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III. The Five Groups of Souls

We now begin our study of the five groups of souls.  For purposes of classification and comparison, we shall divide our earth humanity into the following groups:

 

1. Lemurian Egos...............................

our true Earth Humanity.

2. Egos which came in.......................

on Atlantis.

3. Moon chain Egos...........................

from the moon.

4. Egos...............................................

from other planets.

5. Rare and advanced Egos..............

awaiting incarnation.

 

We enter, therefore, upon a brief consideration of a subject that, to the ordinary psychologist and student who is not familiar with the occult teaching and terms, will sound fanciful and unintelligent.  The reason for this is that we are considering the origin of the souls which are expressing themselves through human beings, of the selves who are functioning through form and are therefore intangible and—scientifically speaking—non-provable.  They are only to be inferred by those who can accept inference, deduction and conclusions which cannot be demonstrated, with the type of human equipment now in use.  Modern psychology, speaking generally, regards the soul in one or another of the following ways:—

1. Either non-existent, the only obvious and provable thing being the intelligent mechanism.

2. As being the sum total of the conscious reactions of the cells of the body—the sentiency of the organism, in other words.

3. As a gradually evolving self, conveying life and, as time elapses, awareness; it is regarded as being conditioned by the body and as a product of the evolution of that [202] body during the ages.  It does not, however, exist in the lower types of human beings, and it possibly possesses immortality, but that is not provable and may not be posited as a fact.

4. As a definite Self, an entity, informing a body, functioning at various levels of human consciousness, and having continuity, immortality and potentiality.

The occult teaching accepts all these hypotheses as correct, but as relative in time and space, and as having reference to different forms of divine life and to differing aspects of those forms.  It is with the occult teaching, right or wrong, that we are at present engaged, and our premises and conclusions can be stated in the following propositions:

1. Every human being, in or out of incarnation, is a "fragment of divinity," and an outpost of the divine consciousness, functioning in time and space for purposes of expression.

2. All these souls, selves, or human beings are found, as we have seen, on one or other of the seven emanations of spiritual energy, issuing forth from God at the beginning of an era of creative activity.  They return to their emanating Source when that particular cycle is brought to a close.

3. In the interim between emanation and reabsorption, these souls pass through various experiences until such time as they can "shine forth in all their exactitude of truth."

4. They are called, as has been stated, in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire (See page 855.)

1. Lotuses of revelation.

2. Lotuses with perfume.

3. Radiant lotuses.

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4. Lotuses wherein the flower is on the point of opening.

5. Lotuses of closed and sealed condition.

6. The colourless lotuses.

7. Lotuses in bud.

5. These souls, cycling through various forms of life in the long evolutionary process arrive eventually at full, self-conscious existence.  By this we mean that they are self-determined, self-conditioned, and self-aware.  They are also conscious of and responsive to their environment.

6. Once this conscious awareness is achieved, then progress becomes more rapid.  It should be borne in mind that many human beings are not thus aware.  The groupings which arise out of this awareness (limiting our ideas entirely to those within the radius of the human family) can be expressed as follows:—

1. The souls who live but whose consciousness sleeps.  These are the dormant human beings whose intelligence is of such a low order, and their awareness of themselves and of life is so dim and nebulous, that only the lowest forms of human existence come into this category.  Racially, nationally, and tribally they do not exist as pure types, but occasionally such a person emerges in the slums of our great cities.  They are like a "throw back" and never appear among what are called the natural savages, or the peasantry.

2. The souls who are simply aware of physical plane life and of sensation.  These people are slow, inert, inarticulate, bewildered by their [204] environment, but they are not bewildered, as are the more advanced and emotional types, by events.  They have no sense of time or of purpose; they can seldom be trained along any mental line, and they very rarely exhibit skill in any direction.  They can dig and carry, under direction; they eat, sleep and procreate, following the natural instincts of the animal body.  Emotionally, however, they are asleep, and mentally they are totally unawakened.  These too are relatively rare, though several thousands of them can be found upon our planet.  They can be recognised through their complete incapacity to respond to emotional and mental training and culture.

