The first major proof that humanity (through the medium of the majority of its advanced people) has undergone the first initiation will be the appearance of a cycle of entirely new creative art. This creative urge will take forms which will express the new incoming energies. Just as the period governed by the sixth ray has culminated in a world wherein men work in great workshops and factories to produce the plethora of objects men deem needful for their happiness and well-being, so in the seventh ray cycle we shall see men engaged on an even larger scale in the field of creative art. Devotion to objects will eventually be superseded by the creation of that which will more truly express the Real; ugliness and materiality will give place to beauty and reality. On a large scale, humanity has already been "led from darkness to light" and the light of knowledge fills the land. In the period which lies ahead and under the influencing radiation of the seventh ray, humanity will be "led from the unreal to the Real." This the first initiation makes possible for the individual and will make possible for the mass of men.
      The Hierarchy of the planet constitutes symbolically the head centre of humanity and their forces constitute the brain forces. On the physical plane are a large band of aspirants, probationary disciples and accepted disciples who are seeking to be responsive to the "head centre", some consciously, others unconsciously. They are gathered from all fields of expression but are all creative in some way or other. They in their turn constitute what might be symbolically called the "pineal gland" of humanity. As in individual man this is usually dormant and asleep, so, in humanity, this group of cells within the brain of the body corporate is dormant, but thrilling to the vibrations of the head centre - the occult Hierarchy. Some of the cells are awake. Let them intensify their endeavour and so awaken others. The pioneers of the human family, the scientists, thinkers and artists constitute the pituitary body. They express the concrete mind but lack that intuitive perception and idealism which would place them (symbolically speaking) in the pineal gland; they are nevertheless brilliant, expressive and investigating. The objective of the Hierarchy (again symbolically speaking) is to make the pineal gland so potent and, therefore, so attractive that the pituitary body of cell lives may be stimulated and thus a close interplay be brought about. This will lead to such potent action that there will be a streaming forth of new cells to the pineal gland and at the same time such a strong reaction set up that the entire body will be affected, resulting in the streaming upward of many stimulated lives to take the places of those who are finding their way into the centre of hierarchical endeavour.
      The man on this fivefold line of the Lord of Civilisation, the Mahochohan ever asks why, and how, and whence, and seeks to synthesise, to comprehend and to make the archetypes and ideals facts in manifestation. He broods on the ideals as he senses them; he aims at contacting the Universal Mind, at wresting its secrets from it, and giving them expression. It is the line of business organisation, the line also in which the artists, musicians, scientists and the workers of the world have their place. The Spirits of Love and Activity pass much time in each of its five departments before passing on to the lines of love and of power.
      In meditation the man takes some ideal, some part of the divine plan, some phase of beauty and of art, some scientific or racial problem, and by brooding over it and by the employment of lower mind, finds out all that can be known and sensed. Then, having done all that, he seeks to raise the consciousness still higher till he taps the source of illumination, and gains the light and information [Page required. He mounts likewise by entering into the consciousness of those greater than himself, not so much from the point of view of love (as in the second line) as from admiration and joy in their achievement, and gratitude for what they have given to the world, and devotion to the same idea that impels them to action.
      The Master Serapis, frequently called the Egyptian, He is the Master upon the fourth ray, and the great art movements of the world, the evolution of music, and that of painting and drama, receive from Him an energising impulse. At present He is giving most of His time and attention to the work of the deva, or angel evolution, until their agency helps to make possible the great revelation in the world of music and painting which lies immediately ahead.
      When the egoic ray is the attributive Ray of Harmony, the fourth ray, the method will be along the line of the inner realisation of beauty and harmony; it causes the shattering of the causal body by the knowledge of Sound and Colour and the shattering effect of Sound. It is the process that leads to the realisation of the notes and tones of the solar system, the note and tone of individuals, and the endeavor to harmonise the egoic note with that of others. When the egoic note is sounded in harmony with other egos, the result is the shattering of the causal body, dissociation from the lower and the attainment of perfection. Its exponents develop along the line of music, rhythm and painting. They withdraw within in order to comprehend the life side of the form. The outer manifestation of that life side in the world is through that which we call art. The great painters and the superlative musicians are in many cases reaching their goal that way.
      Curiously enough, the new and peculiar forms of art which delight some people and which outrage the sense of beauty in others are largely solar plexus creations and are therefore not of a truly high order. In a few of them - a very few - the throat centre is involved. 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 realisation, he passes from initiation to initiation, until there comes the culminating fifth initiation.
      You have been taught that the activity or the inactivity of the centres conditions the personality, working through the endocrine system; the energies which the centres channel and the forces which they generate can be controlled and directed by the soul, by the spiritual man. You have likewise been told that the energy of the sacral centre (the centre most implicated and active at the time of the first initiation) has to be transmuted and raised to the throat centre, thereby transforming the physical creative act into the creative process of producing the good, the beautiful and the true. This is the A B C of your fundamental knowledge: the transmutation of sex.
      . There is a mystical beauty to be achieved, as we all know, through art. It conveys a general sense of beauty, colour and inspiration, and thus it clothes and veils ideas. There is an occult (hidden) beauty also to be achieved in the field of art. This conveys a different sense of beauty, colour and inspiration, clothed in those forms which reveal ideas. Mystical beauty veils, in beauty, the ideal. Occult beauty reveals, in beauty, the ideal. For you the occult achievement must be the goal, and the revelation of ordered beauty in time and space must constitute your synthetic effort. Ponder on these words and definitions, for in them is to be found the secret of true creativeness. Meditate upon the distinctiveness of mystical inspiration and occult revelation and on their synthesis in all great achievement.
      The clue to all this esoteric work demanded by Shamballa is to be found in the development of the Art of Visualisation. Through visualisation, three expressions of the human consciousness will become possible:
      1. The antahkarana can be built and the shining of the Triad be definitely seen. Such will be the new vision-an outcome of the development of the sense of vision.
      2. Groups, large wholes and major syntheses will also be visualised, and this will lead to a definite expansion of consciousness. Thus the sense of synthesis will be unfolded.
      3. All creative art will be fostered by this training, and the new art of the future in all departments of creativity will be rapidly developed as the training proceeds. The unfoldment of the sense of vision and of the sense of synthesis, through visualisation, will lead to a sense of livingness in form. The Mysteries will restore colour and music as they essentially are to the world and do it in such a manner that the creative art of today will be to this new creative art what a child's building of wooden blocks is to a great cathedral such as Durham or Milan. The Mysteries, when restored, will make real-in a sense incomprehensible to you at present-the nature of religion, the purpose of science and the goal of education. These are not what you think today.
      The history of mankind is fundamentally the history of the growth of ideas, progressively realized and of man's determination to live by them; with this power goes the capacity to sense the unknown, to believe in the unprovable, to seek, search and demand the revelation of that which is hidden and undiscovered and which -century after century owing to this demanding spirit of investigation - is revealed. It is the power to recognize the beautiful, the true and the good and by means of the creative arts to prove their existence. It is this inherent, spiritual faculty which has produced all the great Sons of God, all truly spiritual people, all artists, scientists, humanitarians and philosophers and all who, with sacrifice, love their fellowmen.