The Community of Triangles and the Over-Soul
Or, The Practicality of Triangles in the Local Life
In the Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Oversoul is the vital force in the universe in which all souls participate and therefore transcends individual consciousness. Through the Over-Soul, every individual is connected to every other living entity in the universe. Emerson’s essay, The Over-Soul,* is considered one of his greatest works. In that essay, he states:
“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE…We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.” For familiar with her works, Alice Bailey also used the term Over-Soul.
Communities are collectives of these individual souls. As with individuals, every community has a soul. Intentional effort to form a receptacle for the Over-Soul should enhance the spiritual vitality of any community. Individuals must eventually build personal bridges to the Over-Soul. However, at this time in Planetary evolution and crisis, communities are the best instruments for bridging to the Over-Soul to solve the major issues facing all of us. This bridging occurs through the Common Good, a practical manifestation of Goodwill.
Through deliberate practice, any community can initiate a new spirituality for itself – new only because it is a conscious step toward the Over-Soul. Grasping the meaning of these last words is vital: this spirituality is new only because it is a conscious step by the community toward the Over-Soul.
Through intentional balancing of the soul of the community with the emergent qualities of the Over-Soul, an intensifying “harmony of similarity1” with the Over-Soul occurs.
A “natural” link to the Over-Soul occurs in altruistic and idealistic communities. In these communities, one may feel the essence of the Over-Soul. This feeling of communion which one experiences in spiritually maturing communities is the first half of the spiritual bridge that descends to Humanity from the Over-Soul. A more definitive relationship to the Over-Soul may result from intentional community meditation which seeks conscious alignment with the Over-Soul. In this light, Triangles may be seen to be a distributed community 3 of reception, connection, and radiation.
This first half of the bridge to the Over-Soul is a permanent offering of the Over-Soul into planetary life – a spiritual anchor if you will.2 This anchor is always present whether realized as the Over-Soul anchor or not. The anchor exists in individuals. It lives diffused in communities and in nations. Significantly, the realization of the Over-Soul in a community is dependent mostly upon the similarity of the community consciousness with the Over-Soul, hence the above use of the phrase, “harmony of similarity.”
This spiritual anchor of the Over-Soul is Its urge to emergence. Through conscious response to this urge, communities and nations can become receptive to the Over-Soul. The process is a matter of alignment with the essential yet straightforward qualities of the Over-Soul. It is a matter of “like attracting like.” This mutual attraction is the emerging “harmony of similarity.”
Humanity’s response to the Over-Soul generally has been uneven, selfish, and mostly limited to individuals. In both local and distributed 3 communities, members can enlarge response to the Over-Soul because the community is a larger receptacle for this urge to emergence.
Something called epigenetics is the concrete science which studies the way “non-genetic factors cause the organism's genes to behave (or ‘express themselves’) differently than DNA might normally cause.”** Quite simply, “we are not the victims of our genes.” Or still, “nurture apparently affects nature” more than hitherto thought – at least by the concrete scientists, that is. Using an analogy, we can modify this definition and apply the term “spiritual epigenetics” to communities as receptacles for the Over-Soul. This spiritual epigenetics3: “modifies the community through the ‘environmental influence’ of the Over-Soul and thus achieves Communion, an emergent higher state of being of the community.” This Communion in the community is the conscious experience of the Love of the Over-Soul in its first stage.
The Universal Common Good is the second half of the bridge to the Over-Soul. This second half brings Light to the Love of the first half. Humanity must build this bridge itself using humanity’s inherent capacity for Light. In a sense, the Universal Common Good is the meeting place4 of Light and Love. The Over-Soul awaits manifestation through the initiation of the second half of the bridge, i.e., the Common Good built by Humanity. That is to say, Humanity must match the Over-Soul’s urge to emergence with the urge to synthesis - a compelling “will-to-good.” This will-to-good invokes the Over-Soul precisely due to its “harmony of similarity” with the Will of the Over-Soul: The Over-Soul ever wills the good of Its manifested Whole. Humanity must “adopt” this essential attitude – yes, attitude! - of the Over-Soul to balance manifestation of Love and Mind, the other “straightforward” qualities of the Over-Soul.
It is focused will-to-good that is the power to compel the emergence of Light and Love on a Planetary scale.
Community and Communion writ large are, in one sense, the “spiritual yin and yang" compelling expression of the Common Good, and thereby evoking the cooperative emergence of the Over-Soul. Challenging as the idea may be for some, we may imagine Communion with the Over-Soul representing the vertical arm of an even-armed cross, a most ancient spiritual symbol. This vertical arm penetrates upward toward the Over-Soul, the source and cause, and reaches downward toward Humanity, the intended receptacle and effect of the Over-Soul. An aligned Community may be seen to represent the horizontal arm of the even-armed cross – receiving the precipitating Will, Love and Mind of the Over-Soul in greater abundance. Through the community’s efforts at the expression of the Common Good, it becomes a channel for the vitality of the Over-Soul - the “water of life poured forth for thirsty men” of Aquarius. Communion and Community is a spiritual cross that any community can consciously mount.
In conclusion, building upon small community bridges on into the future, a "communion of communities,” if achieved, should further facilitate the emergence of the Over-Soul on a broader scale. The linking element between these small community bridges is surely the Triangles network of Light and Love, “so close to the heart of the Hierarchy at this time.”5
*The Over-Soul
**Wikipedia contributors. (2019, March 2). Epigenetics. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13:14, March 2, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epigenetics&oldid=886424749
1 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, p.585; (At the page, press [CTRL+F]’ type “harmony of similarity” in search box); link to similarity;
2 For years now, I have thought of this half as a “wormhole in consciousness,” extending from the Over-Soul to humanity. Humanity now must build its own “wormhole in consciousness” to the Over-Soul. But that’s just an analogy that works for me.
3Link to behavioral epigenetics;The Extended Mind; distributed cognition; general article on epigenetics
4The image of an hourglass may be helpful: the union of the upper and lower chambers symbolizes the Common Good. In this image, the Common Good would be seen to be the lowest point of the Over-Soul and the highest point of human attainment. The upper chamber contains the vital “spiritual impression” that is the urge to emergence of the Over-Soul. Humanity blocks this flow – or severely limits it – at the very junction with the Over-Soul. This junction is the will-to-good, driving the opening of that junction of communion through the expression of the Common Good in the lower chamber – Humanity. Communities can widen that junction of communion greater than individuals in contact with the Over-Soul. These “isolated” humans merely “point the way.” They inspire. But inspiration must give way to manifestation. Thus is the “harmony of similarity” achieved.
5DINA, II, p. 168 [CTRL+F – then type “close to the heart” in search box that appears]