BEING: Beyond the Soul

"When one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone".   —Kahlil Gibran—37

SEEING THROUGH ILLUSION In our better moments, we see that the ‘ascending’ hierarchy of spiritual abstraction with which we now identify is a hierarchy of degrees of clarity as to the various illusions which jumble and distort our thoughts and attitudes. But perhaps none is so serious as the apparent separation of soul and personality which is a wildly successful planetary illusion dependent upon our being intellectually deceived by misleading images and misinterpretations. Our acceptance of exclusive intelligence (personality) and inclusive intelligence (soul) as a single unit of course in no way precludes an intensive exploration of either personality or soul alone.  Dr. Jonas Salk pointed out that "A hierarchy will always exist of the immature, the not-yet-wise and the unwise, as well as those who possess the natural capacity to develop and express practical wisdom".38 To reject our exclusive intelligence is effectively to reject our interconnecting mass awareness because such rejection affects our attitude towards ourselves and others. The struggle between the wise and the unwise continues within our own mind (where illusion exists) until we stop rejecting our personality, our logical mind, our discriminating, exclusive intelligence—our humanity. Even the unwise who do not actively seek the soul find it sooner or later nonetheless as human elements within the will of the synthetic intelligence of the monadic Mind. However, only as we actively use inclusive intelligence (the middle principle of mind) is our awareness transformed into a compassionate buffering interface relating the isolated human intellect with the oneness of monadic Being.  Strictly speaking, we then share but are no longer bound by exclusive intelligence yet for long after that we struggle with an illusory sense of isolation and illusory restrictions, reaping conflict and disappointment as we discount rather than uplift our personality while wondering ‘what’s wrong with other people’. Whether we approve of their actions or not, or think them cruel or foolish, all human beings are born soul-infused ‘initiates of all degrees’ by the blessing of universal consciousness. We remain subject to the ‘descending’ hierarchy of stimulation of strictly human, information-oriented intelligence and unaware of our salvation, and often continue to take appearances seriously by buying into collective illusions associated with human aspiration. Fortunately, when we see through any illusion the spell loses its power to mislead. OF GODS AND ANGELS In any assumed separation of personality and soul, both misleading images and misinterpretation wreak spiritual havoc. A small but persistent example of a misleading image is the halo, suggesting that those with a nimbus are somehow more sacred than other people. We see stained-glass images and paintings of people sporting coronas, ethereal crowns, rings of light, luminosity or radiance depicting saintly or spiritual individuals.  Prior to the Bible, gods and goddesses as personifications or exemplars of various qualities were depicted wearing aura enhancing golden rings around their heads suggesting sacred or godly awareness or powers. Today such images continue to promote the separative notion that certain people are somehow superior, i.e., they are souls, we are personalities. Our fondness for angels, romantic fragments of our not entirely forgotten past, upholds another powerfully divisive image. These luxuriously winged elements of a symbolic celestial hierarchy are enjoying a resurgence in popularity unparalleled since Victorian times. Angel (angello in Greek) means simply ‘messenger’ or ‘mediator’, referring to consciousness, called the Mercury or Christ principle.  The spiritual problem is that angels with wings are exclusive symbols for inclusive intelligence and as such are misleading as to the relating nature of the mediating interface between God and man, monad and personality, higher and lower mind—that middle principle of Mind of which both the heart center and the one soul are inclusive symbols.

