There is no need for me here to itemize any of these prevailing thought-forms and aspects of intellectual and mental illusion. I would not have you think for a moment that the embodied idea, which we call an ideal, is in itself an illusion. It only becomes so when it is regarded as an end in itself instead of being what it essentially is, a means to an end. An ideal, rightly grasped and used, provides a temporary [134] aid towards the attainment of immediate and imminent reality which it is the goal of the man or the race, at any particular time, to reach. The idea before the race today is the re-establishing (upon a higher turn of the spiral) of that spiritual relationship which characterized the race in its child state, in its primitive condition. Then, under the wise guidance and the paternalistic attitude of the Hierarchy and the initiate-priests of the time, men knew themselves to be one family - a family of brothers - and achieved this through a feeling and a developed sensuous perception. Today, under the name of Brotherhood, the same idea is seeking mental form and the establishment of a renewed spiritual relationship (the idea) through training in right human relations (the ideal). This is the immediate goal of humanity.

This result will be inevitably brought about by means of the cycle of necessity through which we are now passing and the dimly sensed idea will - as a result of dire necessity - impose its rhythm upon the race and thus force the realization of true Being upon all men. If a dose study is made of the basic foundation of all the ideologies without excepting any, it will be discovered that this idea of integral relationships (often distorted in presentation and hidden through wrong methods), of spiritual objectives and of definite positive brotherly activity lies behind every outer form. I have used the current situation as an illustration of the idea taking form as the ideal and, alas, brother of mine, oft becoming the idol and the fanatical misunderstood and over-emphasized goal of the masses, under the guidance of some pronounced idealist. An ideal is a temporary expression of a basic idea; it is not intended to be permanent but simply to serve a need and to indicate a way out of the past into a more adequate future. All the present ideals, expressing themselves through the current ideologies, will serve their [135] purpose and eventually pass away, as all else has passed in the history of the race and will give place, eventually, to a recognized spiritual relationship, a subjective fellowship, as a defined and expressed brotherhood. These will produce, when sufficiently developed and understood, a form of control and guidance and a species of government which it is not possible for even advanced thinkers at this time to grasp.

When ideals and mental concepts and formulated thought-forms dominate the mind of an individual, a race or humanity in general, to the exclusion of all perspective or vision and to the shutting out of the real, then they constitute an illusion for as long as they control the mind and method of life. They prevent the free play of the intuition, with its real power to reveal the immediate future; they frequently exclude in their expression the basic principle of the solar system, Love, through the imposed control of some secondary and temporary principle; they can thus constitute a "forbidding dark cloud of rain" which serves to hide from view the "raincloud of knowable things" (to which Patanjali refers in his final book) - that cloud of wisdom which hovers over the lower mental plane and which can be tapped and used by students and aspirants through the free play of the intuition.