We ended the last presentation by determining that the only productive way forward in life was for the soul to take charge of its physical envelope. A similar change should be brought about with regard to the emotional envelope. Instead of allowing emotions to influence and determine its activity, the soul should decide and determine what emotions to entertain and what feelings to radiate from its emotional envelope. Thus, the soul’s consciousness becomes disentangled from the emotional envelope, and the envelope becomes subservient to the soul’s wishes. Control of the mental envelope is perhaps most essential, as thought is the manifestation of the supreme Creative Energy. We should never allow external forces to incite thought images; instead, any thought images should be created by the deliberate, self-conscious action of the soul.
Great danger lies in the undisciplined imagination. Without imagination, external desires would have no power over us. The soul should, therefore, acquire full control over the imagination and permit it to function only in the directions it determines.
Uncontrolled imagination also undermines and weakens the will. Too often, after making a resolution, the imagination is allowed to dwell on the unpleasant aspects of the decision until it seems so unpleasant that the idea of doing it is given up altogether. Shakespeare expressed this truth when he wrote, “The native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”
The solution to this habit is clear: the will and attention should focus not on the imagined difficulties or unpleasantness but on the task at hand. As Emerson said, “Nerve us with constant affirmatives.”
The will doesn’t actually carry out actions; that’s the role of another aspect of the soul, the creative activity. The will is more like a ruler or king who decides what should be done but doesn’t physically do things. From a psychological perspective, the will is the ability to focus on one thing and block out everything else. It’s calm and still in itself, simply holding onto one thing while excluding everything else.
When properly directed, the power of the human will is almost limitless. Its potential far exceeds what most people realise, and the results it can achieve seem incredible and almost supernatural. A study of its powers makes us understand the saying that faith, if strong enough, could move mountains and cast them into the sea. This description appears less exaggerated when we examine documented cases of what has been accomplished with this incredible power. One of the most important elements for successfully using the will is having complete confidence, which can be gained in various ways depending on the individual.
Once a person realises that the inner and spiritual world of the soul is far more important than the external world, they may see themselves as actors, playing their part in the world because of the true life inside. Just as an actor takes on different roles, we come back in different incarnations and inhabit different bodies. However, the actor always has their real life as a person and as an artist, and they want to play their part well on the temporary stage because of their true life. Similarly, we should aim to excel in our temporary life here because of the greater reality behind it.
If we clearly understand this, we will see the relative importance of our outer life: its only value lies in playing our part well, regardless of the role. The nature of our role and what happens to us in this temporary existence is of little significance. An actor may have to go through various pretended sorrows and difficulties, but these do not truly affect them. For example, they may have to “die” every night in a duel, but the feigned death doesn’t matter. The only concern is to perform well.
Hence, we should understand that the world around us is like a stage, and it doesn’t truly matter what experiences come our way. External events are a result of our karma, which was established in past lives and cannot be changed. Therefore, worrying about these events is useless; we should accept them philosophically. How we handle them shapes our character for the future, which is the most important thing. We should use karma to develop courage, endurance, and other positive qualities and then release it from our minds.
The inner divine Self evolves to become the true Ruler as time progresses. By realising that the person is the Immortal Ruler within, a person gains a growing sense of dignity and strength over their lower nature. This knowledge sets us free.
Although the Inner Ruler may still be limited by the forms it has created for self-expression, acknowledging itself as the Ruler enables it to work diligently toward bringing everything under its control. The soul understands that it has a specific purpose in the world – to prepare itself to cooperate with the Supreme Will – and is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that.
The soul recognises its divinity and knows that its Self-realisation is only a matter of time. While the soul senses the divinity within, it is not yet fully expressed outwardly; its task is to envelop in reality what it is at the core. The soul is a king by right, but not yet in practice.
Similar to a Prince raised to wear a crown, patiently enduring the training that will make him worthy of it, the sovereign Will within us is growing, preparing to attain its full power and can thus endure the necessary trials of life.
