In our journey into the topic of reincarnation, we have looked at the descent of the monad, from its causal body, into a physical-etheric body. During this journey, it has picked up a mental and emotional envelope. After the incarnation, these envelopes being to disintegrate in a pre-determined sequence. The etheric envelope disintegrates almost immediately and the monad then processes the contents of its emotional envelope. When it has rid itself of those desires that locked it into uncomfortable patterns of behaviour, it rises into a consensus environment. Here it can fantasise whatever it wants. Eventually, the monad realises that this is all a game and it leaves the emotional plane for the mental one. Here it forms a subjective bubble and proceeds to reflect on all the events of the past incarnation. The monad has the opportunity to practice skills learnt, refine other skills and catalogue insights gleaned during its sojourn on Earth. Finally, centuries later, it falls asleep in its causal body. Ok, that is the reincarnation cycle. What happens during the time the monad spends in its physical life? That is the topic of this presentation.
Physical Life
The monad is a 1-atom. What is it like being a 1-atom? I have not got a clue and have no chance of answering that question until I can objectively observe a 1-atom and more importantly myself. This is not going to occur until I reach 1st Plane consciously and that is not going to happen any time soon. What I can say about myself is that I am conscious. I have a sense of myself, but what is a self? The most obvious ‘self’ I can observe is my physical body. Not my physical-etheric body, just my body. Somehow, I am controlling this body and the only thing I have at my disposal to do this is my consciousness.
So back to Elvis. He has now arrived on stage. That was a messy process and not a very comfortable one. He is now in full possession of his hips, but does he know how to wiggle them? No, not for at least about three years. This is how long it takes for a monad to begin to get control of this ‘reality’ suit it finds itself trapped in. To make matters worse, the chain of command to get anything done does not start in this reality suit, but in its Mental Body. What goes on in the interim period between birth and the monad getting a modicum of control over its physical-etheric form? Most of the behaviours you witness in a very young child are instinctive and messy to boot. That is why we remember so little of our early childhood. We were not in charge of the show. A performance was occurring but we had no real leavers at our disposal to control events. This we developed over that three-year interval.
The physical-etheric envelope is not a very intelligent being and lacks life experience. For this reason, it fears for its life every time it finds itself in discomfort. This is why babies cry. It is the physical-etheric being fearing for its very existence, or it is hungry! During this first three years of life, the personality of the child begins to develop. This is the persona of the monad slowly finding a way to operate through all these layers of envelopes. It has to work out how it is going to effectively control this body. Forget about its emotions and thoughts for the time, just getting a handle on how the body functions and how to control it is a big enough challenge.
The physical-etheric body is composed of tertiary matter. What do we know about tertiary matter? It has a memory, so it can perform repetitive tasks, but it does not have the ability to direct its activities. So what happens, especially in the initial years of a monad’s physical existence, is that it teaches the tertiary being to do simple things like walk and talk. Getting control of your bowl functions is a greatly appreciated achievement. Going on from here, complex activities can be learnt and then performed with ease. The monad no longer needs to concentrate on these activities. They just flow naturally.
Over the course of childhood, along with physical development, emotional and mental development occurs as well. The monad is trying to work through its persona to match its mental and emotional development to its own level. The persona is only a small fraction of the monad’s total skill set. It has to work with what it has and somehow integrate it with beings of the mental, emotional, and physical-etheric envelopes. Remember, this is a team effort. You have a monad. It takes a set of skills with it and then constructs a series of envelopes. Well, it does not but the devas do. These envelopes attract elemental essences that reflect the traits and habits that have been carried over from previous incarnations. These elemental essences are also attracted by the overall consciousness level of the monad. This sackful of elemental essences, enveloped within a layer of tertiary matter is called a being. It has a life all of its own, but everything it does is triggered by the conscious wishes of the monad. So don’t blame your elementals for your traits and habits. They are just expressing them faithfully for you. Now that the monad is out of its mother’s womb and beginning to fire on all cylinders, it starts to expand its consciousness into its series of envelopes. These expanding stages of life are characterised by different levels of consciousness, which are associated with the subtle bodies. This is presented in this table.
We can see from the progression in time in this table that we develop new interests and priorities at each new stage of life. The previous stages are less relevant as time goes on. What is sobering when you look at the table is that most people do not reach the higher stages. Why? This is because the persona can not develop beyond the level of the monad’s consciousness. If a soul is focused in its 49:1 atom, it never reaches past the nominal age of 14 presented in this table. I lived in the jungles of Papua New Guinea for several years. During that time, I interacted with 1. Young souls that displayed the emotional development of a five-year-old. This made for a very interesting working relationship. You could also look at this table and divide a person’s progression through life, related to its three envelopes. Someone’s career may have progressed, but they may process their emotions like a teenager. You often meet people where you realise that their mental and emotional development has not kept pace with each other.
So what is deemed as ‘maturity’ and how should it be measured? For the purposes of this presentation, maturity is categorised when the persona of an individual matches the monad’s consciousness. This is different for all individuals, although, you can see broad categories are definable. When we reach our true level of consciousness, it can be said that we have achieved life’s purpose. What you notice here is that an awful lot of our life is spent recapitulating what we have achieved before. It is only towards the end of life that we are reaching virgin territory. For the monad, this must be very frustrating. It already knew how to walk and eat and ride a bike, yet it had to learn all these skills again.
