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Esoteric Psychology I - Section Two - I. The Seven Creative Builders, the Seven Rays
It is this unrevealed inner beauty which lies back of the emphasis laid by the churches upon the cultivation of the virtues, and by the occultists upon the use of a seed thought in meditation. These seed thoughts and virtues serve a valuable and constructive purpose. The Biblical truism that "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," is based on the same basic [197] realization, and the distinction between the spiritual man and the man of worldly and material purpose consists in the fact that one is attempting to work with the quality aspect of the life, and the other is focusing his attention upon the appearance aspect. He may and does employ certain qualities as he so works, but they are those qualities which have been developed during the evolutionary process of the divine Life as It has cycled through the subhuman and human kingdoms. Each of the kingdoms in nature has developed, or is developing, one outstanding quality, with the other divine attributes as subsidiary. The mineral kingdom has the quality of activity primarily emphasized, and its two extremes are the tamasic quality, or the static inert nature of the mineral world, and the quality of radioactivity, of radiation which is its beautiful and divinely perfected expression. The goal for all mineral atomic forms is this radioactive condition, the power to pass through all limiting and environing substances. This is initiation, or the entering into a state of liberation, for all mineral appearances, and the organizing of all forms in this kingdom under the influence of the seventh ray. The vegetable kingdom has the quality of attractiveness, expressed in color, and its liberation, or its highest form of activity, is demonstrated by the perfume of its highest forms of life. This perfume is connected with its sex life, which has group purpose and which calls to its aid the initiating wind and the insect world. This is not just a pictorial way of portraying truth. The very nature of perfume, its purpose and intent, is to affect those agencies which will produce the spreading and the continuity of the life of the vegetable kingdom. The "aspirants" in the vegetable kingdom, and the most evolved of its forms, have beauty and perfume, and are [198] susceptible to the hidden influences of Those to Whom is confided the initiating of the life-forms and their bringing to a desired perfection. Hence the influence of the sixth Ray of Devotion upon this kingdom, and the application of the Ray of Devotion which (symbolically expressed) "fixes the eye upon the sun; turns the life ever to the rays of warmth, and causes the blending of the colors and the glory of the perfumed radiance." The animal kingdom has the quality of growing instinctual purpose which - in its highest form - works out as the domesticity of the more evolved animals, and their devotion to man. Behind the appearance of the animals is to be found a steady orientation towards understanding, and a consequent gravitation towards the forms of life which evidence that which they desire. Hence the influence of the fifth Ray of Concrete Knowledge, which pours through the human family upon the third kingdom in nature. Man is the initiating factor here, and to man is committed the task of leading the animal kingdom towards liberation - a liberation into the fourth kingdom, for that is the sphere of its next activity. The vegetable kingdom is liberated into another evolutionary process altogether, and its lives pass into the so-called deva, or angel, evolution. Hence the wind and the insect world are its agents, just as man and the agency of water are the initiators of the animal world. The secret of release for the animal nature is hidden in the "watery nature;" this is the blood aspect, and in the shedding of the blood, esoterically understood, lies the clue to the liberation of the animal kingdom. Hence certain initiatory processes are working out on a large scale in the shedding of blood through the slaughter of the animal form of the human being in the Great War, for instance. In the war the blood of thousands was poured out upon the soil, and from the standpoint of living [199] purpose, certain esoteric results have been achieved. This fact is a difficult one for man to understand, for his awareness is as yet primarily that of the form and not of the quality of the life. It is difficult for men to comprehend the divine purpose working out behind the evils of animal slaughter and the shedding of blood down the ages, prehuman and human. But through the "pouring out of that water which is of the color red" there is eventuating a liberation which will initiate the life of that kingdom into new states of consciousness and of awareness. The whole problem of slaughter, whether in the animal or the human kingdom, originated in events which occurred during the original "war in heaven," when Michael and his angels were cast down and our planetary system came into being. Until a man's consciousness is such that he can, through an inner mechanism as yet unevolved in the majority, respond to the planetary consciousness and "enter into the secrets of the Ancient of Days," the problem of pain, of bloodshed, of war and of suffering must remain an inscrutable mystery. It will be solved - and this is the keynote of most importance - only when man has himself changed the initiating process for the animals from that of bloodshed to that of domesticity and of mutual love. When the mentality of the race is more developed, then man can, by arbitration and the right use of speech, settle all differences, and thus change the mode of animal initiation, whether this refers to the animal kingdom or to his own animal body. In the fourth kingdom, the emerging quality is that aspect of synthetic love or understanding which is the intuition. This intuition is a quality of mental matter and of the "chitta" or mind stuff. Man is also intended to be radioactive; the incense or the perfume of his life must ascend, and thus attract the attention of the initiating factors which wait to lead him to [200] liberation. These factors are the fire and the members of the fifth kingdom in nature. The growing purpose of his animal form must give place to the dynamic will of the spiritual entity, released from form limitations by the fire of life and of initiation. Thus he harmonizes in himself all ways of approach and of release, and all achievements, and synthesizes in his life the aspirations of the other three kingdoms. Radioactivity, the perfume of the aspirant, the devotion to other human beings (the sublimation of domesticity), and the "shedding of blood" or the sacrifice of the life, the expression upon earth (the mineral kingdom) of the devotion and sex life of the vegetable kingdom, plus the sacrifice through blood of the animal kingdom, bring man to the portal of initiation. There the fire awaits him with its purifying uses, and thus earth, air, fire and water (the four elements) prepare him for the great liberation and for the release of that quality of synthetic apprehension of the underlying truth which we call the intuition. This is after all the response of the mechanism to the symbolic appeal of divine quality, expressed in the whole and seen as illumination. Thus the qualities emerge and appear in their full glory as man develops himself and unfolds within himself the needed apparatus of response, training himself to recognize the subjective realities or the divine qualities as they seek to manifest. The processes of manifestation produce results upon and in the gradually awakening consciousness of man.
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