The life of the evolving personality might be divided into five divisions. Ours is, after all, a fivefold evolution, and the life of the man (as a human being and prior to taking the fifth Initiation) may be considered as a series of five gradual steps, each step being gauged by the condition of the indwelling Flame of Spirit. From the standpoint of our occult planetary Hierarchy, as before I have told you, we are measured by our light.

The first division of progress might be measured from the moment when animal-man became a thinking entity, [24] a human being, to that of the conscious functioning of the emotional body or to the point where the emotions are very largely paramount. It corresponds to the period covered by the Lemurian and early Atlantean days. During this period, the man is polarized in his physical body and is learning to be controlled by his desire body, the body of feeling or of emotion. He has no aspirations save such as pander to the pleasures of the body; he lives for his physical nature, and has no thought for aught that may be higher. This period parallels that of the child from one to seven years. At this time the watching Teachers of the race see the indwelling Flame as a tiny pin-point, and the permanent atom of the physical plane holds the polarization. No attention is called for from the Teachers, for the instinctive force inherent in the Higher Self does the work, and the driving force of evolution carries all on to perfection.

The second period covers a point in development when the polarization is largely in the emotional body and when lower mind desire is being developed. Later Atlantean days hold the analogy hid. The desires are not so purely physical, for mind is beginning to permeate, much as yeast causes a movement and a rising in a mass of dough. The man is conscious of vague desires not associated with his physical body; he is capable of a deep love for teachers and guides wiser than himself, of a wild unreasoning devotion for his environing associates, and of an equally wild and unreasoning hatred, for the equilibrium that mind achieves, and the balance that is the result of mental action, is wanting in his makeup. He suffers from extremes.

The polarization lies now in the emotional permanent atom but, (when this point of development is reached) a light plays between the two atoms that have [25] known polarization - the emotional and the physical. What I am seeking to bring out at this stage is that the mental unit has not known the force of polarization, the emotional is holding it, and the result is in integral difference within the periphery of the atom itself. The electronic combinations that compose the atom which has suffered polarization are grouped in a different geometrical form to those which have not yet experienced the process. It is the effect of the life of the Ego, playing on the matter of the atom and causing various approximations and differentiations unseen in a non-polarized atom. The matter is abstruse and complex.

This period is an analogous one to that in the life of a child from seven to fourteen years, or that period when adolescence is traversed and the child is maturing. This maturity is the product of emotional and physical polarization in alignment. Alignment is now easily achieved between the physical and emotional bodies. The problem is to bring both under alignment with the mental and later with the egoic bodies.

Now, on entering the third period, comes the most vital point in the development of the man, that in which [26] mind is developing and the polarizing life shifts to the mental unit. Speaking in terms of the solar system and viewing humanity as a unit, all of whose permanent atoms form the molecules in a corresponding cosmic atom, the work has progressed from physical to emotional polarization and remains there. Not till the seventh cycle of the greater cycle, not till the calling of the system into obscuration and out of manifestation will the cosmic mental atom in the body of the Logos achieve polarization. Here and there individuals are, as units, accomplishing the work and demonstrating therefore the hope for all.

This period corresponds to that between the ages fourteen and twenty-eight. The period here is longer for there is much to be done. Two atoms have felt polarization, and one is receiving the shifting. It is the middle point. At this time the light plays between the three atoms (outlining the personality triangle). But the focal point is gradually shifting more and more into the mental unit, and the egoic body is becoming gradually more rounded out, and assuming its proportions.