One interesting fact emerges out of all this comparative work and this mode of analogical teaching, and that is that the word "spiritual" refers neither to religious matters (so-called) nor to the Path of Discipleship or the Path of the major or higher initiations, but to the relationships on every level of the cosmic physical plane, to every level from the lowest to the highest. The word "spiritual" relates to attitudes, to relationships, to the moving forward from one level of consciousness (no matter how low or gross, from the point of view of a higher level of contact) to the next; it is related to the power to see the vision, even if that vision is materialistic as seen from the angle of a higher registration of possibility; the word "spiritual" refers to every effect of the evolutionary process as it drives man forward from one range of sensitivity and of responsiveness to impression to another; it relates to the expansion of consciousness, so that the unfoldment of the organs of sensory perception in primitive man or in the awakening infant are just as surely spiritual events as participation in an initiatory process; the development of the so-called irreligious man into a sound and effective businessman, with all the necessary perception and equipment for success, is as much a spiritual unfoldment - in that individual's experience - as the taking of an initiation by a disciple in an Ashram.

I have felt it necessary to point this out because it will become apparent as we read and study this section of the Treatise that the Master - moving forward into higher areas of impressionability - may not and frequently will not express this development in terms of what is now regarded as "spiritual" by the religious devotee and by the man used to the wording and the terminology of the churchmen of all faiths. The discoveries of science, my brother, or the production of some great work in literature or in the field of art, are just as much an evidence of "spiritual" unfoldment as the rhapsodies of the mystic or the registration by the so-called occultist of a contact with the Hierarchy.

There will, however, come a point in the experience of all those thus making a spiritual approach along some specialized line, where a meeting place will become apparent, where a joint goal will be unitedly recognized, where essential unity under diversity of forms, of methods and of techniques will be acknowledged, and where pilgrims on all ways of approach will know themselves to be one band of demonstrators of the divine.

One such meeting place is upon the periphery of the Hierarchy during the stage immediately prior to acceptance into an Ashram. It is interesting to note that - on a worldwide scale - the world disciple, Humanity, is today on the verge of this major awakening and joint registration of a unity not hitherto reached; the growth of the spirit of internationalism, the inclusiveness of the scientific attitude, and the spread of a universal humanitarian welfare movement are all indicative of this meeting place.

The door into the Way of the Higher Evolution simply permits the entrance of the sensitive initiate into "spheres of intimacy" (as they are sometimes called) which are this time cosmic in their implications, planetary in their effects, and which give to the initiate what has been called the "key to the Sun" - as it conditions the solar system - just as the door to initiation gives to the aspirant the "key to the kingdom of God."