In the previous presentation, we started to review how most esoteric traditions have tended to focus on consciousness development, as being the only real game in town and the only stable reality. This has led to misconceptions about how you define the concept of the “self”. The storyline that has traditionally been put forward is that although you have a physical organism, this is not really you. Your “principles” lie somewhere else and by not linking those principles to a matter component, who and what you are is some kind of nebulous blob of consciousness. So, what exactly is a “self”? Hylozoics would state that it is one of a number of lower “principles”, namely our envelopes of incarnation. These, as should be familiar to you by now are, the etheric, emotional and mental envelopes. The use of the word “envelope” prescribes these structures as being made of matter. But it is not just these envelopes but the consciousness associated with them. This constitutes a self.
However, we have a problem here. Yes, we can ascribe these “principle” envelopes as being who or what we are but what happens when all these envelopes are discarded at the end of an incarnation? Our studies have shown that the monad migrates back to its causal envelope on the second triad, dismantling, or letting dissolve, these envelopes, which we previously thought of as being ourselves. As they are absorbed into the worlds from which they originate, what becomes of us? There has to be a continuous progressive development of a permanent self, separate from any perishable envelope.
Theosophy presented us with an Eastern occult tradition that said that there was an immortal self that it equated to a spiritual triad. This triad consisted of Atma, Buddhi and Higher Manas. In Hylozoic terms, we would say Lower Spiritual, or Super Essential, as Laurency termed it, but let us just call it World 45. Below this comes the Unity World (46), also known as Essential and finally the Causal World (47:1-3). Is this our self? As barely any humans are conscious in these worlds, are we to conclude that we have not reached self-consciousness?
The traditional doctrines found in esoteric thought resolve this conundrum by allocating two different selves to a person. There is a higher self, 45, 46 and 47:1-3 and a lower self, 47:4-7, 48 and 49:1-4, but not 49:5-7, as this is not a principle! OK, so right from the start we have a split personality. No wonder we are confused, we are schizophrenic by nature! To our higher self is prescribed a superhuman consciousness capacity: “omniscient and omnipotent in the worlds of Humanity”, “free from karma” etc. The higher self is supposed to send down a ray of itself to the lower self to gain experience in the lower worlds of the self, i.e., the 1st triad. If your higher self is already omniscient, what do you think it is going to learn in the worlds of “life ignorance”? Running parallel to our higher self is our lower self, stuck down in misery, weighed down by karma and destiny, whose prime purpose is to establish contact with the higher self and come under its benign influence.
To use a colloquial English phrase, this is a complete load of bollocks and is totally incompatible with the evolutionary principles expounded by Hylozoics. Why? It makes no sense to be toiling away in your envelopes of the 1st triad when you are already a higher, self-conscious self that is omniscient and omnipotent in a superhuman world. How does one resolve this dilemma? There are two options. (1) either the higher self is the result of a process of evolution or (2), the higher self has not evolved from something lower and has always existed “from the beginning” on its higher level. I know many esotericians who opt for number (2). But if this were correct, the only possible explanation would be a narrative similar to one expounded by the Old Testament in the Story of Creation. Here the All-Mighty, right at the beginning, creates all the higher and lower beings in all their classes, investing them at the same time with all the kinds of consciousness, higher and lower, which they are to have for all time, amen. There is one major flaw with this scenario, it flatly contradicts the concept of an evolving consciousness and therefore we will instantly confine it to the dustbin of our history, although it is alive and well in other versions of history. Getting back to option (1), where higher selves are a result of evolution; yes we can live with that. It makes sense and seems logical. But accepting this paradigm involves thinking beyond the bounds of human evolution. If what is higher evolved from something lower, then by logical extension, this must apply to all the kingdoms of nature. Monads are not fixed in their respective kingdoms. They evolve through them. Problem solved; not so fast. If there is a higher self, a divine soul, a spiritual ego and a lower self, then it can not be the same entity, there must be two monads involved.
Hylozoics comes to the rescue with a simple solution. Whatever we call a self in humanity is a primordial atom, a monad. This monad has reached a level where we are normally conscious. This is not just in our physical/etheric bodies, but also for most people, in their emotional bodies and for a small number, in their mental bodies (47:4-7).
When we “die”, we dissolve the composite structures of our various envelopes. Well, we usually do not do it, but it happens because as we withdraw the focus of our attention to these envelopes, they no longer have the inner energy structure to hold themselves together. The monad is uncompounded and so can never dissolve and is subsequently immortal in the cosmos and beyond.
The marvel of the monad is that it is able to perceive the consciousness and matter in different worlds and can interact with their reality by entering into envelopes made of the matter of those worlds and in doing so, activates the passive consciousness of its envelopes. The monad identifies itself with the activated consciousness as its “self”. So a self is a monad in an envelope.
We can speculate that a monad is capable of apprehending, but not necessarily comprehending, the passive consciousness in all higher worlds. How? Because all matter is composed of aggregates of primordial atoms, which are monads like itself. They have passive consciousness. The bottom line is all consciousness is consciousness in monads, whether they be actively or passively conscious. The caveat here is that the monad is only actively self-conscious in those kinds of consciousness that it has been able to activate through its evolution. This applies to us as it does to all other monads.
What is the highest envelope of the Human self, the Human monad; it is the causal envelope. This envelope only becomes a self-conscious being when the monad ends its sojourn through the 4th Kingdom of Nature. This happens when we take the (i3) and centre ourselves in our 47:1 permanent atom. But what is the causal envelope before this happens? Many students of esoterics are happy to talk about their soul as though it is an entity in itself. Indeed it is, it is our solar deva, controlling our causal envelope from within the causal lotus. It, however, is not us yet. To us, the casual envelope itself is just a robot, albeit a very useful one. This envelope contains only passive atoms and molecules, secondary matter to be precise. This is surrounded by a thin skin of tertiary matter, which is actively conscious, the envelope itself. As we all know, secondary monads are only passively conscious. In the casual envelope is the distillation of all the monad’s experiences as it evolves through the 4th, the Human Kingdom of Nature. A fleeting contact with this enormous storehouse of experiences must appear as a contact with a “higher self”. Alas, in such cases, the monad has not been in contact with a self-conscious, independent, active being. This is something we need to be very clear about.
I mentioned in the first presentation of this series that there were five esoteric problems we had to consider when we are looking at the concept of the self. In the next presentation, we will begin to look at the other four problems.