Course XXXVI - Teaching 8: Worlds of Devas

Spiritual monads beyond the Human plane dwell on higher planes called “Worlds of Devas”.
In these Worlds there are three chains of Hosts-Builders: Host of the Shadow, Host of Humanity and Stellar Hosts.
The heavenly Host of the Shadow leads the development of elementals of the terrestrial wheel.
They are radiant angels influencing the material world only by concentration. Their thought concentrates on the labor they have to achieve, and when it has generated form that can act alone for certain period of time, these angels re-concentrate in themselves, lose all control over life that they manifested around them and remain fixed, introspectively, receiving the message of the Host of Humanity. The Host of Humanity, or archangels, leads their labor by means of the precedent Host. Every surge of human life passes through the sevenfold prism of their consciousness and will, reflected in the world by the evolution of types, races and different beings.
These archangels have not times of active concentration and times of passive concentration; only they have consciousness in itself that, as it passes through their minds, takes will of action.
This excellent state of continuous meditation never can be interrupted; it exists always; and his expression is only by reflection through the Host of the Shadow in the world.
Its whole, full happiness is to express in itself, like a drop of water reflects the image of the sun, the spiritual image of the Stellar Hosts, the Principalities.
The Principalities are builders of planetary chains. Every orb, every star, every planet, is the material body of them. Such material body cannot affect them at all because their nature is substantially divine.
The first Host is periodically will and periodically consciousness. The second Host is consciousness and will, simultaneously. The third Host is only consciousness.
No being of present evolution is able to feel this divine state; he can only intuit it.
The great Solar Initiates are transmission of light of Stellar Hosts, inasmuch as Lunar Initiates reflect the light of the Host of Humanity, and the Initiates of Fire, great chemists and transmuters of elements, are influenced by the Host of the Shadow.
If no being goes up to the World of Devas prior to cross the cycle of earthly life, however, many great beings, as they reach the threshold, perceive a higher degree influence of this spiritual world.
Some of them go up to an intermediate state, to the state where these great words are written: “You shall not pass”.
Now here is the name of other existing Hosts, even when they do not belong to the above described Worlds of Devas: following the Stellar Hosts, you have: the Host of Forms or “Powers”; the Host of Language or “Virtues”; the Host of Thought or “Dominations”; the Host of the Line or “Thrones”; the Host of Sound of “Seraphim”; and the Host of Numbers or “Cherubs”.