Symbolic Fragments of Reality exclusive intelligence inclusive intelligence synthetic intelligence separate personalities angels/souls/guides wholeness/oneness mother/madonna/goddess son/babe in Christ/holy infant father/monad/god   Remember, the middle principle is essentially the relationship between lower and higher.  This is as true today as when Mary's first subjective contact with her higher consciousness was described as a visitation by an angel.  "And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be".39  Sensed emotionally but mentally unrecognized as elements of our own inclusive consciousness, these charmingly sentimental images represent fragments of unintegrated intelligence. So it may be good news that such angelic depictions of the soul have become mostly a fashion statement as images of cherubic babies and serene women with wings adorn plaques and chocolates, ride on lapels and peer from candlesticks. Two thousand years ago, humanity needed angels as a reminder to 'look up' to the presence of the soul but today our general awareness of consciousness is quite improved. WORKING DIRECTLY WITH INTELLIGENCE With little abstract awareness, personality and soul appear as a duality for they comprise not a synthesized whole but a unified whole. Inclusivity (the soul) is a mediator between synthesis and exclusivity, so soul and personality together constitute only an illusory duality. Even unified, the exclusive self remains alive and well, transformed by the imposition of inclusivity which alters our values and our perspective in a growing sense of planetary involvement. Remembering that the soul is the first master, and acting as that master, we consider our responsibility for uplifting the personality which got us to where we stand today.  One particularly useful exercise is to consciously call in the angels and integrate any remaining fragments of personality exclusivity from this or other incarnations, as we magnetically re-polarize our awareness as the soul. We accept who we are. When the sensations of exclusivity or impulses to separative thinking are no longer primary or life-changing motivators, we can safely (mentally) fuse within ourselves exclusive and inclusive intelligence (mass consciousness and group consciousness).  When this fusion is sufficiently expressed, we practice universality, seeing Life whole. This marks the end of psychic phenomena, sentimentality, emotionalism, and other indulgences of separated intelligence. Not even bio-neurologists can as yet directly measure human consciousness but they are getting close. And working with the foibles and limitations of a physical brain we cannot tell with certainty who is active monadically because no meditative training or particular religious, philosophical or ideological leanings are required to transcend time or to fully experience Life Itself. Teachings or talk about masters, initiations, love, rays, Shamballa or oneness mean nothing if, by careful analysis of those words and ideas, separative assumptions (like the divisive ‘we’ who know and ‘they’ who don't) are revealed when evaluating spiritual leaders or those presenting themselves as ‘highly evolved’ but who aren't. Those who draw such lines in the dust, perpetuating separation of soul and personality, lead only the foolish.  In the presence of great beauty, truth or goodness, with a sufficiently inclusive open-mind, even the least experienced among us may transcend the sequential awareness of the soul-infused personality. Those with less understanding are likely to experience some loss of consciousness during even brief periods of abstraction, and to return to ordinary awareness with little or no recall of their mental experience. Beginning meditators often drift into a light sleep state when working with abstraction or abstract forms or ideas, but experience soon solves the problem. This was an old practice in certain mystical forms of meditation where loss of consciousness was considered 'spiritual'. Today, loss of awareness is considered passé given the sensitivity of the contemporary human brain. Acute subjective awareness is not only desirable but finally, for some, possible.  Using the middle principle of mind, we practice abstract being and direct knowledge by closely examining and correctly understanding the concepts (with their myriad of ideas) involved in eternity, wholeness, oneness. Such concepts are actually mental templates promoting a higher interlude of abstraction in any scientific form of meditation. From that perspective we should be able to identify, update and correct any separative concepts, relationships and attitudes in our own thinking.  Later, acting as mediator between aspects of our own mind during the lower interlude of meditation, we subjectively readjust or correct the comprehension of our logical mind (brain consciousness) informing it of our subtle conceptual findings or abstract recognitions or realizations. Without this step of consciously informing our lower mind/brain, there will be little or no recoverable long-term memory.  