Etheric retreat
Focuses of the Great White Brotherhood, chiefly on the etheric plane, where the ascended masters preside. Retreats anchor one or more flames of the Godhead as well as the momentum of the masters’ service and attainment for the balance of light in the four lower bodies of a planet and its evolutions.
An etheric retreat is a place where an ascended master lives and receives chelas. It is also a mandala and a forcefield that is used by the solar hierarchies to release increments of energy to a planet and a people, light energy that needs to be stepped down by the ascended masters and their chelas for the distribution of that energy among mankind. The retreats of the Great White Brotherhood have been established on the planet almost since the birth of the planet.
Functions of the retreats
Retreats serve many functions for the councils of the hierarchy ministering to the lifewaves of earth. Some retreats are open to unascended mankind, whose souls may journey to these focuses in their etheric body between their incarnations on earth and in their finer bodies (during sleep or samadhi).
Many of the masters’ retreats, including their mystery schools, were anchored in the physical plane during earth’s earlier golden ages and even after the Great Rebellion of the fallen angels and the Fall. In the face of desecration and destruction of their shrines, the masters withdrew their centers and their flames to the etheric plane, hence the term “retreat.”
The retreats of the Elohim
The retreats of the Elohim are the most powerful on the planet because the Elohimic consciousness is such a vast cosmic awareness of God. The retreats of the Elohim in the body of the earth and the focuses of the flame therein are like the seven major chakras in the body of man. They are the key focuses for the seven rays upon the planetary body. Unascended lifestreams are seldom taken into the retreats of the Elohim, for these are kept as pure, vibrating electrodes to infuse the body of Virgo and Pelleur with life and to attune it with Cosmos.
Since the Elohim have a cosmic consciousness and a cosmic service throughout the galaxies and beyond the Great Central Sun, they appoint representatives to be hierarchs and administrators of their retreats. Their retreats are like touchstones where they place their feet now and then and anchor their consciousness as they are in and out of cosmic service. Of course, the Elohim, as God himself, can place an electronic presence of their being in their retreats, a replica of themselves, the full blazing reality of their God consciousness focused there.
Withdrawal of the mystery schools to the etheric retreats
After the Fall of man, the Great White Brotherhood sponsored mystery schools on Lemuria and Atlantis, where the higher spiritual truths were taught to those who were willing to keep the disciplines of the adepts. The Sangha of the Buddha, the Essene community at Qumran, and Pythagoras’ school at Crotona were among the more recent mystery schools. Other schools were located in the Himalayas, the Far East and Egypt, as well as in Europe and South America. One by one, these mystery schools were destroyed or disbanded.
Wherever these schools have been destroyed, the ascended masters who sponsored them withdrew their flames and sacred shrines to their retreats on the etheric plane. Here their disciples are trained between embodiments and in their finer bodies (during sleep or samadhi) in order that they might attain that Divine Self-knowledge which, until Saint Germain once again advanced it in this century, has not been available to mankind en masse in the physical plane for centuries.
Locations of the retreats
The retreats, temples and focuses of the masters are scientifically located upon the planetary body at certain key points in the design of the mandala. Their positions are calculated for the greatest release of light to the evolutions evolving here. All of the retreats act as receiving and sending stations for the light released in all of the other retreats upon the planetary body as well as that sent from near and distant stars and from the flaming Yod in the Great Hub.
The light emitted from the retreats bounces back and forth between them in magnetic waves. The result of the interaction of these waves of Light is the resonance of a cosmic tone, the sound of the great Amen, the AUM, or the OM, which can be heard with the inner ear. This cosmic keynote bathes the earth, the nature kingdom and mankind in the vibratory action of the sacred Word of creation, which means literally “I AM” or “God is the great Amen.” By this we know that every man can become one with the vibration of the lost Word.
The opening of the retreats
Following the ascension of the Messenger Mark L. Prophet on February 26, 1973, the children of God were given renewed opportunity from the Lords of Karma to balance their karma by attending classes at the retreats of the seven chohans, the Maha Chohan, and the World Teachers.
On January 1, 1986, Gautama Buddha and the Lords of Karma granted a petition of the lords of the seven rays to open universities of the Spirit in their etheric retreats for tens of thousands of students to systematically pursue the path of self-mastery on the seven rays. Traveling in their finer bodies during sleep, students spend fourteen days at each of the retreats of the chohans and the Maha Chohan.
See also
For more information
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Opening of the Temple Doors
El Morya, The Chela and the Path: Keys to Soul Mastery in the Aquarian Age, chapter 5.
Sources
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, February 22, 1975.
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Saint Germain On Alchemy: Formulas for Self-Transformation.
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path to Immortality.