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..:: The Soul ::..
By
Alan Schneider
Accessing the Fourth Plane of Ascension, the
Buddhic Plane – the focus of the Soul, or (in Sanskrit) Atma - .
requires a leap of faith ecause the transition from the still self-motivated consciousness of
the Mental Plane into the utterly selfless consciousness of the the
Buddhic
Plane is so profound,
The Mental Plane marked the
terminus of Ascension in the Old Occult Mystery System – for the ancient
magician, sorcerer, and witch, this was the highest level that was
attainable, and those who reached it were frequently referred to as
“Third Degree Ascended”. Grounded in Pagan Polytheism, as most of the
traditions contributing to the Occult were, there was an aversion
present then (and one that still is present now) to the
acknowledgement of such further philosophical developments as the
concept of the Soul and the Logos – both of which smack of Monotheism,
the ultimate trend in virtually all modern religious thought. Even
apparently Polytheistic belief systems, such as Hindusim, which divides
the Logos into three active elements – Brahma, the Creator God, Vishnu,
the Preserver God, and Shiva, the Destroyer God – still maintains that
the ultimate essence of God – the Brahman – is One
Manifestation – a clear example of Monotheism. And Buddhism,
which is outwardly atheistic or agnostic, yet nonetheless holds that the
Non-Dual Perception of Truth is the ultimate condition of experience,
still is Monotheistic (or, perhaps, Monadic) at its
foundation as well.
The adherence to Polytheism
of the Old Occult philosophy is understandable, because this spiritual
conception is ultimately grounded in the rational assessment of the ego
on the Physical Plane – even at the level of the Thought Form, the
thread of belief is qualitative, and can be reduced to
qualitative perceptual interactions occurring in their final
manifestations on the Physical Plane. And even astrology first
assigns qualities to the heavenly bodies as their essences, and
the same is the case with Polytheist deities – they are conceived of as
acting through their qualities in the world of the senses on the
Physical Plane. The Astral Archetypes are certainly also qualities
of consciousness, occurring in human perception on either the Lower,
Middle, or Upper Astral regions, and yet still comprehensible to the ego
as objects of interpretation. But to say that there is a level of
manifestation yet beyond the Thought Form that is the summation of
existence – the supreme cause of everything – requires a complete
restructuring of awareness away from empirical demonstration and into a
much more subtle level of perception where such manifestations are
felt as Presence and intuitively sensed as Action beyond
sensory perception and ego interpretation. The entertainment of the
possibility of the Soul as the supreme principle of Spirit knowable
requires us to set aside all that has been familiar and comfortable at
the levels which came before this one, and confront many harsh and
uncomfortable spiritual realities – the problem of mortality, the need
for external moral standards, the imperfection of human consciousness,
and the comparable imperfection of the world. The Pagan Polytheist has
no reply to any of this, preferring the secure comfort of Astral Rite,
Physical Ritual, and Mental Manifestation, and ascribing all
intervention beyond physical action to magical influence.
While the Occult
Practitioners of the ancient, and modern, times were satisfied with the
simplicity of their paradigm, and perhaps disturbed by the possibility
of something lying beyond their understanding and control, the Eastern
and Western spiritual visionaries were not. Just as the minutely
inexplicable perturbations in the orbits of the planets led repeatedly
to the discovery of elements of the Solar System lying beyond Saturn,
the most distant planetary object visible to the naked eye, so the
Saints and Seers of the East and the West realized that something
had to lie beyond the Mental Plane and the attendant Thought Form – a
driving force producing the spiritual essence that caused both to
emerge into conscious perception. So they sat in prayer, meditation, and
austerity across the millennia, attempting to study what defied
observation, until at least the outline of that next level had
come clearly into focus.
The names given to this
rarefied state of consciousness are many – the Superconscious Mind, the
Atman, the Jivatman, the Higher Self, the Superego and the Soul, to name
but a few. For our purposes here, I will use the term “Soul” to refer to
this phenomenon, although all of the previous characterizations
contribute in some way to the collective essence of this elusive, but
still very important, condition of consciousness. But, what exactly
is it that we are referring to?
