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Esoteric Psychology I - Section One - II. Certain Questions and their Answers
Question 5 What is the Meaning of the following words: Sentiency; Consciousness or Awareness; The Energy of Light? We shall now consider our last question, and I shall indicate to you, in general terms, - necessarily limited by the inadequacy [130] of language, - the significance of the outstanding soul qualities: Sentiency, or sensitive response to contact, and by that means the subsequent growth in knowledge. Consciousness, awareness of environment, and the development of instruments whereby consciousness may be increasingly developed. Light, or radiation, the effect of the interplay between the life and the environment. The first point that I seek to make is a difficult one to grasp for those beneath the rank of initiate or accepted disciple of the higher stages. The soul is that factor in matter (or rather that which emerges out of the contact between spirit and matter) which produces sentient response and what we call consciousness in its varying forms; it is also that latent or subjective essential quality which makes itself felt as light or luminous radiation. It is the "self-shining from within" which is characteristic of all forms. Matter, per se, and in its undifferentiated state, prior to being swept into activity through the creative process, is not possessed of soul, and does not therefore possess the qualities of response and of radiation. Only when, - in the creative and evolutionary process, - these two are brought into conjunction and fusion does the soul appear and give to these two aspects of divinity the opportunity to manifest as a trinity and the chance to demonstrate sentient activity and magnetic radiatory light. As all that we shall posit in this treatise is to be approached from the angle of human evolution, it might be stated that only when the soul aspect is dominant is the response apparatus (the form nature of man) fulfiling its complete destiny, and only then does true magnetic radiation and the pure shining forth of light become possible. Symbolically, in the early stages of human evolution, [131] man is, from the angle of consciousness, relatively unresponsive and unconscious, as is matter in its early stages in the formative process. The achievement of full awareness is of course the goal of the evolutionary process. Again symbolically speaking, the unevolved man emits or manifests no light. The light in the head is invisible, though the clairvoyant investigators would see the dim glow of the light within the elements which constitute the body, and the light hidden in the atoms which constitute the form nature. As evolution proceeds, these dim points of "dark light" intensify their glow; the light within the head flickers at intervals during the life of the average man, and becomes a shining light as he enters upon the path of discipleship. When he becomes an initiate, the light of the atoms is so bright, and the light in the head so intense (with a paralleling stimulation of the centers of force in the body), that the light body appears. Eventually this body of light becomes externalized and of greater prominence than the dense tangible physical body. This is the body of light in which the true son of God consciously dwells. After the third initiation, the dual light becomes accentuated and takes on a still greater brilliancy through the blending with it of the energy of spirit. This is not really the admission or the recombining of a third light, but the fanning of the light of matter and the light of the soul into a greater glory through the Breath of the spirit. Something anent this light has been earlier indicated in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire. Study it and seek to understand the significance of this process. In the understanding of these aspects of light comes a truer perspective as to the nature of the fires in the human expression of divinity. It must never be forgotten that the soul of all things, the anima mundi, as it expresses itself through all the four kingdoms in nature, is that which gives to our planet its light in [132] the heavens. The planetary light is the sum total of the light, dim and uncertain, to be found in all atoms of radiatory and vibratory matter or substance, which compose all forms in all kingdoms. Added to this, there is, within the planet and also within each kingdom in nature, the correspondence to the etheric body with its centers of radiant energy, found underlying or "substanding" the outer physical form. Man's etheric body is a corporate part of the planetary etheric body, and constitutes its most refined and most highly developed aspect. As the aeons pass away there is a growing intensity of light radiating forth from our planet. This does not necessarily mean that a dweller on Neptune would see our planet glowing with an increasingly brighter light, though this does happen in a few cases in the universe. But it means that, from the standpoint of a clairvoyant vision, the etheric planetary body will grow in vivid radiation and glory as that radiation expresses more and more the true light of the soul.
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