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A Treatise on Cosmic Fire - Section Two - Division A - Manas or Mind and its Nature
3. Manas is that which produces Cohesion

We come now to our third definition: The manasic principle is above all else that cohesive something which enables an Entity (whether Logos, Heavenly Man, or man) to work:

  1. Through form, and thus exist. [333]
  2. By means of progressive development or cyclic evolution.
  3. On certain planes, that are, for the entity concerned, the battleground of life, and the field of experience.
  4. By the method of manifestation, which is a gradual growth from a dim and distant dawn through an ever increasing splendor of light to a blaze of effulgent glory; then through a steadily dimming twilight to final obscuration. Dawn, day, midday, twilight, night - thus is the order for the Logos, for a planetary Logos, and for man.

If the above four points are carefully studied, it will be found that they are fairly comprehensive, and embody the four points that are as yet the only ones available for man in this fourth round.

Man regards himself as a synthesized aggregate of physical body, emotional nature, and mentality, yet knows himself as more than these three, and recognizes himself as the utilizer of form, of emotion, and of mentality, holding them all together coherently so that he is a unit. A planetary Logos similarly does the same, with the difference that manas is not the medium whereby he is a coherent whole. Owing to his more advanced stage of development, wisdom is for Him the dominant factor. A solar Logos achieves through Will what a planetary Logos does through wisdom or buddhi, and man (on his tiny scale) through manas. Yet, as both planetary Logos and man are but parts of their greater whole, the electric fire of will permeates them also, merging with the solar fire of buddhi, and fanning the fires of matter. In all these distinctions and differentiations it must be remembered that they do not exist from the logoic standpoint, but are only to be predicated in [334] relation to the lesser bodies which are included in the solar ring-pass-not.

A man is a coherent unit in objective manifestation for very brief periods on the physical plane simply because as yet he works only through manas and not through wisdom. His cycles are consequently soon run, and gone like a flash in the night. A planetary Logos, Who is perfected manas and works through wisdom, has longer cycles, and from the angle of vision of man endures for aeons; His life is the basis of the comparative permanence of the egoic cycles of man. The cycle of objectivity of a solar Logos persists for the greater mahamanvantara or solar cycle because it is based on will as well as on wisdom and manas. Therefore, it will be apparent that:

  1. Manas or intelligence is the basis of the separative manifestation of man.
  2. Wisdom or buddhi is the basis of the group manifestation of a Heavenly Man.
  3. Will is the basis of the One Life which synthesizes all groups.

Therefore again, in studying this Fire of Mind, we must remember that it is that which man is developing and with which he is learning to work, but that it is also that which a Heavenly Man has developed in an earlier system; it is to Him as automatic in its action as is the subconscious activity of a man's physical organs.

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