Have you any idea, my brother, with what care I watch the work of this group of disciples? I watch with patient attention, not because of any personal interest where the personalities of the disciples are concerned but because of the potency latent in such consecrated groups. If the personnel of the group can be sufficiently purified and trained and if the disciples who compose it can be sufficiently welded together into one functioning unit, then much can be accomplished. All is yet in the trial stage with many of them and only the coming few years will show the Masters which of their groups can stand pressure and yet preserve the soul link which underlies all the differing personalities.

The problem of group integration is always a difficult one; it has been particularly difficult for you to integrate into [628] my group of disciples because of your much cherished and deeply rooted sense of isolation. This was developed in your last life as a defense mechanism for a very sensitive personality. This attitude you are, however, learning to relinquish. For other disciples, the reasons which militate against integration vary. For some, it is largely based upon submergence in personality problems; these hold the disciple fast in prison just as you have been held in your tower of isolation. For others, the problem is to be found in the powerful will-to-be at the center, both in its right and noble sense and in its personality and wrong sense. This attitude produces a sense of identity and of selfhood which hinders integration. Other disciples are hindered by the reverse of this attitude and by their second ray power of attachment and of inclusiveness. This has to be negated in the case of attachment and necessitates a focusing where the tendency to expansion is constructively possible.

I have several times told you that your function in this particular group is to give strength and power to your fellow disciples. Can you do this with pure detachment and with deep attachment? Such is your problem. Each of them needs what you have to give, but needs it in a different manner. I commend this to you as your theme for study for the next few months and propose to you the following work. Study those of your fellow disciples whom you know and seek to get into close rapport with them. Study what they say and write and try to tune in on their souls and to understand their personalities. The result will be partially correct and partially wrong. If they discover what you are doing, you will find that they are all impersonal enough to permit you to learn some psychology from a study of their characters, their temperaments and their tendencies. It will also enable me to give you some training as a practical psychologist - never an easy thing for a first ray ego... [629]