Question 1. What is the soul?  Can we define it?  What is its nature? - Part 1

Here I shall give but four definitions which will serve as a basis for all that follows.

A.  The soul can be spoken of as the Son of the Father and of the Mother (Spirit-Matter) and is therefore the embodied life of God, coming into incarnation in order to reveal the quality of the nature of God, which is essential love.  This life, taking form, nurtures the quality of love within all forms, and ultimately reveals the purpose of all creation.  This is the simplest definition for average humanity, being couched in the language of mysticism, thus linking the truth as found in all religions.  It is necessarily inadequate, for it fails to emphasize the truth that what can be posited of man can also be posited of the cosmic reality, and that just as a human appearance on Earth veils both the quality and purpose (in varying degree), so does that synthesis of all forms or appearances, within that unity which we call a solar system, veil the quality and purpose of Deity.  It is only when man is no longer deluded by appearance and has freed himself from the veil of illusion that he arrives at a knowledge of the quality of God's consciousness and at the purpose which it is revealing.  This he does in a triple way:

a.  He discovers his own soul, the product of the union of his [37] Father in heaven with the Mother or the material nature. This last is the personality.  He then, having discovered the personality, discovers the quality of his own soul life, and the purpose for which he has "appeared."

b.  He finds that this quality expresses itself through seven aspects or basic differentiations, and that this septenate of qualities colours, esoterically, all forms in all kingdoms in nature, thus constituting the totality of the revelations of the divine purpose.  This, he finds, is essentially a septenary aggregation of energies, each energy producing differing effects and appearances.  This discovery he makes by finding that his own soul is tinctured by one of the seven ray qualities, that he is identified with his ray purpose—whatever it may be—and is expressing a particular type of divine energy.

c.  From this point he proceeds to a recognition of the entire septenate, and upon the Path of Initiation he gains a glimpse of a Unity, hitherto unrealised, nor even sensed.

Thus from a consciousness of himself, man arrives at an awareness of the interrelation between the seven basic energies or rays; and from that he proceeds to a realisation of the triple deity, until at the final initiation (the fifth) he finds himself consciously at-one with the unified divine intent lying behind all appearances and all qualities.  It might be added that initiations, higher than the fifth, reveal a purpose wider and deeper than that which is working out within our solar system.  The purpose of our manifested Logos is but a part of a greater intent.  It might also be noted that in the fourth kingdom of nature, on the path of evolution and of probation, a man arrives at a knowledge of his individual soul, and glimpses the quality and purpose of that soul.  On the path of discipleship and of initiation, he glimpses the quality and purpose of his [38] planetary Life, and discovers himself as a part of a ray Life, Which is appearing through the form of a planet and is embodying an aspect of the divine purpose and energy.  After the third initiation he glimpses the quality and purpose of the solar system; he sees his ray life and energy as a part of a greater whole.  These are but modes of expressing the emerging quality and the hidden purpose of the graded Lives which inform all appearances and colour them with quality

B. The soul can be regarded as the principle of intelligence—an intelligence whose characteristics are mind and mental awareness, which in turn demonstrate as the power to analyse, to discriminate, to separate, and to distinguish, to choose or to reject, with all the implications conveyed in these terms.  As long as a man is identified with the appearance, these aspects of the mental principle produce in him the "great heresy of separateness." It is the appearance of the form nature that glamours him and completely deludes him.  He regards himself as the form, and then proceeds from a realisation of himself as the material form, and as identified with the outer appearance, to a realisation of himself as an insatiable desire.  He then becomes identified with his desire body, with his appetites, good and bad, and considers himself as one with his moods, his feelings, his longings, whether they ray out in the direction of the material world or inward toward the world of thought or the Kingdom of the soul.  He is torn by a sense of duality.  Later, he becomes identified with still another of the appearances,—with the mind body or nature.  Thoughts become to him so tangible that he is swayed, turned and influenced by them; and to the world of material appearances, and to the world of the great Illusion is added the world of thought forms.  He is then subjected to a triple illusion, and he, the conscious life behind the illusion, begins to unify the forms into one coordinated whole, in order the better to control them.