3. The souls who are beginning to integrate and who are emotionally and psychically alive.  In them, of course, the animal nature is awake and the desire nature is becoming rampant.  These people are to be found in all races to a small extent, and a number of them can be found among the negroes, which race contains a large number of those who are today relatively children.  These are child souls, and though the mental equipment is there and some of them can be trained to use it, the preponderance of the life emphasis is entirely upon physical activity as it is motivated by the desire for satisfaction of some kind, and by a shallow "wish-life" or desire nature, almost entirely oriented towards the physical [205] life.  These souls are the modern correspondences to the old Lemurian cultures.

4. The souls who are primarily emotional.  The mind nature is not functioning strongly, and only rarely does it swing into activity, and the physical body is slipping steadily into the realm of the unconscious.  In every race and nation there are millions of such souls in existence.  They may be regarded as the modern Atlanteans.

5. Those souls who can now be classed as intelligent human beings, capable of mental application, if trained, and showing that they can think when need arises.  They are still, nevertheless, predominantly emotional.  They constitute the bulk of modern humanity at this time.  They are the average citizens of our modern world,—good, well-intentioned, capable of intense emotional activity, with the feeling nature almost over-developed, and oscillating between the life of the senses and that of the mind.  They swing between the poles of experience.  Their lives are spent in an astral turmoil, but they have steadily increasing interludes wherein the mind can momentarily make itself felt, and thus at need effect important decisions.  These are the nice good people, who are, nevertheless, largely controlled by the mass consciousness, because they are relatively unthinking.  They can be regimented and standardised with facility by orthodox religion and government [206] and are the "sheep" of the human family.

6. The souls who think, and who are minds.  These are steadily increasing in number and gaining in power as our educational processes and our scientific discoveries bring results, and expand human awareness.  They constitute the cream of the human family, and are the people who are achieving success in some department of human life.  They are writers, artists, thinkers in various fields of human knowledge and aspiration, politicians, religious leaders, scientists, skilled workers and artisans, and all those who, though in the front rank, yet take ideas and propositions and work with them for the ultimate benefit of the human family.  They are the world aspirants, and those who are beginning to get the ideal of service into their consciousness.

7. Those souls whose sense of awareness on the physical plane is now of such an order that they can pass on to the Probationary Path.  They are the mystics, conscious of duality, torn between the pairs of opposites, but who are yet unable to rest until they are polarised in the soul.  These are the sensitive, struggling people, who long for release from failure and from existence in the world today.  Their mind natures are alive and active but they cannot yet control them as they should and the higher illumination remains as yet a joyous hope and final possibility.

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8. Souls whose intelligence and love nature is becoming so awakened and integrated that they can begin to tread the Path of Discipleship.  They are the practical mystics, or the occultists, of modern times.

9. The souls who are initiate into the mysteries of the kingdom of God.  These are souls who are not only conscious of their vehicles of expression, the integrated personality, and conscious also of themselves as souls, but they know, past all controversy, that there is no such thing as "my soul and your soul," but simply "the Soul".  They know this not only as a mental proposition, and as a sensed reality, but also as a fact in their own consciousness.

10. The souls who have achieved release from all the limitations of the form nature and who dwell eternally in the consciousness of the One Soul, withdrawn from identification with any aspiration of the form life, no matter how highly developed.  They can and do use the form at will for the purposes of the general good.  These are the Masters of Life, the perfected adepts.

Higher than this we need not go, except by inference.  A detailed analysis is not, however, in order, owing to the limitations of men's minds.  The above is only a wide generalisation, and the various groupings shade into each other in a bewildering way.  The varieties of intermediate types are myriad, but this analysis will serve as a skeleton structure upon which to build.

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7. In the development of the race at this time, we can now study the types, the qualities of these souls, the apparatus of response which they must use, and the nature of the mechanism of contact which they have constructed in order to enable them to function in the world as we know it today.  Science and religion together are producing that latest of the sciences which we call psychology.  For this, the time is now ripe.

