The Atmic Body & the Triadal Soul revealed as lying behind the personality or the monad as working through the triad. As souls we all arose in response to the suffering of the lower self that would have remained isolated from its monadic counterpart without our intervention. Each of us arose as a solution to suffering—a suffering experienced on the atmic plane but not on the monadic. Our soul ray and our ashramic affiliation has to do with the type of response we made at that first arising. Our decision to arise and the ray on which we arose forms the kernel of all subsequent incarnations. When we are able to return to that point of choice as souls having completed our redemptive mission, then we are ready to return to the monad. The first phase of the redemptive mission of the soul is to get the attention of the personality and then integrate the personality via one of the aspects of the Love principle. The process of initiation allows for the gradual infusion of the personality vehicles, until by the Third Degree the personality is consciously expressing the purpose of the soul in the three worlds. At the Fourth Degree the causal body which served to link the soul and personality is released, and at the Sixth Degree the atmic body which served to link monad and soul is released. 1 See Alice A Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations, p.170: “Ashrams on atmic levels are under the control of the Master M., Who fosters the will aspect within the developed forms and Who (as the Old Commentary expresses it) “adds darkness unto light so that the stars appear, for in the light the stars shine not, but in the darkness light diffused is not, but only focussed points of radiance.””
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