1. The period wherein the aspirant struggles to achieve that inner quiet and directed attentiveness which will enable him to hear the Voice of the Silence. That voice expresses to him, through symbol and interpreted life experience the purposes and plans with which he may cooperate. According to his stage of development those plans will express either:

1. The already materialized plans, taking group form on the physical plane, with which he may cooperate and in whose interest he may submerge his own.
2. The plan, or fraction of a plan, which is his individual privilege to bring through into manifestation and thus cause to materialize as a group activity on the physical plane. It is the function of some aspirants to aid and help those groups which are already in functioning activity. It is the function of others to bring into being those forms of activity which are, as yet, on the subjective plane. Only those aspirants who are freed from personal [95] ambition can truly cooperate in this second aspect of the work. Therefore "Kill out ambition."

2. The period wherein he habituates himself to the clear hearing and correct interpretation of the inner voice of the soul and broods reflectively upon the imparted message. During this period "the Energy circulates." A constant rhythmic response to the thought energy of the soul is set up, and, figuratively speaking, there is a steady flow of force between that center of energy we call the soul on its own plane, and that center of force which is a human being. The energy travels along the "thread" we call the sutratma and sets up a vibratory response between the brain and the soul.

An interesting angle of information might here be given, as it is my intent in these Instructions ever to link up the analogies between the different aspects of divinity, as they express themselves in man or in the macrocosm, the Heavenly Man.

The ancient yoga of Atlantean days (which has come down to us in the necessarily fragmentary teaching of the yoga of the centers) conveys to us the information that the reflection of the sutratma in the human organism is called the spinal cord, and expresses itself in three nerve channels. These three are called ida, pingala, and the central channel, the sushumna. When the negative and positive forces of the body, which express themselves via the ida and pingala nerve routes, are equilibrized, the forces can ascend and descend by the central channel to and from the brain, passing through the centers up the spine without hindrance. When this is the case we have perfected soul expression in the physical man.

This is in reality a correspondence to the sutratma as it links the physical man and the soul, for the sutratma in its turn expresses the positive energy of spirit, the negative energy of matter, and the equilibrazed energy [96] of the soul - the attainment of equilibrium being the present objective of humanity. During the period of the later initiations, the positive use of the spiritual energy supersedes the equilibrized use of soul force, but that is a later stage with which the aspirant need not as yet trouble himself. Let him find the "noble middle Path" between the pairs of opposites, and incidentally he will find that the forces he uses on the physical plane will employ the central nerve channel up the spine. This will occur as the transmission of light and truth to the physical brain, via the central channel of the linking sutratma, really works out into satisfactory usefulness. Those ideas and concepts (speaking in symbol) which come via the sutratmic negative channel are well meaning, but lack force and peter out into insignificance. They are emotionally colored, and lack the organized form which pure mind can give. Those which come via the opposite channel (speaking figuratively) produce too rapid concretion, and are motivated by the personal ambition of a ruling mentality. The mind is ever egoistic, self-seeking, and expresses that personal ambition which carries within it the germ of its own destruction.