The characteristics are in reality the qualities, capacities and faculties which the man is manifesting or can manifest (given the right conditions). These are, as we have seen, the result or the effects of his entire past experience carried over the entire cycle of lives up to date. The product of the contacts, unfoldments and developments which have governed him from the earliest [400] dawn of his individuality until the present lifecycle, produce what he is and has, in the present. It must be borne in mind that all these factors which are summed up under the general title of "characteristics" are concerned with the form and its responsiveness to the indwelling spiritual life.

They are produced just as rapidly as the spiritual Indweller can set his impress upon the substance of those forms, bend them to his will, control and subject them. Form has certain vibratory activities of its own, inherent in its own nature. By identification with the form and utilization of it, the Indweller develops a dual set of characteristics. One set demonstrates in the form of the lower self and concerns the adaptability of the form to inner influence, and to outer environment. The other concerns tendencies, impulses and desires which tend to affect permanently the body of the higher, or causal Self. Hence these characteristics are in both cases concerned with the rhythm or gunas of matter.