(A.A. Bailey, Glamour: a World Problem, pp. 104-125, 1950 — SECTION TWO, THE CAUSES OF GLAMOUR, <2>.)

"The causes producing world glamour can be divided into three groups:

A. Planetary causes.

B. Causes initiated by humanity itself.

C. Causes induced by any individual person which are, nevertheless, founded and based in the two above groups of conditioning factors.

A. Planetary Causes. These causes are two in number and beyond your finite comprehension. I only state them and ask you to accept them as reasonable speculations and possibly accurate hypotheses:

1. Causes inherent in substance itself. The atoms of which all forms are made have been inherited from an earlier universe or solar system and are, therefore, tinged with or coloured by the results of that great creative manifestation. The effects produced in that expression of divine existence constitute predisposing factors or initiating causes in this solar system and planetary life. These conditioning and inherited factors cannot be evaded. They determine the nature of the life urge, the trend of the evolutionary unfoldment, and the innate tendencies which all forms possess, such as the capacity to grow and to unfold, to orient the type and to express in time and space the archetype or pattern, and to outline and determine the structure of the kingdoms into which science divides the natural world. These are but a few of the innate, inherent characteristics of substance itself, inherited and conditioning our present manifestation of divine life.

2. The life or manifestation of the planetary Logos, the "One in Whom we live and move and have our being," is determined by His Own Nature. To us, that great Life embodies perfection and the qualities which distinguish Him are those to which we direct our highest aspiration. But, from the angle of Those Lives Who are ahead of Him upon the cosmic path (I speak symbolically and in terms of human experience) He is among the "imperfect Gods." These imperfections, hindering unfoldment or the perfect expression of divine energy when brought into conjunction with the inherited qualities and biases of the substances through which He must express His life, His purposes and intentions, produce the "seeds of death and of decay" which characterise our planetary evolution in all the four kingdoms in nature. They create the obstacles, obstructions and hindrances against which the soul in all created forms must struggle, gaining strength and understanding thereby and eventual liberation.

These are the two major planetary causes. They cannot finally deter the soul from emancipation but they can and do hinder and delay. It is useless for men to speculate upon these hypotheses with their present inadequate equipment and type of brain. Nothing would be achieved and you would be none the wiser.

B. Causes initiated by humanity itself. Slowly, step by step, humanity has created and intensified that glamorous condition of consciousness which we call the astral plane. All glamour is produced by the bringing together of one or more streams of energy which produce a temporary whirlpool of energies and, from the angle of man—the onlooker and participator—produce a condition of darkness, a state of bewilderment which makes clear choice and right discrimination difficult and, in the early stages, impossible. It creates an aura which is today of such a general nature and so all-enveloping that everybody is, figuratively speaking, immersed in it. This aura, in the infancy of the race, only surrounded the more advanced people. To understand what I mean by this statement, I would call your attention to the fact that very unintelligent people, those who are among the lowest human types, and those who are little more than active animals, governed primarily by the instincts, are apt to deal very simply and with complete directness with the facts of existence with which they are faced and which to them are of paramount or sole importance—the facts of hunger, of birth and death, of self- protection and perpetuation. There is little true glamour in their reaction to life and living, and their simplicity, like that of a child, saves and protects them from many of the subtler ills. Their emotions are not subtle, and their minds are unawakened. But, as humanity evolved and the higher levels of the racial consciousness became more subtle and the mind factor slowly became more active, then glamour and illusion developed very rapidly.

The first indications of glamour arose when the disciples and the aspirants of the Lemurian world (whose problem was the right comprehension, correct functioning and control of the physical body) began to differentiate between themselves, as self-conscious beings, and physical and vital forces. That immediately set up a tremendous activity in the throat centre which is the higher aspect of the sacral centre (the sex centre) and thus led to the initial glamour and to the first definite recognition and consideration of the sex impulse, of sex attraction, and—for the initiate of that period—of the necessary sex transmutation. This went hand in hand with the earliest Yoga, or the cult of the physical body with the objective of its control by the soul, and the consequent merging of the conscious and the subconscious.

