1. The Law demands the entrance of that which can effect a change.

Bearing in mind what I have elsewhere given, it is obvious that that which must find entrance is that vital concentrated will which, when set in motion in an individual, in a group, in a nation, in a kingdom of nature (a planetary center), and in the planet as a whole, i.e., in all the planetary centers simultaneously, will cause a stirring, a changed measure, a new movement and momentum, an uprising and a consequent abstraction. The changes wrought in the centers when the death of the physical body is taking place have never yet been observed or recorded; they are, however, definitely present to the eye of the initiate and prove most interesting and informative. It is the recognition of the condition of the centers which enables the initiate to know - when in process of bestowing healing - whether the physical healing of the body is permissible or not. He can see whether the will principle of abstraction to which I have been referring is actively present or not. The same process can be seen taking place in organizations and in civilizations in which the form aspect is being destroyed in order that the life may be abstracted and later again rebuild for itself a more adequate form. It is the same under the great processes of initiation, which are not only processes of expanding the consciousness but are rooted in the death or the abstraction process, leading to resurrection and ascension.

That which effects a change is a discharge (to use a totally inadequate phrase) of directed and focused will-energy. This is so magnetic in quality that it draws to itself the life of the centers, bringing about the dissolution of the form and the release of the life. Death comes to the individual man, in the ordinary sense of the term, when the will-to-live in a physical body goes and the will-to-abstract [165] takes its place. This we call death. In cases of death in war, for instance, it is not then a case of the individual will-to-withdraw, but an enforced participation in a great group abstraction. From its own place, the soul of the individual man recognizes the end of a cycle of incarnation and recalls its life. This it does through a discharge of the will-energy that is strong enough to bring about the change.