The same process of enlightenment or mental expansion can also be obtained in any periodically sustained, abstract contemplation of the nature of wholeness or life. A recent study (referred to in a 3-part series on the Brain, PBS Morning News, week of 9/16/96) suggests this latter 'informing' of our memory about our subjective experience is a normal process, which continues even as we dream40. Higher and lower are symbolic terms, of course, because nothing is ‘lifted’, nothing is ‘up’ or ‘down’ except our sensitivity to oneness. We exist within the one mind, not beneath it. In mastering what Alice Bailey calls "the most potent and influential energy in the world, that of the intelligence"41, we need to understand that the entire path of consciousness constitutes an elaborate, subjective anatomy lesson. This ongoing, detailed study of the anatomy of the triple nature of intelligence is incalculably useful in relating and correctly aligning living facts of life. As suggestible as we all are, it is easy to lose our subjective integrity in the details of sequential living by forgetting we are and have always been the conscious soul. As we experiment with teachings on relationships and consciousness, we should emulate medical students. They do not take to their beds when studying diseases and (most of the time) lose neither their objectivity nor their physical integrity by mistaking isolated bits of anatomical information for personal reality. Whether studying, meditating or serving, we remain complete and moving forward as one soul. Consider more closely the symbolic imperative of that esoteric service. To intensify our usefulness once we are comfortably enlightened and esoterically experienced, we re-examine our service in a higher context. Useful service activities (service as doing) are based on the inclusive intelligence of the soul, love and group awareness and they occur in an hierarchical context. Serving ‘as the soul serves’ (service as being) is based on the synthetic intelligence of the monad, oneness or ‘higher will’. When, as one, we actively engage our abstract intelligence, inclusivity falls beneath notice. Service then describes the subconscious effect of our expressed, synthetic oneness. Naturally, this does not preclude us from providing useful service activities but we no longer confuse this with our actual service. As we contribute to planetary awareness of the goal of the wisdom of synthesis, however, there is pressing need for clearer understanding that: service is not what we do but what we are,   the distinctions between becoming and Being are spiritually critical, and   our acceptance of what we already know is sufficient for us to Be what we already are FROM THEORY TO ACCEPTANCE Emerging as we are from centuries of abuse, we tend to overlook the incredible sensitivity or impressionability of the personality to criticism. Operating in the ‘wholly constructive mode’ required for synthesis is not easy but direct efforts to rid ourselves of limitations tend to be counterproductive. Self-criticism downgrades the personality and produces ‘a poverty of therapeutic effect’42 so no spiritual gain is occultly accepted. As we do with others, we take care to support any effort in the direction of inclusiveness. Other than group crises, most personal crises—observed in hindsight—reveal self-imposed tests within which we draw or involve others as our ‘agents of karma’. Even a self-chosen crisis is difficult but we quickly resolve most crises by identifying the lesson and changing our own attitude, not others. To preemptively use less destructive techniques than crisis, Patanjali tells us to determine the problem and ‘cultivate its opposite’. Saint Jeanne Françoise de Chantal (a student of Saint Francis de Sales) says ignore it:  "Do not any longer find cause for trouble in your trouble. Never speak of it, neither to God nor to yourself, nor ever so much as look at it for long enough to be able to find words to describe it nor express it to anybody whatever; and never make it the subject of any examen. Hide your grief from your very self, and hold your eyes on God as if you did not feel it…".43  Alice Bailey correctly suggests problems can only be solved from a ‘higher level’. In any event it helps to recall that "happiness is not the absence of difficulty but the ability to cope with it".44 Difficulties emerge from the illusions that dualities create in our thinking because our allegiance to one side or other of any duality delays wisdom. And the way we resolve dualities depends technically on the type of intelligence we normally use. If we see dualities as on either hand and ourselves as the transcending (soul) awareness between them, we are the Observer and using inclusive intelligence to create a unity, an inclusive resolution. The result is the path. Until we find the middle ground between opposites (which the Tibetan calls the mentally dynamic ‘organizing principle’ of the path) we are not technically on the path. The path itself is the transcending (abstract) creation of our resolution of duality using conscious imposition within ourselves of inclusive intelligence (energy) upon exclusive intelligence (force).  