by Bryant Reeve

The cosmic viewpoint throws much light on the subject of masters and mastery. In the Christian nations of Earth about the only master anyone knows about is Jesus. This is quite unfortunate because about two-thirds of the people of Earth are not Christians. They have their own masters such as Laotze, Zoroaster, Gautama Buddha, Confucius and Mohammed – to name a few.

Because of the exclusive and combative tendencies of man, this often leads to what might be called the battle of the masters in human thought. Each group claims its master, its leader, its saint is the best – just like children cheering for the home team, or politicians exalting their own nation or their own region above all others. The cosmic view means the universal view, the over-all view, and from this great perspective it is pure ignorance that exalts one master over another. They are all great in their own way, their time and their place. They all serve a cosmic purpose. The invidious comparison of masters, which tends to divide mankind into factions, is not intelligent.

Masters As Teachers

From the cosmic viewpoint great populations on Earth live in the erroneous concept that masters are primarily saviors. Cosmically viewed this is an error – and a ghastly one at that – because it fosters a false reliance on someone else to do our living and our growing for us.

In the higher view masters are primarily teachers and way-showers. They are teachers of life, teachers of light, teachers on a cosmic level of being and understanding. They show us the way. They are saviors only to the extent that their teachings are understood and lived by their followers. If this simple cosmic fact could be imparted to the people of Earth, it would revolutionize our world and accelerate our cosmic progress.

Earthlings are forever looking for saviors. I cannot do it! You do it for me! This is their cry and their attitude. They want to sleep some more. They want to be babes of some master who is going to save them in the great by-and-by, do it all for them later on.

No! This is not cosmic truth. No master in the universe, regardless of how high and magnificent he may be, has any cosmic right to live another’s life for him. No master is given the authority to “save” another who will not make the effort to save himself. The cosmic law of karma forbids – even a master – to do another’s awakening for him. Life is a do-it-yourself affair. This is one of the major differences between human belief and cosmic truth.

What a master does is to assist those who are ready to awaken by showing them the way, teaching them the laws and the practices by which they can awaken themselves. Masters are teachers – guides – way-showers. This is the cosmic view of masters.

Not To Be Worshiped

There is, allegorically speaking, on the back of every cosmic master a big sign which reads: “Learn from me, but do not worship me!” No master – none of them – wants to be worshiped. To learn this is indeed to progress. To worship a master is to frustrate his intentions and to misunderstand his nature and his purpose. “Why callest thou me good?”

Planetary masters or avatars volunteer for service on a planet at different periods of its evolution to meet different needs. They usually come to a planet through the prevailing system of birth in vogue at the time. They appear as ordinary beings – men or women – so they can gain some acceptance in a civilization. But the invisible differences between them and the souls they have come to help lay in their evolvement of consciousness.

Such masters have an enormous awareness, unrecognized by most of their followers. They have a kinship with all life on the planet they are on – which is hard to grasp. They can, at will, tune into and be aware of every aspect of planetary life. They can be aware of the atomic, stone, mineral, fish, vegetable, animal, human, astral, devic, etc, kingdoms of life of a planet. They are also in rapport with the planetary logos – the entity whose body is the planet – and with the hierarchy and governing spirits of the solar system.

Masters are not goody-goody souls who never did a negative thing in all of their cosmic existence. This may be human belief but it is not cosmic truth. Life is forever living, and masters in their evolution drink of all phases of life to the full. It is thus that they evolve to a fullness of understanding of all of the positives and all the negatives of life. It is thus that they learn to become masters. They are highly evolved, illumined and awakened souls – radiating cosmic peace, love, purity and power. They help guide the evolution of a planet. They help other sleeping souls to awaken when these souls are ready.

To appreciate, love and honor them is fine. But once again, no master wants to be worshiped. To worship a master is to do him a disservice and to hinder his mission of awakening souls to their own divinity. Learn from a master how to be a master. This will really please them!

Quantity Of Masters

As Earthman has practically no cosmic memory while he is incarnated on Earth, he is unaware of the great array of masters who have come and gone from this planet in ages past.

Let us realize that cosmically viewed, planets are schools, and planetary masters are primarily school teachers. Earth as a school has a long cosmic history of bygone civilizations and schoolmasters which would stagger the imagination if they were known to modern man. Earth, since its vortex was first formed is some ten billions of years old, and it has been used as a planetary school for evolving life for about three and one-quarter billions of years.

During these long reaches of evolutionary life, many masters have come to Earth, by spaceships, by the biological processes, by emergence, in many ways – to help solve the problems of evolving life on this little planet. Each master has come for a specific purpose, to meet some great need at some period of time.

