BEING: Beyond the Soul

As we clarify our mind as to the distinctions (not differences) between inclusivity and synthesis, between spiritual and divine, between planetary and solar, a possibility, quite new to some, emerges—working as one. Working not as a single person, not in the symbolic midst of a unified soul consciousness within which we share individualized awareness--working not as part of any hierarchical group effort but abstractly with many (in and out of incarnation) who think as a single intelligence--working neither objectively nor subjectively but synthetically as the intelligence of the One Mind.

Superseding soul consciousness with its strong sense of individuality requires us to abstractly (as opposed to personally) accept the significance of our oneness. As a collectively enlightened group we functioned as the soul, the Messenger.  But as a collectively illumined group, comfortable with abstraction, we work as synthetic intelligence, the monad, the master, the Message. Big difference.

In using inclusive intelligence to know the higher mind there is a preliminary requirement to accept the lower to the same degree we accept the higher. We learn to love humanity unconditionally as the soul only when we finally and fully accept the foibles and limitations of our own all too human lower mind with its rather exasperating personality. And only as we trust enough to give up our aspiration to hierarchical affiliation, to initiation and to ashramic inclusion, do we begin to perceive the subtle reality of oneness.

The decision to shift from spiritual love to divine oneness can be somewhat unnerving because it requires—knowing full well that we could be so much more—that we accept ourselves as spiritually adequate to the task as we are this very minute. Of course we haven’t solved all the mysteries or realized every degree of soul consciousness.  But acceptance of ourselves and each other as equals or peers, without reservation, forms the basis of the direct monadic perception associated with spiritual maturity.

Regardless of what we decide, the danger lies in growing spiritual dissipation or insensitivity.  The motivating force of spiritual aspiration, like a tank of gasoline, sooner or later plays out.

If by then sensitivity to synthetic intelligence (which is the divine will) is insufficient to draw us into our own realization that ‘I and the Father are One’, i.e., soul-infused personality and monad abstractly constitute one synthetic intelligence, we remain stuck in aspirational mode with little further maturity using this particular brain. In the remnants of our aspiration, myriad of spiritual forms linger between the stimulation of daily life and the abstraction of Life Itself. This mental condition of 'separation' attained a facade of legitimacy (and still lulls many into spiritual complacency) by the institutionalization of the ‘aspirational stance’ promoted by contemporary religions featuring priests or middle men who interpret symbolic consciousness for fundamentalists whose interest appears limited to spiritual personalities, including ‘God’.

Chronic aspiration produces a subtle form of spiritual estrangement. A sort of mental superficiality ensues when we become aware there is more but we can never seem to get there. We wait patiently for a master to appear, forgetting that the first master is the soul itself. We already are that master. Beyond that, the master for whom we wait is the higher mind which waits for us. Like a mirror, as we approach the higher mind, the monad or master approaches us. If we wait for a door to open, for a miracle to occur, it never does. Change occurs as we develop a more sensitive response to abstraction by contemplating and working with synthesis, oneness, will, divinity, and, most especially, the idea of eternity. Think through the implications of the cosmic fact that Life had no beginning and, therefore, has no end. 

We are used to ‘beginnings’ and progress and it is awkward at first symbolically to wrap our mind around the significance of eternality. But that is our group task. When an incomplete or personal perception of eternity prevents us from realizing our inherent spiritual maturity, we simply assume it by giving up any illusion of further progress. As oneness and being pervade our thinking, our attitude becomes sufficiently causal to return us to monadic awareness of the exalting reality of synthesis. Not up there somewhere but eternally here, now.

In the world of meaning, we experiment with the sequential viewpoint of the Observer using the imaginatively creative As If technique to bridge with and symbolically practice monadic/shamballic oneness. At least we are supposed to be working with oneness. When working as one with higher intelligence a respectful sense of awe is definitely appropriate. Our right to be there is being there as we participate with divinity as synthetic intelligence, as the one Mind whose interest, whose perspective, is cosmic.

In our current tenure on the path of consciousness, our ability to work inclusively with meaning, with love, is a given, a starting point. At this early moment of the 21st century, we expect from the beginning to experiment with oneness in that personal exploration of abstract intelligence which the Tibetan calls ‘the world of significance’. Many of us fail to try. Perhaps we don’t notice, or feel thinking is difficult, or believe synthesis is intimidating. Abstraction means letting go of notions which make us feel spiritually exceptional so some of us persist in feeling their way with ‘love’ rather than thinking. A major benefit of substituting ‘I think’ rather than ‘I feel’ is erasing the dichotomy between loving and thinking by thinking inclusively.

From hierarchical awareness today, many "are ‘being abstracted from the middle point of holiness and absorbed into the Council of the Lord’. In other words, they are passing onward into higher work and are becoming custodians of the energy of the higher will and not simply custodians of the energy of love. They will work henceforth as power units, and not just as units of light. Their work becomes dynamic instead of being attractive and magnetic, and concerned with the life aspect and not just with the soul or consciousness aspect".29 

The more clearly we understand the abstract accuracy of Alice Bailey’s teachings, the more our intelligence serves Life itself, for we tangibly stabilizes the chaos around us as we think as one.

Imagine waves of light (etheric physical) and particles of light (dense physical) emanating from our physical sun, passing as light through the planets to the edge of the solar system.

This symbolizes the stimulating, exclusive intelligence of the lower or personal mind.

The same circulation of energy, circling or reflecting magnetically back to the sun (as it does), returns again through all the planets as the love of the heart of the sun.

This symbolizes the inclusive intelligence of soul-consciousness. The central spiritual sun represents a cosmic synthesis of both, of all intelligence in our solar system, symbolized by the dot in the center of  the circle of manifestation. 

