April 4, 1921 – June 21, 1984
Lucille Cedercrans traveled extensively, developing groups and moving from one group center to another in response to an inner call. She would throw her things into suitcases, ask someone to send on her papers, and rush off. In the process, many of her personal records were scattered or lost. This mobility and continual movement was, in part, by design. Lucille’s intent was not to form an organization and have her work become an institution. Instead, the effort was to be carried on by those who embodied the work by practice and whose only authority was the soul.
Her prime opus, The Nature of the Soul, instructs us to focus on the effect of the work, and not its source. Taking this to heart and since we know very little about her personally, the following is a brief biography of that work, covering a period of about twelve years, from 1951 through 1963.
We have divided the work of Lucille Cedercrans into three sections or categories:
- Training materials in the form of lessons and projections
- Establishment of groups trained in utilizing theme materials
- Beginning of the manifestation of the Synthetic Ashram
We will take these one by one in order to clearly understand the breadth of this work.
Training Materials
The major lessons have been published in book form under the titles: The Nature of the Soul, The Soul and Its Instrument, and Creative Thinking. These texts were the basic training materials used for all of the work that followed. Their essential purpose was to organize, discipline, and develop the soul-mind-brain alignment of the disciple. This was accomplished through a progressive series of meditation exercises and practices (as particularly described in The Nature of the Soul). Since the main thrust of the work was along Seventh Ray lines the emphasis was on “learning through application” rather than study. This meant that to the degree one practiced the meditations one came to understand the meaning of the work.
Lucille described the process by which her material was written in the following extract from Applied Wisdom:
“Well, in the first place, Masters don’t write the lesson material. I write it. They don’t determine the words that will be used. I determine the words that will be used. They have taken those principles of truth which are incorporated in the lesson material and placed them, put them into abstract thought-forms. Now these abstractions are above the level of words; they are above the frequency of pictures. They are in the frequency of meaning itself.
“Now, for instance, I as the station am using the English language and let’s say that there is a station using the French language, one using the Russian language, and so on. We don’t contact these thought-forms via words. We contact the meaning. A Master does not speak to us via the written word or the formulated word. Even in individual instruction or group instruction such as this, we do not receive that meaning. It’s a transference of meaning which includes a vast field of knowledge. We receive that transference of meaning into our consciousness and here in meditation we have to interpret that meaning and to translate it into whatever language we are using, and of course each language has its own advantages and its own disadvantages in interpreting and translating these concepts.
“Some languages are very difficult. In some areas, for instance, the English is most difficult because there are some meanings that we don’t have words for. Our language simply hasn’t gone into these areas of meaning, so that there is no word formulated that will convey the meaning, and it is at times very difficult to find the right assemblage of words, to carry the meaning and give it expression.”
Lucille Cedercrans, October 1, 1960
The above quote explains the necessity of the meditation work. Meditation lifts the individual to the world of meaning. The training offered by this work leads to other subjective skills: first, the utilization of the various ray energies as a way of being causative to one’s own equipment as well as the environment, and second, subjective exercises for service work and the support of service work.