In the last presentation, we opened the topic of the need for an agreed terminology when discussing esoteric truths and how these truths were often conveyed by symbols. We will now look at specific terminology, how it may vary in its meaning and how it specifically relates to the Hylozoic worldview.
We start with the term “Universal Mind”. This is often expressed as the “Mind of God” or the “Divine Mind”. We have already discussed the issue of what God, actually, refers to. The agreed position in esoterics is that it refers to a collective rather than a specific monad. The term ‘God’ can even refer to collective memory, as in the planetary memory in the Causal World or the Unity (46) collective consciousness of the planetary chain. When referring to the “Mind of God” this could mean the plan of the Planetary Government for the foreseeable future. When a grand term like “cosmic total consciousness” is used, the intention of the writer still has to be known. If not known, you, as the receiver of this information, may end up being more confused than illuminated. As Laurency says, “exactitude is a rare thing”. Some may argue that this inexactness helps train intuition. Others say that it just confuses mental consciousness.
Back to those terms; “universal mind” is an imprecise term as it usually refers to the worlds of our Solar System and has nothing to do with the Universe at large. Laurency also laments that the word ‘mind’ is a very vague term. Alas, this term became very popular in Theosophical literature and has been used to describe a multiplicity of higher worlds. This term has also been used to describe the consciousness aspect of a world itself, not just the collective memory. In The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky often referred to Augoeides, guardian angels to you and me, as the “Sons of Mind”. Here we have the use of ‘mind’ again but how clear is the notion it is expressing to the reader? Hylozoics gives the author a clear and unambiguous numerical system by which to let the reader know what exactly they are referring to. They can specify the range of a world, 47:1-3, or the whole world, 46, 45, 44, 43 etc. Now, isn’t that much clearer? You don’t just pontificate about the ‘Universal Mind’, but let your reader know precisely which levels of consciousness you are referring to. Brilliant!
One term that has always got me personally vexed is that of the “soul”. This seems to refer to a multitude of aspects of the Self. In days of old when knights were bold, initiates used the term ‘soul’ to mean a multitude of things. They may have been referring to the 1st-Self or the 2nd-Self. They may have meant the casual envelope or the guardian angel (Augoeides) or were they talking about the active causal self or the 2nd triad. Confused? You should be and that was precisely the point. The student received this information and was able to correctly assign the meaning from the context in which it was couched. To the uninitiated, these words were incomprehensible. Once the use of this term became exoteric, all manner of confusion set in, especially amongst the occultists. This is why Laurency suggests that this word should be replaced by terms that can not be confused. In his opinion, one can not be too precise when trying to convey accurate World and Life views. There is merit to what Laurency is saying because when a term is too diffuse, it filters into a mental system in most humans that are themselves not concrete enough to understand the subtleties of the information being conveyed. The bottom line is that abstract thinking must start from a concrete system of communication. Even intuition has to be grounded in concrete reality, to have any meaning. For the record, when I use the term ‘soul’, I am referring to the higher causal envelope. This is a collective memory gathered by a monad to that date. However, if you wish to refer to a conscious entity that relates to this soul, it is not the monad. That is focused somewhere lower in its envelopes of incarnation. The soul in this case refers to the guardian angel, who is currently standing in as the ‘soul’ of the monad. When the monad passes from the 4th to the 5th Kingdom of Nature, it will dissolve the causal envelope donated by the solar deva, our guardian angel and remake it. This only happens if the 46-Self requires a causal body to continue to function in the 1st Triad.
Following on from the soul, let us look at the terminology around the Twin Soul. This is often referred to as your Twin Flame. The romantic notion of this term is that there is one other person out there that is meant for you. Somehow, you are always destined to be together. Why does this theory not hold water? Firstly, because a monad is a single entity. It does not have any particular affinity to any other monad, other than the fact that monads get pushed into the Universe in batches, so you could say you have batch mates. This scales down to when we causalised into the 4th Kingdom of Nature, as humans. We do this in smaller batches. How many twin flames do we think you would then have? The reality is that, according to esoterics, we all have an insoluble share in the ‘Total Cosmic Consciousness’. The only variable is how much of the Total Cosmic Consciousness are we linked into? So, what then is a twin soul? In esoteric parlance, it relates to the relationship between the casual envelope and the triad envelope. These two envelopes separate during an incarnation and coalesce at the conclusion of it. If you wish to unite with your ‘twin flame’, initiate and take the (i3), you will then truly unite with your ‘other half’.
One term that has repeatedly been mentioned in this series of presentations is the relationship between the spirit, soul and body. It has been pointed out that this terminology has always had several meanings. The most fundamental of these is the referral to the ‘Holy Trinity’ of Motion, Consciousness and Matter. The Gnostics on the other hand use this terminology to refer to the three triads, ‘spirit’ equating to the 3rd triad, ‘soul’ equating to the 2nd triad and ‘body’ equating to the 1st triad. Christianity has been fighting furiously over the centuries, as to exactly what these three terms mean and many a poor believer has been burnt at the stake for doctrinal differences. Even esotericians, such as Blavatsky, have muddied the waters, by stating such things as the fact that the spirit alone is immortal and the soul is neither immortal nor divine. As has been stated above, the term ‘spirit’ refers to the 3rd triad and no triad is immortal or more divine than any other. The monad in the triads alone is immortal. This is the value of Hylozoics and the gift it gives us in understanding the fundamental primacy of the monad. Forget spirit, soul and matter and always think ‘monad’. The bottom line is that whichever term you settle on, they can only refer to staging posts on a monad’s journey back to Plane-1. Beyond that, a monad is a primordial atom and always was a primordial atom. What changes around this primordial atom is the degree to which it is conscious and how much energy it can display. Theologians can haggle over terminology but it all feeds back to one absolute truth, the Monad.
Esoteric orders came into existence about 45,000 years ago. Laurency tells us that students of these order have used serval terms when describing the relationship between the three aspects of the trinity and most of them have been in error. We can now use the knowledge we have of Hylozoics to unravel what was really meant when terms like the “union of spirit and matter” are used. This is a reference to the direct connection between the 3rd and 1st triads, in which the 2nd triad has been totally dissolved. By this time, the monad has acquired omnisciences and omnipotence in the seven atomic worlds of the Solar System (43-49). A 43-Self is now able to function in seven dimensions, although we say nine dimensions, as we account for line and area separately and that is why we talk about three dimensions on plane 49. It should be noted that World 43 penetrates all the lower worlds, right down to World 49.
The old formulation “matter is the lowest form of spirit and spirit is the lowest form of matter” has mistakenly been taken, by some, to the posit that all is energy. What Hylozoics teaches is that as you ascend Jacob’s Ladder, the relative importance between matter and motion changes but both are always present. Consciousness also expands in the process. Bearing this in mind, then the term “the descent of spirit into matter” is not just referring to incarnating, it refers to the fact that the whole of evolution starts from Plane-1 and works its way down. Obviously, in the context used by writers of their time, they were just referring to existence in our Solar System as they understood it.