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Chelas Resolute in the Mastery of the Ten Perfections:
And so the Lord Dipamkara
Prophesied the future
Of the future Buddha.
Behold the disciple of the Lord!
Behold the devotee of the Word!
Behold the one! Lo, he has come!
Sumedha in the world to be,
A Buddha in the world shall be.
He spoke of his great retirement
And of his struggle fierce.
He spoke of his austerities -
The conqueror Dipamkara -
Of his sacrifices
And of the compassion
Of that one, Sumedha,
Who would be known
As the Compassionate One.
And to all the multitudes
The Lord did proclaim
The future name
Of this beloved son,
Of his mother and his father,
Maya and Suddhodana,
And the name bequeathed to him
From ages past, from cycles vast -
A name emitting
From a Causal Body of the sun.
And from out that sun,
The I AM THAT I AM,
Would be born the soul
Of the Sakya clan.
Gautama his I AM name translated
For the Buddha that would be,
For the Buddha yet to see
The fire of God
Descending like a rod -
A flaming spirit out of heaven
Come to earth to be the leaven.
Gautama is his I AM name,
Gautama the name of sacred flame.
Dipamkara spoke
To all the people gathered there
Of events foretold
And the law of old
Written in the Book of Life
Whereby the sons of prophets and of kings
Would come forth
In future time and space
Recycling energies of karma and of dharma
And the distillations of the law,
And the poetry of the songs of angel devas.
So this son of sons,
This king of kings,
This Buddha of the Buddhas
Would come forth
To meditate beneath the Ajapala-tree
And, tarrying there,
Receive the rice pottage
From the maiden fair.
Then to seek and find
The stream Nerajara,
To bathe therein,
To put on the adornment of the saints,
To form the pellets forty-nine
Of the rice pottage all refined,
Then to go the way,
The conqueror's way,
To the place of the tree of wisdom.
And Sumedha -
A soul fearless in the right,
A soul brilliant in the light,
The one of glory
Descending from the throne of grace -
Would take his place
Where every Buddha
From the beginning to the ending
Had sat,
From Alpha to Omega wending
Over spirals of cosmic destiny -
The place for entering the heaven world,
The place on earth
Consecrated by the Lord of Lords.
Under the fig tree he would sit
In the place immutable,
Of the law irrevocable.
Here wisdom's fount and wisdom's throne
Adorned by Buddhas of the ages.
Here one day would Sumedha come
To face the East from the immortal Bo-tree.
Here resolute in wisdom absolute,
One day in cycles yet to come
This devotee,
Lying here before you
Face down upon the mud,
Will come to face
The cosmic consciousness of the One
And enlightenment endure.
Behold the Buddha of the future!
As in the drama of the Christed ones and avatars of the ages their disciples were foreordained, so, too, the disciples of Gautama were named by Dipamkara. As all who would participate in the five-pointed star of mastery, of Cosmos' secret rays, must pursue the mastery of the ten - five points without, five points within - so the future servitors of Gautama must the initiations of the five, the secret rays, invoke.
As keepers of the flame, Moggallana and Sariputta, tempering the mighty flow of wisdom here below, must hold the threads of Cosmos' consciousness and of the antahkarana of a cosmos1 as that cosmos on the warp and woof of the Creative Mind should pass through the heart, the soul, the mind - the chakras of a Buddha yet to be. And Ananda must hold forth the third of the secret rays as point of transition for the two chief disciples of the masculine ray and the two chief disciples of the feminine ray, Khema and Uppalavanna. Then within the fiery core of the five-pointed star enthroned upon the throne of grace, Gautama will take his place, holding the inner keys of the sacred mysteries, holding the law, the alchemy, the wisdom, the compassion, and the victory for all humanity.
When thus Dipamkara had spoken to mortals and immortals, when he had prophesied the prophecy of the Buddha yet to be, he and his procession moved onward, ever onward and upward in the law and on the path of the Lord of All the World while Sumedha, soul of souls, archetype of humanity, patterned Buddha, archetype of the stars, arose from the way where prostrate he lay, to rejoice and to reflect, to prepare and to protect the light of the Buddha yet to be.
And then pursued he diligently the Ten Perfections of the Law, and from out the ten thousand worlds of hierarchy came the proclamations of the masters of the Ten Perfections. And they themselves attested to the presages that are foreordained - events and cosmic happenings, the melting of the elements, the mastery of the wind and water, and the quaking and the shaking of worlds within and worlds beyond. All these and many more were witnessed by the masters of the ten thousand worlds who did profess, "Of a certainty and of a truth, a Buddha of the future thou art."
Thus all the signs of the coming of the Buddha were fulfilled; for the soul of Sumedha had God-willed a destiny foreordained, the destiny of a Buddha yet to be. The soul of souls, the Buddha of Buddhas, would pursue with diligence the quickening and the chastening, the Self-elevation, the self-immolation. And because Sumedha received the torch of the Buddha that day and accepted the torch of Dipamkara's ray, in future aeons yet unborn one called Gautama would hold the mastery sevenfold of the seven holy Kumaras, the lords of flame from Venus who would unfold the epitome of the law, the sacred fire, and the rekindling of threefold flame, of heart chakra, of Shamballa. Behold Gautama, Lord of All the World! Behold Gautama, holding the banner of Sanat Kumara! Behold the Buddha of a soul!
