From all the above, you will note that some of the effects upon humanity as a whole and the skeleton structure of the new and beautiful future will take place as a result of the new incoming first ray activity. No details can yet be given, but enough has been written down anent the basic, predisposing cause to enable you who read to ponder upon the possible effect, spiritually speaking. What is coming is a civilization of a different yet still material nature, but animated by a growing registration by the masses [650] everywhere of an emerging spiritual objective which will transform all life and give new value and purpose to that which is material.

When it comes to a consideration of the effect of this ray at the time of the fifth initiation, you must bear in mind that the disciple has passed, in a previous incarnation, through the Initiation of Renunciation, and has established within himself a condition of complete harmony as a result of conflict - a conflict which has been raging for millennia of years and whose goal has ever been revelation. Just as a camera has to be correctly focused in order to register correctly that which is visioned, so this harmony, once finally achieved, can be regarded as a form of focused orientation. Throughout the many lives the disciple has lived, there have been many such moments, but they were brief and passing, serving only to stir the aspiration into activity. With the disciple of the fourth initiation, [651] submitting himself to the fifth initiation, the orientation and the focus attained remains a permanent condition. This prefaces an entirely new cycle of spiritual experience - the experience of the higher evolution - leading to that great moment when the revelation of the seven Paths is accorded to him at the following or sixth Initiation of Decision.

Where the ordinary everyday man is concerned, the propelling aspiration (if I may use such an unusual phrase) is of a material nature and concerns his successful progress in the world of everyday physical plane life. It might be wise to consider ambition as the lower expression of aspiration; this ambition covers all the many phases of the Path of Evolution, from the ambition of the raw savage in primeval times to gain food and shelter for himself and family to the ambition of the modern business man to reach the height of financial gain or power. Having achieved that goal, it frequently happens that, on the way to the higher octave of ambition (aspiration), there may come a cycle of lives where the ambition is directed to the creative arts. Next comes gradually the transmutation of all these ambitions into a steadily growing and consciously spiritual aspiration. The man treads then the Probationary Path and eventually the Path of Discipleship, and as his spiritual ambition grows and is paralleled by an equally steady growth in mental realization, he passes from initiation to initiation, until there comes the culminating fifth initiation.