It will be apparent to you that these streams of force, emanating from the Lords of the Seven Rays, are colored, therefore, and "tainted" - if I may use such a word - by the limitations of these same great Beings; They are Gods, from our point of view, but in reality, Gods in the making, even though much nearer solar divinity than the most advanced human being is near to planetary divinity. They are the "imperfect Gods" spoken of in The Secret Doctrine [293] and are the planetary Logoi of the sacred and non-sacred planets. If the great informing Lives of the planets within our solar system are imperfect, the effect of this imperfection must inevitably affect Their planetary creations, Their bodies of manifestation, and thus introduce a karmic condition over which the individual human being has absolutely no control, but within which he moves and which he shares. It is obviously impossible for me to elucidate this theme. All I can do or am permitted to do is to give you seven stanzas from one of the most ancient volumes in the world; it deals with the seven ray causes of imperfections in our planetary manifestations. To these should be added (if it were only possible) the stanzas which convey the significance of the defects emerging from astrological conditions and producing effects of a planetary nature and involving, therefore, the horoscope of our particular planetary Logos. But these are far too abstruse, elaborate and far-reaching in their theme, and can be studied and considered only when humanity has reached such a stage of intuitive development that men can "appreciate causes and effects as whole processes and can see both the beginning and the end in one flash of time in space." In these words the Master Serapis once summed up the matter when endeavoring to train a group of initiated disciples in this mode of approaching vast subjects.

The "Book of Karma" has in it the following stanzas, and these can serve as an introduction to those dealing with the Seven Ray causes of inharmonic and disease. To the intuitive aspirant some meaning will emerge, but he must ever bear in mind that all that I am attempting to do is to put into words - unsatisfactory and quite inadequate - stanzas concerning the conditioning factors in the equipment of those great Beings Whose life force (which we call energy) creates all that is, colors and shapes all [294] manifestations within the worlds, and adds its quota of force to the equipment of every single human being. Every man appropriates this energy to the measure of his need, and his need is the sign of his development. The stanzas I have selected are from The Book of Imperfections. Part Fourteen:

"The seven imperfections issued forth and tainted substance from the highest sphere unto the lowest. The seven perfections followed next, and the two - that which is whole and sound and that which is known as detail and unwholesome in an awful sense - met upon the plane of physical life. (The etheric plane. A.A.B.)

And there they fought, swinging into the conflict all that they were and had, all that was seen and all that was unseen within the triple ring. (The three lower worlds. A.A.B.)

The seven imperfections entered the seven races of men, each in their own place; they colored the seven points within each race. (The seven planetary centers, transmitting imperfect energy. A.A.B.)

The seven perfections hovered o'er each race, over each man within each race and over each point within each man.

And thus the conflict grew from the outermost to the innermost, from the greatest One to the littlest ones. Seven the imperfections. Seven the perfect wholes; seven the ways to oust the dark of imperfection and demonstrate the clear cold light, the white electric light of perfect wholeness."

All that you can gain from the above, my brother, is a concept of agelong conflict, of seven great energies which manifest as dualities and which produce when anchored within one body (whether that of a planet, a man or an [295] atom) an area or cycle of distress, as it is called; this distress produces the evolutionary urge and is itself the cause of manifestation, whilst its effect (which is karma) is the liberation ultimately of the perfect and the good. These things are not easy to comprehend. It must be remembered that the seven imperfections are related to the sevenfold nature of the One in Whom we live and move and have our being, and that these seven imperfect energies hold within themselves the perfect will-to-good, more potent in the long run than the will-to-harm.

These energies pour through the seven centers of the planetary body and are - as far as we are concerned - the seven ray energies. In relation to the will-to-harm which can and does demonstrate as disease in all the four kingdoms in nature, you have the reason why I instituted, among the esoteric students for whom I have made myself responsible, the development of harmlessness. It is the major agent for the offsetting of karma.