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A Treatise on Cosmic Fire - Section Two - Division D - Thought Elementals and Fire Elementals
We are but seeking to emphasize the fact of the interdependence of all atoms and forms, to lay stress upon the reality of the variety of influences which play upon all [802] that is manifesting, and to call attention to the fact of the karma of the past aeons, kalpas and that unknowable period in which the initiatory impulses were set up which are still persisting, and which God, man and atoms are still working out and off. Influences or vibrations, calling forth response, play upon every form and atom in the solar system and all that can be predicated of them is that they tend to develop consciousness of some kind, impose certain rhythms according to that conscious response, and produce aggregations or group activity.

The liberation from karma about which would-be occult students so glibly talk is after all but the freeing of the atom from its own personal problem (the problem of response to unitary sensation), and its conscious acquiescence in group response and work. It marks the dissociation of the human atom from the rhythm imposed upon him by the lower "influences" which find their channel of approach through his vehicles, or lunar bodies, and his consequent willing recognition of the will-impulse of his greater whole, or the life of the egoic group - a center in the planetary body. It involves atomic control, but involves also conscious subjection to the karma of the Heavenly Man. Man is no longer the slave of the rhythm of matter per se, but controls it in the three worlds of his endeavor; he is still nevertheless controlled by the group karma of the planetary center, by its influence, life and vibratory impulse. The same can be predicated of a Heavenly Man, and of a solar Logos.

We might, in closing, express the same thought in terms of fire, remembering that words only limit and confine the thought, and that the main reason for this mode of approach is to bring pictorially before man some aspects of the central idea.

"Electric fire, or will-impulse" in conjunction with "fire by friction" produces light or "solar fire." Electric fire is force or energy of some kind, and hence in [803] itself is fundamentally an emanation. "Fire by friction" is substance with the quality of heat as its predominant characteristic; it is latent heat or sensation. Both these ideas, therefore, convey the idea of duality. An emanation must have its originating source, and heat is but the result of friction, and is necessarily dual. Both these concepts involve facts long antedating the solar system, and hidden in the Universal Mind. All that we can scientifically ascertain is the nature of that which is produced by their approximation, and this is solar fire or light. These thoughts may make clear somewhat the significance of the number five, esoterically considered. Electric fire, being an emanation is essentially dual in concept, and so is fire by friction; they together produce solar fire, and thus the esoteric fifth.

It will be apparent that when a man speaks of karma, he is dealing with something much wider than the interplay of effect and cause within the sphere of his own individual routine. He is, in all things, governed by causes originating in the aggregate of lives which form his egoic group, by the aggregate of groups which form one petal in a center of a Heavenly Man, by force or purpose circulating through a triangle of centers, and by the life energy or purposeful will of the planetary Logos Himself. Finally he is governed by the will of the solar Logos as it demonstrates itself in initiatory activity. Beyond this we need hardly go, but enough has been said to show that every human atom is under the dominance of forces outside his own consciousness, which sweep him and others into situations from which there is no escape, and which are to him incomprehensible.

This has been at no time better illustrated than in the event of the late war and in present world conditions; these are effects of causes having their origin in the renewed activity of a certain planetary triangle, and in the vibration set up by our planetary Logos on the moon-chain, [804] and which had a faint beginning in an earlier solar system. This vibration impinged primarily upon certain atoms and groups of atoms in His body, principally those composing the human and animal kingdoms, and produced the apparently dire results which we have been witnessing. So great was the effect of His energy, that the vegetable kingdom was somewhat (though not so much) affected, and the mineral kingdom felt the effect in a startling manner, far more than the vegetable kingdom and almost as much as the animal. Here we have a setting of circumstances outside human and even group control, which illustrates the helplessness of man in certain conditions, and which serves to bring in factors apparently apart from the individual vibration of the fourth kingdom.

Nevertheless, within limits, man definitely does "control his destiny," and can initiate action which produces effects recognizable by him as being dependent upon his activity along a particular line. He does, on a miniature scale, repeat the procedure of the Logos on a vaster scale, and thus is the arbiter of his own destiny, the producer of his own drama, the architect of his own home, and the initiator of his own affairs. Though he may be the meeting place of forces outside his control, yet he can utilize force, circumstance and environment and can turn them, if he so will, to his own ends.
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