• First, owing to his stage in evolution, he is able to enforce his words in a manner which would surprise him could he but see on the mental plane. He builds more accurately than the average men, his subsequent thought-form is more strongly vitalized, and it performs the function whereon it is sent by the "Sound" or speech with greater precision.
• Second, any word spoken and consequent thought-form built (unless along the higher path and not based on personality impulses) is apt to cause a barrier of mental matter between a man and his goal. This matter or separating wall has to be dissipated before further [978] advance can be made, and this process is karmic and unavoidable.
• Third, speech is very largely a mode of communication on the physical levels; on the subtler levels whereon the worker stands, and in his communications with his fellow workers and chosen cooperators it will play an ever lessening part. Intuitive perception and telepathic interplay will distinguish the intercourse between aspirants and disciples, and when this is coupled with a full trust, sympathy and united effort for the plan we will have a formation wherewith the Master can work, and through which He can pour His force. The Master works through groups (large or small) and the work is facilitated for Them if the interplay between units of the group is steady and uninterrupted. One of the most frequent causes of difficulty in group work and consequent arrest of the inflow of force from the Master temporarily is based on misuse of speech. It brings about a clogging of the channel for the time being on the mental plane.

If a man succeeds in understanding the significance of speech, if he learns how to speak, when to speak, what is gained by speech, and what happens when he speaks, he is well on the way to achieving his goal. The person [979] who regulates his speech rightly is the person who is going to make the most progress. This has ever been realized by all leaders of occult movements. That most occult order of Pythagoras at Crotona, and many other of the esoteric schools in Europe and Asia had a rule that all neophytes and probationers were not permitted to speak for two years after entering the school and when they had learned to keep silence for that period, they were given the right to speak, for they had learned a specific reticence.

In everyday life when the student speaks, he is doing just the same thing, only the trouble frequently arises that in his speech he constructs something that is usually not worth while and vitalizes it with the wrong kind of energy, so that the form, instead of being a constructive, vital, helpful force, is a destructive one in the world. If we study the various cosmologies of the world, we shall [980] see that the process of creation was carried on by the means of sound or speech or the Word. We have it in the Christian Bible, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made." (Bible. John I.) Thus, according to the Christian teaching, the worlds were made by the Word of God.