But there are untold trillions of life-evolving planets in the vast reaches of endless space. Some of them are man-bearing planets. And throughout endless time masters have gone to them when the need arose. Just think of the vast number of masters – of cosmic administrators and planetary school teachers – that are required in the universe. We can revere them all. But what right have we to worship one of them, in distinction to another. The only planetary masters we even know the names of are those that have appeared on Earth in the last few thousand years. What about the great ones we do not know? They too are the sons and daughters of the all – of the most high. There are endless masters, to meet endless needs, on endless planets, and in the endless spaces between the planets – yes, there are masters in “empty” space itself.

The Nature Of Masters

Many people on Earth think only of masters in terms of special beings, a special order of creation. They never think of themselves as similar souls – evolving toward mastery. Therefore, they set up walls of demarcation between themselves and these masters. Yet the whole effort of masters is to fan the spark of divinity in each one of us into the flame of self-realization – the realization of our own mastery!

Let us remember such teachings as this: “The works that I do, shall ye do also and greater works than these shall ye do.” Often a master teacher will equate himself with a pupil. He will say for example: “I am you! You are me!” – always helping sincere students to awaken and to realize their own innate divinity and mastery.

Masters are not a special creation. They are people. They are men and women, individualized souls, as indeed we are also. Only they have evolved to greater levels of consciousness. There are many degrees of mastery in the universe, just as there are many degrees of mastery on Earth. We have our master electricians and master carpenters and we have our masters of science and of medicine.

But cosmic masters do not have to be in human form or in any form at all. This is true of us also, is it not? Souls do not require form to be themselves. Masters may use any form they need for any occasion. As stated, some planetary masters incarnate through the biological process in order to help a planet. Others simply appear in the form they wish, from human sight. Many new age researchers are convinced that great masters are now walking Earth in human form, but incognito. They are also convinced that many very advanced souls are now being born in human bodies. But such high souls are only known to those who have the spiritual discernment to recognize them.

There are also great cosmic beings unseen to us – members of the cosmic hierarchy – who preside over the planets, suns, solar systems, galaxies and island universes. Outer space is inhabited. It teems with life. It is very difficult for men on Earth to conceive of the greatness, the cosmic stature, or the love, abilities and power of the great men and women in outer space. The all works through its sons and daughters its wonders to perform.

Cosmic teachers assure mankind that there are ordinary people on Earth right now who never think of themselves as masters, but who in the course of evolution will actually become the presiding geniuses of planets and solar systems. It is all a matter of growth, of evolution, of consciousness!

Human Footsteps Toward Mastery

In the early stages of man’s human unfoldment, he learns or believes that there is a great power, a “God” out there. So he sacrifices to it, propitiates it, worships it or prays to it. This is good as far as it goes.

But in time he learns that he is not a body, but a unit of consciousness himself. As consciousness he begins to discern that he is an integral part of this great power. He sees the transcendence of this power, but more important for him he sees the eminence of this power, his individual participation in this power. Then he can take a tremendous step into the practical metaphysical aspects of life and mastery.

He can then learn the omnipotence of thought! He can actually prove to himself that by controlling his thoughts – and keeping them positive – he can enjoy an amazing degree of control over his experiences. Life stops pushing him around, and he has the pleasure of “demonstrating” at least in some degree his “dominion over all the Earth.”

Later he learns that it is not only his thought that he must govern, it is also his feelings. He learns something of the omnipotence of feeling – the need for emotional control – as a factor in mastery. He discovers that thoughts without feeling have much less attractive power and creative energy than thoughts vibrating with feeling. He learns that thoughts form the mold of experience – so to speak – but that feeling fills the mold and helps externalize the demonstration as physical reality. Thus he climbs the ladder of self-mastery which is the mastery of life.

Still later he discovers the cosmic secrets of meditation – and how to tune individual will and consciousness to the infinite.

Then there dawns upon him the glory and the omnipotence of desire – heart’s desire – attuned to the infinite. Then, while still a human being, on the surface of a planet and while he may still appear to others as just one of them – he has invisibly and inwardly gained certain degrees of self-realization – and he lives by grace.

Graduation from the three-dimension octave of life then opens up to him, if he is ready for it. All life is for the enjoyment and profit of the individualized cells of the infinite. Let us repeat it, it is all the infinite experiencing itself! It is all a matter of the one consciousness – the one life – the one in all and the all in one.

Excerpt from The Advent Of The Cosmic Viewpoint