Spirit in ourselves.

In this way the generic or race-mind in the individual becomes the
instrument through which the specializing power of the Spirit works toward
the building up of a personality based upon the truly Normal Standard of
Individuality which we have found to be inherent in the All-originating
Spirit itself: and since the whole question is that of the introduction of
the factor of personal individuality into the creative order of causation,
this cannot be done by depriving the individual of what makes him a person
instead of a thing, namely, the power of conscious initiative and
selection.

For this reason the transition from the Fourth Kingdom into the Fifth
cannot be forced upon the race either by a Divine fiat or by the generic
action of cosmic law, for it is a _specialising_ of the cosmic law which
can only be effected by _personal_ initiative and selection, just as iron
can only be made to float under certain specialized conditions; and
consequently the passage from the Fourth into the Fifth Kingdom is a
strictly individual process which can only be brought about by a personal
perception of what the normal standard of the New Individuality really is.
This can only be done by the active laying aside of the old race-standard
and the conscious adoption of the new one. The student will do well to
consider this carefully, for it explains why the race cannot receive the
further evolution simply as a race; and also it shows that our further
evolution is not into a state of less activity but of greater, not into
being less alive but more alive, not into being less ourselves but more
ourselves; thus being just the opposite of those systems which present the
goal of existence as re-absorption into the undifferentiated Divine
essence. On the contrary our further evolution is into greater degrees of
conscious activity than we have ever yet known, because it implies our