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Thus the Personality of the soul makes its appearance.  He stands then on the verge of the probationary path.  He enters the world of quality and of value, and begins to discover the nature of the soul and to shift the emphasis from the appearance to the quality of the Life which has produced it.  This identification of the quality with the appearance grows steadily upon the path until the fusion of quality and appearance, of energy and that which it energises, is so perfect that appearance no longer veils the reality, and the soul is now the dominant factor; consciousness is now identified with itself (or with its ray) and not with its phenomenal appearance.  Later, the soul itself is superseded by the Monad, and that Monad becomes, in verity, embodied purpose.

The process can be expressed by a very simple symbology, as follows:—o.o.o. or o.o...o or o...o.o., thus portraying the separateness of the three aspects.  The union, then, of the aspects of appearance—quality—purpose or life, results in an abstraction from the appearance, and therefore the end of phenomenal existence.  Ponder on the simple arrangement of these signs, for they portray your life and progress:

Unevolved man. . .o o o. appearance, quality, life.

Disciple. . . . . . . . .o o. .o.appearance—quality. . . . . .life.

Initiate. . . . . . . . . .o..o o.appearance. . . . . . quality—life.

Finally. . . . . . . . . .within the circle of infinity.

This is true of the human being, of the Christ in incarnation; it is equally true of the cosmic Christ, of God incarnate in the solar system.  In the system a similar fusion and blending is going on, and the separated aspects are entering into an evolutionary relationship, resulting in an eventual synthesis of appearance and quality, and then of quality and purpose.  It might be noted here that the Hierarchy as a whole is distinguished by the sign o..oo; the New Group of World [40] Servers by the sign oo..o; and the unevolved masses by o o o.  Forget not, that in all three groups, as in nature, there are the intermediate stages composed of those who are on their way to a transitional accomplishment.

The work before all students of this Treatise on the Seven Rays is the fusion of quality and appearance, and therefore they need to study the nature of that quality in order to produce a true appearance.  In the ancient rules given to mystics in Atlantean times we find these words:

"Let the disciple know the nature of his Lord of Love.  Seven the aspects of the love of God; seven the colours of that manifesting One; sevenfold the work; seven the energies and sevenfold the Path back to the centre of peace.  Let the disciple live in love, and love in life."

In those olden days no thought of purpose entered into the minds of men, for the race was not mental nor was it intended so to be.  The emphasis was laid upon the quality of the appearance in all preparation for initiation, and the highest initiate of that time endeavoured to express only the quality of God's love.  The Plan was the great mystery.  The Christ, cosmic and individual, was sensed and known, but purpose was as yet veiled and unrevealed.  The "noble eightfold path" was not known, and only seven steps into the Temple were seen.  With the coming in of the Aryan race, the purpose and the plan began to be revealed.  Only when the appearance is beginning to be dominated by quality, and consciousness is expressing itself in directed awareness through the form, is the purpose dimly sensed.

I seek in various ways to convey through the symbol of words the significance of the soul.  The soul is therefore the son of God, the product of the marriage of spirit and matter. The soul is an expression of the mind of God, for mind and intellect are terms expressing the cosmic principle of intelligent [41] love,—a love which produces an appearance through the nature of mind and thus is the builder of the separate forms or appearances.  The soul also, through the quality of love, produces the fusion of appearance and of quality, of awareness and of form.

C. The soul is (and here words limit and distort) a unit of light, coloured by a particular ray vibration; it is a vibrating centre of energy found within the appearance or form of its entire ray life.  It is one of seven groups of millions of lives which in their totality constitute the One Life.  From its very nature, the soul is conscious or aware in three directions.  It is God-conscious; it is group-conscious; it is self-conscious.  This self-conscious aspect is brought to fruition in the phenomenal appearance of a human being; the group-conscious aspect retains the human state of consciousness, but adds to it awareness of its ray life, progressively unfolded; its awareness then is the awareness of love, of quality, of spirit in its relationships; it is God-conscious only potentially, and in that unfoldment lies, for the soul, its own growth upward and outward after its self-conscious aspect is perfected and its group-awareness is recognised.  The soul therefore has the following points, or appearances:

o. . . .Consciousness of God, of solar system.  Unity.

