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Classification and Synthesis of Rays

The distinction between one ray and another is not hard and fast.  That is, the division is not precise or sharp, rather, the meaning of the rays overlaps.  Rays, cycles, and centers all overlap.  For instance, the second ray is the ray of "love." But all rays can be looked at with a view to understanding how they relate to love.  One must use synthesis to bring the pieces together and probe the underlying meaning of any concept, especially of one such as rays.  

Below are examples of how one may understand love with respect to human expressions of all seven rays:

Ray 1, Will or Power:  Love in action (the will initiates).

Ray 2, Love:  There are many dimensions of "love" in the 2nd ray sense, but we may say that ray 2 love expresses in combination with all other rays.  The probability of its higher or lower expression is rendered more likely by certain combinations.  “Inclusiveness” is an example—we may have inclusiveness ("to shine on the just and unjust alike”) or, the same principle on a lower plane expressed as "over inclusiveness," e.g. to throw together (with mental or emotionally motivation) things that do not suit each other.

Ray 3, Creative Intelligence:  Love creatively expressed; love that intelligently adapts itself to the needs of another.

Ray 4, Harmony through Conflict:  Compassion (Note the implication of the word which means to "suffer with.")

Ray 5, Concrete Mind:  Intelligent love.  Loves despite a realistic understanding of the object of that love.

Ray 6, Devotion:  Love as devotion ("Devotion is love looking upward.")  Or, in the lower expression, narrow love (My nation, family, or group, or religion on ( right or wrong) and apart from others families and groups.)

Ray 7, Order or Manifestation:  Love measured in practical terms.  Manifested love, objectively expressed.  Courtesy is a reflection of this.

Notice that the key word of "ray;” a ray is a radiance, an energy--it is not a form.  Rays create forms, but they are not forms, and in the last, analysis, cannot truly be understood in terms of forms. Nevertheless, they must be described in terms of forms.  The form words suggest in connection with the rays are symbols, and in essence, illusions.  Deep understanding—whether of one’s self or of some external thing--is, in essence, a process of transcending its form

"Ray [from Latin radius rod, staff, beam, ray] An indefinitely small thread of light or other form of radiant energy, whether undulatory or emissive, considered as propagated in a straight line and with a definite velocity. The figurative use of the word must not blind us to the fact that everything physical has its prototypes on planes above. As our sun sheds rays of a great number of kinds, and interchanges of radiation take place throughout our solar system and locally on each planet, so rays are emanated throughout the universe on all its visible and invisible planes, and represent the spiritual, intellectual, and fohatic and life-giving forces -- mystically in each case a Mercury on his winged way bearing the messages of the gods."

Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary

“Ray” Defined