The second perfection is the Perfection of the Precepts. To practice and pursue the precepts of the law, Sumedha flowed with the determination of the Mother of the World to drink from the fount of her holy wisdom, to assimilate each precept line by line, facet by facet, catching sparkles of the diamond-shining mind of God, and, by the alchemy of the Perfection of Alms already perfected, to make each facet of the mind of God a sharpened arrow of the mind of man, an arrow that would reach the mark in kind of the Creator's mind from whence it came. Each arrow thus sharpened a means of penetrating the impenetrable, until the thread of consciousness - threading the arrow as though threading the eye of a needle - should reach the center of that Creative Mind and there in love nirvana find.
There is a story in Buddhic lore about the yak cow and her flowing tail and the determination of that yak cow who will stand if needs be unto the death, if perchance that flowing tail be caught in brambles or bushes by the way. For the yak cow will not allow her flowing tail to be tattered or torn. More precious than life itself to the yak cow is her tail. So then, this is the teaching of the Buddha of Buddhas: to guard and keep the precepts whole and holy, to guard them still if the Buddha thou dost will, to guard them forevermore as the yak cow guards her tail.
And is not the tail of the yak cow symbolically the extension of the energies of the Muladhara?2 And these energies, do they not flow from the fount of wisdom of the Mother of the World? Is this not the Goddess Kundalini and the fire of attainment whereby every Buddha does attain to the enlightenment of the crown, ascending the scale of being, the ladder of initiation from Omega unto Alpha?
So then, the one who would walk the way of the Buddha must the perfections of the law perfect. These ten for the mastery of the secret rays within, without; and each of the five rays of the fiery core contains within itself the mastery of the Father, the mastery of the Mother. From Alpha to Omega, from Omega to Alpha, the soul that is resolute in the mastery of the Ten Perfections ennobles the Soul of God and the souls of humanity with this discipline of the disciplines which comprise the wheel of the law. And thus the Perfection of Alms is God-mastery in the masculine ray and the Perfection of the Precepts is God-mastery in the feminine ray. And these two comprise the test of Alpha and Omega in the first of the secret rays.
During many existences Sumedha endeavored to fulfill the precepts of the law. The defining and the refining of these principles of power, of the omnipotence of the Lord of Lords, of the God of Very Gods, he found within the fiery core of being as the geometry of the One. Thus defining and refining the law of love, he acquired the perfection of the precepts until he became known as the Keeper of the Precepts. For the Law of the One, for the Principle of Precepts, he again laid down his life.
First he was assailed as the vessel of cosmic consciousness, as the divine memory of the gods. This was the test of fire and of the etheric body. And to attain where he had lain face down upon the mud, the brave Sumedha, soul of very souls, surrendered that vessel of cosmic consciousness even then as he lay upon the sod. And by the alchemy of air and the wind of the Holy Spirit, he proved the precepts in the vessel of the mind; and the mental body was refined. Line by line, moment by moment, minute by minute, Sumedha passed the prerequisites of the sacred precepts. He proved the mind of God to be the mind of Buddha, to be the mind of a soul all in one. And in the raging of the fallen ones and of Mara and his armies, he proved the precepts as the molecules of water, as the mastery of the water, and as the sounding of the sea and the pounding of the sea upon the rock of Christ, upon the mountain of the Mother, upon the diamond shores of the Logos.
But when it came to the mastery of the earth and the alchemy of crystallization and of the salt and of the pillars of the salt, the body of Sumedha, as Christ upon the cross, was pierced through and through while the soul of Sumedha remained steadfast in sublime contemplation of the God of Very Gods. He kept the precepts to perfection, returning love for each affliction of the hordes of night, returning wisdom and the justice of God being for each reaction to the Shining One, the gift of God from out the central sun. Their senses were defenses against the Buddhic light. The flaming one remained a flame, and they who sought to kill the body could not kill the flame. And thus in the ultimate sacrifice, Sumedha anchored for eternity the golden flame of Buddhic light, the golden flame of the precepts of the law.
That blessed one upon that blessed day knew well what others failed to know. And so he confirmed the law "This body that my soul does wear, 'tis good, 'tis good - expendable for the cause of Buddhahood. 'Tis better, then that I renounce that which will be taken still ere the seasons turn and the Eternal claims what is not mine to claim. 'Tis better that I exchange the corruptible for the incorruptible3 and give to God and man what is only mine to give." Thus given the choice between the immortal flame and the mortal frame, Sumedha chose to seal the flame for humanity for eternity and to commend to God the vanity, the frailty of all mortality.
This is a choice
That every soul can make
In the here and in the now
And by transmutation's flame
Exchange the old man for the new,
Bring the Christ flame to perfection's view.
For every soul can choose
To perpetuate the vow
To the perfection's ten,
Dying to the old ways,
Living to the new
According to the precepts of the law.
To every soul resolute in the mastery
Of the Ten Perfections of the Law,
I say pursue the precepts,
Pursue them without flaw.