It is those who are unable to create the spiritual immortal man, who project the senseless model (the Astral) of the physical Being; and, as will be seen, it was those who would not multiply, who sacrificed themselves to the good and salvation of Spiritual Humanity. For, to complete the _septenary man_, to add to his three lower Principles and cement them with the Spiritual Monad--which could never dwell in such a form otherwise than in an _absolutely latent state_--two connecting "Principles" are needed: Manas and Kâma. This requires a living Spiritual Fire of the middle Principle from the Fifth and Third States of Plerôma. But this Fire is the possession of the Triangles, not of the (perfect) Cubes, which symbolize the Angelic Beings;(176) the former having from the First Creation possessed themselves of it and being said to have appropriated it for themselves, as in the allegory of Prometheus. These are the active, and therefore--in Heaven--no longer "pure" Beings. They have become the independent and free Intelligences, shown in every Theogony as fighting for that independence and freedom, and hence--in the ordinary sense--"rebellious to the divine passive law." These are then those "Flames"--the Agnishvâtta--who, as shown in the shloka, "remain behind," instead of going along with the others to create men on Earth. But the true Esoteric meaning is that most of them were destined to incarnate as the Egos of the forthcoming crop of Mankind.
The human Ego is neither Âtman nor Buddhi, but the Higher Manas; the intellectual fruitage and the efflorescence of the intellectual self- conscious Egotism--in the higher spiritual sense. The ancient works refer to it as Kârana Sharîra on the plane of Sûtrâtmâ, which is the "golden thread" on which, like beads, the various Personalities of this Higher Ego are strung. If the reader were told, as in the _semi-Esoteric_ allegories, that these Beings were returning Nirvânîs from preceding Mahâ-Manvantaras--Ages of incalculable duration which have rolled away in the Eternity, a still more incalculable time ago--he would hardly understand the text correctly; while some Vedântins might say: "This is not so; the Nirvânî can never return"; which is true during the Manvantara he belongs to, and erroneous where Eternity is concerned. For it is said in the Sacred Shlokas: