The Way of Man by Henry T. Laurency
11. THE ESSENTIAL SELF
11. THE ESSENTIAL SELF
1The entire cosmos is composed of primordial atoms (monads). The primordial atoms (atomic kind 1) are involved to form 48 ever more composed atomic kinds (atomic kinds 2–49. This involvation is repeated in four processes in which four main kinds of matter are obtained: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary matter.
2Primary matter has rotary motion enabling the primordial atoms to involve to form atomic kinds and molecular kinds. Secondary and tertiary matter has rotary-cyclic spiral motion enabling the atoms and molecules to be composed into material forms.
3Primary matter lacks consciousness; expressed differently: its consciousness is potential. Secondary matter has actualized passive consciousness, lacks self-activity but is exceedingly easily activated by vibrations from without. Secondary matter is also called involutionary matter or elemental matter (elementals = material forms produced by active consciousness and having activated consciousness in the matters of the emotional and mental worlds). The passive consciousness of secondary matter is called involutionary or robot consciousness. In tertiary matter (triad matter), there is incipient self-active consciousness, incipient will. The primordial atoms of quaternary matter (the evolutionary monads) acquire active consciousness, self-activity.
4So much about the basic matter aspect of existence.
5About the consciousness aspect of existence it should be said that there is only one single consciousness in the cosmos, the cosmic total consciousness in which every monad (primordial atom) has an unlosable share as soon as its potential consciousness has been actualized into passive consciousness. The cosmic total consciousness is passive, not active, but can be activated by the evolutionary monads’ ability of active consciousness.
6Through their active consciousness evolutionary monads acquire the ability of individual monad consciousness in the collective consciousness of existence, such as it manifests itself in the various atomic kinds. Thus consciousness is both collective and individual, the individual being self-acquired in ever higher atomic kinds in ever higher natural kingdoms. Individual consciousness or self-consciousness or monad consciousness always shares in the collective consciousness but will not be self-conscious of this sharing until it has acquired its own, active collective consciousness in the common consciousness of the essential world.
7Consciousness is one, is an amalgamation of the consciousness of all monads (primordial atoms). Every monad makes, in its collective consciousness, a contribution to the cosmic collective. In that sense, there is no real “loneliness of the soul”, even if those are unable to ascertain this who have not acquired consciousness of unity. From the physical world the cosmic total consciousness appears as a 49-degree scale (49 different atomic worlds). Seen from above, however, all lower kinds of consciousness appear as a unity. Thus to a 43-self the whole solar system makes up one single consciousness. Everything in the system lies within the field of vision, and the self can immediately experience everything that happens or has happened in whichever domain in the various planets.
8The many different kinds of consciousness – atomic and molecular consciousness, the countless kinds of aggregate consciousness (envelopes, worlds, etc.) – are due to the make-up of matter, since consciousness is always bound up with matter composed of primordial atoms and is dependent on the degree of their involvation.
9The physical atom contains the 48 higher kinds of atoms, and the lowest physical kind of matter contains 49 different layers of physical matter. Every atomic kind and molecular kind has its own kind of consciousness.
10Essential consciousness can identify with consciousness in all atomic and molecular kinds from physical to causal matter in the material forms of lower worlds. The higher the atomic kind, the more lower kinds of matter whose consciousness becomes accessible to the monad consciousness. Perhaps these facts could clarify how absurd is the psychologists’ belief in their ability to explore consciousness. All they can discover makes up a superficial layer of envelope consciousness. More than 99 per cent of the consciousness in kinds of matter activated by man remains inaccessible.
11In essential consciousness and in higher kinds of consciousness there is no isolated selfconsciousness, but all essential selves can be aware of the consciousness expressions of other beings in the essential world (46) and in the three lowest atomic worlds (47–49).
12The essential world is the world in which the individual, with his self-identity retained, enters into the consciousness aspect of existence. The three aspects of existence appear totally different in the different worlds of the cosmos. Matter, being the vehicle of consciousness and making up the material for energy (and this in all worlds), loses its hitherto great significance to those who live in the consciousness aspect of existence. To the essential self, the four lowest atomic kinds appear to be just robot matter, obeying the least hint of essential consciousness.
13This robot matter makes possible those phenomena in the course of events which have been thought to be caused by mechanical or final energies: the mechanical ones according to the laws of nature found in the matter and motion aspects; the final (purposive) ones according to the laws of life, in the consciousness aspect.
