Perhaps it might have struck you in the traditional story of the Nativity of our Lord, that in the grotto, or the stable, wherein He was born, there was darkness, be it beautiful transparent darkness, but that the glory of heaven was shown outside the cave to the shepherds and that also outside the cave the glory of the Lord was heralded by the Angel host. These shepherds were told to convince themselves of the glorious sign they would find within the stable.

Today, on this second day of Christmas, we are still in the beginning of the birth of the Spiritual Light. It all starts on the atmic plane. When we try to touch it, it is like entering a grotto or entering a world of virgin rock of immense profundity, a world of the deepest wisdom. The conditions which are created at the beginning of Christmas are such, that we are able to enter into the spiritual reality of that world and so to experience the birth of the Light, the springing forth of the new indivisible divine structure of the New Name, which will become at New Year's Day the Message, sounded out in silver tones by the King of the World.

During Advent the conditions are such that we can see everything reduced to the seven primitive structures, gleaming as beautiful lights; gradually one gets accustomed to that light by adapting oneself by the protection of the Mother to the primeval substance. Under that protection we can see something of that pristine light, of the beauty and the purity of that light. We then can see the light, the structure in the light and the form springing forth from it.

The seven symbols, expressing these primordial structures, are seen in very different ways by different persons who try to approach them. Somehow these seven structures are combined into a Name. From that Name is derived a Word. This Password for the Year is pronounced by the King of the World Who in this world of existence is the Representative of Ishvara. He bundles together the seven higher primordial structures of Light, which also stand for the seven principles of man and for the fundamental principles of the whole world. He synthesises these seven light-structures into one Word, giving it in silver tones, resounding in every atom. This is the Word, born within the darkness of the atmic plane. It is always born in a cave, this Word, that is passed on by the Angels and brought down into the lower worlds and multiplied there, until on the 1st of January it is thundering over the earth. It is therefore well that we begin the H. Eucharist on that day by singing the Te Deum, symbolising the giving out of the New Word, bringing it down by our collective effort into the worlds of lower existence.

In these worlds the third aspect of the three Divine Aspects creates the Law-in-Action, whereby both the personalities and the individualities of man are brought to that perfection, in which all the three aspects are fulfilled, when the end is reached. At Pentecost the personality in a narrower sense is burned away. That is the "flaming plume" whereof the Master has spoken. The holder of the plume, the individuality, remains. When the personality is destroyed, there remains that primordial structure of the individual. It is purified by the fire of the Holy Ghost, of which I spoke yesterday. It is again purified by an aspect of the Great Mother, expressed by the image of the Virgin Rock. It is as if every personality shoots upward like a silver arrow, it is like a swarm of rockets shooting into the air. Every personality sends an individual arrow out in the pure transparency of the divine substance. While rising they support each other and so, continuing their way collectively, they reach a very high point. All our structures reach up into Christ. When, however, that individual structure reaches upward into the Atma, the Lord Christ instead of receiving this structure into Himself, stands aside in order to give that individual the highest place he can reach and He does the same for that collectivity of arrows, reaching even higher. Thus, every year the Lord gives to every individual and to mankind as a whole that great chance.

Therefore the Easter Festival is the great festival for the individual, Pentecost for the personality, Christmas for the Angels. At Easter we have to strike the atmic spark out of the Virgin Rock in ourselves by our own effort. Then we form all together a fire that is like a volcanic mountain, rising from the bottom of the sea gradually upward until at Ascension Day this mountain pushes upwards unto the Monad. Then the Monad comes down into the Ego. All the diverse powers then come free, the Mountain on reaching the Monadic Plane is shattered into millions and millions of fragments and they descend on us like a dew of the finest, smallest light sparks. But at Christmas, the Foundation is laid with the appearing of the new light structure in the nightly darkness, giving the key and the clue to enter the mysteries, which start on that day.