.

.

The Soul ooo. . . .o.  Consciousness of the ray, of one of the seven,

              ——-                    of divine quality.  Group Consciousness.
            /
           /   .
          /    .

Aspirant  o. . . .Self consciousness, awareness of appearance. 

                             Diversity of form life.

Aspirants who are studying and training themselves to live the life of service might be regarded as having reached the point where the line is to be found.  To visualise this correctly [42] the sign should be regarded as in rapid revolution, thus producing a turning wheel, which is the wheel of life.

Let me again repeat:

1. The soul is the son of God, the product of the union of spirit and matter.

2. The soul is an embodiment of conscious mind, the expression, if one might so phrase it, of divine intelligent awareness.

3. The soul is a unit of energy, vibrating in unison with one of the seven ray Lives, and coloured by a particular ray light.

The personality of the soul is intended to be an embodiment of love, applied with intelligence and producing those "attractive" forms which will serve to express that loving intelligence.  The soul in its turn is intended to be the embodiment of divine purpose or will, intelligently applied in the great creative work, which is produced through the power of creative love.

Each son of God can say: I am born of the love of the Father for the Mother, of the desire of life for form.  I express, therefore, the love and the magnetic attractiveness of the God nature, and the responsiveness of the form nature, and am consciousness itself, aware of Deity or Life.

Each intelligent point of life can say: I am the product of intelligent will, working through intelligent activity and producing a world of created forms which embody or veil the loving purpose of Deity.

Each vibrating unit of energy can say: I am part of a divine whole, which in its septenary nature expresses the love and life of the One Reality, coloured by one of the seven qualities of the love of Deity and responsive to the other qualities.

For our purposes in this treatise, we must grasp the fact [43] that the world of appearances is energised by and vibrating to the world of qualities or values, which world, in its turn, is energised by or vibrating to the world of purpose or of will.  Therefore, as is stated in The Secret Doctrine and in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, the electric fire of will, and the solar fire of love, in cooperation with fire by friction, produce the world of created and creative forms.  These proceed under the law of attractive magnetic love towards the evolutionary accomplishment of a purpose at present inscrutable.  This purpose remains unknown only on account of the limitations of the "appearance" which is not yet responsive to the quality.  When the illusory appearance and the veiled quality of the life are known and comprehended the underlying purpose will emerge with clarity.  Indications of this can be dimly sensed and the attribute of this growing awareness can be noted in the tendency of modern thought to speak of patterns and of plans, of blue prints and synthetic formulations of ideas, and in the tracing of historical developments—national, racial, human and psychological.  As we read, ponder and study, the dim outlines of the Plan appear, but until the consciousness has transcended all human limitations and has included the subhuman, as well as the superhuman, within its range of contacts, the true Plan cannot be rightly grasped.  The will, lying behind the purpose, cannot be understood until the consciousness has transcended even that of the superhuman man, and has become one with the divine.

Will or the energy of life are synonymous terms and are an abstraction, existing apart from all form expression.  The will-to-be emerges from outside the solar system altogether.  It is the all-pervading energy of God which informs with a fraction of itself the solar system, and yet remains outside.  Plan and purpose concern the emanating energies of that central Life and involve duality,—will or the life urge plus attractive [44] magnetic love which, in its turn, is the response of the vibrating universal substance to the impact of the energy of will.  This initial activity precedes the creative process of form building; and the play of the divine will on the ocean of space, matter, or etheric substance produced the first differentiation into the major rays, and their mutual interplay produced the minor four rays.  Thus the seven emanations, the seven potencies and the seven rays came into manifestation.  They are the seven breaths of the one Life, the seven basic energies; they streamed forth from the centre formed by the impact of the will of God on divine substance, and divided into seven streams of force.  The radius of the influence of these seven streams determined the extent or scope of activity of a solar system and "outlined" the limits of the form of the incarnated cosmic Christ.  Each of these seven streams or emanations of energy was coloured by a divine quality, an aspect of love, and all of them were needed for the ultimate perfecting of the latent and unrevealed purpose.

