2. The Ray of the Planet—Earth.

Each of the seven sacred planets (of which our Earth is not one) is an expression of one of the seven ray influences. These seven planets might be enumerated as follows, and the rays working through them are accurately given.  The student however must remember three things:

1. That every planet is the incarnation of a Life, of an Entity or Being.

2. That every planet, like a human being, is the expression of two ray forces,—the personality and the egoic.

3. That two rays are therefore in esoteric conflict in each planet.

I but indicate one of the rays, and I do not tell you whether it is the egoic or personality ray of the particular planetary Logos. Too much accuracy and too detailed information is not at this time good for humanity, which is yet too selfish to be entrusted with it.

THE PLANETS AND RAYS

I deal here with the major ray cycles and not with the minor cycles.  Two rays, you will note, are apparently not expressing themselves through the non-sacred planets; the seventh and the fifth.  There are only five non-sacred planets. But the reason which makes a planet sacred or not is one of the secrets of a certain major initiation, and I may not further [336] elucidate here.  Suffice it to say that the sacred planets are seven in number, making a totality of twelve planetary manifestations.  It will be obvious to the observant reader also that certain sacred planets and certain non-sacred planets have a close relation with each other through the rays which influence them.  These are:

These relationships will provide a somewhat new field of investigation for astrologers.

You will note therefore how peculiarly this Earth on which we live is suited to the development of the incarnating sons of God.  Man comes forth, as do all lives within the radius of influence of a solar system, upon the inspiration of love, expressed in wisdom.  Love is not a sentiment.  Love is the great principle of attraction, of desire, of magnetic pull, and (within our solar system) that principle demonstrates as the attraction and the interplay between the pairs of opposites.  This interplay provides every needed grade or type of unfoldment for consciousness.  Conscious response is first made to the most potent and to the densest kind of attraction in matter, that of the mineral kingdom.  Dense as it is, and heavy as is that type of vibration, it is nevertheless an expression of embryonic love.  Response again comes, with greater facility and more true awareness and sensitivity, in the next kingdom, and the consciousness of the vegetable world emerges.  But this too is love.  It responds more freely and reacts to a far wider range of contacts in the animal kingdom, and the basic instinctual desires emerge and can be recognised.  They, in due time, become the motivation of the [337] life, yet still it is only the love of God which is manifested.  It is love between conscious life and conscious form; it is love between the pairs of opposites, leading to an eventual synthesis or marriage; it is relationship between the basic dualities; it is not sentiment but a fact in a great natural process.  Always there is the emerging glory and radiance of a growing love, until we come to the human kingdom wherein love enters another plane.  Then responsiveness and sensitivity and human sentimental reaction develop into a rudimentary mind.  The consciousness of loving and being loved, of attracting and of being attracted, enters through the door of the intelligence and expands into the human state of awareness.  Pleasure and pain become definite factors in unfoldment, and the long agony of humanity commences.  Love then is seen in its naked selfishness, but also its potential glory can be sensed.  Love or attractive desire then attracts to itself that which it feels it needs, but later, that is changed into what it thinks it should have, and this, in time, is transmuted into that which it knows is the divine non-material heritage of a son of God. Ponder on these last few words, for in the true understanding of love as feeling, love as thinking, and love as aspiration will come a clarification of man's problem and his liberation from the thralldom of the lower loves into the liberty of love itself, and into the freedom of the one who possesses all things, and yet desires nothing for the separated self.

The magnetic pull of that which is desired is modified on our planet by the personality ray of our particular planetary Logos.  This is the Ray of Active Intelligence, and of selective Adaptability.  Just as every cell and atom in the human body is modified and conditioned by the egoic ray and the ray of each of the inner bodies, so every cell and atom in the body of the planetary Logos is conditioned and modified [338] by His outstanding ray influence, in this case, His personality ray.  In this conditioning influence is found a clue to the distress and agony and pain in the world today.  The planetary Logos of our Earth is primarily conditioned by a cosmic ray, to be sure, but not by His egoic ray.  Perhaps in this condition may be found the reason (or one of the reasons) why our Earth is not one of the seven sacred planets.  On this I need not enlarge, but it was necessary to call attention to this great determining factor, the third ray, which is the personality ray of our planetary Logos.

This ray brings in the factor of discrimination through mental activity, and this, in its turn, balances the so-called love nature, and it is in truth the cause of our evolutionary growth.  The life in forms passes through discriminative and selective activity from one experience to another in an ever widening scale of contacts.  It is this Ray of Intelligent Activity which dominates man at this time.  Human beings are largely centred in their personalities; they are "egocentric," in the terminology of the psychologist, which recognises the integrating principle of the ego (in many cases) but does not yet recognise the overshadowing ego or soul, except under such a vague term as "the superconscious".  We have therefore a humanity engrossed by a tremendous activity and demonstrating everywhere a vital discriminating and intellectual interest in all types of phenomena.  This tendency to be active will go on increasing and intensifying until the Aryan race will merge into the coming major root-race, for which we have as yet no name, though we recognise that in that race the intellect will serve the intuition.  Human activity is now regarded as having reached an incredible speed and intensity of vibration, yet from the angle of the world Knowers it is only just beginning to express itself, and is relatively feeble as yet.  The growth of the tendency to vital speed can [339] be noted if history is studied, and the pace at which man now lives, and the complexity and the many dynamic interests of his life, may be compared with those of the average man two hundred years ago.  The last twenty-five years of man's history have shown a tremendous speeding up as compared with conditions fifty years ago.

