On my quest to finally talk about Chains, Rounds and Globes, I have decided to take a detour and look at another unrelated topic first. This deals with consciousness development; more specifically how esoteric students have been confused by what esoteric writers such as Alice Bailey have put into print. The spotlight may go to Bailey because she is one of the most influential exponents of esoteric doctrine. However, there is a plethora of misinformation circulating in so-called “New Age” teachings. Unfortunately, these ideas are not coherent or logical.
C.W. Leadbeater is the most systematic exponent of Theosophical ideas and Bailey has afforded us many details about consciousness development, but both these authors fail to explain the root process at hand, the consciousness development of the self, the monad. Why is this? Because the concept of the monad as a self, a primordial atom, was absent from Oriental esoterics. After 1875 when the Secret Doctrine was published, this Oriental view was what Western thought had access to and so they presented it to their audience as well.
Your good friend and mine, Henry Laurency came along and bluntly pointed out that; ”Many students of theosophical literature have vainly searched for the ‘self’, wondering where it is. They are aware that they are ‘selves’, but to theosophists, the self is always something else and somewhere else. Theosophists appear not to have understood that the self is a primordial atom, that the self is the monad, that the self is the individual, and that the self is the personality, that the self is centred in the lowest triad.”
Take note of that last fact. The “self” is centred in the lowest triad.
Reading through Theosophical literature the term “monad’ is usually used in the context of the 44th world or plane but not in the way that Pythagorean Hylozoics explains the monad. Lars Adelskogh is baffled at how theosophist and Bailey placed the monad within the 3rd triad. So, to clear away the weeds, let’s restate a few Hylozoic axioms.
- Only monads can be conscious beings. Here, specifically, we are talking about self-conscious ones. The entire cosmos is made up of monads and envelopes surrounding monads. It should be noted that an envelope is always consciousness to a lower degree than the monad for with the envelope is intended. As a familiar example, take your own physical envelope, your body, it appears to be conscious, but only because you are consciously residing within it.
- The second major bug-bear I have is the illogicality of someone talking about their “higher self”. How can you have a higher self? The lower self, by extension, is just part of the higher self and therefore is the self. In the same vein, it is fruitless to talk about your monad. Your monad is not somewhere else or something else, it is you. The only expression that is logical to use is “I, the monad”.
Ok with that off my chest, let’s proceed to look at the “problems of the self”. Let us start by restating two Hylozoic fundamentals. The first is that there are three aspects of cosmic reality and this reality is atomic. The core of Pythagorean teachings is centred around the monad, the smallest particle of matter, present in the Cosmos. The second fundamental is that every unit of atomic matter, the monad, is comprised of matter itself but must also have two other, inseparable, components, consciousness and motion. This concept is at the core of all Pythagorean teachings and is what distinguishes Hylozoics from all other esoteric teachings. If you accept the existence of monads and the “trinity” that equates with it, a whole host of problems are solved, which otherwise would go unanswered, leaving the student with hosts of fictions to contend with.
We will now examine five problems that surround the concept of the self if you do not approach it from the perspective of Hylozoics. The first of these sums up the other four and that is that other esoteric systems, especially, older systems, have assiduously avoided studying the matter aspect. The object was to direct the disciples’ attention towards the consciousness aspect of life. Why did they do this? Because it was easier to acquire higher kinds of “consciousness” and its related qualities. They thought, and here I am assuming they thought about it at all, that focusing on the material aspect of the exchange of lower kinds of molecular matter, for higher kinds within an envelope, was distracting. The activities of these various envelopes or the activities of the envelope centres, such as the chakras would only disturb the student, as energy follows thought, from what was the natural course of evolution, consciousness development. The New Age mantra has been to develop your consciousness by “working to purify your inner body”. For us Hylozoicians, this would mean replacing lower vibrating molecules in your emotional and mental envelopes, with higher vibrating ones. But for the New Agers, you gain control of your chakras by meditating on them. This view is based on ignorance as New Agers are mixing up cause and effect. Meditating on a chakra does not raise your consciousness. Raising your consciousness activates your chakras. At its core, the journey to higher consciousness is rooted in the principles of Unity (46). You can not make yourself the focus of your efforts, that is egotistical. Your personal development is not what is at stake. It is the development of the whole of Humanity. You achieve this by giving out love, sacrificing your efforts for a greater cause, giving service to others and generally being a nice person.
What is not being proposed here is to ignore consciousness development, because it is at the core of all Hylozoic teachings as well. But there is a difference in focus that Hylozoics lays out that differentiates it from older teachings. It does not ignore the matter aspect, the existence of the trinity or the primordial atom, the monad.
All the illogical absurdities you find in most esoteric systems can be traced back to the silent treatment given to primordial atoms, aka; the monad. Why am I fixating on this? Because when teaching elementary esoterics, if the Theosophists had mentioned the monad, they would have been forced to admit that everything has a matter aspect. This matter aspect is found in all worlds and on all planes of matter and makes up the sole content of the Universe. Matter is the necessary basis of consciousness and the medium of motion (energy). This brings us to the crux of this series of presentations. By ignoring matter they deprived themselves of the possibility of accurately describing the self. Why? Because the self is the consciousness of the monad, of the primordial atom.
Try as they may, esotericists can not avoid talking about envelopes of the self, notwithstanding these are material things. But they led the student’s thoughts away from the fact of materiality by calling the envelopes “principles” and by simultaneously asserting, without any explanation, that the organism, your body, was not a principle. With this sleight of hand, they created a concept covering both envelopes and envelope consciousness, without forcing your thought processes to consider the idea of a “body” or anything material at all.
Now you may well cross your arms and say but “Kazim” you have talked about the differentiation between the four principle envelopes, the Etheric, Emotional, Mental and Lower Causal, incessantly. This is true, because there is a difference, starting right from the beginning in the formation of the foetus and the descent of the monad from its causal slumber, until it is finally connected to its “virtual reality suit” by its solar deva at birth. In my defence, I have never left you in any doubt that this is a process that is grounded in matter. So, although our envelopes of incarnation hail from different sources, they collectively make up a material vessel, which the monad uses to experience life on the 49th plane of matter. Our world, our Earth.
Problems pile up if you try and explain the human self based on “principles” and if you ignore that these principles are all material. This leads us to ask the question, “What exactly is the self?”
Join me in the next presentation to find out.