The will of Deity coloured the stream of energy units which we call by the name of the Ray of Will or Power, the first ray, and the impact of that stream on the matter of space insured that the hidden purpose of Deity would inevitably and eventually be revealed.  It is a ray of such dynamic intensity that we call it the ray of the Destroyer.  It is not as yet functioning actively.  It will come into full play only when the time comes for the purpose to be safely revealed.  Its units of energy in manifestation in the human kingdom are very few.  As I earlier said, there is not a true first ray type in incarnation as yet.  Its main potency is to be found in the mineral kingdom, and the key to the mystery of the first ray is to be found in radium.

In the vegetable kingdom the second ray is peculiarly active, producing among other things the magnetic attractiveness [45] of flowers.  The mystery of the second ray is found to be hidden in the significance of the perfume of flowers.  Perfume and radium are related, being emanatory expressions of ray effects upon differing groupings of material substance.  The third ray is, in its turn, peculiarly related to the animal kingdom, producing the tendency to intelligent activity which we note in the higher domestic animals.  The correspondence to radioactivity and to emanatory perfumes which we found in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms, we here call devotion, the characteristic of the attractive interplay between the domestic animals and man.  Devotees of personalities might more rapidly transmute that devotion into its higher correspondence—love of principles—if they realised that they were only displaying an animal emanation.

The desire of the Deity expresses itself through the second Ray of Love-Wisdom.  Desire is a word which has been prostituted to cover the tendency of humanity to crave material things or those pleasures which bring satisfaction to the sensuous nature.  It is applied to those conditions which will satisfy the personality, but in the last analysis, desire is essentially love.  This desire expresses itself by attractiveness, by its capacity to draw to itself and into the radius of its influence that which is loved.  It is the bond of coherence, and is that principle of magnetic cohesion which lies behind all creative work and which produces the emergence into the light of manifestation of those forms or appearances through which it is possible to satisfy desire.  This second ray is pre-eminently the ray of applied consciousness, and works through the creation and development of those forms which are found throughout the universe.  They are essentially mechanisms for the development of responsiveness or awareness; they are sensitive machines, responsive to an enveloping environment.  This is true of all [46] forms, from that of a crystal to that of a solar system.  They have been created in the great process of satisfying desire and of providing the media of contact which will guarantee a progressive satisfaction.  In the human family, the effect of this dual interplay of Life (desiring satisfaction) and of form (providing the field of experience) is a consciousness which is striving towards a love of the formless instead of desire for form, and the wise adaptation of all experience to the process of transmuting desire into love.  Hence this ray is, par excellence, the dual ray of the solar Logos Himself, and hence colours all manifested forms, directing all consciousness in all forms in all kingdoms of nature, and in all fields of development; it carries the life through the range of forms in that basic search or urge for the attainment of bliss through the satisfaction of desire.  This urge and the interaction of the pairs of opposites produced the varying types of conscious reaction to experience which, in their main stages, we call consciousness, animal consciousness, and allied differentiating phrases.

This second ray is the ray of Deity Itself, and is coloured by distinctive aspects of desire or love.  They produce the totality of the manifested appearances, animated by the Life Which determines the quality.  The Father, Spirit or Life, wills to seek the satisfaction of desire.  The Mother or matter meets the desire and is attracted also by the Father. Their mutual response initiates the creative work, and the Son is born, inheriting from the Father the urge to desire or love, and from the Mother the tendency actively to create forms.  Thus, in the language of symbolism, have the form worlds come into being, and through the evolutionary work the process is going forward of satisfying the desire of spirit.  Thus in the two major rays of Will and Love we have the two main characteristics of the divine nature, which lie latent behind all the [47] myriad of forms. The aeons will see these two energies steadily dominating all appearance and driving the created world on to a full display of the divine nature.  This is true of gods and men.

