Here the order is reversed and the student, being frequently polarized in his mental body, has to learn through that mind to understand the other two, to dominate and control, and to utilize to the uttermost the powers inherent in the threefold man. The method here is perhaps not so hard in some ways, but the limitations of the fifth principle have to be transcended before real progress can be made. These limitations are largely crystallization and that which you call pride. Both have to be broken before the student who progresses through intellectual application can serve his race with love and wisdom as the animating cause.

He has to learn the value of the emotions, and in so learning he has to master the effect of fire on water, occultly understood. He has to learn the secret of that plane, which secret (when known) gives him the key to the downpour of illumination from the Triad via the causal and thence to the astral. It holds the key also of the fourth etheric level. This will not as yet be comprehended [287] by you, but the above hint holds for the student much of value.

This is the line of the third ray, and of its four subsidiary rays, and is one of great activity, of frequent transference, and of much mental display in the lower worlds.

Only when the student, who progresses by intellectual application, has learned the secret of the fifth plane, will he live the life of sanctified service, and so blend the three rays. Always synthesis must be attained, but always the fundamental coloring or tone remains. The next or fifth round will show the greatest exposition of this method. It will be the round of supreme mental development, and will carry its evolving Monads to heights undreamed of now.