporarily made London an active centre of New Age ideas and opportunity.
4 When Gurdjieff was teaching in Paris in the 1920s, the writer Katherine Mansfield joined his community, and he once asked he if she knew what individuality was. She, who was seen by her contemporaries as an outstanding example of a free-thinking individual, acknowledged that in fact she did not. Gurdjieff then replied ‘An individual is one who can do ‘.
In its first Phase DKF-K was primarily involved in making the knowledge contained within Esoteric Astrology applicable to individuals.
With or without help from Astrology, those who have lived their purpose have made an impression on our world precisely because they have held onto their separate realities and put them to good effect. Yet, as long as Ray 6 was active we remained inspired by the bigger picture and understood that our lower selves were our biggest liability to progress. The discipline of service work was the route, and almost certainly the best route, to learning to manage the lower self, something else the New Age shared with Christian teaching, if not its practice.
All things have their time, and by the close of the Twentieth Century time was up on this phase of Western spirituality and Ray 6 was decommissioned. Nevertheless, the contribution made to the development of human consciousness in the past 2,000 years through its different expressions across the world and have been made is incalculable.
Once Ray 6 was withdrawn, the familiar ways of presenting spiritual truths rapidly appeared old and tired – its very sounds were wrong. Devotionalism died, Theosophy had long been a travesty of itself, the New Age faded away and enthusiasm for the Asian systems and spiritual teachers of all kinds diminished and the Hierarchy having presented themselves removed themselves so that it was as if they had never existed. The speed with which this happened was breath taking. At DKF-K we watched this ending and understood why but were uncertain how spirituality would express itself from hereon. So, we had to wait and see.
The replacement ray Ray 45 ‘the Healer’s Ray, was introduced to human consciousness in the 1970s, and when those born in the 1970s grew to adulthood, alternative healing, decluttering and enhancing the home environment, committing to partnerships, and getting closer to nature became the more acceptable frame for knowledge with a message about raising vibration, which is the essential point of any spiritual system. The focus increasingly was upon self and restoring health to facilitate access potential. Those born in the 1970s are the generation which made trainers everyday footwear across the world They intended to travel light and did not want teachings or teachers, but travel and experience of different ways of living something they could fix for themselves and turn on and off.
Thus, a new phase of Western spirituality commenced which was about gaining temporary access to higher realities through some form of mediation which they could fix up for themselves– travel, healing techniques, artwork, music, literature – to heal the conflicts in and around us in our environments, enhance their quality aesthetically and to encourage the development of potential already within us by. This was the time that Light Working and Cranial Sacral therapies became popular.
But, the experiences from this kind of applied activity do not always stack up to create something substantial and lasting with the individual, and do not of themselves provide a clear sense of purpose and direction, and indeed they did not for very many. So DKF-K had a place in this new phase because our approach to Astrology has always been focused on the potential within us because a future is the best thing to be hoping for a future provides time in which we can make lifestyle changes.an it balanced out the work of the psychologist- Astrologers whose focus at the close of the last century saw too many people gnawing away for far too long .at the old bones of parenting and childhood.
5 Ray 4 has the quality of healing: Harmony through Conflict
During this phase the Universe has become smaller - planet-centered - and, once more, the perception of the Universe as a spectrum of Being is fading from view. God, if He exists at all for those born in the last 50 years does so in nature, and our planet is the place where this unnamed God can and eventually will be found.
And so, finally, the Earth is getting some respectful attention, but what we perceive now is frightening to us. The things that have come to define the Westerner’s life: peace, ease, affluence, our very future, are under threat, and this conveniently distracts us from our own states of being and the need for inner work. Our potential may be within us but how do we develop it if we have never been shown and still deny our need for supervision. How can we help the planet if we cannot manage ourselves, and if we have not Spiritual Will and cannot do?
Gurdjieff’s ‘Knowing how to do’ is what Master DK calls Spiritual Will and Spiritual Will is necessary for Planetary Service.
These conditions will provide the context of our spirituality for the foreseeable future. From where else are inspiration and incentives going to come, if not from the commitment that we make to the visible world, our Earth, because the invisible world no longer has a place in the realities of so many on our planet now?
How can we make this kind of Earth-centered spirituality work for us and the planet? What can we contribute to ensure the human family remains a seed bed for individuals who can advance evolution, otherwise the human family will become simply food for the moon: worth more dead than alive because in death, nature makes us give up etheric substance which continues the expansion of our Solar system
Can we not make ourselves more consciously useful to evolution whilst we live? Planetary Service is a need and an opportunity. Its three major fields are the human family, the animal kingdom and the Earth itself.
One thing we know for sure, this focus will reconnect us with knowledge once known but long forgotten and love once given to a Transcendent God will now go to our planet.
In 2025, in association with our US colleagues DKF-K will be running some Astrologically themed events in UK designed to reactivate remembrance of the bigger picture, the place of Humanity in the solar system, our own place within the Human family, and the Way of the West.
For DKF-K this will be our Third stage.
Details of these events will be released later this year.
Suzanne Rough
DKF-K/ February 2025.