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Esoteric Psychology I - Section One - II. Certain Questions and their Answers
C. The soul is (and here words limit and distort) a unit of light, colored by a particular ray vibration; it is a vibrating center of energy found within the appearance or form of its entire ray life. It is one of seven groups of millions of lives which in their totality constitute the One Life. From its very nature, the soul is conscious or aware in three directions. It is God-conscious; it is group-conscious; it is self-conscious. This self-conscious aspect is brought to fruition in the phenomenal appearance of a human being; the group-conscious aspect retains the human state of consciousness, but adds to it awareness of its ray life, progressively unfolded; its awareness then is the awareness of love, of quality, of spirit in its relationships; it is God-conscious only potentially, and in that unfoldment lies, for the soul, its own growth upward and outward after its self-conscious aspect is perfected and its group-awareness is recognized. The soul therefore has the following points, or appearances: Aspirants who are studying and training themselves to live the life of service might be regarded as having reached the point where the line is to be found. To visualize this correctly [42] the sign should be regarded as in rapid revolution, thus producing a turning wheel, which is the wheel of life. Let me again repeat: The soul is the son of God, the product of the union of spirit and matter. The soul is an embodiment of conscious mind, the expression, if one might so phrase it, of divine intelligent awareness. The soul is a unit of energy, vibrating in unison with one of the seven ray Lives, and colored by a particular ray light. The personality of the soul is intended to be an embodiment of love, applied with intelligence and producing those "attractive" forms which will serve to express that loving intelligence. The soul in its turn is intended to be the embodiment of divine purpose or will, intelligently applied in the great creative work, which is produced through the power of creative love. Each son of God can say: I am born of the love of the Father for the Mother, of the desire of life for form. I express, therefore, the love and the magnetic attractiveness of the God nature, and the responsiveness of the form nature, and am consciousness itself, aware of Deity or Life. Each intelligent point of life can say: I am the product of intelligent will, working through intelligent activity and producing a world of created forms which embody or veil the loving purpose of Deity. Each vibrating unit of energy can say: I am part of a divine whole, which in its septenary nature expresses the love and life of the One Reality, colored by one of the seven qualities of the love of Deity and responsive to the other qualities. For our purposes in this treatise, we must grasp the fact [43] that the world of appearances is energized by and vibrating to the world of qualities or values, which world, in its turn, is energized by or vibrating to the world of purpose or of will. Therefore, as is stated in The Secret Doctrine and in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, the electric fire of will, and the solar fire of love, in cooperation with fire by friction, produce the world of created and creative forms. These proceed under the law of attractive magnetic love towards the evolutionary accomplishment of a purpose at present inscrutable. This purpose remains unknown only on account of the limitations of the "appearance" which is not yet responsive to the quality. When the illusory appearance and the veiled quality of the life are known and comprehended the underlying purpose will emerge with clarity. Indications of this can be dimly sensed and the attribute of this growing awareness can be noted in the tendency of modern thought to speak of patterns and of plans, of blue prints and synthetic formulations of ideas, and in the tracing of historical developments - national, racial, human and psychological. As we read, ponder and study, the dim outlines of the Plan appear, but until the consciousness has transcended all human limitations and has included the subhuman, as well as the superhuman, within its range of contacts, the true Plan cannot be rightly grasped. The will, lying behind the purpose, cannot be understood until the consciousness has transcended even that of the superhuman man, and has become one with the divine. Will or the energy of life are synonymous terms and are an abstraction, existing apart from all form expression. The will-to-be emerges from outside the solar system altogether. It is the all-pervading energy of God which informs with a fraction of itself the solar system, and yet remains outside. Plan and purpose concern the emanating energies of that central Life and involve duality - will or the life urge plus attractive [44] magnetic love which, in its turn, is the response of the vibrating universal substance to the impact of the energy of will. This initial activity precedes the creative process of form building; and the play of the divine will on the ocean of space, matter, or etheric substance produced the first differentiation into the major rays, and their mutual interplay produced the minor four rays. Thus the seven emanations, the seven potencies and the seven rays came into manifestation. They are the seven breaths of the one Life, the seven basic energies; they streamed forth from the center formed by the impact of the will of God on divine substance, and divided into seven streams of force. The radius of the influence of these seven streams determined the extent or scope of activity of a solar system and "outlined" the limits of the form of the incarnated cosmic Christ. Each of these seven streams or emanations of energy was colored by a divine quality, an aspect of love, and all of them were needed for the ultimate perfecting of the latent and unrevealed purpose.
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