• RAY I - This ray is still out of physical manifestation but is beginning to have a definite effect upon the mental plane; there it influences the minds of disciples everywhere and lays the stage for the appearance of a certain group of disciples from Shamballa. Two thousand years from today, the influence of this ray will be felt powerfully upon the physical plane. One hundred years hence its potency will be noted upon the astral plane.
• RAY II - This ray is always in subjective manifestation and very potent because it is the ray of our solar system and particularly so at this time as the Hierarchy is approaching closer to humanity in preparation for the "crisis of love," and an imminent major planetary initiation. At this time, however, the second ray is becoming objective in its influence upon the physical plane. It will become increasingly so for the next two thousand two hundred years when it will gradually withdraw into the background.
• RAY III - This ray will remain in objective incarnation from the point of view of humanity for a very long time - so long a time that it is needless for us to anticipate its waning influence. That planetary center which is Humanity itself still needs the intensified application of these forces so as to stimulate even the "lowest of the sons of men."
• RAY IV - This ray, as you know, begins to come into incarnation early in the next century and - in collaboration with the developing Saturnian influence - will lead many on to the path of discipleship. When the peculiar [143] energy to which we give the somewhat unsatisfactory name of "harmony through conflict" and the forces of that planet which stage opportunity for the aspirant are working in combination and an ordained synthesis, we can then look for a very rapid adjustment in human affairs, particularly in connection with the Path. This fourth ray is, in the last analysis, the ray which teaches the art of living in order to produce a synthesis of beauty. There is no beauty without unity, without embodied idealism and the resultant symmetrical unfoldment. This ray is not the ray of art, as it is often claimed, but is the energy which brings about the beauty of those living forms which embody the ideas and the ideals which are seeking immediate expression. Many people claim to be on the fourth ray because they dream of the artistic expressive life. As I have told you before, creative art expresses itself upon all the rays.
• RAY V - This ray has been in manifestation for nearly seventy years. It will pass out (by special and unique arrangement) in another fifty years, thus breaking into its own normal cycle, because it is deemed that the needed special impulse has been adequate and that the impetus given to the human "spirit of discovery" has served its purpose. Any further intensification of the mental processes just now (except through the general pervasive effect of the third ray) might prove disastrous. The ray cycles are usually set and determined, but, in collaboration with each other and because of the imminent spiritual Crisis of Approach, the Lord of the Fifth Ray and the Lord of the World have decided temporarily to withdraw this type of force. It will take about fifty years to do this. [144]
• RAY VI - This ray has been passing out of manifestation for quite some time now, as you know, and will do so with increasing rapidity.
• RAY VII - This ray is coming into effective expression now; there is little need for me to add here anything further to the mass of information which I have given you in this treatise and in my other books.

I would have you study the tabulation which I gave you in Initiation, Human and Solar, and which you will find in the appendix to the first volume of A Treatise on the Seven Rays. I insert it here for the benefit of those who have no copy of the first volume of the Treatise, and whose attention should be turned again from the magnitude of the Macrocosm to the responsibility of the microcosm. [145]