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Thus we have the stages succeeding each other from the initial appropriation upon the Mental plane until the man, in consciousness, has worked his way down through the planes and back again to the Mental plane, which brings him to the stage of the coordination of the personality, and the emergence into full expression of what we call the Personality Ray. Life after life takes place. Again and again, the Soul incarnates and, in consciousness, passes through the stages outlined above. But gradually a higher sense of values supervenes; there comes a period when desire for material experience and for ambitious personality satisfactions begins to fade out; newer and better values and higher standards of thought and desire begin slowly to appear.
The consciousness aspect then passes through all the stages upon which we have touched but in reverse order, and this time upon the upward arc, corresponding to the evolutionary stage in the great cycle of natural processes, concerned with the form life. It expands slowly from the consciousness of ambition through activity and the succeeding unfoldments, to the stage of approach to the divine reality upon the Mental plane and that of the final appropriation, wherein the consciousness of man, becomes merged in that of the Soul upon its own level, and finally appropriates in full awareness (if one can use so paradoxical a phrase) the One.
When the consciousness of the Soul, incarnate in a human form, arrives at a realisation of the futility of material ambition, it marks a high stage of personality integration and precedes a period of change or of a shift in activity. During this second stage upon the Path of Return, the shift of the consciousness is away from the physical body altogether, into the Etheric or vital body, and from thence into the Astral body. There duality is sensed and the battle of the pairs of opposites takes place. The disciple makes his appearance as Arjuna. Only after the battle and only when Arjuna has made his fateful decisions, is it possible for him to make his approach upon the Mental plane to the Soul. This he does by:
approach by service.
Then comes that peculiar stage of transcendent aspiration, wherein desire for individual experience is lost and only the longing to function as a conscious part of the greater Whole remains. Then and only then can the conscious Soul appropriate the "body of light and of splendour, the expression of the glory of the One" which, when once assumed, makes all future incarnations in the three worlds impossible, except as an act of the Spiritual will. The significance of the above may be found difficult of comprehension for it is one of the mysteries of a higher initiation.
Therefore, it will be seen that we begin and we end with an expansion of consciousness. The first one led to the inclusion of the material world, and the second one includes or appropriates, consciously and intelligently, the Spiritual world. We see the desire consciousness transmuted into aspiration for the Spiritual realities and the focused, vital approach to the kingdom of God. We see the appearance on the Physical plane of the imprisoned consciousness, limited and confined for purposes of defined, intelligent development, within an evolving form, and the final emergence upon the Mental plane of the enriched, released consciousness into the full freedom of the Mind of God.
We see the activity of the conscious mind of man slowly expanding and intensifying, until it becomes the activity of the illumined mind, reflecting the divine consciousness of the Soul. We see the ambition of the conscious man transformed at first into the Spiritual ambition of the pledged disciple and finally into the expression of the Will of God or of the Monad, in the initiate.
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