We might also define manas as the key to the door through which entrance is made into the fifth kingdom of nature, the spiritual kingdom. Each of the five kingdoms is entered by some one key, and in connection with the first two kingdoms - the mineral and vegetable - the key or method whereby the life escapes into the higher kingdom is so inexplicable to man at his present stage [335] of intelligent apprehension that we will not pause to consider it. In relation to the animal kingdom it might be said that the key whereby entrance is effected into the human kingdom is that of instinct. This instinct, towards the final stages of the animal's evolution, and as it becomes more and more detached from the group soul, ²⁶ becomes transmuted into mentality, or into that embryo mind which is latent in animal-man, and which simply needed the stimulating vibration which emanated from the Earth's Primary to be fanned into something definitely human. We must always bear in mind that the method of individualization on this globe was not the one followed on others, and that many of the present advanced units of humanity individualized normally, and through the driving force of evolution itself. They found (to express it as far as possible in terms of fire), their opposite electrical pole through the activity of animal instinct, and by the blending of the two a human being was produced, - the union of the three fires in the causal vehicle.

• Instinct - The key from the animal into the human kingdom or from the third into the fourth kingdom.
• Manas - The key from the human into the spiritual kingdom, or from the fourth kingdom into the fifth kingdom. [336]

Higher we need not go, for the transmutation of manas proceeds, and much as yet remains to be done.

26 "A Group-soul is a collection of permanent Triads in a triple envelope of monadic essence. The permanent Triads are a reflection upon the lower planes of the spiritual Triads on the higher. This description is true of all group-souls functioning on the physical plane, but gives no idea of the extreme complexity of the subject."
- From A Study in Consciousness, by Annie Besant.