Thoughts from The Tibetan
"Redemptive Activity"

This theme of redemption (which underlies all the initiatory processes) is hidden in the karmic responsibilities of Sanat Kumara; stage by stage, initiation by initiation, the disciple arrives at an understanding of redemption. First of all, he learns to bring about the redemption of his threefold personality; then the concept enlarges along paralleling lines as he seeks the redemption of his fellowmen; later, he shares the redemptive work connected with all true hierarchical endeavour and becomes an "active part of a redeeming Ashram." At the later initiations, and after the fifth Initiation of Revelation, he sees with a new clarity some of the karmic liabilities which have led the planetary Logos to create this planet of suffering, sorrow, pain and struggle; he realises then (and with joy) that this little planet is essentially unique in its purpose and its techniques, and that on it and within it (if you could but penetrate below the surface) a great redemptive experiment is going forward; its prime implementing factors and its scientific agents are the "sons of mind who choose to be the sons of men and yet for all eternity remain the Sons of God." These "sons of mind" were chosen, in that far distant time when the fourth kingdom in nature came into being, to carry forward the science of redemption. There is a true historical and spiritually esoteric significance in the words in The New Testament that the "whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now, waiting for the manifestation of the Sons of God." St. Paul is there referring to planetary purpose and to the determined insistence of the Sons of God that eventually—as they brought about the redemption of substance, of matter and form, and thus proved the possibility of that redemption through their own transfigured personalities—their reward should be their eventual manifestation as expressions of divinity. For this purpose and with this goal in view, they instituted the great evolutionary process of initiation, thus producing a continuity of revelation and of enlightenment. In reality, the period of time at which the final initiation is undergone is simply a climaxing, triumphant demonstration of the realisation and purpose of all past experiences; it is fulfilment (by the One Initiator) of the first promise ever made to the "sons of mind" when they originally started their redemptive work, and is "a sudden blazing forth of the individual glory and its merging at initiation with the glory of the whole." 

Discipleship in the New Age, Vol. II, pp. 385-86