We come now to a section of our study of the soul and its life which is of real moment to all who live (or begin to live) and function as conscious souls, through definite alignment and at-one-ment. This section will, however, be relatively abstruse to all those whose lives are centered in the personality. Down the ages, the Scriptures of the world and those who have attempted to elucidate them, have been occupied with imparting to humanity an understanding of the nature of those qualities and characteristics which should distinguish all true believers, all true aspirants and all sincere disciples, whether Christian or otherwise. The teaching has always been given in terms of good behavior and of right action, and therefore given in terms of effects, produced by inner causes which have not always been specified. Basically, all such virtues, good inclinations and attempted sound qualities represent the emergence into expression upon the physical plane of certain energies and tendencies, inherent in the soul itself. These, in their turn, are governed by energies and laws which are of a nature different from those governing personalities. It is important to emphasize this and to bear in mind that the powers of the soul, as they are appearing in the world today, constitute (in their working out) a body of phenomena which would have been regarded as magical, impossible and superhuman several centuries ago. The discoveries of science, the adaptation of the laws governing matter and directing material energy to the service and the growing needs of mankind, the subtle and delicate apparatus of the human body and the steadily increasing sensitivity of [86] the human mechanism, have brought about a world consciousness and a civilization which - in spite of its glaring defects, all based on the separative and selfish attitudes of the personalities through which the soul has yet to work - are a guarantee of the innate divinity of man, with all that may be inherent in, and inferred from that phrase.

Two sets of principles are to be found controlling human life - the selfish and the unselfish, the individual good and the group good, the objective goal and the subjective goal, the material incentive and the spiritual impulse, national [87] patriotism and the world ideal, separative religious belief and the federation of religions, and all the many massed dualities which simply indicate the realism of people who are personalities (integrated and separative) or of souls (aligned and group-conscious). Here is the major divergence in the world today; with the weight of the power on the side of separation, as it is the line of least resistance, and of critical differentiations. A balancing of the two will gradually take place, with the weight of world idealism gradually shifting into the realm of soul unification, until eventually (but not for quite a while) the emphasis of world thought will be definitely and permanently on "the side of the angels." Note the occult truth of that familiar phrase. Therefore we can look for the new laws, governing soul life, which is group life, to begin to function and make their presence felt. This will at first increase the world difficulty; hence the need to make the meaning of these laws clear, their objectives simple and their potencies understandable.