After the second initiation the teaching shifts up a plane. The initiate learns to control his mental vehicle; he develops the capacity to manipulate thought matter, and learns the laws of creative thought building. He functions freely on the four lower subplanes of the mental plane, and before the third initiation he must, - consciously or unconsciously, - be complete master of the four lower subplanes in the three planes of the three worlds. His knowledge of the microcosm becomes profound, and he has mastered theoretically and practically, in great measure, the laws of his own nature, hence his ability experimentally to be master on the four lower subplanes of the physical, astral, and mental planes. The last fact is of interest. The control of the three higher subplanes is not yet complete, and here is one of the explanations as to the failures and mistakes of initiates. Their mastery of matter in the three higher subplanes is not yet perfect; these yet remain to be dominated.

At the third initiation, termed sometimes the Transfiguration, the entire personality is flooded with light from above. It is only after this initiation that the Monad is definitely guiding the Ego, pouring his divine life ever more into the prepared and cleansed channel, just as in the third, or Moon Chain, the Ego individualized the personality [87] through direct contact, a method different to the individualization as shown in this fourth chain. The law of correspondences, if applied here, might prove very revealing, and might demonstrate an interesting analogy between the methods of individualizing in the various chains, and the expansions of consciousness that occur at the different initiations.