First of all, let us consider the type of energy which the seventh ray expresses and wherein lies its potency and efficacy, from the angle of the initiation. As we study these initiations and their conditioning rays, we will divide our ideas into three parts: [568]

1. The type of energy and its quality in relation to the processes of the particular initiation with which it is associated.
2. Its effect upon humanity, regarding humanity as a world disciple.
3. The stimulating nature of the energy as it expresses itself:
   1. In the three aspects of the initiate's nature - mental, astral and physical.
   2. Through the soul-infused personality, the initiate "in good standing" - a phrase of the deepest occult implication.

At other times, during the process of being withdrawn "to their own place," they cause the fading out or the dying of form aspects, of institutions, and the "organizing [569] organisms" (to use a peculiar phrase); they therefore produce cycles of destruction and of cessation and thus make room for those new forms and life expressions which an incoming ray will produce. It has been the gradual withdrawing of the sixth Ray of Idealism and of one-pointed Devotion which has been responsible for the ferment, crystallization, destruction, death and cleavages of the past century; old things are passing away as the Lord of the sixth Ray withdraws His attention, and therefore His energy; His radiation is today no longer centered or focused in the life of the three worlds. Simultaneously, the energy and radiation of the Lord of the seventh Ray are becoming steadily more powerful in the three worlds.

This incoming of a ray always produces an intensified period of initiatory activity, and this is the case today. The major effect, as far as humanity is concerned, is to make possible the presentation of thousands of aspirants and applicants for the first initiation; men on a large scale and in mass formation can today pass through the experience of the Birth Initiation. Thousands of human beings can experience the birth of the Christ within themselves and can realize that the Christ life, the Christ nature and the Christ consciousness are theirs. This "new birth" initiation of the human family will take place in Bethlehem, symbolically understood, for Bethlehem is the "house of bread" - an occult term signifying physical plane experience. These great initiations, implemented by the ray energies, must be registered in the physical brain and recorded by the waking consciousness of the initiate, and this must be the case in this amazing period wherein - for the first time since humanity appeared on Earth - there can take place a mass initiation. The experience need not be expressed in occult terms, and in the majority of cases will not be; the individual initiate who takes this initiation is aware of great changes in his attitude to himself, to his fellowmen, to circumstances and to his interpretation of life events. These are peculiarly the reactions which attend the first initiation; a new orientation to life and a new [570] world of thought are registered by the initiate. This will be equally true on a large scale where modern man, the world initiate of the first degree, is concerned. Men will recognize the evidences in many lives of the emergence of the Christ-consciousness, and the standard of living will increasingly be adjusted to the truth as it exists in the teachings of the Christ.

This developing Christ-consciousness in the masses of men will create necessarily a ferment in the daily life of peoples everywhere; the life of the personality, oriented hitherto to the attaining of material and purely selfish ends, will be at war with the new and inner realization; the "carnal" man (to use the words of Paul, the initiate) will be battling the spiritual man, each seeking to achieve control. In the early stages, after the "birth" and during the "infancy of the Christ-Child" (again speaking in symbols), the material aspect is triumphant. Later, the Christ life triumphs. This you well know. Each initiation indicates a stage in the growth and the development of this new factor in the human consciousness and expression, and this continues until the third initiation, when there emerges the "full-grown man in Christ." The initiate is then ready, at the fifth initiation, to register, realize and record the long awaited revelation.