Esoteric Psychology - The Seven Rays

By Douglas M. Baker

Esoteric Psychology - The Seven Rays.

The knowledge of the Seven Rays provided by this book will prove of immense value to all who seek to understand human nature, and to achieve enhanced self awareness and integration of personality, in themselves and others.

This masterly written and illustrated manual is an absolutely essential starting and reference work for all those who finally respond in this lifetime to their Purpose and Inner Voice!

This book emphasises that all is energy and that Man is an energy unit affected from both without and within. It demonstrates that Ray Psychology is essentially practical and shows how the qualities of these energies may be understood and embraced in human behaviour and today's language.

It is plain that psychology will play an ever-increasing role in the development of new age consciousness. Already today millions of people, who would be regarded as laymen, practise their own psychology in everyday life. This tendency has been boosted by the general interest in astrology.

A glimpse into the future will show that the new psychology will be based on many emerging astrological factors. Esoteric psychology takes into account not only hereditary and environment, but draws also upon that massive third factor which is the psychic and spiritual nature of Mankind. The effect of karma, the influence of previous lives, etc., are major contributions to the behaviour of those who seek to tread the path towards spiritual enlightenment.

Esoteric Psychology is based on two major precepts. Firstly, there is a cosmic force conveying seven streams of energy into our solar system that affect the nature, behaviour and evolution of all forms within the ring-pass-not of this system. These streams are termed the Seven Rays. Secondly, spiritual qualities emerging from the immortal component of Man's structure affect his behaviour and modify the contributing factors of his hereditary equipment and the environment into which it is thrust.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker eBooks Publishing
• Release date: Apr 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781625690128

Douglas M. Baker

Dr. Douglas M. Baker. English born and raised in South Africa has done extensive scientific research into those hinterlands of the mind which one might call psi-semantics. He graduated in the Arts & Humanities in South Africa and qualified in medicine at Sheffield University (UK) in 1964. Having taught in the East End schools of London for 10 years, he began his tour of the Western world giving lectures and seminars in Esoteric Healing, Esoteric Anatomy, Esoteric Astrology, Esoteric Psychology, Esoteric Science and Metaphysics. He, more than any other, set in motion the trends towards alternative methods of medicine which have transformed that field in Britain today. As medical advisor to the De la Warr laboratories in Oxford, he undertook research into Biomagnetism and quantum physics their effects on the human aura and dark matter, producing the book by the same name in conjunction with George de la Warr. Through the years he has given more than 15,000 lectures and attracted people from all over the world to his Esoteric Science Festivals and International Summer Schools staged in America, Canada, England, Switzerland, Italy, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. His transformative experiences during the Second World War, when twice severely wounded, set the pattern for his life long investigations into the Powers Latent in Man. His extensive esoteric writings are said to be the largest collection in the world produced by a living author. He has written over 100 books, many of which have been translated into the 9 European languages at https://www.douglasbaker.com, and his list of downloadable MP3 audio lectures available at www.douglasbaker.org, include 500 live lectures given around the world and on a vast range of subjects. He has led the field in esoteric astrology, producing with a team, his magnum opus, a Dictionary of Astrology for the 21st Century in three volumes. This is in addition to the already existing 11 volume set of books on the same subject.

Book preview

Table of Contents

ESOTERIC PSYCHOLOGY - THE SEVEN RAYS

SECTION ONE - The Need for an Esoteric Psychology

SECTION TWO - The Seven Rays (Nature, Origin and Function)

The Hylozoistic Theory

The Endocrine Glands and the Planets

The Two Streams

The Ray of Humanity

Ray Five

The New Age

Assessing the Rays

Soul Age

Rotating Spheres

The Tapestry of Life

Relation of Rays, Planes and Qualities

Correlation

Our Own Monad and Soul Rays

Relationship to a Master of the Wisdom

The Work of the Rays

Ray Cycles

SECTION THREE - Rays of Aspect

RAY ONE: WILL AND POWER THE FIRST RAY OF WILL AND POWER

The Ray of the Destroyer

The Ray of the Maintainer

The Ray of the Creator

The Rays in Embryology

The Ray in Politics

The First Ray Mental Body

The First Ray Astral Body

General Review

RAY TWO: LOVE-WISDOM

The Ray Two Personality Bodies

RAY THREE : ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE

The Third Ray Soul

The Physical Body

The Rays and the Planes

Correspondences between Rays and Races

SECTION FOUR – Rays of Attribute

RAY FOUR: ART & HARMONY THROUGH CONFLICT

THE INSTRESS OF INSCAPE

For the Fourth Ray Disciple ...