But in the same way in which the Father contributes to the Son the divine qualities of will and love, so the Mother contributes much also, and the initial duality is increased and the qualities are enhanced by the addition of a quality inherent in matter itself,—the quality or Ray of Intelligent Activity.  This is the third of the divine attributes and completes, if I may so express it, the equipment of the appearing forms, and predisposes all creation to an intelligent appreciation of the true goal of desire and to an intelligent use of the technique of form building in order to reveal divine purpose.  The Knower (man) is the custodian of that wisdom which will enable him to further the divine plan and bring the will of God to fruition.  The field of knowledge is so constituted that it vibrates with intelligent response to the slowly emerging will.  Knowledge itself is that which knows its own ends and works towards those ends through the process of experiment, expectation, experience, examination and exaltation which produces a final exit.  Words such as these are synthetic symbols, conveying a cosmic story in terms of constructive brevity.

Thus the three rays of Will, Love and Intelligence produce appearance, donate quality and, through the life principle which is the underlying aspect of unity, ensure continuity of growth until such time as the will of God has evidenced itself as power, has attracted to itself the desired, has with wisdom utilised the experience of a gradually growing satisfaction, and has intelligently applied the gain of experience to the production of forms more sensitive, more beautiful and more fully expressive of the quality of the life.[48] Each of these rays is dual in time and space, though only the second ray is dual when they are regarded from the standpoint of the final abstraction.  In their temporary duality can be seen, for each of them, the interplay which we call cause and effect.

Ray I....Will, dynamically applied, emerges in manifestation as power.

Ray II...Love, magnetically functioning, produces wisdom.

Ray III..Intelligence, potentially found in substance, causes activity.

The result of the interplay of these three major rays can be seen in the activity of the four minor rays.  The Secret Doctrine speaks of the Lords of Knowledge and of Love, and also of the Lords of Ceaseless Devotion.  We might, in order more clearly to understand the mystical significance of these names, point out that the dynamic persistent will of the Logos expresses itself through the Lords of Ceaseless Devotion.  Here devotion is not the quality to which I referred earlier in this treatise, but is the persistent directed one-pointed will of God, embodied in a Life which is that of the Lord of the first ray.  The Lords of Love and of Knowledge are the two great Lives Who embody or ensoul the Love-Wisdom and the creative Intelligence aspects of the two major rays.  These three are the sum total of all forms or appearances, the givers of all qualities, and the emerging Life aspect behind the tangible manifestations.  They correspond, in the human family, to the three aspects of Personality, Soul and Monad.  The Monad is dynamic will or purpose, but remains unrevealed until after the third initiation.  The Monad is Life, the sustaining force, a Lord of persevering and ceaseless devotion to the pursuit of a seen and determined objective.  The soul is a Lord of love and wisdom, whilst the personality is a Lord of knowledge [49] and of intelligent activity.  This use of terms involves the realisation of an achieved goal.  It is not true of the present stage as regards expression, for this is the intermediate stage.  None are as yet working with full intelligent activity, though some day each will do so.  None are as yet manifesting Lords of love, but they sense the ideal and are striving towards its expression.  None are as yet Lords of ceaseless will and none realise as yet the plan of the monad nor the true goal towards which all are striving.  Some day all will.  But potentially every human unit is all these three, and some day the appearances which were called personalities, that mask or veil reality, will fully reveal the qualities of Deity.  When that time comes, the purpose for which all creation waits will burst upon the awakened vision, and we shall know the true meaning of bliss, and why the morning stars sang together.  Joy is the strong basic note of our particular solar system.

One of the foundational septenate of rays embodies in itself the principle of harmony, and this fourth Ray of Harmony gives to all forms that which produces beauty and works towards the harmonising of all effects emanating from the world of causes, which is the world of the three major rays.  The ray of beauty, of art and harmony is the producer of the quality of organisation through form.  It is in the last analysis the ray of mathematical exactitude and is not the ray of the artist, as so many seem to think.  The artist is found on all rays, just as is the engineer or the physician, the home-maker or the musician.  I want to make this clear, for there is much misunderstanding on this matter.

