(A.A. Bailey, The Reappearance of the Christ, pp. 95-101, 1948 — CHAPTER FOUR, THE WORK OF THE CHRIST TODAY AND IN THE FUTURE, <IV>.)

"This is a hard saying for the orthodox and narrow Christian churchman to accept; it means primarily that Christ will work in the closest cooperation with the Buddha until this fusion and reconstruction have truly taken place. The Buddha is closely allied with the Christ in this process of His reappearing, though He will not be involved or active during the entire period of Christ's coming, active work on earth. As you know, He, too, has not relinquished His contact and relationship with humanity, though He relinquished His physical body centuries ago. He did this in order to accomplish certain assigned work which had in it (besides many things unknown to humanity) activities connected with the work of the Christ, with the immediacy of His coming and with certain plans for the coming civilisation of the Aquarian Age. As many millions in the world know, each year (at the time of the Wesak Festival at the May Full Moon) He communicates with humanity, via the Christ and the assembled, attentive Hierarchy. He acts in this way as an agent bringing about relationship between the "centre where the will of God is known" and the "centre which we call the race of men." These two descriptive phrases are used advisedly because all the work now being done by these two great Sons of God is concerned with the distribution of energy—the energy of light and the energy of love. It is through the Triangle, earlier mentioned, that the energy of will eventually will be distributed and one of these divine distributors is the Buddha.

Actually the work of the Buddha for humanity is nearly over, and His long alliance with the race of men has nearly come to an end. The moment that the appearance of the Christ is an accomplished fact, and the rule of right human relations is beginning definitely to condition human living, then the Buddha will pass to the work which awaits Him. One of the senior disciples of the Christ, ranking next to the Christ in hierarchical status, will take His place and carry on the work, connected with mankind.

By the time this particular Master takes over His task, the intelligent principle or knowledge, which is the outstanding characteristic of humanity, will have been to a large extent transmuted into wisdom by the world intelligentsia, though not as yet by the masses of men. Wisdom is the predominant characteristic of the Buddha and the momentum of this wisdom energy will eventually be so strong that it will need no further distribution or control by the Buddha. He can then re-orient Himself to higher spheres of activity where His true work lies, and begin to work with an aspect of wisdom of which we know nothing but of which both knowledge and wisdom have been expressing themselves through the Christ and the Buddha; later, through the cooperation of the Avatar of Synthesis, Christ will be able to blend within Himself both of these major divine energies, and thus be a pure expression of love and wisdom, of right relationship and intuitive understanding.

In order to make this possible and thus release His spiritual Brother from the arduous task of relating humanity to the "centre where the will of God is known" (Shamballa), Christ is subjecting Himself at this time to an unique process of training. Of this training, His thirty years of work in the carpenter's shop in Palestine has ever been the hitherto unrecognised symbol. The word "carpenter" is significant of building, of construction, and means (in its derivation) someone who is an artificer in timber or a builder of wooden houses. This is the true meaning of the Biblical story of Christ's being crucified upon the cross of wood or the tree. It is related in reality to the decision made by Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane to take over the building or reconstruction work in Aquarius, and thus complete the task which He attempted to do in the Piscean Age. He and His disciples and the New Group of World Servers are the pledged builders of the new civilisation, the new "house of humanity." The preparatory work He is now doing will fit Him to demonstrate in wisdom (and not only through love) the nature of the hierarchical Plans, wise constructive measures, wise choice of builders and correct methods of construction.

It is apparent, therefore, that this greatest of the Sons of God, the Christ, Representative of humanity and of the second divine aspect, will demonstrate within Himself, during the Aquarian Age and after His reappearance, certain major fused and blended dualities. It would profit us to study them and know which they are:

1. The fusion of the second divine aspect of Love and the first divine aspect of Will—the Will-to-good.

2. The fusion of love and wisdom, enabling Him to be the Builder of the new age and civilisation.

3. The fusion of Piscean energy, generated during the past two thousand years of Christ's spiritual activity and the Aquarian energies to be generated and active on Earth during the next two thousand years, or two thousand five hundred.

It is for this process of fusion and all that it entails that He now subjects Himself to training. When this is completed, He can become in a sense hitherto unknown to Him the focal point and the transmitting Agent for all these five divine energies:

1. The energy of Love.

2. The energy of Will.

3. The energy of Wisdom.

4. Piscean energy, generated during the Christian era.

5. Aquarian energy, already generating upon the inner planes of thought and feeling, and to be generated during the centuries ahead of us.

The lines which His training follows are known only to Christ, to the Buddha and to the Avatar of Synthesis. All esoteric or spiritual training has to be self-applied; this is as true of the Christ as it is of the humblest aspirant. Into the processes of Christ's thinking, reactions and planning, it is not possible for us to enter.

In Palestine, His appearance was mainly prophetic and His work primarily that of laying the foundation for the activities which will follow His reappearance, plus the sowing of the seed, the harvest of which He will garner in the new age. The tragedy of His appearance two thousand years ago has coloured the presentation of truth by the theologians and made them posit an unhappy story, producing a miserable and unhappy world. This tragedy was based on:

1. His discovery that humanity was not ready for that which He came to give and that for centuries much experience, teaching, trial and testing would be needed before His real work could begin.

2. His recognition that He Himself needed a deeper relation with that centre which He always referred to as "the Father's House"; it was this realisation which led to His comment that His disciples could and would do "greater things" than He had done and that He had to go to His Father.

3. His arriving at the conclusion that He must have more trained and dedicated workers and agents than at that time was possible, or has proved possible since. Hence the gathering out and the training of the New Group of World Servers. When there are enough of these servers and enlightened workers, He will come and nothing can arrest His approach.

4. He discovered also that men were not then desperate enough to "take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence"; it is only in desperation and when completely at the end of his tether that the disciple finds his way into that Kingdom and is ready to relinquish the old ways. What is true of the individual must also be true, on a larger scale, of humanity.

It is to the whole world that Christ comes and not just to the Christian world. He comes to the East and to the West, and has foreseen this "time of the end," with its planetary catastrophes, phenomenal disasters, despair and invocation—arising from both the East and West. He knew that in the time of final crisis and tension, humanity itself would force His emergence. The New Testament story is true and correct; it is only the man-made interpretations which have misled humanity.

In the East there is an ancient legend which has an application today and which holds the clue to the relation of the Christ and of the Buddha; it concerns a service which, the legend says, the Buddha will render Christ. In symbolic form, the legend runs that when the Buddha reached enlightenment, and experience on Earth could teach Him no more, He looked ahead to the time when His Brother, the Christ, would be active in the Great Service—as it is called. In order, therefore, to aid the Christ, He left behind Him (for His use) what are mysteriously called "His vestures." He bequeathed and left in some safe place the sum total of His emotional-intuitive nature, called by some the astral body and the sum total of His knowledge and His thought, called His mind or mental body. These, the legend says, will be assumed by the Coming One and prove of service, supplementing Christ's Own emotional and mental equipment and providing Him with what He needs as the Teacher of the East as well as of the West. He can then with strength and success contemplate His future work and choose His workers. There is something of this same idea latent in the injunction given in The New Testament, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ." (Phil. II:5.)

Thus the Christ, with the fused energies of love and wisdom, with the aid of the Avatar of Synthesis and of the Buddha and under the influence of the Spirit of Peace and of Equilibrium, can implement and direct the energies which will produce the coming new civilisation. He will see, demonstrating before His eyes the tr ue resurrection—the emergence of mankind from the imprisoning cave of materialism. Thus He will "see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied." (Is. LIII.11.)" [101]

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