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Esoteric Psychology I - Section Two - III. The Rays and Man
3. The Ray of the Fourth Kingdom We now touch briefly upon an obscure and difficult subject, and one that will appeal primarily to those types who work with the Law of Correspondences. Esotericists must remember that every kingdom in nature constitutes a totality of lives. Every atom in every form in nature is a life, and these lives form the cells of a Being's body or vehicle of manifestation. There is a Being embodied in every kingdom [343] in nature. Just as the myriads of atomic lives in the human body constitute a man's body of expression and form his appearance, so it is with the greater Life informing the fourth kingdom in nature. This appearance - as are all appearances - is qualified by some particular ray type, and is determined also by the vital principle or spirit aspect. Thus every form is composed of innumerable lives, which have in them a preponderance of some ray quality. This is an occult platitude. These qualified lives produce a phenomenal appearance, and thus constitute a unity, through the influence of the integrating principle, which is never absent. The ray which governs the sum total of the human kingdom is the fourth Ray of Harmony through Conflict. It might be symbolically stated that the egoic ray of the Life which informs the human family is this fourth ray, and that the personality ray is the fifth ray of knowledge through discrimination, - the Ray, as it is called, of Concrete Knowledge or Science. Harmony through conflict, and the power to achieve knowledge through discriminating choice - these are the two rays or major influences which sweep through humanity as a whole, and drive it forward towards its divine destiny. They are the predisposing factors upon which a man may count and infallibly depend. They are the guarantee of attainment, but also of turmoil and temporary duality. Harmony, expressing itself in beauty and creative power, is gained through battle, through stress and strain. Knowledge, expressing itself eventually through wisdom, is attained only through the agony of successively presented choices. These, submitted to the discriminating intelligence during the process of the life experience, produce at last the sense of true values, the vision of the ideal, and the capacity to distinguish reality behind the intervening glamor. Students of esotericism will, of course, bear in mind that [344] the fourth ray has a natural relation to the fourth kingdom in nature, which is in turn the lowest manifestation of the fourth creative Hierarchy. This unification of the three major results of the activity of a great Life might be enumerated thus: The ray power or life which tends ever towards harmony and an eventual beauty, the fourth ray. The creative hierarchy of human monads, who (little as they may realize it) have already attained wisdom and are veritably at this time the divine sons of God. The fourth kingdom in nature which is the result of the evolutionary activity of the above, who are in their turn impelled to this activity by the fourth ray. This is essentially the true apostolic succession, for it provides a triple line of directed energy. This produces the human manifestation on the fourth globe of our Earth chain, and in this fourth round is responsible for the tremendous crisis with which our present humanity is confronted. The conflict aspect of the process is at its height, nay, has passed its height, from the angle of physical plane expression. This situation and this triple influence, producing the manifestation of the sons of God, is summed up for us in the terse words of the Old Commentary - terse, when we remember that they express the long agony of humanity's test, and the opening to man of the door into the fifth kingdom of spiritual being. They include therefore, in their meaning, his goal and objective and the process whereby he attains: "The Holy Four descend from out the heavenly places and venture forth towards the sphere of Earth. From the fourth great plane they thus control the battle. "The Lord of Harmony, Who sits on high, pours all His life and force throughout the field of conflict. He sees the end from the beginning nor stays His hand though deep [345] and full the pain and agony. Peace must be the goal. Beauty must be achieved. He cannot then arrest the life and stop its flow. "The Middle Four, rested now from the earlier campaign, gird on their armor and hide themselves behind the outer form. They leave the fourth great sphere of harmony and pass on to the plane of mind. There they fortify the temple of the Lord, illumine it with light and glory, and then they turn their eyes towards the Earth. "The Lower Four take form between the lives that are not human and the three groups of lives which dwell beneath the threshold. They seek to link and blend, to bridge and fuse. Mankind now lives. The higher and the middle four meet in the lower four upon the fourth great globe. "The battle now proceeds. When the three groups of manifested fours can see each other in the light, and later blend their forces, the goal will be achieved. "In the fourth globe of action and in the major cycle of the fourth expression will this fusion be completed. The lower four, merged in the middle four, will leave the triple world of conflict, and find their dwelling place, whilst in the form, within the fourth sphere whence came forth