Each of the great rays has a form of teaching truth to humanity which is its unique contribution, and in this way develops man by a system or technique which is qualified by the ray quality and is therefore specific and unique.  Let me point out to you the modes of this group teaching:

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The fourth ray is essentially the refiner, the producer of perfection within the form, and the prime manipulator of the energies of God in such a way that the Temple of the Lord is indeed known in its true nature as that which "houses" the Light.  Thus the Shekinah will shine forth within the secret place of the Temple in its full glory.  Such is the work of the seven Builders.  This ray is expressive primarily on the first [51] the formless planes, counting from below upwards, and its true purpose cannot emerge until the soul is awakened and consciousness is adequately recording the known.  The planes or manifested spheres of expression are influenced in manifestation in a numerical order:

The fifth ray therefore works actively on the plane of the greatest moment to humanity, being, for man, the plane of the soul, and of the higher and the lower mind.  It embodies the principle of knowledge, and because of its activity and its close relation to the third Ray of Active Intelligence might be regarded as a ray having a most vital relation to man at this time in particular.  It is the ray which—when active, as it was in Lemurian times,—produces individualisation, which is literally the shifting of the evolving life of God into a new sphere of awareness.  This particular transference into higher forms of awareness tends, at the beginning, to separativeness.

The fifth ray has produced what we call science.  In science we find a condition which is rare in the extreme.  Science is separative in its approach to the differing aspects of the divine manifestation which we call the world of natural phenomena, but it is non-separative in actuality, for there is little warring between the sciences and little competition between scientists.  In this the workers in the scientific field differ profoundly from those of the religious.  The reason for this is to be found in the fact that the true scientist, being a coordinated personality and working therefore on mental levels, works very close to the soul.  The developed personality produces the [52] clear distinctions of the dominant lower mind, but (if one may use such a symbolic way of expression) the close proximity of the soul negates a separative attitude.  The religious man is pre-eminently astral or emotional and works in a more separative manner, particularly in this Piscean age which is passing away.  When I say the religious man I refer to the mystic and to the man who senses the beatific vision.  I refer not to disciples nor to those who are called initiates, for they add to the mystical vision a trained mental apprehension.

The sixth Ray of Devotion embodies the principle of recognition.  By this I mean the capacity to see the ideal reality lying behind the form; this implies a one-pointed application of desire and of intelligence in order to produce an expression of that sensed idea.  It is responsible for much of the formulation of the ideas which have led man on, and for much of the emphasis on the appearance which has veiled and hidden those ideals.  It is on this ray primarily—as it cycles in and out of manifestation—that the work of distinguishing between appearance and quality is carried forward, and this work has its field of activity upon the astral plane.  The complexity of this subject and the acuteness of the feeling evolved become therefore apparent.

The seventh Ray of Ceremonial Order or Magic embodies a curious quality which is the outstanding characteristic of the particular Life which ensouls this ray.  It is the quality or principle which is the coordinating factor unifying the inner quality and the outer tangible form or appearance.  This work goes on primarily on etheric levels and involves physical energy.  This is the true magical work.  I should like to point out that when the fourth ray and the seventh ray come into incarnation together, we shall have a most peculiar period of revelation and of light-bringing.  It is said of this time that then "the temple of the Lord will take on an added glory and the Builders will rejoice together."  This will be the high moment [53] of the Masonic work, spiritually understood.  The Lost Word will then be recovered and uttered for all to hear, and the Master will arise and walk among His builders in the full light of the glory which shines from the east.

The spiritualising of forms might be regarded as the main work of the seventh ray, and it is this principle of fusion, of coordination and of blending which is active on etheric levels every time a soul comes into incarnation and a child is born on earth.