Rather like a piece of cosmic pie, the top point of every triangle represents that center dot—the synthetic intelligence of the One (Shamballa), while the bottom line represents the outer or fragmenting edge of the circle, the extremity of exclusive intelligence (Humanity). The interfacing body of the triangle represents the relationship between dot and circle, higher and lower mind, the 'soul on its own plane', or consciousness as a unified group (Hierarchy). This symbol is not flat but is a sphere revolving in two directions, turning in upon itself. 

Using this particular 'piece of cosmic pie' image it's easy to see why literal minded people in the mists of exclusive thinking perceive or believe in multiple souls, angels, spirits, guides and so on, while those abstractly facing the monadic point see but one soul. Our entire view of life changes, our perspective, all our interpretations, depending on the hierarchical ‘direction’ of our mental stance.

Monadically, we see the picture whole. We see the end from the beginning.  Within the divine circulation of this hierarchy of exclusive/inclusive intelligence, each interfacing ‘edge’ (abstractly relating the one or concretely relating the many) has its own techniques, requirements and challenges. Depending on our orientation we see that such forces of darkness and light do not so much oppose each other as they stand symbolically back to back with totally different world views. Inclusiveness helps us in time to see both points of view preparatory to synthetic awareness. 

"The dynamism inherent in the will, wielded by the new group of world servers and by the disciples and initiates of the world, will turn instinctive mass response into factual experience and produce the ‘appearance’ on earth of the new, developed ‘quality’ which ‘life’ seeks in the New Age to demonstrate....The three divine aspects: Life, Quality and Appearance are now in process of making their appearance in final form for this particular cycle".30 

Our usefulness depends on our understanding that "Being and Existence are not the same as Becoming or of Qualified Appearance. It is largely a question of emphasis".31

Symbolically, we are consciousness. Abstractly, we are intelligence. We have no intelligence we cannot use, no awareness we do not need. Abstraction is subtle, using the mind not to intuit symbolically but to see synthetically in terms of oneness.

Perhaps some many thousands of years ago this was not the case.  But today, each person's shift into the middle, heart or soul principle of mind is so uneventful that few of us registered it.  This shift requires only the basic information that our mind is dual—an ordinary mind and a higher mind. Many learn this in grade school. Simply registering the fact of an abstract mind makes us the Observer, the relating principle or interfacing consciousness. The awareness of the higher or abstract mind then becomes or should become the goal.

When Isaac Newton asserted (privately, of course) that "the doctrine of the Trinity was a fraud perpetrated in the 3rd and 4th Centuries",32 from the point of view of the abstract or mathematical mind, he was factually correct. From the perspective of synthetic intelligence, sequential consciousness is perceived as symbolic illusion. Newton, like Pythagoras, understood that we best retain our sources of ancient wisdom not through spiritual or mystical experience but by careful, accurate, abstract analysis of the teachings.

When we believe ourselves to be on the receiving end of energy coming ‘from above’, we are prevented from effective identification with that which we are intended to Be—that which we inherently Are. By examining our own version of spiritual preconceptions and misconceptions away from those tired symbolic trappings which our mind no longer questions, we create a new context for understanding. From this new beginning, we demystify, clarify and correct any exclusive, misleading or inaccurate mental images imprinted on our memory like snapshots during this lifetime’s evolutionary reiteration of the Path. 

Beautifully captured in Alice Bailey’s The Labours of Hercules, the Aquarian cleaning of the Aegean stable, a serious housecleaning of the logical, symbolic mind sheds light on all sequentially conceived beliefs, including the illusory nature of initiation, a truly baffling affair for those who don’t yet clearly grasp the significance of the distinctions between consciousness (soul) and monad (spirit). When one is ‘group conscious’, "initiation is a process at this stage, and not an event".33 

Abstractly, we understand that "The applicant has become soul conscious, and is therefore an initiate; remember[ing] always that the soul on its own plane is an initiate of all degrees. Initiation is, in the last analysis, the realization, the recognition in the brain consciousness of various spheres and states of divine awareness, with a consequent life demonstration of this fact, this eternal fact".34 

The ‘soul on its own plane’ is one term for monadic intelligence unrestricted by any fragmented sense of time, while ‘group consciousness’ exists and remains within the relative reality of sequential time.

Spiritual maturity brings the idea of relativity into a fresh focus because both inclusivity and synthesis are true but from differing perspectives. All of us have always been that ‘initiate of all degrees’. This is more fully realized as we grasp the nature and reality of the oneness of intelligence and see both time and consciousness as only relatively useful.

"Self-will relates man to form; the will of God relates the soul of the man to the Spirit. It takes three initiations to make this clear to the disciple".35

We still wear watches, of course, and run late for appointments but the limitations of time and process no longer distort our thinking. Liberated from the compulsion to spiritual progress, our blinders to higher understanding are gone. We see, and finally know that we are ‘the real self in the real world’ because of the beneficence of synthetic intelligence, the liberating divine will.

Long ago, the Buddha must have realized that All is Mind and Mind has a dual nature, and then later, the Christ realized that the soul relates the two and makes one Whole. By fusing soul and monad (consciousness and higher mind) within himself, the Buddha expressed wisdom. By fusing personality and soul (consciousness and lower mind), the Christ expressed love. Following these teachings, we each are able to fuse our consciousness with our lower mind, and that same consciousness with higher mind.

For this coming age, however, our contribution, our challenge, our effort is not to fuse but to synthesize lower mind and higher mind, personality and monad, human and shamballic intelligence, to express a new divine quality, the power of synthesis. We fuse ideas working upward, we synthesize from above downward. Working abstractly, personal struggle lies behind us and the joyous creative challenge of Life itself lies open.