Each stage of life is primarily characterised by one type of consciousness listed in the table already presented. However, each stage can be further broken down into six sub-stages. As an example, let’s look at the Physical stage (0-7).
- 1st sub-stage is characterised by Physical consciousness. You see a body trying to explore its world with its hands and mouth.
- 2nd sub-stage, which is related to Etheric consciousness, occurs when energy from its etheric body stimulates the child to become mobile.
- 3rd sub-stage, which is related to Lower Emotional consciousness, results in the display of negative emotions. We call this the ‘terrible two’s’.
- 4th sub-stage, which is related to Higher Emotional consciousness, is characterised by the child becoming more friendly, loving and caring.
- 5th sub-stage is related to Mental consciousness, sees the development of the intellect as the child starts to attend school.
- 6th sub-stage is related to Causal consciousness. There is a marked increase in the creativity of the child at this time.
As seems to be the case with just about everything in this universe, large group headings seem to be subdivided into smaller headings that are composed of the bigger groups. The Universe has seven cosmic kingdoms. The subplanes of each of these kingdoms seem to follow the exact same headings. Obviously, nothing really repeats itself, but there does seem to be a pattern in how consciousness evolves. Basically, through lots of recapitulation.
As I have already mentioned, one disadvantage of living in a physical body is that we have to go through childhood every time we incarnate. This is repetitive and time-consuming. All it does is just set the scene for adulthood. It amuses me when people look back at their childhood wishfully. What are they telling me, the rest of their life is pointless? What we are doing is re-attaining a natural level of consciousness, mindset and a level of emotional development. Parents, siblings, schooling and childhood experiences all come into the picture. Our upbringing moulds our emotional and mental nature. Any trauma we may have undergone plays a vital part in ensuring our state to mind is appropriate to the life we still have to live. This may sound a simple business but in fact, it is incredibly difficult and complex. At the back of all we experience, is our karma and destiny exerting its influence.
It is, therefore, a fair comment to make that a child is an old soul in a new persona and physical body, regardless of the age of the soul itself. The Lesser Causal Body that surrounds the three lower subtle bodies, contains many life experiences. It has personality traits, it has abilities and it has knowledge. We start life with these abilities lying dormant because our persona does not know the pathways back to recall these attributes we possess. However, as we go through life, we encounter circumstances or teachings similar to those laid down in our memory banks. This is enough to reactivate those traits and habits.
What is happening here is that causal molecules that contain latent knowledge, are stimulated into activity when similar circumstances are met. Once a molecule of the Lower Causal Body is activated, it sets up a sympathetic vibration in the other subtle bodies. This transfers this causal knowledge and abilities into the persona. In each new incarnation, we must reactivate whatever skills, abilities or knowledge we require to achieve our life’s objective. This process takes years. Consequently, it can be said that life is very repetitious. In fact, it is 99 per cent repetition and one per cent progression.
Getting back to Elvis sitting in his dressing room, the non-physical period of incarnation is all back-stage preparation for the show that is hopefully about to be performed. At this stage, we can acquire useful knowledge but have little opportunity to apply it. So what is the point of this non-physical life, before, during and after an incarnation? It serves the purpose of allowing us to purge our false beliefs. It also allows us to contemplate what have or have not learnt. Last but not least, it affords us the opportunity to rest before our next incarnation.
I have met many people who have acknowledged that life is a cycle of incarnations. Yet many of them lament being ‘down here’ and can’t wait to get ‘back’. Firstly, very few of them know where ‘back’ actually is. If you know of the existence of your causal body, were you aware that you are most likely to be unconscious in it? The ‘spirit world’ seems so much more inviting and indeed it is. The dimensions you exist in, increase. Everything is more vivid. You do not suffer from physical ailments and you never tire. But the sad fact, or the most important fact, is that our physical life is the most important stage of our reincarnation cycle.
One thing that occurs when we are born is that our etheric web cuts us off from seeing behind the scenes. The only objective reality we perceive is done so by our five senses. If someone is clairvoyant, they may be able to consciously perceive behind the first of these ‘curtain’s but they can not make meaningful sense of what they witness. So we have to be honest with ourselves and realise that the physical world is the only place where we can currently combine knowledge and experience. What does this lead to? It leads to wisdom. This comes back to the old adage, you can talk about having a baby but it is only when you have had one that you really know what you are talking about. So, on the mental plane, you may learn to perform a certain feat. It is only, however, when you demonstrate that feat down on the physical plane that you can say I have truly learnt something.
The next topic I wish to present is the cheerful theme of death in all its glory, from leaving our physical-etheric body, to dissolving our higher subtle envelope. I have mentioned in previous presentations what happens when the monad ascends through its chains of envelopes on its way back to its causal body. I will leave this until my next presentation but in that presentation, I will look at the actual process of dying and how this has been represented by various religions and schools of esoteric thought.