D. The soul is the principle of sentiency, underlying all outer manifestation, pervading all forms, and constituting the consciousness of God Himself.  When the soul, immersed in substance, is simply sentiency, it produces through its evolutionary interplay an addition, and we find emerging quality and capacity to react to vibration and to environment.  This is the soul as it expresses itself in all the subhuman kingdoms in nature.

When the soul, an expression of sentiency and quality, adds to these the capacity of detached self-awareness, there appears that self-identified entity which we call a human being.

When the soul adds to sentiency, quality and self-awareness, the consciousness of the group, then we have identification with a ray-group, and there appears the disciple, the initiate and the master.

When the soul adds to sentiency, quality, self-awareness and group consciousness, a consciousness of divine synthetic purpose (called by us the Plan), then we have that state of being and knowledge which is distinctive of all upon the Path of Initiation, and includes those graded Lives, from the more advanced disciple up to the planetary Logos Himself.

But forget not that when we make these distinctions it is nevertheless one Soul that is functioning, acting through vehicles of varying capacities, of differentiated refinements and of greater and lesser limitations, in just the same sense as [54] a man is one identity, working sometimes through a physical body and sometimes through a feeling body or a mental body, and sometimes knowing himself to be the Self—a rare and unusual occurrence for the majority.

Every form in manifestation does two things:

1. Appropriates, or is pervaded by, as much of the world soul as its capacity will permit.  The atom of substance, the molecule or the cell all have soul, but not in the same degree as has an animal; and an animal has soul, but not in the same degree as has a Master, and so on up or down the scale.

2. Through the interaction between the indwelling soul and the form, two things occur:

a. Sentiency and quality are expressed according to the type of body and its point of evolution.

b. The pervading soul drives the body nature into activity, and forces it forward along the path of development, and thus provides for the soul a field of experience and for the body the opportunity to react to the higher soul impulse.  Thus the field of expression is benefited, and the soul masters the technique of contact which is its objective in any particular form.

The soul therefore, viewed from one angle, is an aspect of the body, for there is a soul in every atom comprising all bodies in all kingdoms in nature.  The subtle coherent soul which is the result of the bringing together of spirit and matter exists as an entity apart from the body nature, and constitutes (when separated from the body) the etheric body, the double, as it is sometimes called, or the counterpart of the physical body.  This is the sum total of the soul of the atoms constituting the physical body.  It is the true form; it is the principle of coherence in every form.

The soul, in relation to the human being, is the mind principle [55] in two capacities, or the mind expressing itself in two ways.  These two ways are registered and become part of the organised equipment of the human body when it is adequately refined and sufficiently developed:

1. The lower concrete mind, the mental body, the "chitta" or mind stuff.

2. The higher spiritual or abstract mind.

These two aspects of the soul, its two basic qualities, bring into being the human kingdom and enable man to contact both the lower kingdoms in nature and the higher spiritual realities.  The first, the quality of mind in its lower manifestation, is owned potentially by every atom in every form in every kingdom in nature.  It is a part of the body nature, inherent and potential, and is the basis of brotherhood, of absolute unity, of universal synthesis and divine coherence in manifestation.  The other, the higher aspect, is the principle of self-awareness, and when combined with the lower aspect produces the self-consciousness of the human being.  When the lower aspect has informed and pervaded the forms in the subhuman kingdoms, and when it has worked upon those forms and their latent sentiency so as to produce adequate refinement and sentiency, the vibration becomes so potent that the higher is attracted and there is a fusion or at-one-ing.  This is like a higher recapitulation of the initial union of spirit and matter which brought the world into being.  A human soul is thus brought into existence and begins its long career.  It is now a differentiated entity.

"Soul" also is a word used to express the sum total of the psychic nature—the vital body, the emotional nature and the mind stuff.  But it is also more than that, once the human stage is reached.  It constitutes the spiritual entity, a conscious psychical being, a son of God, possessing life, quality and appearance— [56] a unique manifestation in time and space of the three expressions of the soul as we have just outlined them:

1. The soul of all the atoms, composing the tangible appearance.