8. All these manifesting souls have come forth from some Source at some time in their cyclic expressions.  This, to the modern thinker, is purely speculative, and can be regarded probably unprofitable; it may also be interesting, but is presumably imaginative.  May I say here that the occultist regards all the above affirmative statements as constituting an exact and proven science, but as being presented in symbolic form for the consideration of the minds of men.  Esotericists and theosophists would do well to remember this, and to realise that their divisions and groupings, their affirmations and statements about occult teaching, and their pronouncements as to time and place are largely symbolical and must be thus considered.

9. The process whereby the soul nature and the form nature meet and blend is termed individualisation.

1. Individualisation is the emergence of the soul upon the path of outgoing, through the medium of a form.  Thus through the use of a form, expression in the three worlds becomes possible.

2. Initiation is the process whereby a soul, having exhausted the resources of form life, and [209] having thus achieved mastery and expression, returns again to its source.  This the soul does through the medium of five stages, steps or initiations which are the correspondence in the interior life of the soul to the five stages whereby expression is developed in the strictly human races, beginning with the Lemurian stage, passing through the Atlantean and the Aryan, and so on through the two final races upon our planet in this world cycle.

In connection with individualisation the following points should be remembered:—

1. Individualisation upon the moon chain took place in the fifth race of the third round.

2. In Lemurian days, individualisation took place because it was the third root race and the fourth round.

3. In Atlantis, the door of initiation opened, and forced initiation became the objective of the best of the human family.  Those who could or can thus become initiate are the "lights which ever radiate."  In Lemurian days it was the "lights which ever burn" that came into being.

4. In our race we find the "lights which ever shine."  This is the individualisation of the sixth race types who came in the second round.

It is well to remember that the soul who came into incarnation in old Atlantis individualised upon that chain which is called the moon chain.  This was a period of unfoldment so much earlier than that of our earth that we know nothing about it.  These egos, therefore, did not individualise on our [210] earth at all but came into our cycle of evolution as human beings,—of a low order as far as the lowest of our present humanity is concerned, but somewhat higher than the egos which individualised upon ancient Lemuria.

It might be of interest here to note that Christ was the first of our earth humanity to achieve the goal, whereas the Buddha was the last of the moon chain humanity to do so.  As far as the development of these two sons of God was concerned, so rapid was the development of the Christ that in Atlantean days He found Himself upon the Path of Probation as did also the Buddha.  He, coming into incarnation from the moon chain (having been held in what the occult teaching calls "pralaya" till that time), entered upon the probationary Path a very short time ahead of His Brother, the Christ.  From the angle of evolution the rapid unfoldment of the evolution of Christ was, and has been, totally unparallelled.  It has never been duplicated, though there are people living today upon the planet who are beginning to develop now with equal rapidity (but not earlier, so that they have a background of slow individual development, which is only now being accelerated).  This rapidity is, however, a different matter altogether, for many of the disciples today came into this earth evolution from the moon chain where already much had been unfolded.  They have not worked up to their present point from Lemurian times as the Christ has done.  He, therefore, stands uniquely alone.

Just how and why egos come into our planetary evolution from earlier cycles and from other planetary systems is a subject of the greatest interest, but it is of no real importance to the students of this Treatise.  We shall not therefore consider it or deal with it.  It is of a speculative nature and utterly past their possible corroboration or capacity to check.  There is no standard of comparison nor can they judge by inference [211] what is important.  All that can be said is that the three major monadic types came into being, either from the moon chain or during the Lemurian stage of individualisation, and that these three determine much that is transpiring today.  All that it is here possible to do is to give some information which may throw a light on the subject, and colour our general thought, but which it is impossible either to check or accept except as being inferential or possible.  All this can later be determined by the student when his knowledge and powers are greater than they are at present and adequate for that purpose.

The three major types are, as is well known, those of will or power, of love-wisdom and of active intelligence.  The following facts must, therefore, be remembered:—

1. That egos of all types individualised upon the moon chain, but that the egos of active intelligence constituted 75% of the total, the remaining 25% being divided between the other two.