NO TAKING SIDES Only by becoming the path can we abstractly transform it into the higher Way. If we fail by exclusively taking the side of white, right and angels, we effectively exclude ourselves from consciousness as the soul. Simple recognition of any duality automatically creates an energy triangle because the Observer (the interfacing Christ principle, the ‘relationship between’) is the abstract third point. Generally speaking, the resolution of any duality, such as black and white, is Light which abstractly is the Will of the One. The nature of our perception dictates the nature of our 'personal' universe: every duality (exclusivity) is esoterically a triangle (inclusivity), every triangle is in reality a full circle (synthesis). So if we observe apparent dualities such as personality and soul from the monadic perspective we see but aspects of a single whole which are now and always have been one. The full circle. This is strictly a perceptual matter. Aside from the systemic duality of spirit and matter, we see all dualities as illusions and stand neither between nor above them. We neither react nor respond to them. Abstractly, they are in us, in our mind, contained within the synthetic perception of the manifesting One. Of strictly human origin, neither heaven nor hell has the slightest relevance to anything so we give up both by seeing through them, seeing them whole. Abstractly restored to monadic paradise (the Persian word for ‘garden’), we see but no longer mistake for reality the yin and yang within the circle of oneness, or misunderstand the (69) as Cancer's symbol of humanity's physical manifestation. The result is the higher Way of Being. FINDING OURSELVES Sufi mystics contend that shoes symbolize the personality. As an aspirant, removing the shoes for meditation is a symbolic setting aside of the personality to remind us to work as the soul. A bit trickier for the conscious disciple who no longer makes that separation is ‘walking humbly with God’, working monadically as the ‘soul on its own plane’. What is certain is that like the butterfly emerging from the cocoon—to be beautiful we have to change. Change means correcting and clarifying our understanding of life by experimenting, analyzing and making mistakes. Failure, like disillusionment, is an important stage in the creative process and to effectively liberate ourselves we learn both from our own mistakes and from those of others. Designed to stimulate personal experience of the Being of oneness, the following tables comprise an informal checklist in three parts--addressing difficulties and obstacles of each of the three levels of awareness: Exclusive Intelligence (Intellect) Inclusive Intelligence (Intuition) Synthetic Intelligence (Direct Perception) These lists are also found at Being-Checklist Problems of Exclusive Intelligence (Intellect) Confusing feelings of love or affection for inclusive intelligence. Confusing emotional feelings of devotion for love. Mistaking feelings of unworthiness as not being ready for monadic oneness. Perceiving others as mentally separate from ourselves in terms of intelligence or the one Mind. Belief in ‘individual souls’, angels, or spirit guides.   Belief in a mystical heaven, hell, or paradise. Seeing the soul ‘as an entity’, separate, above or beyond us in terms of time or space. Perceiving the soul as a channel, or being on the receiving end of such a channel, effectively separates us from inclusively being that soul. Erroneous impersonality to other people rather than impersonality to their faults and limitations. Irritation or disappointment with our own personality retards progress. All personalities are those proverbial ‘little children’ we invite to approach us, so treat them well. Forgetting that negative observations about others reflect our own shortcomings. Skepticism about spiritual or intuitional knowledge isolates us from becoming the soul. Unrealistic, exclusive, personalized expectations about masters delays acceptance of the hierarchical nature of our own consciousness. Belief that redemption or soul infusion lie ahead creates artificial separation from the soul. We are all human, soul-infused from birth. Separation from the heart/soul by thinking of ourselves (or others) as personalities prevents compassion, i.e., failure to see that ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. Failure to relinquish the exclusive sense of individuality in favor of the sense of unity. Failure to take that inclusive next step; to think inclusively.   Problems of Inclusive Intelligence (Intuition) Not recognizing the middle or soul principle of the mental plane as the true heart center. Not grasping that our collective inclusive intelligence or consciousness is the soul. Not understanding that the significance of love is not feeling but thinking inclusively. Failure to progress from ideals about humanity to inclusive soul love for others. Belief that personality awareness is separate from soul consciousness. Habitual or devotional aspiration to soul-consciousness isolates us from becoming the soul; prevents identification with soul knowledge. Belief that the soul, interfacing relationship, is separate from higher mind or monad. Too specific identification with any of the seven rays or seven planes prevents fusion. Literal interpretation of Hierarchy prevents the abstraction necessary for fusion. Hierarchy is collectively to Humanity what the soul is individually to the personality. Imagining the masters, Hierarchy or ashrams as up there or beyond us in either time or space prevents fusion. All are right here, now. Isolation from hierarchical group consciousness by clinging to the notion of ‘my soul’. Suppressing the intuition by seeing oneself as a unit of awareness within the one soul rather than as that one soul. Exclusion from group consciousness by rejection of mass awareness. Working with meaning and with symbols of relationship such as masters, hierarchy, initiations, ashrams, triangles, rays, planes,  petals or centers instead of their abstract significance in terms of oneness. Failure to relinquish the sense of group in favor of the sense of oneness.  