The first ray, for instance, governs all cycles such as those of one million years, one hundred thousand years, one thousand years, one hundred years and one year. The seventh ray controls such similar cycles as seven thousand years, and seven million years. The interchange and interplay of these ray cycles is so intricate and so great that it would serve only [266] to confuse should I further elaborate. Remember, however, that all of the seven rays are forever functioning, and functioning simultaneously, but that cyclically and under the directed plan of the Minds (who are embodied by the rays), certain of these influences and forces are more dominant at one time than at another, and certain lines of activity and certain results of this activity are demonstrated under one ray influence more than under another. These influences pour through all forms in all kingdoms, producing specific effects, definite and different forms of life, peculiar types of realization, and particular expressions of consciousness in form which are, for that period, the product of the united and concerted plan of the building forces, working in complete harmony, but temporarily under one or another of their number. They enter into constructive activity; they pass through that particular cycle; they then pass out, or die to that activity, and are then "raised into heaven," until such time as their cycle again comes round. This process they constantly enact and re-enact, repeating the drama of birth, death and resurrection.

Cyclic appearance, therefore, governs the rays as well as the kingdoms in nature and the forms contained therein. It determines the activity of God Himself. Races incarnate, disappear and reincarnate, and so do all lives in form. Reincarnation or cyclic activity lies behind all phenomenal activity and appearance. It is an aspect of the pulsating life [267] of Deity. It is the breathing out and the breathing in of the process of divine existence and manifestation. It is that which lies behind the science of chemical affinity, of the relation of the polar opposites, and of the marriage relation, whether that of men and women or of the soul and its expression, the personality. It is the cause of the sex relation in the world, which works under the great Law of Attraction and Repulsion. Perhaps as we are considering the work of one kingdom with another and the relation between positive and negative groups of lives (such as that of the fourth kingdom in nature to the third), it might be apposite next to deal briefly with this subject of sex, which is to be so deeply and widely considered, and more wisely understood, through the influence of the incoming seventh ray.

I have little more to add to this teaching anent the animal kingdom and the rays, for - as said before - it profits not. Man's work is to raise the dead to life, to bring brotherhood into expression on the physical plane, and to transmit divine energy to a waiting world of forms. As the rays play their part with humanity and bring man forth into manifestation as he is in essence and reality, his work with the animal kingdom and with the other kingdoms will proceed steadily and inevitably. Scarcely knowing how or why, humanity will play its part in the work of building. The creative work will proceed and the Plan materialize. Man's work for the animal kingdom is to stimulate instinct until individualization is possible. His work for the vegetable kingdom is to foster the perfume-producing faculty, and to adapt plant life to the myriad uses of man and of animals. Man's work with the mineral kingdom is to work alchemically and magically. With that process of transmutation and of subsequent revelation I cannot here deal. [268]