RAY FIVE : CONCRETE KNOWLEDGE & ANALYTICAL SCIENCE

The Fifth Ray Personality

The Fifth Ray Mental Body

RAY SIX : DEVOTION & IDEALISM

The Sixth Ray Personality

Sixth Ray Astral Body

The Sixth Ray Physical Body

RAY SEVEN: RITUAL, CEREMONIAL ORDER AND MAGIC

The Seventh Ray Personality

The Seventh Ray Physical Body

The Task of the Seventh Ray

SECTION FIVE - Ray Analysis

Sample Ray Analysis

EXTRACT OF CASE HISTORY FOR C.K.

EXTRACT OF CASE HISTORY FOR J.G.

EXTRACT OF CASE HISTORY FOR H.W.

EXTRACT OF CASE HISTORY FOR G.W.

EXTRACT OF CASE HISTORY FOR R.B.

EXTRACT OF CASE HISTORY FOR L.H.

APPENDIX – Charts

ESOTERIC PSYCHOLOGY - THE SEVEN RAYS

By

Dr. Douglas M. Baker

B.A., M.R.C.S, L.R.C.P.

First printed edition: 1975

Second printed edition: 1979

This printed edition: 1996

ISBN 9780906006023

Copyright © 1975 Douglas Baker

Baker Publications

Little Elephant

Essendon, Hertfordshire,

AL9 6HR United Kingdom

This is the only authorized eBook of the printed edition.

© Copyright Dr. Douglas M. Baker 2011

ISBN 9781625690128

Published by Baker eBooks Publishing

Many audio lectures and some of the images and charts used here can be downloaded in higher definition for free from our website https://www.douglasbaker.org (https://www.douglasbaker.org).

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Introduction

It is plain that psychology will play an ever increasing role in the development of new age consciousness. Already today millions of people, who would be regarded as laymen, practise their own psychology in everyday life. This tendency has been boosted by the general interest in astrology.

A glimpse into the future will show that the new psychology will be based on many emerging astrological factors. Esoteric psychology takes into account not only hereditary and environment, but draws also upon that massive third factor which is the psychic and spiritual nature of Mankind. The effect of karma, the influence of previous lives, etc., are major contributions to the behaviour of those who seek to tread the path towards spiritual enlightenment.

The divine chromosomes of our septenary solar system are expressed through the seven Lords of the Rays, on whose activities the psychology of this work is based.

The knowledge of the Seven Rays provided by this book will prove of immense value to all who seek to understand human nature, and to achieve enhanced self awareness and integration of personality, in themselves and others.

Esoteric Psychology is based on two major precepts. Firstly, there is a cosmic force conveying seven streams of energy into our solar system that affect the nature, behaviour and evolution of all forms within the ring-pass-not of this system. These streams are termed the Seven Rays. Secondly, spiritual qualities emerging from the immortal component of Man's structure affect his behaviour and modify the contributing factors of his hereditary equipment and the environment into which it is thrust.

This book emphasises that all is energy and that Man is an energy unit affected from both without and within. It demonstrates that Ray Psychology is essentially practical and shows how the qualities of these energies may be understood and embraced in human behaviour.

This edition is gratefully dedicated to

Nicola & Maurice Griffin

The Ultimate Health Clinic

Centre for Nutritional and Esoteric Healing

What this Book is About

Esoteric Psychology is based on two major precepts. Firstly, there is a cosmic force conveying seven streams of energy into our solar system that affect the nature, behaviour and evolution of all forms within the ring-pass-not of this system. These streams are termed the Seven Rays. Secondly, spiritual qualities emerging from the immortal component of Man's structure affect his behaviour and modify the contributing factors of his hereditary equipment and the environment into which it is thrust.

