This theme necessarily has great interest for all aspirants and would-be disciples, but I am not at first going to deal with the subject from the angle of humanity and its effort to establish contact with the Ashram. I desire first of all to speak of the Ashram as a whole, constituted of many Ashrams and creating an "invoking area" of relationship for the supreme Head of the Ashram, Sanat Kumara, the Lord of the World. I seek to enter into no discussion of this leading Life of our entire planet. He is to a still greater Being, the One referred to elsewhere as "the One about Whom naught may be said," what the vehicle of a Master in physical incarnation is to Him, and on a less accurate basis, what your personality is to you; it is an expression of the soul or of the Monad when a disciple has attained initiate-consciousness. [367] All the qualities, the love and the purpose of a supreme Entity, referred to in The New Testament as the "Unknown God," are focused in Sanat Kumara. Some gauge of the unfoldments which can lie ahead of humanity will enter the human consciousness when:

1. The fact of the Hierarchy,
2. The nature of its relationship to Shamballa,
3. The spiritual nature of Those Who respond in reverent obedience to the slightest wish of the Lord of the World,

are among the accepted truths whereby men live. This will happen after the externalization of the Hierarchy.

The center which we call Shamballa controls that mysterious center which is the correspondence to that which we call "the center at the base of the spine"; this is the inadequate name given to the reservoir of threefold fire, latent and quiescent, which is found at the base of the human spine; it is entirely inactive except in those people who have [368] taken the third initiation. The planetary center is related to the three fires (electric fire, solar fire, and fire by friction) which are the source of the life, warmth, moisture and growth of all forms upon our planet. It may seem curious and inexplicable to you, but the center of creativity is affected, and I had almost said guarded, by the "center which we call the race of men"; the reference in the serious occult books to the future of humanity as the Savior of all the subhuman kingdoms has relation to this fact.

Though the Christ is the Head of the Hierarchy, it is Sanat Kumara, the Ancient of Days, Whose Ashram it truly is. The Christ (I am using one of His official names) is indeed the Master of all the Masters. and the Coordinator of the entire life of the great Ashram, in conjunction with the two other hierarchical Officials, the Manu and the Mahachohan. The information I gave as to the constitution of the Hierarchy, in Initiation, Human and Solar, was along the same line. The Hierarchy is the Ashram of Sanat Kumara, but He has delegated His authority, right down the ages, to the so-called World Saviors successively; Their life expression embodied in every case the goal of the period during which They held office.

In the early days of the Hierarchy, millennia of years ago, neither the official Directors of the Hierarchy nor the Masters were of the caliber which They are today. Had They been so, They would have been too far removed from [369] the factual life of the cycle, and therefore useless for the cycle of divine life which existed. The growth of humanity and its evolutionary status (when compared with primordial and primitive man) can be seen in the quality of the Hierarchy today, which humanity produced and towards which it looks for guidance and teaching. This is an interesting point which I offer for your consideration. Never forget, my brothers, that as it is humanity which has furnished the personnel of the Hierarchy - including the Christ, the first of our humanity to achieve divinity - we have, therefore, the guarantee and the assurance of humanity's ultimate success.

1. The Christ, representing the second Ray of Love-Wisdom,
2. The Manu, representing the first Ray of Will or Power,
3. The Mahachohan, representing the third Ray of Active Intelligence,

are responsible to the Lord of the World for the processing of the life and impulse which condition the evolutionary process. This statement is made without any further definition by me because the whole subject is too abstruse and it would require another Treatise like that on Cosmic Fire to make it even a little clearer.

Humanity can only be the recipient of this type of information after the first Ray of Will or Power has become more active; this will take place when the work of the second Ray of Love-Wisdom has reached its next cyclic crisis point. The crisis points of a ray are ever indicative of success and have in them the quality of joy. Mankind will then be much freer from the spirit of separateness, and a measure of peace, unity and cooperation will be conditioning human relations. There is a constant shifting in the state of the planetary consciousness and this, though implemented from Shamballa, is produced by humanity itself; this unfolding human consciousness leads mankind eventually out of the fourth kingdom in nature into the fifth, the hierarchy of souls, and - at the same time - raises the level of consciousness [370] in all the three subhuman kingdoms. This series of happenings will remain for a long time inexplicable to man, though the results can be seen in the effect which humanity has had on the animal kingdom, through domestication; on the vegetable kingdom, through specialization and science; and on the mineral kingdom, through the skilled utilization of metals and the widespread use of the mineral products of the earth.