Today we will start a new topic titled Identification and Liberation. Could these two words lead to a whole series of presentations? You had better believe it. These two words and the concepts they represent are at the core of a monad’s entire evolutionary process, at least when it reaches the stage of quaternary matter. We know from our studies that consciousness is always linked to matter. There are no “and”, “if” or “buts” about this one seminal fact. The term “slave to matter” is often used and this is an accurate representation of a monad’s relationship to matter in the lower kingdoms of nature. This gives us the first definition of the term “liberation”. It can be thought of as a process that occurs until consciousness itself is aware of matter and goes on to become its lord and master. Primary matter is oblivious to anything. Secondary matter responds to conscious inputs but is always reactive to them. Tertiary matter begins to remember what it is commanded to do, as it is now actively conscious. It is when we finally get to quaternary matter that the game changes and the monad eventually becomes self-conscious in the 4th Kingdom of Nature.
Coming away from the atomic subplane, which exists at the top of every plane of matter in the Cosmic Physical Kingdom (43-49), all the six molecular sub-levels on a plane are composed of molecules. This only occurs in the lowest of the cosmic kingdoms. These molecules are comprised of positive and negative atoms. These atoms contain positive and negative energy and positive and negative consciousness. This reality is often referred to as the “dualism of manifestation”. This, Laurency warns us, is not to be confused with other kinds of dualism. Looked at from a technical point of view, there is something interesting to note. The process of identification and liberation implies that you first identify with something and then liberate yourself from it. So, let us assume you identify with something positive, if you then liberate yourself from it, this implies that what was positive, now becomes negative. In our evolution, our consciousness migrates from one plane of matter to the next higher one. This process in the first four Kingdoms of Nature is largely an automatic one. The lower plane of matter becomes negative to the higher plane of matter. This process of liberation occurs because energies that made the acquisition of higher consciousness possible, are no longer experienced as the highest energies possible, but as effects of still higher energies. Ponder that for a moment. Consciousness development is just such a process. Its tempo becomes dependent on the capacity and purposiveness of the individual. Gradually, the individual becomes receptive to the energies emanating from higher worlds and learns to use them correctly.
We now come back to the statement at the beginning of this presentation. Consciousness is linked to matter but there is the third factor of the Trinity that needs also be mentioned. Why? Because it is energy that makes the content of consciousness conceivable to self-consciousness. Ponder those words; “content of consciousness”. What is that saying? The content of consciousness is matter. Self-consciousness is about becoming aware of the matter that goes into making you. Get that concept clear in your mind and all the subsequent presentations on this topic will fall into place.
So, let us expand on the concept just mentioned. The individual, also known as the “self” or the “monad”, apprehends everything through their envelopes. Note the term “apprehends”, it is not “comprehended” yet. The self thus identifies itself with the various molecular kinds of its envelopes in order to get to learn that particular kind of reality. The monad acquires higher envelopes by gradually learning to distinguish between lower and higher, the unessential and the essential. Where do we all go wrong in this regard? We invariable have the inability to liberate ourselves from the kind of reality we consider essential. It is essential to us because we love and can not bear to be parted from it. I have these feelings towards Marmite!
We use the term evolution in many contexts. We now have a new context with which to view it. It is now being defined as a continuous process of liberation. This means different things on different planes of matter. Physically, it means liberation from interests, relations to individuals or groups and restricting conditions. Emotionally, it means being free from binding devotion to persons, causes or missions. From a mental perspective, it means freedom from schools of thought, political dogmas, social norms and religious ideologies.
As the self-evolved, it acquires every richer consciousness content and reality content, of every higher degree of consciousness. It does this by identifying itself with these new kinds of realities. Note, now you have a new identity. You have just liberated yourself from an old identity but you seem to end up with another identity. Each of these identities is not you. You are a monad, but you can not see yourself yet. You are having to identify with one envelope or another, albeit higher, more refined ones, as you evolve your consciousness. The paradox is that identification, which was previously deemed to be a hindrance, is now seen as the basis for liberation. In us, this process largely occurs in our subconscious minds, which becomes manifest only at the transition from the lower to the higher. This transition is critical. To sum up, consciousness development of the self can be viewed as a continuous process of identification and liberation. It is the identification of self-consciousness with ever higher kinds of envelopes of consciousness. This happens by liberating oneself from the lower envelopes.
This brings us to another point to consider. We understand whatever we are able to identify ourselves with. Note, again, the distinction between the use of the term “understand” and the term “comprehend”. We may identify with our past, but do we really comprehend what we went through? We identify with something, because it resonates with something from our past, we have a tendency then to overestimate its “life value” to us. The real importance of this new identification only gets put into context in the future, when we have liberated ourselves from our dependence on it. This process brings about a continual reevaluation of the values of everything we once regarded as essential or necessary.
Liberation entails gaining freedom from the dependence on illusions and fictions of lower kinds. We are surrounded by innumerable misconceptions of reality, bathed in superstitions that dominate our lives and topped up with misconstrued ideologies. Slowly, through experience, we come to realise fact from fiction. We have to come to realise that we can not enter the world of ideas, the causal world if we cling to human constructions of any kind. The causal, Platonic view of life, is something totally different from any conceivable notion we have.
A good start on this road to causal reality is for the monad to realise that they are not their envelopes of consciousness. They must be able to distinguish that their envelopes of consciousness may be desiring something but it is not them, the monad, that is desiring it. This is not to say that when you sneak back for that extra piece of cake, you can blame it on your envelopes alone!
If you feel that libation from something is a sacrifice; a good case in point is giving up meat, then you have not had sufficient experience of “meat”. Liberation becomes possible when renouncing “meat” is something that brings you relief. This is a useful yardstick by which to judge your path through life. We are here to learn from every reality we find ourselves in. It is only when that reality no longer meets our needs and serves no purpose that we are ready to move on to a new reality. Imagine what it must be like transitioning from the 4th to the 5th Kingdom. All the trials and tribulations of our passage through our current kingdom will be gladly discarded.
You gain liberation from the physical world when you no longer desire what it holds for you, when you become independent of your physical circumstances. This is not to say that you should despise the one world that has provided you with all the possibilities for consciousness development. Walling yourself up in a cave and pretending that there is no “outside”, is not the answer. By the same token, removing yourself from temptation in a monastery is not exactly proving to anyone that you have mastered the temptations on the other side of the walls to your current restrictions.
In the next presentation, we will continue our look at what liberation does and does not mean by looking at our emotional world.