Having outlined the five reasons why traditional esoteric doctrine is not coherent in its presentation of what a soul is, it is time to delve into the weeds and see how things can get so confusing. The word “souls” is a word used in common speech, however, what that word denotes mean one thing to a theologian, another to a mystic, and potentially something else again to an esotericist. So you end up with a term that denotes consciousness in a general sense, but also, depending on your paradigm, something specific. The only solution to this conundrum is that whenever the term “soul” is used, it needs to be defined. Failure to do this leads to where we are today, in a fictional world of possible meanings.
Now we come to the Blue Books, where Bailey used the term “soul” to mean a variety of things. She doe not indicate the specific parameters for the use of the term and often contradicts herself. As an example, in “White Magic”, the soul is described as being omniscient, yet at the same time, it is classified as being deficient in its understanding of the three worlds of Humanity. You can’t have it both ways. In a similar vein, the soul is described as being omnipotent yet it needs to organise itself to prepare itself for fresh impulses. Why do you need to do that if you are already omnipotent? Bailey seems to regard the soul as having a home in the 1st triad, with karma attached to it. It is also described as a superhuman structure, devoid of karma, existing at the top of the 4th as well as existing in the 5th kingdoms of nature. So, which of these definitions accurately reflects what the soul is? Can it be all these things and yet be so different? Why is this important to define? Because it has a huge bearing on the whole teaching expounded by Bailey in her books. Needless to say, you know I am now going to tell you that if you approach this tangle of meanings from a Hylozoic perspective, all is made clear to the student.
Bailey comes up with two basic definitions of the soul. The first refers to the soul as expressing itself in general consciousness and the second is limited to its expression in the 2nd triad (45:4-47:3). To be fair to Bailey, she does not use the word “soul” in its first definition often. She is usually referring to it at the level of the 2nd triad.
Laurency tells us that Hylozoics teaches that “The thing most essential for understanding the consciousness aspect of existence is to know that there is only one consciousness in the cosmos, the cosmic total consciousness, of which every monad has an inalienable part. This consciousness is an amalgamation of the consciousness of all monads in the cosmos.”
Bailey talks about the “universal soul” also called Anima Mundi. This refers to the planetary collective consciousness in atomic worlds, not the molecular worlds, 46–49. Again, Laurency tells us that “The collective consciousness is the primary and common one; the individual self-consciousness the individual must acquire by themselves throughout ever higher natural kingdoms, this being possible because of their participation in the collective consciousness.” Can you see how the world view of the Arcane School and Hylozoics differ? The traditional, Bailey-centred, world view is an impersonal one. Somehow the “soul”, whatever that really means, is lost in some higher agglomeration of “soul-ness”. Hylozoics agrees that there is one giant collective consciousness, but the monad plays an individual and active part in this collective being. It is not subsumed into oblivion.
Now let’s look at the other representation of the soul, from the consciousness level of the 2nd triad. Bailey uses the term “soul”, “ego” and “higher self” to denote consciousness in the 2nd triad. “Soul”, as we have seen, is also used in a general sense, but “ego” and “higher self” is used specifically. We have already discussed how the term “higher” is misleading. Let’s look at the term “ego” in greater detail, but first, it is important to reiterate three important Hylozoic principles.
(1) There is no consciousness but consciousness of matter; consciousness in matter. Expressed differently: consciousness is always bound up with matter and always has a material basis. This implies in turn that you can define any kind of consciousness by referring to the kind or kinds of matter corresponding to it. In fact, this is the only possible way of dividing, defining, or classifying consciousness. This principle is called the basic materialism of hylozoics.
(2) There is no consciousness but as a result of the process of manifestation (the process of involution followed by the process of evolution). This implies that however high a level of consciousness a being is on, this being must have reached that level by evolving from a lower level and, in the last analysis, from the very lowest. Consequently, this being must have gone through all the stages, not just of the process of evolution, but of the whole process of manifestation. This principle is called the consistent evolutionism of hylozoics. This is a very difficult concept for many students of esoterics to swallow. They feel that they are a “spark of a divine spark” and somehow their task is to redeem matter here on Earth. Implicit in this view is that they were always somehow ‘divine’ in an omniscient and omnipotent way. If this is the case, why are they so dumb now?
(3) There is no self-consciousness other than that inherent in a permanent, material monad, which is different from its envelopes. Consistent evolutionism implies or presupposes that the same individuality evolves from the subhuman natural kingdoms to the human kingdom, and from there to the superhuman and divine kingdoms. This individual consciousness, or self, must have a material basis. This material basis cannot be any one of those three called “man’s three aspects” by Bailey and called the three triads in hylozoics, since the individuality will abandon them in turn as its consciousness evolves beyond them. The material basis of the self is in all kingdoms a primordial atom, which is called the monad. This hylozoic principle is called Monadology. I don’t like that term but there it is.
If we use these three principles as our reference, let us try and grasp what Bailey is getting at when she uses the term “soul”. We first need to ask several questions.
- What kind of consciousness in the 2nd triad is the term “soul” referring to? Is it Causal (47:1-3), Unity/Essential (46:1-7) or even Lower Spiritual (45:4-7)?
- What degree of awakening or self-activation is intended? Clearly, we are dealing with a very different “soul” at these three levels of consciousness.
- When Bailey differentiates between Humanity’s “higher self” (ego or soul) and “illusory self” and by this term we mean our ordinary physical, emotional, and mental self-consciousness, how is this teaching to be understood in the light of hylozoics, which teaches that the human self is the monad consciousness on any level – physical, emotional, or mental – wherever it is to be found?
The answer to the first question is that Bailey rarely defines in which context the term “soul” is used. She may be assuming that “soul” and “ego” both refer to the causal envelope, yet there are times when her description of the “soul” is referring to Unity consciousness (46). Here are five examples:
“1. Only the soul has a direct and clear understanding of the creative purpose and of the plan.
2. Only the soul, whose nature is intelligent love, can be trusted with the knowledge, the symbols and the formulas, which are necessary to the correct conditioning of the magical work.
3. Only the soul has the power to work in all three worlds at once, and yet remain detached, and therefore karmically free from the results of such work.
4. Only the soul is truly group-conscious and actuated by pure unselfish purpose.
5. Only the soul, with the open eye of vision, can see the end from the beginning, and can hold in steadiness the true picture of the ultimate consummation.”
It is very important to understand that human causal self-consciousness awakens or develops gradually, that it has not been there all the time as an “omniscient higher self” of sorts. So, let us sum up the discussion so far and also answer Questions (1) and (2) posed earlier, which asked what is the term “soul” referring to when used in the context of the 2nd triad? We say that the term “soul”, when not meaning collective consciousness of any kind whatever, which is not a common meaning in the Bailey literature, means the monad’s consciousness in any of the three units of the second triad and, through it, the envelope it controls. In general, this implies the human monad centred in the second triad 47-atom (47:1). It is active, therefore, through the causal envelope, or active in both the causal (47) and Unity (46) envelopes. This means all stages of activation are implied, from the first, sporadic contacts with causal consciousness, where the individual’s self-active consciousness is almost wholly concentrated on mental and emotional levels, to full sovereignty in the causal and unity envelopes where self-consciousness is centred in the second triad 47:1 and 46:1 atoms.
This leaves question three, but that can wait until the next presentation.