2. That in Lemurian times, the egos of love-wisdom preponderated, and in their turn constituted 75%, with the remaining 25% being the egos of active intelligence.  Very few indeed, practically a negligible number, individualised along the line of power or will at that time.

3. There was a very large influx of individualising egos in early Atlantean days and they were practically all of the power-will type.  It might be stated that 80% of those who entered human evolution at that time were egos who were expressing the will aspect of deity, and that the remaining 20% were along the line of love-wisdom.

These all, with the egos which individualised upon the moon chain and which came in steadily, as the planetary conditions fitted them, until the final stages of the Atlantean period, [212] constitute the bulk of our modern humanity, plus some rare egos which drift into our planetary evolution for some reason or other, and never become properly adapted to or fitted into our planetary life.  They persistently remain abnormalities.

Two happenings of great import will occur before so very long.  The door will be opened, for the admittance of rare and peculiar souls who will bring into our world civilisation new aspects and rare and new qualities of Deity, though it will not be opened for ordinary individualisation.  These rare and unexpected types will cause much bewilderment to our psychologists.  It should here be pointed out that individualisation is a crisis and not an unfoldment.  This is of real importance and should be borne in mind in all consideration of this difficult subject.  It is the result of development, but such development need not lead to this particular crisis.  What causes this crisis in the lives of souls remains as yet hidden in the consciousness of the planetary Logos and is only revealed at initiation.  There are as yet characteristics and qualities of the planetary Logos which remain incomprehensible to us.

When the animal kingdom, viewing it from the angle of the whole and not from the angle of species, had reached a particular stage of development, then there was an inrush into the planetary life of the energy of all the seven rays simultaneously.  This occurs very rarely and the tremendous stimulation then undergone by the sensitive forms of life (and of these the animal was at that time the most sensitive), produced the emergence of a new form, that of infant humanity.  It was the reaction of that kingdom, as expressed through its indwelling life, the animal Being (who is the informing Life of that kingdom in nature), which produced individualisation in the more advanced animal-man of the time.

The statements found in occult books that dogs and other [213] animals responded to the divine impulse through an activity of the will or of love, may be symbolic in nature, but are not correct literally, as so many devout occult students may think.  Such specific forms of life did not exist in those far off times, particularly upon the moon chain.  The consideration of species and of types may not be permitted; it is futile and a waste of time.  What really occurred was a reaction throughout the entire animal kingdom to the inpouring of the three major types of energy, which expressed themselves through the usual seven types and thus called forth response from those forms of life which were energised through the medium of the three major centres—heart, head and throat—of the Being who is the informing life.  A tremendous surging upward and a going-forth in response ensued, which enabled a new kingdom to emerge.

A creative act is ever the result of inspiration being seized upon, recognised for what it is, and developed by the form side, and understood and fostered by the brain and the heart of man.  Some new thing is thus produced.  The instinctive creative act of the physical body is not here discussed.  In this way, through a response to inspiration, the animal kingdom came into being.  First, there was the pouring in of energy, stimulating and inspiring; then there came the recognition of the responding form, resulting in an initiated activity, and then there was the production of that which had not been theretofore.  Thus a new kingdom in nature appeared.

This same thing it is that is again happening today in the world.  There is a pouring in of spiritual energy, vitalising, transforming, and rendering humanity creative.  Initiatory work becomes possible and a new and higher kingdom can appear upon the earth.  But all this is due, as before, to the pouring in of a triple energy in seven ways.  The potency of [214] these forces lies behind the disruption of the present time, but a new kingdom in nature will be born.

The interest of this, psychologically speaking, does not lie in the historicity of the facts stated, but in the appearance upon earth today of the higher types at present found amongst men everywhere.  Egos of will are relatively and naturally few; egos of love are becoming more frequent in appearance; intelligent egos are widely distributed.  There is a balance now being established between the egos of love and of intelligence, and these together must and will inaugurate the new civilisation which will be the field for the culture of the kingdom of God on earth.  The coming of this kingdom will be as much a precipitation of an inner reality as an unseen factor, such as a germ, working within a human body.  This precipitation and culturing of the germ kingdom is slowly happening.