Forget not, brother of mine, that this is not this first time that this has happened. Changes were made in Atlantean times; the door of entrance for the animal kingdom or for animal man into the human kingdom was stopped. No more units have since then been admitted from the third kingdom into the fourth, except in a few cases and for specific reasons. Here, however, you have a reverse situation. The Hierarchy, owing to its constitution at that time and to the fact that very few, relatively, of our Earth humanity were members of the Hierarchy, could not influence directly the more developed human beings or train more aspirants. They therefore closed the door. That particular condition does not now exist, and the supreme Directors of the seven cosmic Paths are today in the same position as was the Hierarchy then; the word has gone forth to our three Great Lords - the Manu, the Christ and the Mahachohan - via the three Buddhas of Activity, to act in order to tighten up on requirements, to make the sixth initiation and not the fifth, the decisive one, and to present those on the seven rays with [412] a wider range of choices and a greater diversity of choice. Thus the Masters will have nine choices to face when They face Their decision; there will then be no need for Those on certain rays to pass to certain already determined Paths, but They can move forward under Their Own inspiration and with greater freedom. The cosmic mental plane is not barred to Them, as has hitherto been the case.

All these factors have forced a reorganization in the Plans at Shamballa and, in a unique conference, in that far greater Council Chamber over which our Solar Logos presides; greater opportunity was consequently offered to the Members of our planetary Hierarchy. I stress that point: the opportunity was not offered or presented to the fourth kingdom in nature, but to the fifth kingdom.

It is all these facts which have caused what may look to you like discrepancies and limitations in what I have given and [413] in comparison with that given in the earlier volumes of this Treatise, but they are not so in reality. The Master of the fifth initiation even if now He does not at that time make His decision, faces intelligently and with some understanding of the choices to be made, the sixth initiation and its decisions. He begins to take also the particular training, and to this the teaching in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire now applies. He is shewn the newer opportunity, the modes of decision, and the limitations which are no longer legitimate. I would like to point out here that these changes are a cause of deep joy to the Hierarchy and to the Great Lives in the Council Chamber at Shamballa, for they indicate the strength and potency of Sanat Kumara's success and the incredible progress made in the consciousness of humanity as a consequence; this will lead also to future paralleling decisions on the physical plane in human affairs; this deeply spiritual and mysterious success (mysterious because the human mind knows naught about it) was also the reason for the violent attempt of the Forces of Evil to gain control, and their resultant failure.