313. A Treatise on Cosmic Fire - 31. DIVISION C - THE EGOIC RAY AND SOLAR FIRE I. THE NATURE OF THE EGOIC OR CAUSAL BODY - A. BAILEY

DIVISION C - THE EGOIC RAY AND SOLAR FIRE

I. THE NATURE OF THE EGOIC OR CAUSAL BODY

The subject of the egoic Ray and its relation to the second fire is one of vital import to three types of people:  Those who are interested in the true psychology, or in the evolution of the psyche; those who are on or nearing the Path, and hence are coming more and more into touch with their own Ego; those who work with the souls of men, the servers of the race.

The reason for this is because in the due comprehension of this subject, that of the Ego functioning in the causal body, comes the ability to work scientifically with the problem of one's own evolution, and to do good work in aiding the evolution of one's brother.

1. Egoic manifestation is produced through the medium of two fires.

Let us therefore consider somewhat the subject of the egoic Ray and the causal body, viewing it from the standpoint of the microcosm, and leaving the student to work out for himself the analogies where the Logos is concerned, conjuring him to bear in mind that the analogy must ever be drawn with due emphasis upon the fact that all that the human unit can comprehend is the manifestation of the solar Logos in a physical body.

In all manifestation, as we well know, we have duality producing triplicity.  Spirit meets and contacts matter; the result of that contact is the birth of the Son, or the Ego, the consciousness aspect.  The egoic manifestation is therefore the middle aspect, the place of at-one-ment, [506] and (after due evolutionary cycles) the place of balance, or of equilibrium.  It should be noted that the analogy between the Logos and man is not accurate, for man has to undergo the whole process within the solar periphery, whilst the Logos (within that periphery) goes through the stage analogous to that which the man undergoes when his astral sheath clothes itself with etheric matter and he takes physical incarnation, which was touched upon when considering the subject of "Fire by friction."  It will consequently be apparent that, in considering the manifestation of the Ego, we are dealing with the point of central emphasis in man's threefold manifestation.  We are concerning ourselves with that division of his nature which concerns the process of making him the perfect six-pointed star during the preliminary stage (the threefold personality and the threefold Triad merged and blended and perfectly produced through the intermediate point the causal body) and which, when the physical body is eliminated, makes him the five-pointed star or perfected manasaputra.

To state the whole in terms of fire:  The causal body is produced by means of the positive life, or fire, of the Spirit (electric fire) meeting the negative fire of matter, or "fire by friction"; this causes the blazing forth of solar fire.  This central blaze inevitably in due course burns up the third fire, or absorbs its essence, and is itself eventually blended with the fire of Spirit and passes out of objective display.

I seek here to deal with the subject of the causal body in two different ways—one along the old lines and the other strictly along the lines of occult electrical phenomena.

2. Egoic manifestation is produced at individualisation.

The causal body is that sheath of mental substance which is formed at the moment of individualisation by [507] the contact of the two fires.  The force or energy that pours through from the higher planes (the breath of the Monad, if you care so to term it) produces a vacuum, or something analogous to a bubble in koilon, and the sheath of the causal body—the ring-pass-not of the central Life is formed.  Within this sheath are to be found three atoms, which have been termed the mental unit, the astral permanent atom and the physical permanent atom; they correspond individually to the seventh principle of each of the three persons of the microcosmic triad, a reflection (in the three worlds of the microcosm) of the three Persons of the logoic Trinity.  H. P. B. hints at this in connection with the Logos when she speaks of the visible sun being the seventh principle of the Brahma aspect, the physical permanent atom of the Logos. ^[clxvi] 65, ^[clxvii]66