Around the aspirants of that time could then be seen gathering the first clouds and fogs of glamour, though illusion was nowhere present. The first recognition of the plane of the emotions, of the astral plane, was evoked in the consciousness of the groups under preparation for the first initiation which was the highest initiation possible at that time. The reason for this slowly emerging astral consciousness in the physically polarised aspirant of that time, was due to the fact that one of the secrets of initiation consists in the right understanding and use of the consciousness which is aware and capable of functioning upon a plane higher than that on which humanity as a whole is, at any given time, living. Hence, in Lemurian times, the physically centred man who was on the verge of admission to the Path was aware of:

1. The physical duality wherein his consciousness was accustomed to function normally and of the conflict between the physical body per se and the vital etheric body.

2. A dimly sensed higher consciousness which was distinguished by quality and sentiency. This was all that he could at that time contact upon the most familiar plane today, the astral plane.

3. A growing sense of self-identity which was the awakening soul or self, the Master who was to lead him out of the purely physical consciousness into the next divine stage, the astral consciousness. Forget not, through familiarity and fatigue of conflict, the divinity of each developing step.

Thus it will be apparent to you, if the above is a true statement of fact, that glamour arose from the recognition of these factors in consciousness and was the result of man's reactions to the complexities of his own constitution and to the energy of his own soul.

As time went on, the entire human family became aware of the new emerging dualism existing between the physical constitution and the astral plane, plus the activity of the centre within himself, which at this stage made its appearance as conscience and innate—and at that time unreasoning—realisation of an urge to higher living or a tendency to lower activity. This nebulous conscience developed eventually into what we call the Voice of Conscience. When that took place, the intricacy and the difficulty of life was greatly increased and glamour was definitely established on Earth. It was that which enfolded and over-emphasised the lower at the expense of the higher, and served to distract the attention of the aspirant away from reality. May I again re-emphasise that, at this early stage, glamour was only evoked by and recognised by the highly evolved people of that period?

Then the Lemurian race slowly passed away and the Atlantean race came into existence. During the millions of years this race flourished on Earth there were vast numbers of people with the Lemurian consciousness flourishing at the same time, just as today in this modern Aryan race, there are many, many millions of people who express the Atlantean consciousness and are polarised in their astral bodies, the victims of emotion and of consequent glamour.

In the Atlantean race, the physical duality was then solved, and the physical body and the etheric body constituted a unity, and in the healthy person still do so. The sense of duality shifted then into a growing recognition of the conflict in the realm of quality and into the field of what we today call the "pairs of opposites"—good and evil, pain and pleasure, right and wrong, sense and nonsense, and the multiplicity of opposites by which the aspirant is today faced.

Each of these racial histories sees the establishing of a temporary sense of unity in the early stages, when the previous cleavage had been healed and the initial duality had been resolved into a unity. Then there comes a growing recognition of a fresh realm of choice, based upon the emergence of the higher values, and finally a period of conflict in the consciousness of the individual and of humanity as a whole, as the attempt is made to resolve this higher duality with which the man or the race is confronted.

This resolution is brought about when a higher aspect of the consciousness is dimly visioned and men become aware of themselves as mental beings. There is then a growing demand for that mind nature to be developed and brought into play in the effort to solve the problem in this category of opposites upon the astral plane.

At the same time the sense of self-identity or the consciousness that "I am," is steadily growing, and the initiate of the day faces the effort to release himself from the thraldom of the senses upon the astral plane, from the dense glamour into which his sensory perception has thrown him, and to establish his freedom by a complete control of the astral body. This he eventually does by developing the power to pass between the pairs of opposites, unaffected by either, and thus leave them behind. He accomplishes this by using the mind as a distributor of the light which reveals the "middle way" and which dissipates the glamour with its brilliance and radiance.

