We proceed now to take up the consideration of the Ruler of Fire, AGNI, and are brought to the study of the vitality that energizes and the Life that animates; to the contemplation of the Fire that drives, propels, and produces the activity and organization of all forms. The realization of this will reveal the fact that what we are dealing with is the "Life and the lives," ⁸⁶ as it is called ⁸⁷ [602] in the Secret Doctrine; with Agni, the Lord of Fire, the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer; and with the forty-nine fires through which He manifests. We are dealing with solar fire per se, with the essence of thought, with the coherent life of all forms, with the consciousness in its evolving aspect, or with Agni, the sumtotal of the Gods. He is Vishnu and the Sun in His glory; He is the fire of matter and the fire of mind blended and fused; He is the intelligence which throbs in every atom; He is the Mind that actuates the system; He is the fire of substance and the substance of the fire; He is the Flame and that which the Flame destroys.

Students of the Secret Doctrine when they read carelessly are apt to consider Him only as the fire of matter and omit to note that He is Himself the sumtotal - and this is especially the case when they find that Agni is the Lord of the mental plane. ⁸⁸ He is the animating life of the solar system, and that life is the life of [603] God, the energy of the Logos, and the manifestation of the radiance which veils the Central Sun. Only as He is recognized as Fohat, the energy of matter, as Wisdom, the nature of the Ego and its motivation, and as essential unity, can any due conception be arrived at as to His nature or being. He is not the solar Logos on the cosmic mental plane, for the egoic consciousness of the Logos is more than His physical manifestation, but Agni is the sumtotal of that portion of the logoic Ego which is reflected down into His physical vehicle; He is the life of the logoic Personality, with all that is included in that expression. He is to the solar Logos on His own plane what the coherent personality of a human being is to his Ego in the causal body. This is a very important point to be grasped, and if meditated upon will bring to the student much enlightenment. His is the life that fuses and blends the threefold nature of the Logos when in physical incarnation; His is the coherent force that makes a unity of the triple logoic Personality, but man can only arrive at His essential nature by the study of the logoic physical vehicle - hence the difficulty; he can only understand by a consideration of His psychic emanation as it can be sensed and viewed by passing the history of the races in retrospect. Man's personality reveals his nature as his life progresses; his psychic quality unfolds as the years slip away, and when he passes out of incarnation he is spoken of in terms of quality, good or bad, selfish or unselfish; the effect of his "emanation" during life is that which remains in men's minds. Thus only can the logoic personality express itself, and our knowledge of His nature is consequently limited by our close perspective, and handicapped by the fact that we are participants in His life, and integral parts of His manifestation.

It is only as we begin to function upon the buddhic plane that we can in any way "live in the subjective" [604] side of nature, and it is only as our knowledge of the spiritual life increases, and as we pass definitely through the portal of initiation into the fifth kingdom that we can appreciate the distinction between the dense physical, and the vital body. Only as we become polarized in the cosmic etheric body and are no longer held prisoner by a dense material sheath (for the three lower planes are but the dense body of the Logos) do we come to a fuller understanding of the psychic nature of the Logos, for we stand then in the body which bridges the gulf between the dense physical, and the astral body of the Logos. Only when this is the case do we understand the function of the Lord Agni as the vital life of the cosmic etheric, as the vitality of the Heavenly Men and the activity of Their sheaths.

86 The Life and the Lives. H. P. B. says in the Secret Doctrine:

1. Everything lives and is conscious , but all life and consciousness is not similar to the human. - S. D., I, 79.

1. Life is the one form of existence manifesting in matter.
2. Matter is the vehicle for the manifesting of soul.
3. Soul is the vehicle for the manifesting of Spirit.

• Life of the 3rd Logos - animating atoms of matter.
• Life of the 2nd Logos - animating the forms, or aggregate of atoms.
• Life of the 1st Logos - animating the composite forms.

2. The one Life synthesizes this triplicity.

The sources of these three fires, I may observe in passing, constitute the three principal deities spoken of in the Veda, namely, Surya, the sun, representing the solar fire; Indra (and sometimes, Vayu) the rain-producing deity, representing the fire of the firmament; and Agni, representing the terrestrial fire, the fire produced by friction (Nirukta, VII, 4); and all these three, be it remembered, are merely the ramifications of one Agni; which in its turn is an emanation from the Supreme One, as the reader will find from the allegorical description given of Agni as being the mouth-born son of Brahma, in the Vishnu purana.

Now, each of the triple forms of Agni has numerous subdivisions. The solar fire is distinguished by several divisions according to the nature of the rays emitted by the great luminary." - The Theosophist, Vol. VII, p. 196.