Failure to substitute the synthetic will-to-continue for aspiration.  Failure to recognize the monad as the abstract mind, our collective abstract intelligence.   Working with fusion instead of synthesis, or believing fusion leads to synthesis.   Failure to take that synthetic next step; thinking not of relationships but of wholes. Problems Grasping Synthetic Intelligence (Direct Perception) Failure to accept the synthesis of spiritual ideals. Belief in an individual abstract mind or personal monad. Mistaking unity for synthesis. Poor imagination in working (playing) with eternity, with the sense of oneness. Attempting to function as ‘the soul on its own plane’ (the monad), as an individual. Unwillingness to discard concepts and ignore images which don't reflect oneness. Failing to appreciate, value, and use spiritual disillusionment. Fear that synthetic intelligence jeopardizes self-awareness or promotes uniformity. Not grasping that all progress, qualities, and processes are based on sequential soul perception, not oneness. Using group techniques, acting as if we are the loving soul, slows or stalls personal acceptance of monadic reality, of true universality. Belief in the limitations of time and space. Failure to recognize the antahkarana bridge of relationship consciousness as sufficiently complete. Literal, symbolic or pictorial interpretation of shamballic intelligence prevents understanding and experience of synthesis. Belief that the Path of meaning and the Way of significance are the same. Belief that fusion leads to synthesis.   Weak or unpracticed extrapolation skills hinder abstraction. Misguided ‘respect’ factor prevents effective Identification by being too polite to presume. Insufficient humor and irreverence to dispel obstructing sacred cows or obsolete spiritual ideals, crucial for success. Failure to abstract oneself from the relating activity of inclusive intelligence we recognize as the psyche or soul consciousness. Confusing human (planetary) life and spiritual (solar) life with divine (solar) Life in terms of our intelligence. Failure to abstract ourselves from use of both energy and force by a synthetic sense of oneness. Need for stimulated abstract imagination to see ourselves and others as a single, eternal, living, synthetic intelligence. Failure to redefine omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence as contemporary, achievable experience.   Failure abstractly to think 'as One'.   Failure to accomplish a true sense of universality.   Failure to accept reality as it is.   If, through the illusion of our own sense of isolation, we persist in thinking of ourselves (or others) as persons with souls, we remain effectively excluded as conscious elements of an externalized hierarchical interface between Humanity and Shamballa. As we accept the practical realities of the nature of our own hierarchical awareness, we no longer think of Hierarchy as they but as we.  We acknowledge to ourselves an assumed responsibility for the management and future well-being of all forms of Life as it expresses on this small planet, Earth. Such assumed responsibility implies an inclusive acceptance of all other human beings and all other kingdoms. As tempting as it is, we are no longer asked to reveal the nature of soul-infused consciousness. This was revealed by the Christ, and by all those who preserved the teachings based on the eternal experience of redemption and salvation. And we are not asked to reveal the nature of the soul/spirit synthesis of the One Mind, for this was revealed thoroughly by the Buddha who articulated the nature of the dual mind, and the razor-edged Way between consciousness and higher Mind.  Today, we are asked to apply the teachings of both Christ and Buddha to our own understanding--and then to do more. We are to do what has not yet been done (except by rare individuals), to accept the reality of our oneness on the mental plane, the synthetic nature of the One Mind, the wholeness of soul-infused personality and monad.  As we accept both our personal and abstract monadic intelligence, we acquire both a sense of individuality and a sense of universality.  Thinking as one, we reveal the simplicity of the inherent synthetic intelligence of our new human nature—our new humanity. [End of Part 5 of 6] BEING: BEYOND THE SOUL BEING: | Contents | Being-Intro | Part1 | Part2 | Part3 | Part4 | Part6 | top | Choices | Liberty |  Lights |   Home |