The Soul may be defined as
the spiritual essence and focus of the individual human consciousness,
beyond the subconscious Id, the waking conscious ego, and all of
the psychological and psychic elements of both. The Soul supersedes the
Physical, Astral, and Mental Planes, hence the use of the term “Atmic
Plane” to specify its psychic location in the total Mind of the Psyche.
In part, the Soul exists because it must exist to explain the
many otherwise perplexing behavioral events on the three preceding
Planes. Why do individuals who have otherwise superficially happy lives
and want for nothing suddenly decide to turn away from opulence and
affluence and live in poverty and austerity? Where do the Archetypal
Symbols and Thought Forms of the Astral and Mental Planes come from?
Certainly they do not simply appear in conscious perception for no
reason at all! Why will people who have successfully evaded moral issues
all of their lives decide to confess to all manner of crimes and
indiscretions they have committed for no discernable reason? Why are
human beings so consistently compelled to identify and perform morally
correct actions in life? Why is life so filled with apparently random
suffering? These questions can only be answered by the existence of the
Soul as our intuitive moral compass and spiritual core. There must be a
source of manifestation largely hidden from sensory observation that
both directs our consciousness from the highest point of manifestation,
and yet remains interactive with the first three Planes of
Manifestation, and that source is the Soul.
Yoga, and Tantric
philosophy, relegates the first three Chakras to the world of physical
manifestation. Muladhara, Chakra One, is concerned with rote
survival issues – making a living, traveling, breathing, eating –
external reality. Svadhisthana, Chakra Two, deals with
creating and raising a family – domestic reality – and with the
physical pleasures attendant to this process. Manipura, Chakra
Three, addresses personal status, political power, and social position –
the ultimate manifestations of physical realities as social
realities. Anahata, Chakra Four, confronts the questions of
moral realities, and this is where the truly spiritual Chakra
sequence begins, denoting the transition of the Kundalini onto the Atmic
Plane.
Why is Anahata considered the
focus of the Soul, compassion, and selfless love? This center of
consciousness is also known as the Heart Chakra, and the emotional
heart is universally considered to be the source of humanitarian concern
in virtually every culture in history. Why? Perhaps it is the human
association of the blood with the personal physical essence of life, and
of the heart as the “center” and driver of the circulatory system. When
the heart stops, physical life and immediate consciousness stops as
well. Perhaps it is the sensation of security and surety that
accompanies the heart beat – along with the breath, the other
universally reliable consistency of physical existence. Very few insults
are as derogatory as referring to someone as “heartless” – the universal
implication of being completely unfeeling and uncaring. The thrust of
things here seems to be that the heart and its activity is as intimately
associated with life and consciousness as anything can be, and that
intimacy transfers to emotional perception on a very subtle, frequently
unconscious level. So it is that my heart is the reminder of
all hearts, and of all human hopes and aspirations held in the
deepest personal way by others. This physical mechanism, it would
appear, is also psychological and spiritual, reminding us of the core of
shared human experience in the most intimate personal fashion.
And this collective bond, whether consciously acknowledged or not, is
the root of compassion in the human condition. Thus, the Soul has its
beginning in the collective consciousness of the human race at the point
where we are all most alike – the beating hearts and hopes of humanity.
In this sense, the Soul is
located well into the collective region of the unconscious mind and the
Psyche, and this is one reason why reaching it in perception is such a
daunting task – it is almost beyond even indirect observation conducted
in deep trance. Paradoxically, in view of its association with the
physical heart, one must be willing and able to surrender all physical
sensation, and all psychological expectation, to perceptually contact
the manifestation of the Soul, existing as it does in the purely
spiritual realm of the Atmic Plane. Certainly one key to conditioning
oneself to begin working with Atmic perception is the acceptance of
compassion as the primary human virtue, and the inherently
self-motivated ego will resist this with great determination. One cannot
simultaneously live for oneself and humanity – at some point, a decision
must be made to accept the principle of the general good of all human
beings as outweighing the personal comfort and convenience of the
individual, a very tough proposition for most people to accept. Yet,
this is the ultimate truth of human experience – at the deepest
spiritual level, we all share a common consciousness in the Divine Light
of Consciousness. Either we are one, or we are none. The
apparent separation of our condition into distinct vessels of existence
is just that – only apparent – the sensory illusion of Maya, when
the Truth is that we are all United in Love under God. The practice of
compassion helps us to see this Truth in our daily lives as we struggle
through the Maya of the senses, and opens the Way to the perception of
the Soul.