This glamour has steadily deepened and intensified as more and more people have succeeded in resolving the initial physical cleavage and have become centred in the astral consciousness. Today such is the magnitude of this glamour and such the success of the evolutionary process, that humanity, as a whole, is wandering in the fogs and miasmas of the world of sentient consciousness. When I use the word "sentient" I do not refer to the sensory apparatus of the physical nervous system, but to the sentient awareness of the Self which is today so immersed in glamour that the mass of men are entirely identified with the world of feeling, of quality, of sentient interplay, and of emotional reactions, with their likes and dislikes, and their dominant self-pity. Self-pity is one of the major glamours of the advanced and sensitive man. It is the advanced people who contribute the most to the world glamour. The major glamour is the reaction of the aspirant to the truth, to reality when he first becomes aware of that which lies beyond the astral plane. He interprets all that he there senses and sees in terms of glamour, of emotional understanding, of a sentient fanaticism. He forgets that truth lies beyond the world of feeling altogether, unaffected by it, and can only be sensed in its purity when feeling is transcended and transmuted. The second major glamour is self-pity.

The world today is divided into three groups, all of whom are subject to certain phases of glamour:

1. Those who are Atlantean in their consciousness and are, therefore, completely glamoured by:

a. That which is material and to be desired.

b. That which they feel in all relationships.

c. That which they believe to be ideal, to be true or just, based on their reactions to the thinkers of the day, but which they themselves do not mentally understand.

d. That which they demand of beauty, and of emotional comfort.

e. That which brings to them spiritual comfort in the realm of religion and religious desire. Note the phrasing.

2. Those who are more definitely Aryan in their consciousness. This means that the mind factor is awakening and thus constituting a difficulty and that the illusions of the mental plane are now added to the glamours of the astral plane. These illusions are theoretical and intellectual in nature.

3. A group of people who are emerging out of those subject to glamour and illusion, and who are alive to the Voice of the Silence and to the demands of the soul.

The complexity of the modern psychological problem lies in the fact that our race and period sees the synthesis of all the glamours and the emergence of the illusions of the mental plane. Today we have aspirants at all stages of unfoldment, and find the masses recapitulating the different steps upon the evolutionary way, with the lowest layer of the human race definitely Lemurian in their consciousness, even though few in numbers relatively speaking.

Illusion is rapidly growing as the mental power of the race develops, for illusion is the succumbing to the powerful thoughtforms which the thinkers of the time and of the immediately preceding age have formulated, and which at the time of their creation constituted the hope of the race. They embodied then the new and emerging ideas by means of which the race was intended to progress. These forms, when old and crystallised, become a menace and a hindrance to the expanding life. The realisation of the problems of illusion lies centuries ahead when the race will have left glamour behind, when there will be few Atlantean minded people on the planet, and when there will be no people at all with the Lemurian consciousness. However, as evolution proceeds, things are greatly speeded up, and the time when humanity will be predominantly distinguished by the Aryan consciousness, is not as far ahead as might be generally supposed. I speak not in terms of the Aryan race as it is generally understood today or in its Nordic implications.

Race	Duality	Problem	Method	Goal
Lemurian	Physical Force versus Vital Energy	Maya	Astral control Hata Yoga: Aspirants Laya Yoga: Disciples	1st Initiation Inspiration
Atlantean	The Pairs of Opposites Qualities Sentiency	Glamour	Mental control Bhakti Yoga: Aspirants Raja Yoga: Disciples	2nd Initiation Illumination
Aryan	Dweller on the Threshold Angel of the Presence	Illusion	Soul control Raja Yoga: Aspirants Agni Yoga: Disciples	3rd Initiation Intuition

C. Causes initiated by the individual. If you have studied all the above with the needed care, it will be apparent to you that the individual man enters upon incarnation already handicapped by existent glamour of a very ancient origin and utterly beyond his power to control at this stage. It is of great potency. I use the word "handicapped" advisedly for lack of a better term. I would like, however, to point out that the true significance of the situation exists in the fact that these conditions offer the opportunity to the man of evoking the understanding and point of view of the soul, for they provide the means whereby experience is gained. This experience will lead eventually to the soul assuming control of the mechanism, the personality, and thus giving to that soul a definite field of service. The vehicles through which the soul is seeking experience and expression are normally and naturally subject to world glamours, and to the glamours of humanity as well as illusion. When the soul, in the early stages of experience, falls into the snare of maya, of glamour and eventually of illusion, the reason is that the soul is identifying itself with those forms and therefore with the surrounding glamour, and thus failing to achieve identification with itself. As evolution proceeds, the nature of the problem becomes apparent to the soul in incarnation and a process is then instituted whereby the soul frees itself from the results of wrong identification. Every soul in incarnation which succeeds in releasing its consciousness from the world of illusion and of glamour is definitely serving the race, and helping to free humanity from this ancient and potent thraldom.