This book emphasises that all is energy and that Man is an energy unit affected from both without and within. It demonstrates that Ray Psychology is essentially practical and shows how the qualities of these energies may be understood and embraced in human behaviour.

In understanding the nature of esoteric Man we elaborate a formula, which is called the 'Ray complement.' It consists of the Ray of the Soul, in Roman numerals, followed by the personality Ray and, bracketed, the Rays of the mental, astral and physical bodies, e.g.:

The above is a typical Ray complement arrived at through a Ray Analysis (see Section Five). This formula is used throughout this book.

SECTION ONE - The Need for an Esoteric Psychology

Madame Blavatsky once said that knowledge of The Seven Rays brought power to the knower. Lack of knowledge concerning one's nature is a serious defect. When we don't understand ourselves we can't change ourselves. Knowledge of our real nature and something of our totality brings the ability with it to reconstruct our vehicles and thenceforth to use them as the trained esotericist does, drawing on the hidden forces of nature to enrich them and to direct them towards the ultimate in creativeness, a creativeness which can be manifest twenty-four hours of every day!

In the sacred temple of the initiates at Delphi, in the former days of Greece's glory, there was an oracle that guided much of the nation's thinking. Here, from an opening in the floor of the temple carbon dioxide gas rose gently into the most sacred part of the temple from the bowels of the Earth. Under the influence of its fumes the temple virgins succumbed and then, speaking through them, the voices of the gods on Mount Olympus were heard as the oracle. Through this mechanism, the minds of the important men of those days were seeded by the thoughts of the Masters of the Wisdom. It was here that in answer to a question put to the oracle Socrates was pronounced the wisest of all men.

Today, amongst esotericists, the Delphic Oracle is still a household word because of its famous injunction Man, know thy Self.

When Man can answer four eternal questions about himself, and by himself, he will have truly heeded that injunction:-

Who am I?

Where do I come from?

Why am I here? and

Where do I go to from here ?

The answering of these questions takes Man to the gods on Olympus, to the feet of the Masters and the journey there is called The Path. There have always been those who have searched for the Path, for The Jewel in the Lotus, for the same Golden Fleece that Jason sought, for the Holy Grail of Christian Mysticism or the Shining Bowl of Judaic teachings.

Today, we call that same search into spiritual enlightenment, The Opening of the Third Eye. I always say that looking for the Third Eye is like searching for your spectacles. You need the spectacles to find them! And Man needs spiritual equipment to find his spiritual Self.

In The Secret Doctrine, Madame Blavatsky tells us that we are given, in our lives, opportunities to acquire enough of the right sort of information to take us to perfection but we have not, within our personality equipment, the power to synthesise the knowledge we have gained. This is indeed true. There is no lack of teachings. Our library shelves are stacked with books, read and unread, our Halls of Learning bulge with enough knowledge to make Masters of us all and yet that wisdom, the deposit of the ages, given out by the initiates and Masters lies practically ignored. Very few, only a handful in each country are prepared to take the Secret Path to self-mastery. Only the Few will search deeper than that narrow margin or surface area of wisdom which merely brings comfort to some thwarted aspect of personality. Most search only long enough or deeply enough to find some balm for the wounds they have received from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or for the pangs of despised love. Too many use the occult as a sop for their frustrations at the personality level, and then drop it.

Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

The untrained mind begins to flounder when it tries to get to grips with what amounts to a more complete picture of Man who is something more than the tip of the iceberg. We need a holistic approach to the phenomenon of Man in order to understand him and, thereby, change him. We must understand:-

Man as possessing Seven vehicles of consciousness, of which he physical is but the grossest and the brain of which we scarcely know anything...

Man in relation to the universe and the seven planes of which it is composed and the various hierarchies of lives visible and invisible that inhabit those planes and with which Man, willy- nilly interacts...

The septenary natures of these two fields of knowledge spread into chakras and nadis, rounds and chains, races and root races, planes of consciousness and disciplines, colours, sound and magnetism, forward motion, spiralling cyclic motion and rotary motion, solar systems, constellations and galaxies... The list is endless. The Secret Doctrine itself and its sequel A Treatise on Cosmic Fire run to more than three thousand pages. This, my own treatise on the same subject - and one more by direct statement than by inference - runs to seven volumes with many parts still to come even though it is written with Fifth Ray briefness and backed, to assist brevity, with copious illustrations.