The reason for this increase of intelligent activity and rapidity of response and contact is to be found in the subjective fact that humanity is with great speed integrating the three aspects of human nature into a unity, called personality.  Men are steadily becoming personalities, and unifying into one expression their physical, emotional and mental aspects; hence they are more able to respond to the ray of the integrated personality of the One in Whom they live, and move, and have their being.

Speaking therefore in terms of man's life problem, we might state that it is affected potently by the two major influences which beat upon the human kingdom, the cosmic ray of the solar system, the Ray of Love-Wisdom, and the cosmic ray of the planet, which is the personality ray of the planetary Logos, the Ray of Active Intelligence or Adaptability.  Man might be defined as a unit of conscious life, swept into tangible expression through the discriminating love of God.  Through his life experiences he is presented with innumerable choices which gradually shift from the realm of the tangible into that of the intangible.  As he attracts, or is attracted by, the life of his environment, he becomes increasingly conscious of a series of shifting values, until he reaches that point in his development when the pull or the magnetic attraction of the subjective world and the intangible mental and spiritual realities are more potent than the factors which have hitherto enticed him on.  His sense of values is no longer determined by:

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1. The satisfaction of his instinctual animal nature.

2. The desires of a more emotional and sentimental kind

which his astral body demands.

3. The pull and pleasures of the mind nature, and of intellectual appetites.

He becomes potently attracted by his soul, and this produces a tremendous revolution in his entire life, regarding the word "revolution" in its true sense, as a complete turning around.  This revolution is happening now, on such a universal scale in the lives of individuals in the world, that it is one of the main factors producing the present potency of experimental ideas in the world of modern times.  The attractive power of the soul grows steadily, and the pull of the personality weakens as steadily.  All this has been brought about by the process of experiment, leading to experience; by experience, leading to a wiser use of the powers of the personality; by a growing appreciation of a truer world of values and of reality, and by an effort on man's part to identify himself with the world of spiritual values and not with a world of material values.  The world of meaning and of causes becomes gradually the world in which he finds happiness, and his selection of his major interests and the use to which he decides to put his time and powers are finally conditioned by the truer spiritual values.  He then is on the path of illumination.  I have sought to express the effects of these two major ray influences in terms of mysticism and of philosophy, but in very truth all that I have here said could be expressed scientifically and in terms of scientific formulas, if man were mentally equipped to appreciate them.  But this is not yet possible.  All these ray vibrations, no matter which they may be, can eventually be reduced to formulas and to symbols.

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Reaction to environment, sensitive response to the ray influences which govern and express themselves through the forms which compose man's environment, a growing power to discriminate between energies and forces, a slowly developing sense of values (which sense is the one which eventually dispels illusion and glamour and reveals reality), and a shift of the discriminating interest away from the worlds of tangible experience, of emotional life and of mental interest,— all this expresses the effect of the interplay between the two rays of the solar system and of the planet.  These, intermingling, pour through and affect mankind.

One of the most difficult things with which the Masters are today confronted is to prove to man that the old and recognised values and the tangible world of phenomena (emotional and physical) must be relegated to their right place in the background of man's consciousness, and that the intangible realities, and the world of ideas and causes must be, for him, in the immediate future, the main centre of attention. When man grasps this and lives by this knowledge, then the glamour which now holds the world will disappear.  If you ponder on this you will recognise how the great crisis of 1914-1918 did much useful work in smashing the glamourous material security in which men were living, and in destroying much of their instinctual and sensuous selfishness.  The group is beginning to be recognised as of major importance, and the welfare of the individual is important just in so far as the unit is an integral part of the group.  This will not eventually destroy initiative and individuality.  It is only in our initial experiments, and through our inexpertness in the use of the discriminating faculty, that we are, as yet, making such sad mistakes.  This process of destroying the world illusion has been going on on a large scale ever since; in every country, through the various experiments which are going forward [342], the glamour is breaking down and the truer values of group welfare, of group integration, and of group progress are emerging.  The sense of insecurity which is such a distressing aspect of the present upheaval is due simply to this destruction of the old sense of values, to that dispelling of glamour which reveals at present an unfamiliar landscape, and to the fear and instability which man feels when he comes up against the world "Dweller on the Threshold."  This has to be broken up and destroyed, for it blocks the way to the new world of values.  The great thought form which man's greed and materiality have built, down the ages, is being steadily demolished, and mankind is on the verge of a liberation which will take him on to the Path of Discipleship.  I refer not here to the final liberation, but to that liberation which comes from a free choice, wisely used and applied to the good of the whole, and conditioned by love.  Note that I say, "wisely used."  Wisdom, actuated and motivated by love, and intelligently applied to world problems, is much needed today and is not yet to be found, except among the few illumined souls in every nation,—in every nation, I say, without exception.  Many more must love with wisdom and appreciate the group aspiration before we shall see the next reality to be known and to emerge out of the darkness which we are now in the process of dispelling.