But it must be borne in mind that when a man is nearing the stage of consciousness when both the astral body and the mental body are active and functioning, he himself becomes a manufacturer of glamour. He struggles with forces within himself and within the world in which he lives, and the increasing potency of the inflowing soul energy (which comes in conflict with personality forces) gradually produces around him a field of glamour and an environment of illusion that brings this third category of glamour into full play.

These glamours are dependent upon the expression of the different forces which constitute a man's lower nature, of which he is becoming increasingly aware, and which pass through the stages of emergence into recognition, potency in expression, and violence in conflict until the struggling soul sits down—as did Arjuna—in the midst between the two opposing forces (personality force and soul energy) and asks himself:

1. Which is right, this or that?

2. How can I distinguish where my duty or my responsibility lies?

3. How can I find my way out of this bewildering situation?

4. How can I bring in the control of the Warrior so that the two groups of forces which I love may be resolved into a unity?

5. How can I find my way out of this impasse?

6. Why must I hurt that which I love and through which I have expressed myself for ages?

7. How can I become aware of that mental illumination which will reveal the "middle way" between the pairs of opposites?

8. How can I see God? or else the Form of God?

Many such questions arise in the mind of the aspirant. They indicate dilemma, bewilderment, a realisation of surrounding glamour, a stage of illusion and a condition of impotency. Against the disciple are fighting all the forces of his own nature, and also those of humanity as a whole and of the planetary state. He feels helpless, inert, feeble and hopeless. He cannot even see the way out. Only one clear fact remains and that is the fact of the Soul, of the immortal Identity, the Warrior behind the scenes, the Charioteer, Krishna, the Christ within.

The Bhagavad Gita can be read entirely from the standpoint of the disciple's combat with glamour and students would be well-advised so to study it.

The individual glamours of which the disciple becomes aware are consequently of five types of force. These, when brought into activity simultaneously, produce those glamours which are strictly initiated and produced by the man himself. They are:

1. The forces of his dense physical nature and of the vital body which latter, functioning through the dense physical nature, produce a condition of maya or of uncontrolled energy.

2. The forces of the astral nature, based upon desire and upon sentiency. These, at this stage, fall into two groups which we call the pairs of opposites. Their potency is accentuating at this period of individual history, for the disciple is polarised in the majority of cases in his astral body and is, therefore, subject to the glamours produced by the interplay of the opposites, plus the condition of maya, referred to above.

3. The forces of the lower mental nature, of the chitta or mind-stuff of which the mental body is composed. This is coloured by past activity, as is the substance composing all the vehicles. This adds to maya and glamour, the state of illusion.

4. The personality ray then emerges and intensifies all these three aspects of force expression, producing eventually their synthetic work. Then we have the emerging of what has been called "the threefold glamorous condition," into one major glamour.

5. The soul ray or energy is all this time steadily increasing its rhythmic potency, and seeking to impose its purpose and will upon the personality. It is the united relation and the interplay between these two which—when a point of balance has been achieved—sweeps the man on to the Probationary Path, on to the Path of Discipleship, and right up to the gate of initiation. There, standing before the Gate, he recognises the final duality which awaits resolution. The Dweller on the Threshold and the Angel of the PRESENCE.

The nature of these glamours differs with different people, for the ray quality determines the type of glamour or illusion to which a man will easily succumb, and that kind of glamour which he will the most easily create. Disciples have to learn to differentiate between:

1. The glamours or glamour already existent in his environment, to which he will easily be attracted, or which he will easily attract, for they constitute the line of least resistance.

