As I said before, this subject of parenthood and child training is too great for ample or satisfactory discussion in these brief instructions, but certain statements can be made which will be indicative of future developments and point the way to where the changed attitude may be anticipated. Let me list them as follows:

1. The emphasis in the future will shift from the urge to produce large families to that of producing quality and intelligence in the offspring. This will include that science of which eugenics is the distorted and [134] exoteric indication. When the fact of the etheric body with its force centers is scientifically established, the above prophecy will assume significance and meaning.

2. The need of an increasing birthrate will be eventually regarded as erroneous, and this for three reasons which it would profit you to study:

1. Many souls are rapidly achieving perfection and passing away altogether from our planetary life. This process will be intensified during the coming Aquarian Age. It should be remembered that the door will be shut for some time as yet upon the animal kingdom, and for a long period no individualization will culminate in materialization into physical bodies. Technically, any individualization which may take place will be that which is technically called "individualization into pralaya, there to await the inevitable call." There will be, therefore, no necessity for a massed and hurried creation of human forms.
2. The economic situation will make it necessary that certain physical restrictions should be imposed, because it is now evident that beyond a certain point the planet cannot support humanity. This is more fundamental in its implications than you can imagine. Again, we have evidence of a growing realization of the race along this particular line; that realization is as yet distorted and much misunderstood and is today producing the promiscuous use of contraceptive methods. As the intelligence of the race is developed (and that is going on apace), as the Laws of Rhythm and Approach are grasped, it will then be found that there are certain innate reactions which will negate conception, and that then the mechanical means will no longer be required. This sounds as yet [135] extremely vague and almost impossible, but the race is rapidly achieving personality control (e'en though our idea of rapidity may not be yours) and this, in its turn, must produce certain automatic and inherent changes. This is a point which must be grasped by esotericists.
3. The widespread promiscuity of the sexes, and the rule in many countries which entitles a man to possess many wives (which is an insult to the woman), will eventually and inevitably cease. It is, in the last analysis, a form of legalized prostitution, and the fact that it has the endorsement of tradition and centuries of practice does not mitigate this position which I take. Through this lack of regulation and of essential rhythm, the natural consequences have occurred, and millions of souls have been brought into incarnation who were never intended at this time to incarnate and achieve exoteric manifestation. This fact is largely responsible for much of the present economic distress and for the modern planetary dilemma. The economic situation and the necessity to provide for the unduly large population of the planet lies behind much of the aggression and greed of the nations down the ages, and for the effort being made today as never before to provide better and more adequate living conditions. War has consequently been the inevitable result of this undue and unlimited propagation of the human species. This lack of sexual control has brought into the world thousands of unwanted children whose appearance is solely the result of accidental and uncontrolled sexual relations, and in no way indicates the planned intention of parents - planned because intended to offer experience to incarnating souls, with the conscious intent of [136] offering the opportunity to hasten the "birth into the light" of those particular souls, thus rendering service to the divine plan.

3. The science of eugenics and of sex hygiene and the development of mentally controlled relationships will steadily grow. Much that is now taught along these lines is erroneous and wrongly motivated, being based upon fear, expediency and the desire for improved racial attributes and physical perfection. The right form of scientific sex control, leading to those right conditions in which souls may incarnate, cannot be imposed by law. The desired ends may be aided by educational methods and already this is being done in a tentative and embryonic manner; but the real change in human consciousness which is needed will appear only as the race itself is brought under a rhythmic law - under which, for instance, the animal lives function, or the seasonal law under which forms in the vegetable kingdom operate - thus transferring the whole concept on to a higher turn of the evolutionary spiral. This, when it is brought about, will produce certain fundamental changes - regulated sex life, an organized parental life, and mental differences in the racial attitude towards the sex relation and its ordained consequence, Birth.

4. As yet, it is only the religious person who thinks in terms of the two necessitated and inevitable births, the physical and the spiritual, and he thinks of the relation between the two as purely symbolic and not in any way to be interpreted literally. Yet there is a close relation and an analogy between the two which, as time elapses, will become more clear. There can be no new birth, no creation of the "body of light," and no "manifestation of the sons of God" apart from the process of physical incarnation. There can be no fusion of the opposites of soul and personality [137] apart from the physiological processes of sex, and I say this deliberately, for it is in the relation of the sexes that the element of time enters into the experience of the soul, and the understanding of this will come when the doctrine of reincarnation is properly comprehended and taught universally. It is here that sex magic and the inner tantric teachings have gone so woefully astray, and been centralized upon individual development and the attainment of some experience which is presumed to promote spiritual attainment. The underlying idea, governing all that has been given out on the sex relation heretofore, is twofold in its implications: