PREVIOUS     |     HOME     |     TOC      |     ABR      |     NEXT

Three things emerge in connection with the task of the Soul as it appropriates sheath after sheath for expression:

1. The condition of the substance of the sheaths which determines the equipment.
2. Responsiveness to the pattern, which is dependent upon the stage of conscious development.
3. Ability to work in connection with the Plan, which is dependent upon the number and quality of the

               crises undergone.

All this takes place as the Soul passes, time after time, through the experience of physical incarnation; later, progress is made consciously from plane to plane and this is undertaken with clear intent. The work is facilitated and progresses with increased rapidity as the Soul, actively, intelligently and intuitively, begins to work with the pattern, transmitting from crisis to crisis (each marking an expansion of consciousness) a newer reach of development and a fresh grasp of the great Design, coupled with a better and more adequate equipment through which to carry on the work.

The above should prove to be immediately practical. Initiation carried to its consummation, as far as humanity is concerned, produces the liberated Master of the Wisdom, free from the limitations of the individual, garnering the fruits of the individualisation process and functioning increasingly as the solar angel, because focused primarily in the inner Spiritual body.

We have thus touched upon the three great divisions which mark the Soul's progress towards its goal:

1. Through the process of Individualisation, the Soul arrives at a true self-consciousness and awareness in the three worlds of its experience. The actor in the drama of life masters his part.

2. Through the process of Initiation, the Soul becomes aware of the essential nature of divinity. Participation in full consciousness with the group and the absorption of the personal and individual into the Whole, characterise this stage on the path of evolution.

3. Finally comes that mysterious process wherein the Soul becomes so absorbed into that supreme Reality and Synthesis through Identification that even the consciousness of the group fades out, except when deliberately recovered in the work of service.

It should be noted here, therefore, that there are, literally, two points of identification in the long experience of the Soul. One marks the stage wherein form, matter, substance, time and space are controlling factors, and imprison the Soul within their types of consciousness. This connotes identification with form life. The other connotes identification with all that lies outside of form expression and is released from it.

BASIC PREMISES

With this preamble, we will pass on to the consideration of the mechanism and of that which infuses it and motivates it with life and intelligence. Certain basic premises are recognised and can, therefore, be very briefly mentioned:

1. The Soul informs the mechanism in two ways and through two points of contact in the body:

1. The "thread of life" is anchored in the heart. The life principle is there to be found, and from that station it pervades the entire physical body through the medium of the blood stream, for "the blood is the life".

2. The "thread of consciousness" or of intelligence is anchored in the head, in the region of the pineal gland, and from that station of perception it orders or directs the Physical plane activities, through the medium of the brain and the nervous system.

2. The directive activity of the Soul, or its authoritative grasp upon the mechanism of the body, is

        dependent for its extent upon the point of development, or upon the so-called "age of the Soul". The

        Soul is ageless from the human angle, and what is really meant is the length of time that a Soul has

        employed the method of physical incarnation.

169

PREVIOUS     |     HOME     |     TOC     |     NEXT