2. The glamour that he creates as he tackles life through the medium of a particular equipment, which is coloured by the experiences of past incarnations, and by the ray quality under which he has come into being.

This subject is so intricate that it will serve no useful purpose for me to go into detailed particulars. I can indicate the major glamours (and under this term I include the various maya and illusions) to which the ray types predispose the man. If you then apply these to the three vehicles of manifestation as well as to the personality and the soul, you will note how complicated is the problem. Yet remember this, my brother:

The issue is certain and determined for, in this solar system, the triumph of the soul and its final dominance and control is a foregone conclusion, no matter how great the glamour or how fierce the strife. Thus, the ascertaining (by the aspirant) of his ray influence is one of the first steps towards understanding the nature of his problem and the method of release. The psychology of the future will direct attention to the discovery of the two rays which govern the soul and personality. Having done this through a study of the physical type, emotional reactions and mental tendencies, attention will then be directed to the discovery of the rays governing the specialised vehicles. When these five rays (egoic, personality, physical, astral and mental) have been approximately ascertained, then the following factors will need consideration:

1. The nature, quality and stability of the glandular system.

2. The point attained in evolution. This will be done by a careful consideration of the centres and the glands and their relation to each other.

3. The recognition of the points of cleavage or the splits in the personality which exist. These can be:

a. Between the etheric and the physical bodies, leading to a lack of vitality, physical weakness, obsession and many forms of difficulty.

b. In the sentient astral body, leading to a vast number of problems and psychological difficulties based upon undue sensitivity, reaction to glamour in the environment, innate tendencies to glamour in the equipment or resulting from sensitivity to the glamours of other people.

c. In the mental body, imposing mental illusions of many kinds, such as control by self-created thoughtforms, sensitivity to existing world, national, or environing thoughtforms of any school of thought, idée fixe, the sense of the dramatic or of importance, or a fanatical adherence to groups of ideas, inherited from the past, or mental reactions of a purely personal nature.

d. Between any of these groups of forces which we call bodies:

Between the etheric and astral bodies.
Between the astral and the mental bodies.

There is, for instance, a definite correspondence between the condition of negativity to physical plane living which is the result of a lack of integration between the physical and the etheric bodies, and that lack of interest and that failure to handle physical plane living which the thinker on abstract and scientific levels so frequently evidences. Both groups fail to make a definite and decisive manifestation upon the physical plane, both groups fail to deal with the problems of physical plane living in a clear and satisfactory manner, both are non-positive physically, but the causes producing these relatively similar conditions are totally different—though alike in their effects.

4. The comprehension of the Path of Life for an individual, through a study of his astrological indications. It is necessary in this connection to regard the sun sign into which a man is born, as indicative of his personality trends, and as embodying the characteristics which he has inherited from the past, but to regard the rising sign as holding within it the indications of the way that a man's soul would have him go.

Many other factors will warrant careful attention. The problem of the individual is complicated by certain inherited tendencies of a family, national and racial nature. These powerfully affect the physical body in both its aspects, producing glamours of many kinds. It is also affected by certain inherited ideas which are the embodied thoughtforms of family, national and racial approaches to truth. These produce powerful illusions to which the individual man easily succumbs. There are also the inflowing forces of the sign into which the sun may be passing, such as the conditions found in the world today, due to the fact that our sun is passing into a new sign of the zodiac. Therefore powerful and new energies are playing upon humanity, producing effects in all the three bodies. They are evoking glamours in the emotional nature and illusions in the mental nature. Those easily subject to glamour become at this time conscious of an emphasised duality. The subject, as you will therefore see, is vast, and this science of the psychological influences and the results of their impact upon the human mechanism is, as yet, in its infancy. I have, however, indicated enough to arouse interest and to start investigation in this new field of psychological activity.

To return to the consideration of the many glamours which are produced by and related to certain ray types:

RAY I.

The glamour of physical strength.
The glamour of personal magnetism.
The glamour of self-centredness and personal potency.
The glamour of "the one at the centre."
The glamour of selfish personal ambition.
The glamour of rulership, of dictatorship and of wide control.
The glamour of the Messiah complex in the field of politics.
The glamour of selfish destiny, of the divine right of kings personally exacted.
The glamour of destruction.
The glamour of isolation, of aloneness, of aloofness.
The glamour of the superimposed will—upon others and upon groups.

