In our studies of identification and liberation, the focus is now going to turn to sacrifice and liberation. A quick reminder; what is consciousness development? It is the acquisition of consciousness in higher kinds of matter. This is a simple statement yet it speaks to a fundamental concept that we have returned to again and again. Consciousness is acquired in higher kinds of matter. Consciousness does not exist by itself. That repeated acquisition of consciousness in higher kinds of matter presupposes the renunciation of all lower kinds of consciousness. Up until the time of liberation, this lower world was considered to be the whole of reality. The monad comes to realise this is not the case and subsequent renunciations repeatedly reaffirm this error of perception.
Placing ourselves within the confines of the seven lowest planes of matter, with each higher kind of consciousness the self acquires, the self is liberated from its dependence on lowers planes. Examples would be the physical, emotional, mental and causal planes. The lower has lost its ability to allure the monad, to fascinate it, to lead it astray. What is the net result of all this transformation? It is greater freedom, a gaining of power over whatever held sway until that transition. The monad is liberated from its current level of life ignorance and impotence. This all leads to a greater ability to understand and apply the Law. This process of transformation has particular significance at the 4. Compassionate stage of development, when the monad is focused in its 47:4 permanent molecule. Here the monad comes to learn that human wisdom is “vanity”. It affords us no knowledge of reality or of life. The Kingdom of Humanity is just a kingdom of preparation.
There is one important fact that it is wise to get under your belt, sooner rather than later. You do not give up the lower for the higher until you have mastered it completely. The lower existed for a purpose and until that purpose is fulfilled, it has something still to teach you. You can not reach the higher by sacrificing the lower for the higher before all conditions are fulfilled. This is something you do not get to decide. This implies that it is not by sacrifice or renunciation that an individual is able to identify themselves with higher kinds of consciousness. Renunciation should be based on the results of a shift of values. The lower has now lost its allurement. This is a stepwise process for us, the physical losing its attraction to the emotional, the emotional to the mental etc.
So to be clear, liberation is a natural process. You cannot liberate yourself by severing ties prematurely. If you do, they will bind you even more tightly in subsequent incarnations. As an example, you can not free yourself from attachments to wealth by giving this wealth away. It is better to administer this wealth, even if it may be a burden. You can not reach the higher by selfish desire to do so. One day the shackles fall off and you do not know when and how this happened. Life seems to have solved your problem without you doing anything about it. Laurency tells us that “once again it appears that anyone who forgets themselves in service, will have no problems with themselves. Every thought of the personal self becomes an obstacle to liberation.”
It should be clear now that sacrifice and renunciation have no value in themselves. It could be that you sacrifice and renounce things in many perverse ways. For example, what is the point to save and scrape, to then give all your money away to charity? In following such a path, you lose the opportunity of cultivating qualities that go along with personal sympathy for the needy you meet everywhere. This is writ large in the actions of billionaires, who spend their lives impoverishing their workers to then leave their fortunes in gigantic charitable trusts. They could have shared their wealth with the needy during their lifetime. They had lost sight of what was essential about life and human interactions.
Laurency points out that there is, what he terms a “great risk” that esoteric knowledge is misunderstood by the immature. It is not enough to simply know facts. You have to learn how to apply the knowledge you have learnt. This you cannot do until you have mastered it. Knowledge has to be turned into a living whole. In our current era, as knowledge has become more freely available, there is a risk that students may engage in practices that should not be attempted until a future time when the student’s development is properly adjusted. Yogic breathing and trying to raise one’s kundalini is a good example of this. This was the safety valve that was naturally built into ancient knowledge orders. Members did not receive knowledge that belonged to higher degrees. Running before you can walk leads to fateful outcomes.
Laurency is adamant that there is no such “categorical imperative” as Kant thought . By this is meant, commands or moral laws that all people must follow, regardless of their desires or extenuating circumstances. “For the esoterician, there is just a definitive choice based on knowledge of the Law.” Why there is no imperative is that this choice is made, free from all compulsion. Where there is compulsion there is no freedom and as we all know the Law of Freedom is one of the big seven laws that govern us all. Consider it a categorical imperative! LOL Our will is determined by our strongest motives. When an individual has “come of age” spiritually, their strongest motive will be the result of their own work. This chimes with the Law of Self-Development. Oh those laws, don’t you just love them!
When you look at the strictures of the Catholic Church, liberation is often conceived as “you may not”. This is totally wrong. You may, but do not want to. You may be glad you do not want to. You may, but are unable to. You may, but you have grown out of the need to do it. Laurency points out that it is “one of the paradoxes of esoterics that you can love only then when you think you will never be able to love again.” The upshot of all this is that there are no commandments or prohibitions in esoterics. When such propositions, such as, “you may not”, are put forward, they are just descriptions of mental states.
Now let’s look at the concept of latent levels and liberation. It is a truism that “the more intensely the self identifies with the consciousness content of its envelopes, the more thoroughly it learns from its experiences.” As we have already discussed, each new incarnation is a process of “remembering anew”, activating consciousness in a new envelope. Let us assume we are dealing with an individual who has attained the 4. Compassionate stage of development. They will, as a general rule, pass through the 1. Young stage in the first seven years of their life. They will move on to the 2. Community stage from seven to 21 and the 3.Cultured stage from 22 to 35 years of age. To achieve this, the individual must be given the requisite guidance and taught the rules of engagement in society, to minimise friction with other people. When the individual has discerned the limits set by the equal right of all and is willing to adapt themselves to these rights, they are ready for self-education. After seven years of life, the individual begins to identify with their lower emotions, the repulsive ones. For the next fourteen years, experiences are had around feelings such as fear, anger, contempt, envy, vindictiveness, malicious pleasure and the presumptions of self-assertion in all its varieties. During this phase, inference and principle thinking develops in the mental envelope, to a greater degree.
Most people do not reach these higher stages of development. They just seem to be “killing time” in their incarnations. They remain stagnant on the level they previously attained. However, those that have reached the 4. Compassionate stage (47:5), cultivate instinctively and automatically, altruistic feelings, simultaneously widening their principle thinking into perspective consciousness. The individual lives their life by the principles of reason. Emotionality comes under the control of mentality. Plato’s tenant now applies; “he who knows what is right, does what is right”. This is an axiom that is contested by theologians.
It is not enough to just climb the mountain. You have to stay there and this requires daily attention; old tendencies remain to be overcome. It is easy for a “4. Compassionate” person to wander with the herd until one day they perceive “the synthesis” and realise the meaning of all their previous experiences. The esoterician must learn to walk in darkness and understand nothing. This is the lesson in life that allows them to see things. Others are more sure and certain about everything, the esoterician alone is the “fool”.