The Atman, the Soul, has at
least some defining characteristics that can be enumerated here. The
first is innocence – no matter how fallen a given person’s life
may have been, the Soul given to that person during incarnation remains
clean. The next is immanence – the Soul is never any
further away than the ego – we simply have learned to look away from it.
It never looks away from us, not even for an instant, and is
always available for consul and comfort in hard times and good alike.
The Soul is the supreme expression of Love, not only for the apparently
discreet self associated with the physical body, but for everything
in existence at all levels of expression. The Soul is an extension of
God manifest in human association, and God is Love above all
other considerations. Thus, the Soul is a personal and collective
extension of the outpouring of God’s Love. This outpouring is expressed
in the Universal Act of Creation – everything has a Soul as its
spiritual essence – even rocks, trees, plants, and acts of human
creation. Exactly like the Brahman, God’s Love permeates the whole of
existence forever. Divine Love is the Brahman, and the Brahman
is Divine Love. Thus, the Soul is Universal Love.
The Soul is also Universal
Light – an intensely bright white Light that shines at the core of
consciousness at the center of the Psyche. I have personally
witnessed this Light – it is omnipresent and omniscient in character
– the embodiment of all knowledge and experience possible. And I have
entered into this Light, into the Divine Consciousness, and
experienced the inexpressible Love that is present there. In this sense,
the Soul is God, and God is the Soul, and existence is
the Divine Light – all else is Karma, Dharma, and Maya. It is my
sincere wish for all of humanity that everyone is able to make the
spiritual journey that I have made while still incarnate, and return a
new being, remade by God in Love. Namaste, all!
If all of these things are
true about the Soul, why do we seem so persistently to return to the
illusion of Maya and sensory experience? Well, obviously, due to the
presence of the body of flesh which sustains that sensory
experience. But this apparently simple condition is much more involved
than first glance indicates. Referring to Karma, Dharma, and Maya, in
the preceding paragraph, all three of these have specific, interactive
relationships with the Soul, and therein lies the subtle complexity of
Enlightenment and Soul Realization.
God expresses Universal Love
through the outpouring of Creation, and the seed form of everything
Created is the Soul, or Spiritual Essence, of its physical expression on
the Physical Plane of objects and objective processes directly
perceptible in the senses. This realm of direct perception is Maya
– the illusion of a continuum of form created through and by the action
of the senses. Because this illusion is also subject to the ongoing and
ever-expanding interpretation of the ego based on memory and
self-interest, it is the ego interpretation of objective meaning that we
“know”, not (in the case of most human observers) the spiritual
vibration of the object or process in question. We must have
been seeking, and successfully achieved, spiritual perception before
this spiritual vibration can be experienced. Spiritual perception is
achieved by turning away from ego processing through engaging in
some suitable spiritual practice like Yoga, Cabala, or meditation. So,
one must learn an entirely new spiritual method of experiencing the
Physical Plane to know the ultimate Truth of perception, the
spiritual vibration, as opposed to an ego interpretation nested in
illusion and Maya.
