Introduction to the 2nd Edition of the Monastery of the Seven Rays Lessons (Copyright (C) 1996 by Michael P. Bertiaux, Post Office Box 1554, Chicago, Illinois 60690-1554, USA).

In accord with the wishes of Docteur Hector-Francois Jean-Maine, this edition of the lesson-papers of the Monastery of the Seven Rays is being published by Technicians of the Sacred. It was the wish of our late and much mourned Sovereign Grand Master that whenever possible the lesson-papers of his order be also published and distributed by the order, he led. Originally, this was the task of the patriarchate of our church. With the passage of time, however, the work of our church has become more esoteric and research-grounded in ontological practice and the history and theology of empowerment and the physics of initiation; while the order has grown and extended its spiritual energy into every part of the world of human welcome. Fortunately, again, his spiritual son now heads both the order and the company, which publishes and distributes the lesson-papers .

Within the context of the order, the lesson-papers direct the chela towards the higher states of human spirituality and freedom. Because these documents represent the teachings of the Jean-Maine lineage, they will never need revision or interpretation, and the esoteric and Haitian gnosis therein contained is pure and true, manifesting the mind and mystical geometry of the Lord of the Crossroads and the Noonday/Midnight in his essence and ontological fullness. At the time of the original publication of these lesson-papers, the thought that esoteric wisdom was contained in mystical traditions of any Haitian adepts was a very unfamiliar and remote concept. Recent studies in a variety of fields and disciplines since the 1960s have quite simply confirmed the validity of the Monastery position, thirty years ago, which was essentially part of the slowly emerging continuum of the African rooted mystical tradition. With all of these changes in the mind of spiritual humanity, the Monastery and now the order pour forth energies and teachings. The order has been called to be the guru to this spirit of awakening. Now, we will be able to continue our role through the worldwide contacts and networking of Technicians of the Sacred.

Spiritual energy, as Bergson has shown, does not remain in one place; but moves, it is always alive, dynamic in the act of transformation and literally pulling humanity and all of the cultural institutions of spiritual value into the first moments of tomorrow. That is the way in which these lesson-papers work in the psyche. They act to incarnate the facts of spiritual empowerment in daily experience. We can actualise the possibility of the future in every act of study and application. These lesson-papers are alive by their own magic, their own mental elementality and life-in-history. These ideas will make radical and powerful changes in your life and in the raw experience of the consciousness of this planet. When you read them you will know that they — these lesson-papers, filled with light — quite simply have unlimited metaphysical potencies to cause all of being to grow closer to God and return to the primordial unity of the divine life. When you hold these papers and read the pages, we invite you to feel them as did Nietzsche, who said: "these words are alive, they are powerful and they are very dangerous to those who