Yet in these teachings, only a fragment of the Wisdom of the Ages has been presented. It is therefore inevitable that certain keys to the Wisdom have been fashioned through the ages. They precipitate the raincloud of knowable things and each age must use one appropriate to the language and qualities of that day, scientific, artistic or otherwise.

The Astrological Key.

The Astronomical key.

The Physiological key.

The Metaphysical key.

The Anthropological key, which recognises the dual origin of Man with his ancestry linked to life in other parts of the universe.

The Geometrical key which Pythagoras used... "God

geometrises" is a truer expression than we sometimes recognise.

The Mystical key.

The Numerical key and

The Symbolical key.

These keys have usually incorporated many aids like the Tarot, mantras, crystal balls, words of power, peyote cactus, hatha yoga, etc.

Frequently the keys were incorporated into a religion which entrenched the key, made a dogma out of it and retained it long after its appropriateness had been superseded by that of another one. To this day, Christianity retains fragments of the original key in the incense, stained glass windows, etc., farcical relics of a devotional and ceremonial key pertaining to the Seventh Ray which rules the personality of the Catholic Church and the Sixth Ray which rules its soul.

Whatever the key, if it were successful, it opened the floodgates of higher consciousness.

The key had to make sense of the inherited but perennial Wisdom of the Ages. It had to bring not only a synthesis to it but make it applicable to the problems of the day. In this respect, the key used by some churches today is often outmoded and useless and no changing of its outer facade is going to bring back lost congregations. The knowledge concerning Man's soul, which we term Ancient Wisdom, must be presented in the language of the Aquarian Age ... in the vein of I KNOW rather than I BELIEVE ... Man must know for himself, not be given something just to have belief in and second hand from the local priest. Hence the importance at this time of the Delphic Oracle as it posits the four eternal questions put earlier. Any teacher trying today to feed the young with teachings which must be accepted on blind faith, is doomed to failure. Present the young with the facts and let them judge for themselves ... this is far more acceptable and will become more so as the new age sweeps into manifestation.

The key to the knowledge of Man's totality for our day is the PSYCHOLOGICAL one. Through an understanding of the Seven Rays this psychological key becomes practical and effective in answering the problems of the day. It takes into account the whole picture of Man... holistic Man. It takes into consideration also the whole domain of Man's attention, the world about him and the worlds of his inner space and out of it all there emerges a framework for understanding God's plan for atom, cell, planet and galaxy, and, above all, for Man himself.

The Psychology of the Seven Rays takes into account a factor concerning man ignored by most contemporary psychologists. The two, more traditional factors come under the heading of environment and hereditary equipment. The THIRD factor postulates an inner, spiritual nature for man, and only recently has it found some sort of representation in those current schools of psychology representing the so-called existential approach, as exemplified by Maslow,* Assagioli ** and others.

* Towards a Psychology of Being by Prof. Abraham Maslow.

** Psychosynthesis by Roberto Assagioli.

The Seven Rays analyses the anatomy and function of these various units of spiritual energy which constitute the vehicle of expression of man's soul and which constantly stimulate or moderate the elements of man's personality from within, and which he comes to recognise as a 'spiritual conscience.' It is mainly through the effects of this inner nature that man is able to integrate his personality to the extent that it sounds forth as a single note. He is then able to express some of those inner powers said to be latent in man, which are now being examined by various scientific bodies and are known as extra sensory perception, parapsychology, psi-faculty, etc.

The teachings on the Seven Rays are a key to the true nature of man and embrace all scientific, occult and mystical knowledge, providing a framework for understanding God's Plan for each atom, cell, planet, galaxy and for Man himself. The Rays give us new methods of healing, new light on the origin of disease* and teach the manipulation of soul energy.** They indicate the political character and destiny of nations and show us the origin, function and future of individual races and the race of mankind as a whole. They indicate geographic areas of harmony and chaos on the surface of our globe and point to future cataclysms and planetary illnesses. They categorise and analyse the reasons for human desire and indicate how these desires may be handled. They give a wider view of karma and offer information about the mechanics of reincarnation. They can indicate to the earnest