After noting and watching this trend of affairs for another one hundred years, the Elder Brothers of the race called a conclave of all departments about the year 1500 A.D. Their object was to determine how the urge to integration, which is essentially the keynote of our universal order, could be hastened, and what steps could be taken to produce that synthesis and unification in the world of thought which would make possible the manifestation of the purpose of the divine Life which had brought all into being. When the world of thought is unified, then the outer world will fall into a synthetic order. It should be remembered here that the Masters think in large terms and work in the wider cycles of evolutionary endeavor. The tiny and temporary cycles, the small ebb and flow of the cosmic processes do not engage Their attention in the first instance.

At this conclave They had three things to do:

1. To view the divine plan on as large a scale as possible, and refresh Their minds with the vision.
2. To note what influences or energies were available for use in the large endeavor to which They were pledged.
3. To train the men and women who were then probationers, chelas and initiates so that in due time They could have a satisfactory band of assistants on whom They could in future centuries rely.

They had, in connection with these aspirants, two problems:

1. They had to deal with the failure on the part of even the most advanced disciples to preserve continuity of consciousness, a failure even now manifested by even initiates. [403]
2. The Masters found the minds and brains of chelas curiously insensitive to the higher contacts, and this again is a condition which still prevails. The chelas, then as now, possessed aspiration, a desire to serve humanity, devotion and occasionally a fair mental equipment, but that telepathic sensitivity, that instinctive response to hierarchical vibration, and that freedom from the lower psychism which are the needed prerequisites to intensive intelligent work were singularly lacking. For that matter, they are still distressingly so. Telepathic sensivity is decidedly on the increase as a result of world conditions and the evolutionary trend, and this is (for the workers on the inner plane) a most encouraging sign, but love of psychic phenomena and failure to differentiate between the vibrations of the various grades of hierarchical workers still greatly hinder the work.

You might here ask and rightly so: What is this plan? When I speak of the plan I do not mean such a general one as the plan of evolution or the plan for humanity which we call by the somewhat unmeaning term of soul unfoldment. These two aspects of the scheme for our planet are taken for granted, and are but modes, processes and means to a specific end. The plan as at present sensed, and for which the Masters are steadily working, might be defined as follows: - It is the production of a subjective synthesis in humanity and of a telepathic interplay which will eventually annihilate time. It will make available to every man all past achievements and knowledges, it will reveal to man the true significance of his mind and brain and make him the master of that equipment and will make him therefore omnipresent and eventually open the door to omniscience. This next development of the plan will produce in man an [404] understanding - intelligent and cooperative - of the divine purpose for which the One in Whom we live and move and have our being has deemed it wise to submit to incarnation. Think not that I can tell of the plan as it truly is. It is not possible for any man, below the grade of initiate of the third degree, to glimpse it and far less understand it. The development of the mechanism whereby a disciple may be en rapport with Those responsible for the working out of the plans, and the capacity to know (and not just dimly sense) that tiny aspect of the whole which is the immediate step ahead and with which cooperation is possible, that can be achieved by all disciples and should be held as the goal before all aspirants. With the exception of probationary disciples who are not as yet sufficiently stable in their endeavor, all can therefore strive towards achieving continuity of consciousness and at awakening that inner light which, when seen and intelligently used, will serve to reveal other aspects of the Plan and specially that one to which the illumined knower can respond and usefully serve.