eye of the cyclone

THE HIDDEN DIRECTORATE
excerpt: The Dramatic Universe (Vol. 4),
pp. 325-327
by
John Godolphin Bennett

The central task of the Great Work is to enable humanity to fulfill its destiny as a creative agent in the Cosmos. The Great Work, during the period we are studying, had to take into account the two-fold problem of assuring the evolutionary progress of the human mind and of liberating the soul-stuff from the taint of egoism. The primary task was foreordained for the Demiurgic Intelligences, associated as we may surmise with the Solar System. The secondary task was made necessary by the failure-in part at least willful-of some of the Demiurgic Powers to do what was required of them. The Demiurgic Intelligences are required, but not compelled, to serve the Great Work. They are not compelled because they are free beings-freedom being a necessary condition of creativity. They were tempted to depart from the plan because they are conscious and consciousness must bring awareness of the imperfection of the world, without necessarily the ability to see its total significance and hence its Rightness.

These powers and these limitations reappear in men whose Demiurgic Nature has been awakened-that is in the two lower groups of Psychoteleios Humanity. These groups when organized for the service of the Great Work are able to cooperate with the Demiurgic Intelligences and to receive direction from the higher Psychoteleios sub-groups of Prophets and Messengers who are in direct communication with the Hyparchic Future. The human intelligences engaged in the Great Work have seldom been known to men and women of the Psychostatic Order except through the results of their intervention. Although their presence in the world is not deliberately disguised, they are not recognized because their activity differs from that of other people only in Hyparchic Regions, which ordinary man cannot perceive. They have appeared as magicians and soothsayers, as heroes and hemitheandric rulers, as prophets and priests: but, their true nature never becoming apparent, they have soon been transformed into legendary images. In our present day, they are regarded as either wholly mythical, or as ordinary men and women superstitiously endowed by their admirers with super-human attributes.

We shall hold firmly to the hypothesis that, since man was endowed with creativity, there have always been people who could see into the Hyparchic Future and discern the destiny of mankind; and that these people have intervened in history to avert dangers and to make possible advances towards the goal of human evolution. These people belong to the Psychoteleios order of society, but they must have a link with the generality of mankind by way of the Psychokinetic groups.

We shall use the term Hidden Directors to designate those who are aware of the purposes pursued in the evolution of mankind and know the action that has to be taken.* We assume that there is some kind of organized structure by which the Hidden Guides cooperate and transmit their influence. We shall call this structure the Hidden Directorate.

The task of the Hidden Directorate is to help mankind to develop both individually and socially to the point at which man can assume responsibility for his destiny and the fulfillment of his mission on the earth. The Hidden Directorate is presumed to have developed out of the groups of Guides and Initiates who took charge of the diffusion from the Four Centres. These in their turn were the descendants of those who established these centres at the beginning of the Great Cycle that started 12,500 years ago and of which about one half has now been completed.

If we postulate the reality of the Great Work, we must allow that it is directed by Intelligences whose time-scale is measured in thousands if not tens of thousands of years. We are to assume, then, that the Hidden Directorate can see ahead and make plans that will take a long time to mature; but we are not to assume that they are supernatural beings able to interfere with the operation of natural laws. This does not mean that they have no powers beyond those of ordinary people. Modern man knows very little about energies finer than the material tetrad, ** and therefore powers that are natural and subject to natural laws can well appear to him as supernatural or perhaps magical. The Hidden Directorate, possessing knowledge of a high order, would be a centre for the transformation and concentration of energies. That such centres have existed and do exist is verifiable by anyone who is willing to undergo the training necessary to recognize the working of ‘higher energies’.

We, therefore, regard the reality of Hidden Guides and of the Hidden Directorate as more than a conjecture. The reality of the Great Work is another matter. It is not perceived as such by any external marks, but must be inferred from the character of observed events. There is nothing surprising in this. We do not perceive the working of another man’s mind, but we infer its presence from two lines of evidence: one is analogy with our own experience of mental processes and the other is comparison of his behaviour with our own. If we could see no evidence of a hidden intelligence working in history, we could dismiss the hypothesis of Hidden Direction as superfluous. But if we see evidences of foresight, purpose and coordinated action, analogous to similar processes in ourselves, and if we find that this action could not originate with, and is not directed by, the visible leaders of mankind, then it is reasonable to draw the conclusion that there are Great Minds at work behind the scene of human history.

These considerations acquire an ever greater significance as we approach our own time. It is by no means easy to recognize the working of Demiurgic Intelligence in contemporary history. The humanistic revolt against providential interpretations of history has been so successful that even religious people have come to accept the view that belief in Providence is no longer permissible in the light-the blinding light! - of scientific discovery. There is a deeper reason why belief in Hidden Direction now seems implausible and out of date. This comes from the very character of the Epoch recently ended. We call it the Megalanthropic Epoch because it has been a period dominated by the sense of human greatness.* The idea that mankind is still in need of direction and guidance by a Higher Intelligence seems to be an affront to the grandeur of human nature attested by man’s achievements in gaining mastery of the earth. These achievements are, at least in part, attributable to the liberation of man from superstitious fears of nature and nature powers, personified as gods and demons.

According to the concept of history that we have developed in this book, the Demiurgic Intelligences are concerned in human affairs only to the extent that is necessary to ensure progress towards eventual assumption by humanity of complete responsibility for the destiny of all life on the earth. The great progress made during the Hemitheandric Epoch towards the externalization of the Psychokinetic Group made it possible to transfer to Specialists known to the generality of mankind, activities previously undertaken by the Hidden Groups. These included technical and economic undertakings which have led to the scientific society of our time. The consequent withdrawal of the hidden groups meant a considerable change; but not their dissolution. We indicate this by adopting the modified terminology of Hidden Directors and the Hidden Directorate.