The spiritual vibration is
the perception of the Soul of an object or process emanating on the
Physical Plane – or on the successively Higher Planes – and this Soul
will be identifiable by at least some of the characteristics listed
earlier in this essay. And even though everything has a Soul, the
human Soul is very close, perhaps of the utmost closeness, to the
Logos which created it. Only the ego, and ego interpretation,
prevents the direct perception of spiritual vibration, the Soul, and God
– even the simple action of the physical senses by itself is not
sufficiently obstructive to hold the illusion of Maya in place – this
requires the influence of the ego. Now, the term Karma literally
translates as action in Sanskrit, and this has many implications
for perception on the Physical Plane. The first “action” to be
considered here is the action of ego interpretation itself. The ego
normally has no perception of its role as observer and interpreter on
the Physical Plane – it simply carries out both functions more or less
automatically. Its role in either case must be brought to its attention
by some kind of external epiphany or synchronicity. This calling
to personal attention is frequently the gateway to Enlightenment
for the otherwise unenlightened individual, who has, prior to this
event, been functionally sleep-walking through life. When, after a long
and fruitless string of enquiries and been made to the Buddha regarding
his state of mind, an exasperated Initiate finally said “Well, if all of
these things are what you are not, what then are you?!” the
Buddha simply replied “I am awake”. The ego thinks it is
awake, and in control, when its very nature is that of the sleeper,
drawing the veil of Maya across the Truth as its sole and only real
function in life! That is the First Karma – the creation of Maya by the
ego. The Second Karma is the nature of the ego’s perception of action
on the Physical Plane – as a sequence of linear episodes governed by
causal physical logic, when all action proceeds directly from God as an
expression of Creation. God is in control, and Love is in control – the
ego is not. The expression of apparent causality and
intervention is yet another feature of Maya, and it is the
responsibility and entitlement of the Initiate to penetrate this aspect
of the veil of illusion and discover the Truth concealed behind it.
Karma as represented by the
physical formations of objects and processes on the Physical Plane, is
essentially a complex series of mirrors for the Soul – on every
occasion in which we suppose we are experiencing and interacting with an
“object”, or series of objects, we are really interacting with a
relatively slowly vibrating reflection of the personal Soul, held in
place by a “piece” of God put there by the Logos as a gift to the Soul
to enhance its spiritual evolution! Furthermore, what is meant through
the use of the term “evolution” here is the shift in perception from the
ego illusion of Maya to the total experience of the Logos as Divine Love
and Light. This is the Soul’s challenge during incarnation – to Ascend
in Spirit back to the highest level of Manifestation, back to God,
through the attainment of God Realization. In conjunction with this
process, it is the ego’s challenge to realize that it, and we
ourselves as egos, are social fictions that obscure the
Truth, and to then stand aside to permit the parting of the Veil of Maya
while we are incarnate on the Physical Plane.
The process of Spiritual
Evolution is accomplished by Dharma – the development of
Enlightenment as experienced through good works, devotion to Holy duty,
and the attainment of compassion. Dharma is the process by which
the Soul becomes God Realized, or God-Like, during the term of
incarnation on the Physical Plane. As the journey through the Planes of
Ascension progresses, and the comprehension of the higher meaning and
purpose in life beyond the collection of material objects continues to
develop and expand, the ability to sense the Presence of the Soul also
progresses. And along with this improved intuitive perception of the
Soul, the Soul itself is spiritually activated and enhanced as a
more God Realized entity in a combined process of Ascension. In
essence, Being is quite literally Becoming on the Atmic
Plane, and this characteristic of spiritual growth continues in this way
on all of the Planes of Ascension to follow.
Once the overarching
importance of the Soul as the driver of consciousness and personal focus
of Ascension is comprehended by the Initiate – and this may be the
ongoing work of a lifetime of sacrifice and austerity – and the
principles of selfless love and compassion are incorporated as the
foundation pieces of spiritual practice, thus infusing the Heart Chakra
with the Kundalini, the Path is open to the succession of Planes and
corresponding Chakras beyond. The work of Soul Realization in the Heart
is progressive, and as it moves forward, so does the Kundalini, carrying
the Ascension process with it into the remaining Planes and Chakras.
Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned in working with the
Heart is that of patience, as so much imperfection is revealed and
accepted for the sake of humility, compassion, and the Soul.
The next essay in the
Ascension Series deals with the Atmic Plane, the Fifth Plane of
Ascension. As might be expected, this Plane is involved with the next
step beyond Soul Realization, known in the Eastern Mysteries as Self
Realization. The Atmic Plane is analogous to the Fifth Chakra,
Vishuddah, the Chakra of Divine Intonation, and the process of Divine
Communication – not only the inner communion of the Soul and
Logos, but external communication about both, and about spiritual
living in the material world. I welcome your return to the Spiritual
Ascension Series, and the illumination of the Atmic Plane!
- With Love, Alan -
(CR2008, Alan Schneider)
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