The relationship between the soul and its successive personalities needs to be understood properly to clear up misunderstandings about the teachings of the Lord Buddha. The Buddha consistently spoke against the prevalent idea in his time of the continuation of the personality. He emphasised that nothing with which people generally identify themselves lasts forever. However, he also made unequivocal statements about the successive lives of individuals, providing examples of past lives and comparing successive incarnations to days spent in different villages.
Today, the Southern Church of Buddhism teaches that only karma persists, not a soul. This perspective suggests that when a person dies, nothing of them remains, and a new person is born who inherits the karma of the previous individual. Interestingly, despite this formal teaching, there still exists a practical belief in the continued existence of the individual. For instance, Buddhist monks speak of attaining nirvana and acknowledge that it may take many lives to achieve this.
The essential point of the Buddha’s teaching lies in his emphasis on the impermanent and external aspects of human existence, which do not endure, while implying that the non-temporary or external parts of humans do survive as the enduring soul, the real essence of people. We would say monad, not soul.
Buddha’s teaching went deeper than this. In the Shri Vakya Sudha, there is a passage that warns the aspirant that when he repeats the great formula “I am That”, he must be cautious about what he means by “I”. It explains that the separate individual should be understood as threefold and that it is the union with Brahman only of the highest of these three that is proclaimed by “Thou art That” and similar sayings. It has been made clear that the personality is not “I”, and even the “you” in me is not “I”. The “I” is something indistinguishable from the universal Self, in which the many and the One are one. The teachings of Lord Buddha deny the permanency of the “you” that people call “I”.
There is much wisdom in etymology; for example, the word “person” comes from the Latin words “per” and “sona” and therefore signifies “that through which the sound comes”, referring to the mask worn by Roman actors to indicate the part they were playing. This is why it’s appropriate to speak of the temporary lower vehicles which a soul assumes when descending into incarnation as its “personality”.
Equally instructive are the words “individual” and “individuality” when applied to the soul. “Individual” means that which is not divisible without loss of identity: subsisting as one. “Individuality” is defined as a separate and distinct existence. Taking it a step further, the word “exist” derives from “ex”, out, and “sistere” to cause to stand. Thus, the soul or individuality is made to stand out from the Monad and manifests itself through the mask of the personality.
The diagram illustrates the relationship between the soul and its successive personalities. The Monad gets its life from the Unmanifest and projects its soul, with its threefold characteristics, below itself. The soul then projects a series of successive personalities onto the lower planes, which gradually widen out as they develop. Eventually, the last personality is fully and symmetrically developed, expressing the nature and powers of the soul as fully as its inherent limitations allow.
As people develop, personal consciousness can be unified with the life of the soul. In this state, there is only one consciousness, and even in personal consciousness, there is awareness of the soul and its activities. However, many people today experience considerable opposition between their personality and soul.
A person who raises their consciousness to the level of the causal envelope and unifies the consciousness of the lower and higher selves, and the personality with the individuality or soul, has access to the soul’s consciousness throughout their physical life. This consciousness is unaffected by the death of the physical envelope or even the second and third deaths, where the emotional and mental bodies are left behind. In fact, consciousness resides in the soul all the time, playing through whatever vehicle the individual happens to be using at any given moment.
According to H.P. Blavatsky, the entire series of a person’s set of lives is regarded as one continuous life. Each incarnation is seen as a single day in that life. Throughout human evolution, the individual’s consciousness remains fully active. It’s important to note that karma is being generated continuously, irrespective of the period. While a person’s current condition is the result of past causes, they are constantly shaping their future through their thoughts and will. This applies to all individuals, but those who have attained soul consciousness are better able to deliberately and effectively modify their karma.
H.P. Blavatsky describes the Higher Self as the “great Master,” using the term Master in a different sense than it is commonly understood today. She explains that it is equivalent to Avalokiteshvara, Adi-Buddha in Buddhist occultism, Atma in Brahmanism, and Christos in ancient Gnosticism. Remember, here we are talking about the Monad, not the soul.
In the next series of presentations, we will examine the role of the soul in the personality.