the higher governing four. Thus will the government be established; the glory seen; the rule of the hierarchy demonstrated. "In the fourth race (the Atlantean - A.A.B.) the conflict was begun, and consciousness was born. In the fifth race (the Aryan - A.A.B.) the crisis of the battle will be seen, and then the lower four and the middle four will begin to unite their forces. In the sixth race, the dust of battle dies away. The lower four, the middle four and the higher four will chant in unison the glory of their Lord, the beauty of the love of God, the wonder of the brotherhood of man. This is their paean." Esoterically speaking (and not speaking symbolically, for there is a distinction between these two forms which students would do well to note), when the lines of forces are adjusted and there is free interplay of energies and a straight aligned channel between the various aspects of divinity, then there is achievement and beauty. This is the theme of the [346] above symbolical and ancient formulation of truth, which is in the nature of a symbolical prophecy. The same idea has been expressed in a still more ancient and terse statement which has to be understood and reduced to a mantric formula when the fourth initiation is taken: "When the forces of the four, three times repeated, become the four, then the Life of... reveals Itself in beauty." It is interesting to note that the numerical value of the word "four" is the same in detail as that of the word "force", if you eliminate the number five. For humanity, it is the fifth energy which leads to the battlefield, the energy of the discriminating mind, and when that has been in due time used, controlled and transmuted, "only the four remains and force has gone." Note the detail of the numbering: F 0 R C E. 6 6 9 3 5 - 29 11. Number of adept, using energy. F 0 U R. 6 6 3 9 - 24 6. The creator, unifying the subjective and the objective. It is apparent that force in the first group ends in separativeness, for five is the number of the mind and of man. Number nine, the number of initiation, is hidden midway in force, but the climaxing figures indicate activity and separation. In the second group of figures, activity precedes the nine of initiation, and that nine is the culmination. But five is left out. Man is no longer really human or separative. He is the perfected four of the lower three and the soul. Putting the truth quite simply, let it be borne in mind that mankind, the fourth kingdom, which is an expression of the fourth creative hierarchy of human monads, is swept by the instinct or impulse towards harmony, and is thus primarily under the influence of the fourth ray. This harmony is achieved [347] through the use of the energy of the fifth ray of knowledge. Then through gained and applied knowledge, the result is beauty and the power to create. Then the ray of the fifth Lord will be withdrawn from the major cycle governing humanity, and wisdom and intuitional buddhic response will characterize humanity. There is a close interplay in this major cycle, as far as mankind is concerned, between the two ray Lords of Harmony and of Knowledge. It is again in this numerical relation of four and five that the number nine emerges, which is the number of initiation. An adept of the fifth initiation is one who has achieved complete harmony through right knowledge. This takes place at the fourth initiation and is demonstrated or proven at the fifth. A close study of the tabulations of the rays affecting humanity will have made it clear that they are so many and so diverse that the complexity of the subject is very great. There are numerous influences which tend to make man what he is, and of many of them little is as yet known. In the early stages of his development, it is well-nigh impossible for any one (except an initiate) to deal with the various phases or even to recognize the indications of humanity's reactions to these rays. But as mankind evolves, and as the form aspect becomes increasingly a better and finer response apparatus and a more plastic sensitive reflector of the inner man, definition and analysis become easier. Types emerge with greater clarity in their delineations, and the ray qualities begin to dominate. The impress of the controlling rays can be more clearly noted and the point in evolution can be more accurately realized. We have now to consider the rays which dominate the races of mankind. The average reader would be wise to take the position that for him, at least, the information hitherto [348] given, and that which concerns the racial, national and cyclic rays, provide an interesting hypothesis which can be intelligently accepted until disproven. This knowledge must necessarily remain hypothetical for several life periods, where the average student is concerned. When, however, we come to the consideration of the final three points of this section of our treatise, it may be possible to check the information, to correlate the ray types, and to discover (by a study of the potencies involved) their emerging characteristics and ray forces. By the proving therefore of the human detail, we lay the ground for the acceptance of the cosmic, solar and planetary knowledge. What is proven true on the small scale opens the door for the understanding of that which exists on a larger scale. "Man, know thyself" is a potent key to the knowledge of Deity and to the workings of divinity.
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