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I shall utilise the word Life when referring to Spirit, to energy, to the Father, to the first aspect of Divinity, and to that essential dynamic electric Fire which produces all that is, and is the sustaining, originating Cause and Source of all manifestation.
I shall use the word Quality as expressive of the second aspect, the Son of God, the cosmic Christ incarnate in form—a form brought into being by the relation of Spirit and matter. This interplay produces that psychological Entity which we call the Christ.
I shall use the word Appearance to express that which we call matter, or form, or objective expression; it is that illusory tangible outer appearance which is animated by life. This is the third aspect, the Mother, overshadowed and fertilised by the Holy Ghost, or Life, united with intelligent substance. This is Fire by Friction—a friction brought about by life and matter and their interplay, and producing change and constant mutation.
The seven Rays are therefore embodiments of seven types of force which demonstrate to us the seven qualities of Deity. These seven qualities have consequently a sevenfold effect upon the matter and forms to be found in all parts of the universe, and have also a sevenfold interrelation between themselves.
These seven Rays are the seven streams of force issuing from a central energy after (in point of time) that vortex of energy had been set up. Spirit and matter became mutually interactive and the form or appearance of the solar system began its process of becoming,—a process leading to an eventual being. This idea is ancient and true. We find reference to the seven aeons and the seven emanations and to the life and nature of the seven "Spirits which are before the Throne of God" in the writings of Plato and of all initiates who laid down in ancient times the basic propositions which have guided the human mentality down the ages.
These great Lives, functioning within the boundaries of the solar system, gathered to Themselves that substance which They required for manifestation and built it into those forms and appearances through which They could best express Their innate qualities. Within the radius of Their influence, They gathered all that now appears. This aggregated, qualified material constitutes Their body of manifestation, just as the solar system is the body of manifestation of the Trinity of aspects.
This statement covers also the life story and the qualified appearance of any one of the seven Rays. God, Ray, Life, and Man are all psychological entities and builders of forms. Therefore a great psychological life is appearing through the medium of a solar system. Seven psychological lives, qualified by seven types of force, are appearing through the medium of the seven planets. Each planetary life repeats the same technique of manifestation—Life-Quality-Appearance—and in its second aspect of quality demonstrates as a psychological entity.
Every human being is a miniature replica of the entire plan. He is also Spirit-Soul-Body, Life-Quality-Appearance. He colours his appearance with his quality and animates it with his life. Because all appearances are expressions of quality and the lesser is included in the greater, every form in nature and every human being is found upon one or other of the seven qualifying Rays and his appearance in a phenomenal form is coloured by the quality of his basic Ray. It is qualified predominantly by the Ray of the particular life upon whose emanation he issued forth, but it will include also in a secondary measure the six other Ray types.
Let us therefore posit—as a symbolical analogy—the fact of a Central Life (extraneous and outside our solar system yet within it during the process of manifestation) Which decides within Itself to take a material form and to incarnate. A vortex of force is set up as a preliminary step and we then have God immanent and God transcendent at the same time. This vortex, as a result of this initial activity, demonstrates through the medium of what we call substance through the Ether of space. The consequence of this active interplay of life and substance is that a basic unity is constituted. Father and mother are at-one. This unity is characterised by quality. Through this triplicity of Life-Quality-Form, the central Life evokes and manifests consciousness, or awareness of response to all that is eventuating, but in a degree which it is impossible for us to cognise, limited as we are by our present relatively undeveloped point in evolution.
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