Souls on this ray use the method of "gathering in" or "drawing into". The soul sets up a vibration (little as we may yet grasp the real significance of that word) and that vibration affects its environment, and atoms of substance on all three planes are attracted to the central point of energy. The method is relatively gentle, when compared to the method of the first ray, and the process is somewhat longer whilst the over-shadowing (carried forward prior to entering into [81] the three worlds for purposes of appearance) is very much longer. This refers to that over-shadowing of the substance to be built into form, and not to the over-shadowing of the completed form, i.e. the child in the mother's womb. In the first case, it might be said that souls on the first ray are sudden and rapid in their desire to incarnate, and in the methods employed. Souls on the second ray are slower in coming to that "impulsive" action (in the sense of impulse to action and not impulse in time) which leads to the occult manufacture of an appearance with which to manifest.

Just as the grasping and attracting are terms applicable to the methods of the two first rays, so a process of "selective manipulation" is characteristic of this third ray. This method is totally different in its technique to that of the two mentioned above. It might be said that the note which generates the activity set up by souls on this ray, is such that atoms of the different planes are moved as if consciously responding to a selective process. The vibratory activity of the soul makes itself felt, and atoms collect from widely different points in response to a certain quality in the vibration. It is far more selective than in the case of the second ray.

Just as souls in the first case seem to grasp indiscriminately what they need, and force the substance thus grasped into the form or appearance required, enduing it with the quality needed in a dynamic and forceful way, and just as souls on the second ray set up a motion which gathers material out [82] of the immediately surrounding environment, and imposes on it, through magnetic attraction, the desired quality, so in the case of souls on the third ray the required material is chosen here and there, but that chosen already has the needed quality (note this difference) and nothing whatever is imposed. It will be apparent, therefore, that substance itself exists in three major categories, and that these three categories are the correspondences in substance to the three Persons of the Trinity or to the three bodies of incarnated man. They are also the analogy in the third aspect of divinity (the life of the third Person of the Trinity) to the quality of the three periodical vehicles through which manifestation takes place.

The following tabulation is an attempt to define that which it is almost impossible to make intelligible in words. From the angle of the illumined occultist it is meaningless, even more than it is to the average student, because as yet the mystery of electricity and the true nature of electrical phenomena (than which there is naught else) is at this time an unrevealed secret, even to the most advanced of the modern scientists. [83]