RAY II.

The glamour of the love of being loved.
The glamour of popularity.
The glamour of personal wisdom.
The glamour of selfish responsibility.
The glamour of too complete an understanding, which negates right action.
The glamour of self-pity, a basic glamour of this ray.
The glamour of the Messiah complex, in the world of religion and world need.
The glamour of fear, based on undue sensitivity.
The glamour of self-sacrifice.
The glamour of selfish unselfishness.
The glamour of self-satisfaction.
The glamour of selfish service.

RAY III.

The glamour of being busy.
The glamour of cooperation with the Plan in an individual and not a group way.
The glamour of active scheming.
The glamour of creative work—without true motive.
The glamour of good intentions, which are basically selfish.
The glamour of "the spider at the centre."
The glamour of "God in the machine."
The glamour of devious and continuous manipulation.
The glamour of self-importance, from the standpoint of knowing, of efficiency.

RAY IV.

The glamour of harmony, aiming at personal comfort and satisfaction.
The glamour of war.
The glamour of conflict, with the objective of imposing righteousness and peace.
The glamour of vague artistic perception.
The glamour of psychic perception instead of intuition.
The glamour of musical perception.
The glamour of the pairs of opposites, in the higher sense.

RAY V.

The glamour of materiality, or over-emphasis of form.
The glamour of the intellect.
The glamour of knowledge and of definition.
The glamour of assurance, based on a narrow point of view.
The glamour of the form which hides reality.
The glamour of organisation.
The glamour of the outer, which hides the inner.

RAY VI.

The glamour of devotion.
The glamour of adherence to forms and persons.
The glamour of idealism.
The glamour of loyalties, of creeds.
The glamour of emotional response.
The glamour of sentimentality.
The glamour of interference.
The glamour of the lower pairs of opposites.
The glamour of World Saviours and Teachers.
The glamour of the narrow vision.
The glamour of fanaticism.

RAY VII.

The glamour of magical work.
The glamour of the relation of the opposites.
The glamour of the subterranean powers.
The glamour of that which brings together.
The glamour of the physical body.
The glamour of the mysterious and the secret.
The glamour of sex magic.
The glamour of the emerging manifested forces.

I have here enumerated many glamours. But their names are legion, and I have by no means covered the possibilities or the field of glamour.

One of the groups with which I have worked had certain characteristics and difficulties, and it might be of value if I mentioned it here.

This group had a curious history in relation to other groups, because its personnel changed several times. Each time, the person who left the group had been in it from karmic right and old relation to myself or to the group members, and had, therefore, earned the opportunity to participate in this activity. Each time they failed, and each time for personality reasons. They lacked group realisation and were definitely occupied with themselves. They lacked the new and wider vision. So they eliminated themselves from this initial new age activity. I am explaining this, for it is valuable to disciples to grasp the fact that karmic relation cannot be ignored and that group opportunity must be offered, even though it delay functioning in group service.

Several of the group members were still struggling with glamour and it needed a longer time for them to adjust themselves to recognition of it when encountered. The major task of this group was to dissipate some of the universal glamour by a united indicated meditation. Certain of the group members also were facing or had major adjustments in their lives, and it took a little time for the needed subjective rhythm to become established. But they all worked with understanding, perseverance and enthusiasm, and it was not long before the group work was started.

You would find it of value to consider the following questions:

1. What is the method whereby ideas are developed from the moment of impressing the mind of some intuitive?

Broadly speaking, they pass through the following stages, as you have oft been told:

a. The idea  . . . based on intuitive perception.
b. The ideal . . . based on mental formulation and distribution.
c. The idol . . . . based on the concretising tendency of physical manifestation.

2. What glamours do you feel are particularly dominant in the world today, and why?

3. I have spoken often of the work which this group and certain other groups are intending to do in dissipating world glamour. Have you any ideas as to how this should be done, or what will be demanded of you?" [125]

♦

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