We now come to (3) The Mental Life. – Our third and last factor, which affects the emotional body during ordinary waking consciousness. The mental activities have the most far-reaching effects on the emotional body for two reasons: –
(1) Because mental matter, Manas, is so inextricably linked with emotional matter, Kama, that it is almost impossible for most people to utilise one without the other: i.e., few people can think without at the same time having feelings, or feel without at the same time, to some extent, thinking. This is not the same as being distracted when you are meditating. In case (1), the order of precedence is often reversed, with the emotional body taking the lead and governing a response before the mental envelope has had a chance to fully process the situation. In trigger responses like this, a person can have programmed emotional pathways activated by situations, people and the environment. If the mental envelope was playing its correct role, this would not be the case and any situation would be analysed and the emotional envelope would be used to further the discernment of the situation at hand.
(2) In the second case, the organisation and control of the emotional body rests with the mind, as it ideally should. This is an example of the general principle that each body is built up by consciousness working in the plane next to it. Without the creative power of thought, the emotional body cannot be organised. This is especially prevalent in toddlers and the results are harrowing for any parent dealing with them.
Every impulse sent by the mind to the physical body has to pass through the emotional body. This not only sends the signal where it is intended, to the brain, but it also has a direct effect on the emotional body as well. Further, as emotional matter is far more responsive to thought vibrations than physical matter, the effect of mental vibrations on it is proportionately greater than on the physical body. Consequently, a controlled, trained and developed mind strives to bring the emotional body under control and to develop it as a tool to better understand the situation. When, however, the mind is not actively controlling the emotional body, the latter, being peculiarly susceptible to the influence of passing thought currents, is perpetually receiving these stimuli from outside and eagerly responding to them. The reason for this is that the elemental life inside an envelope is eager for stimulus. It is not bothered where this comes from. It is not the slave of the persona. The challenge is for the persona to use the mental body to bring order to this seething mass of secondary matter, taming its wild excesses and ultimately releasing the bulk of this matter back into the general pool of elemental essences that the emotional envelope swims in. The lower emotions help us wake up and sense our own being. This job complete, they should be retired and put out to pasture. The higher emotional matter is still needed to soften the logic of the mental envelope and to better understand how others and general situations are evolving. The world is not logical and neither are people, so you need your emotional envelope to navigate your environment. If you remember back to the “orange” monads in the Moon chain, they were so appalled at the scattered energies of their emotional bodies that they ignored them to the point where they stunted their development spiritually, as well as physically. It should also be remembered that the emotional body has a direct link to the Unity body (46) and it is the energy from this envelope that the metal body draws from as it begins to construct the Antahkarana.
So far, we have dealt with the general effects produced on the emotional body, during ordinary life, by the nature of the physical, emotional and mental life. We have now to deal, but in general outline only, with the use of the special faculties of the emotional body itself, during waking consciousness.
The nature of these faculties and their connection with the various Chakras in the emotional body, have already been described. Utilising the powers of emotional matter itself, developed through the agency of the Chakras, a person is enabled not only to receive vibrations from etheric matter, transmitted through the emotional body to their mind, but also to receive impressions directly from the surrounding matter of the Emotional World. These are also similarly transmitted through the mental body to the persona. But in order to receive impressions in this manner directly from the Emotional World, the person must learn to focus their consciousness in their emotional body, instead of, as is usually the case, in their physical brain.
In 1st and 2nd stages of evolution, Kama, or desire, is still emphatically the most prominent feature, though mental development has also proceeded to some extent. The consciousness of such people is centred in the lower part of their emotional body, their life being governed by sensations connected with the physical plane. That is the reason why the emotional body forms the most prominent part of the aura in the undeveloped person.
The average person in the West today is still living almost entirely in their sensations, although the higher emotional envelope is coming into play. The prominent question, which guides their conduct is not what is right or reasonable to do, but simply what they, themselves, desires to do. The more cultured and developed examples of Humanity, are beginning to govern desire by reason. The centre of consciousness is gradually transferring itself from the higher emotional to the lower mental body (47:4-7). Slowly as the person progresses, it moves up further still and the person begins to be dominated by principle rather than by interest and desire.
We should remember that humanity is still in the Fourth Round, which should naturally be devoted to the development of desire and emotion; yet we are engaged in the unfolding of intellect, which is to be the special characteristic of the Fifth Round. The reason this is the case is because of the immense stimulus given to our evolution by the descent of the Lords of the Flame from Venus and by the work of the Adepts, who have preserved for us that influence and steadily sacrificed themselves so that we make better progress. In the smaller cycle of races, the Fifth Root Race is working on developing the mind-body nexus, whereas the Fourth Root Race is/was more concerned with the emotional body.
Even though, in the vast majority of cases, the centre of consciousness is located in one of the subplanes of the emotional body, most people are quite unaware of the fact. They know nothing at all about the emotional body or its uses. They have behind them the traditions and customs of a long series of lives in which the emotional faculties have not been used; yet all the time those faculties have been gradually and slowly growing inside a shell, similar to how a chick grows inside the egg. Hence a very large number of people have emotional faculties, of which they are entirely unconscious. These are, in reality, very near the surface and it is probable that in the near future, as these concepts become more widely known and understood, in great numbers of cases, these latent faculties will break through and powers inherent in the emotional body, will then become far more common than they are today.
The shell spoken of so far is composed of a great mass of self-centred thought in which the ordinary person is almost hopelessly entombed. This applies also, perhaps with even greater force, to the sleep life, with which we shall deal in the next presentation.
We have spoken so far of focusing the consciousness in the emotional body. The consciousness of humanity can be focused in only one vehicle at a time, though we may be simultaneously conscious through the others in a vague way. A simple analogy may be taken from ordinary physical sight. If the finger is held up before the face, the eyes can be focused to see the finger perfectly: at the same time, the distant background can also be seen, though vaguely, because it is out of focus. In a microsecond, the focus can be changed so that the background is seen perfectly, but the finger is now out of focus.
Precisely in the same way, a person who has taken the (i3) and who has developed emotional and mental consciousness, has their focus in the physical brain. Therefore in day-to-day life, they will see the physical bodies of people and at the same time they will “see” their emotional and mental bodies, but only dimly. In a split-second, a person can change the focus of their consciousness so that they see the Emotional World fully and perfectly. At the same time, it is possible to view the mental and physical bodies, but not in full detail. This is also true of mental sight and the sight of higher planes.
Thus in the case of a highly developed person, whose consciousness has already developed even beyond the causal body (47:1-3), they are able to function freely on the Unity Plane (46) and have also a measure of consciousness upon the Atmic plane or Lower Spiritual Plane (45), the centre of consciousness lies between the Causal and the Unity plane. The Causal and the higher emotional bodies are much more developed than their lower parts and though they still retain their physical body, they hold it merely for the convenience of working in it and not in any way because their thoughts and desires are fixed there. Such a person has transcended all Karma, which could bind them to incarnation and their physical body is therefore retained so that it may serve as an instrument for the forces of the higher planes to reach down into the physical plane.
In the next presentation, we will delve into specific aspects of the emotional life of a person.