This is the result of hard work and discrimination. It necessitates three things before the plane of the mental unit is achieved, and before the causal consciousness (the full consciousness of the higher Self) is reached:

• Clear thinking, not just on subjects wherein interest is aroused, but on all matters affecting the race. It involves the formulation of thought matter, and the capacity to define. It means the ability to make thought forms out of thought matter, and to utilize those thought forms for the helping of the public. He who does not think clearly, and who has an inchoate mental body, lives in a fog, and a man in a fog is but a blind leader of the blind.
• The ability to still the mental body so that thoughts from abstract levels and from the intuitional planes can find a receptive sheet whereon they may inscribe themselves. This thought has been made clear in many books on concentration and meditation, and needs not my elucidation. It is the result of hard practice carried over many years.
• A definite process brought about by the Master with the acquiescence of the disciple which welds into a permanent shape the hard won efforts and results of many years. At each initiation, the electrical or magnetic force applied has a stabilizing effect. It renders durable the results achieved by the disciple. Like as a potter moulds and shapes the clay and then applies the fire that solidifies, so the aspirant shapes and moulds and builds, and prepares for the solidifying fire. Initiation marks a permanent attainment and the beginning of a new cycle of endeavor.

Above all two things should be emphasized: