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A Treatise on Cosmic Fire - Section Three - Division B - The Nature of the Cosmic Paths
SECTION THREE - DIVISION B - THE NATURE OF THE SEVEN COSMIC PATHS It should be carefully borne in mind that when the term PATH is used, it is simply an energy term, and streams of energy are indicated, - seven streams which blend and merge to form one Path. It should also be noted that the Adept Who undergoes the discipline and who passes through initiatory rites which will enable him to tread those seven Paths, has transcended color, has passed beyond the veil and has expanded His consciousness so that he is at-one with the conscious life of His planetary Logos. He has therefore arrived at a stage incomprehensible to man now; He is passing out of the realm of substantial forms altogether into the realm of energy. He knows the life of the two aspects, the soul and the body, and is passing away from the realm of awareness altogether. This will sound to the average reader as a foolish jingling of words and a splitting of hairs but he who reasons by the Law of Correspondences and who has grasped the basic essential relativity of the three aspects to each other has arrived at the knowledge that back of all form is a subjective Life which is known by its quality, its color, and its attributes; he has expanded his consciousness until gradually he has ascertained and made a part of his own conscious ensemble those attributes and qualities. But the pulsating dynamic vibration which is the producing cause of both the subjective life and its qualitative form is as yet - to him - the mystery of mysteries and the ineffable secret. It becomes the goal of his endeavor as he sets foot upon one of the seven Paths which face him after the fifth Initiation. If a Master of the Wisdom and the one who has unified both the manas (intellect) and wisdom (buddhi) knows not what shall be revealed to him as he treads the cosmic Path which is his choice, surely it is needless for us to try and comprehend (at our relatively low stage of evolution) what is the true [1242] connotation of the word "Spirit." Pondering upon these matters is (for the average man) not only useless but also dangerous. He has not yet the apparatus of thought necessary for its safe undertaking. It is as if one tried to force a child in the first grade in school to comprehend the differential calculus and the laws of trigonometry. These seven Paths, when trodden, prepare a man to pass certain cosmic initiations, including those upon the Sun Sirius. One hint may here be given. Each of these Paths eventually leads to one or other of the six constellations which (with ours) form the seven centers in the body of the ONE ABOUT WHOM NAUGHT MAY BE SAID. Those adepts therefore who stay for a prescribed length of time upon our planet are a correspondence to those greater initiates who remain for many kalpas within the solar system, taking certain mysterious initiations concerned entirely with solar evolution. Their work is concerned with the system as a center in the body of that Existence Who vitalizes the Logos of our own system. It might be of value here to list the seven cosmic Paths as follows: 35 Path I - The Path of Earth Service. Path II - The Path of Magnetic Work. Path III - The Path of the Planetary Logos. Path IV - The Path to Sirius. Path V - The Ray Path. Path VI - The Path of the Solar Logos. Path VII - The Path of Absolute Sonship. [1243] It must be borne in mind and no confusion of thought must be permitted that these terms are the generic names given in the mystic parlance of the Lodge of Masters to the seven methods of work, of endeavor and of aspiration whereby the perfected sons of Earth's humanity pass on to specific cosmic Paths or streams of energy, making in their totality one great cosmic WAY. The seven paths at a certain stage which may not be defined become the four paths, owing to the fact that our solar system is one of the fourth order. This merging is effected in the following way: The initiates upon Path I "fight their way" on to path VI. The initiates upon Path II "alchemise themselves" on to Path VII. The initiates upon Path III through "piercing the veil" find themselves upon Path V. This leaves Path IV to be accounted for. Upon this Path pass all those who, through devotion and activity combined, achieve the goal but who lack as yet the full development of the manasic principle. This being the solar system of love-wisdom, or of astral buddhic development, the fourth Path includes the larger number of the sons of men. In the hierarchy of our planet the "Lords of Compassion" are numerically greater than the "Masters of the Wisdom." The former must therefore all pass to the sun Sirius there to undergo a tremendous manasic stimulation, for Sirius is the emanating source of manas. There the mystic must go and become what is called "a spark of mahatic electricity." These seven Paths are not concerned with nature or the balancing of the pairs of opposites. They are concerned only with unity, with that which utilizes the pairs of opposites as factors in the production of LIGHT. They deal [1244] with that unknown quantity which is responsible for the pairs of opposites; therefore they are primarily concerned with that which lies outside the manifested forms, with the true abstraction or the Absolute. Spirit and matter are never dissociated during manifestation; they are the duality lying back of all that is objective. Yet some factor is responsible for them - that which is neither Spirit nor matter, that which will be regarded as non-existent by anyone except the initiate. At the third Initiation some glimmering light upon this Abstraction is sensed by the initiate, and by the time the fifth Initiation is reached enough is apprehended by him to enable him to set forth with ardor on the search for its secret. 35 Students must be careful to distinguish in their minds between these seven cosmic Paths and the seven ray Paths upon which all humanity are found and which have been earlier treated in this Treatise. As we have already seen the seven ray paths become three when units upon the four minor rays merge themselves into one of the three major rays. These three form the synthetic ray of Love-Wisdom by the time the sons of men have taken the final systemic Initiations. When this stage is reached and men realize the unity of the solar system not only theoretically but also as a practical reality with which they have identified themselves, then there is borne in upon their consciousness a something which transcends consciousness altogether and which can only be expressed by the limiting word identification. This identification is a cosmic and not a systemic process, and is itself sevenfold in nature. This sevenfold process for lack of a better term we call the sevenfold cosmic Path.
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