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A Treatise on Cosmic Fire - Section Two - Div. B - Manas as a Cosmic, Systemic and Human Factor
The five Postulates

Postulate I. All matter is living matter, or is the vital substance of deva entities. For instance, a plane, and forms built of that particular plane substance, is the material form or sheath of a great deva, who is the essence back of manifestation and the soul of the plane. [489]

Postulate II. All forms, vibrating to any keynote, are fabricated by the building devas out of the matter of their own bodies. Hence they are called the great Mother aspect, for they produce the form out of their own substance.

Postulate III. The devas are the life which produces form-cohesion. They are the third and second aspects blended, and might be considered as the life of all forms that are subhuman. A magician, therefore, who transmutes in the mineral kingdom works practically with deva essence in its earliest form on the upward arc of evolution, and has to remember three things:

  1. The effect of the backward pull of the involutionary lives which lie back of the mineral, or, in effect, its heredity.
  2. The sevenfold nature of the peculiar group of devas which constitute its being in an occult sense.
  3. The next transition stage ahead into the vegetable kingdom, or the occult effect of the second kingdom on the first.

Postulate IV. All deva essences and builders on the physical plane are peculiarly dangerous to man, for they work on the etheric levels and are - as I have earlier pointed out - the transmitters of prana, or the vital, animating substance, and hence they set loose upon the ignorant and the unwary, fiery essence which burns and destroys.

Postulate V. The devas do not work as individualized conscious units through self-initiating purposes as does a man, a Heavenly Man or a solar Logos (viewed as Egos) but they work in groups subject to:

  1. Inherent impulse, or latent active intelligence.
  2. Orders issued by the greater Builders.
  3. Ritual, or compulsion induced through color and sound. [490]

When these facts are remembered and considered, some comprehension of the place the devas play in transmutation may be achieved. The position that fire occupies in the process is of peculiar interest here, for it brings out clearly the difference of method between the two schools.

In the transmutative process as carried on by the Brotherhood, the inner fire which animates the atom, form or man is stimulated, fanned and strengthened till it (through its own internal potency) burns up its sheaths, and escapes by radiation from within its ring-pass-not. This is seen in an interesting way as occurring during the process of the final initiations when the causal body is destroyed by fire. The fire within burns up all else and the electric fire escapes. The true alchemist therefore in days to come will in every ease seek to stimulate the radioactivity of the element or atom with which he is working and will center his attention upon the positive nucleus. By increasing its vibration, its activity, or its positivity, he will bring about the desired end. The Masters do this in connection with the human spirit and do not concern Themselves at all with his 'deva' aspect. The same basic rule will be found to apply in the case of a mineral as well as of a man.

The process as carried on by the Dark Brotherhood is the reverse of this. They center the attention upon the form, and seek to shatter and break that form, or the combination of atoms, in order to permit the central electric life to escape. They bring about this result through external agencies and by availing themselves of the destructive nature of the substance (deva essence) itself. They burn and destroy the material sheath, seeking to imprison the escaping volatile essence as the form disintegrates. This hinders the evolutionary plan in the case of the life involved, delays the consummation, interferes with the ordered progress of development, and puts all [491] the factors involved in a bad position. The life (or entity) concerned receives a setback, the devas work destructively, and without participation in the purpose of the plan, and the magician is in danger, under the Law of Karma, and through the materializing of his own substance by affinity with the third aspect. Black magic of this nature creeps into all religions along this very line of the destruction of the form through outer agency, and not through the liberation of the life through inner development and preparedness. It produces the evils of Hatha Yoga in India and similar methods as practiced in certain religious and occult orders in the Occident also. Both work with matter on some plane in the three worlds, and do evil that good may come; both control the devas, and attempt to produce specific ends by manipulation of the matter of the form. The Hierarchy works with the soul within the form and produces results that are intelligent, self-induced and permanent. Wherever attention is centered on the form and not on the Spirit, the tendency is to deva worship, deva contact and black magic, for the form is made of deva substance on all planes.

This must be considered well in connection with every form for it holds the key to many mysteries.
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