1When the monad acquires a causal envelope, it joins a group of causal beings. It is true that in respect of consciousness the individual lives in his causal envelope shut off from the possibility of contact with the consciousness of other beings. Isolation is only apparent, however. Even from the very beginning, the individual has been put together with a group within the same department, and this group makes up his esoteric family. The group is connected with other groups, and so an esoteric family, clan and class is obtained. Thus man is a group-being even though he is unaware of it until he has acquired consciousness in his second triad essential atom. He then discovers that the people he has been put together with and has learnt to love with ever greater intensity belong to his own family, clan, etc.
2Sometimes you hear about families where the sense of solidarity is great and the family love is strongly developed. Then the esoteric family has had the opportunity to be gathered; a phenomenon that should become more frequent as consciousness develops more and mutual service and so “good sowing and reaping” increase. Where division in the family is particularly strong, you have a reason to assume that “old debts” are being settled. Notice, however, that it is not just a matter of effects of the law of reaping. Besides reaping those are usually also opportunities of service, lessons, tests, hardening, etc.
3We all belong to an esoteric group, whether we know it or not. Physical race, nation, class, clan, or family is made up of temporarily united individuals who need not have anything in common with the esoteric group. For example, a group of seven or nine individuals may be members of as many different nations. Man can never know whether the individual he meets is a member of his group. “Instantaneous understanding” between two individuals can be due to the fact that they are on the same level and have the same departments in their causal and triad envelopes. As a disciple, the individual has no particular relatives. Such ones are part of the relations of physical destiny or reaping.
4We shall be aware of the group we belong to when we become disciples of the planetary hierarchy.
5In order to become a causal self at the present developmental stage of mankind, the individual must become a disciple of a teacher in the planetary hierarchy. Then he is put together with a group (usually of nine) which is to form its own consciousness group, a causal envelope with mental atoms from the causal envelopes of the group members, one common causal being through which the teacher communicates with everybody in the group. All in the group share in the individual teaching everybody receives according to his possibilities to apprehend and realize. Of course the teaching presupposes that all group members have at least the mental self’s (47:5) incipient subjective causal consciousness.
6Common consciousness in the group envelope is the stage preparatory to common consciousness in the essential world and facilitates the building of the individuals’ bridge (the so-called rainbow bridge) between the first triad mental molecule and the second triad mental atom.
7To begin with, the group members have to learn how to communicate with each other telepathically, at first emotional telepathy (in the solar plexus centre), later mental telepathy (the heart centre), finally causal telepathy (the crown centre).
8Via the group consciousness the disciples are subjected to an energy supply, which they have to use purposefully so that the energies will not “take the wrong course” and entail the individual’s expulsion from the group. If the individual directions are not followed carefully, this may harm the group, which of course must not happen. This method is new and is still at an experimental stage, as ignorant in esoteric matters as most people still are. As their knowledge increases, however, it is calculated that the experimental stage will soon be finished and disciples will be better prepared for what is required of them, which all spells greater efficiency. As the influx of more and more qualified aspirants increases, the teacher has the option to tighten the requirements and select those who are best suited to an intended group. So much can be said that anyone who regards himself suitable assuredly is not. Fancied supermen (Steiner, for instance) stand no chance, which does not prevent them from believing themselves chosen.
9The group envelope serves two different purposes. It prepares the disciples for the “art” of acquiring collective consciousness. It enables the teacher (45-self) to supply the individuals of the group with the dynamic ideas without harming them, which would be the case if the energy were not distributed within the group. Individuals in lower kingdoms cannot stand the energies pouring down from higher kingdoms. A 45-self can certainly make a personal contact with a mental self. But when doing so he must damp his radiation, which involves extra work (“sacrifice”) for the higher self.
10When the esoteric group has been welded together into a unit with a common group envelope, it cannot just perform otherwise impossible things but also solve problems, which the individuals would be unable to solve individually. It is with such groups that the planetary hierarchy works from now on. Becoming a disciple thus means being admitted to a group and acquiring telepathic group consciousness preparatory to essential consciousness. This group consciousness is physical as well as emotional and mental. At the admission the individual is informed as to the method enabling his integration. The method largely depends on the departments of the envelopes and is individual. Aspirants cannot reckon on being contacted by the “group teacher” before their admission. “Inspiration” they nowadays receive (except from Augoeides) from causal and essential selves. The entire hierarchy moved in 1925 from the causal to the essential world, and this has involved a total change of all previous methods resulting in a tightening of the requirements for discipleship. At the same time, the ties between the planetary hierarchy and government have been strengthened inasmuch as the 43-selves have been admitted to the government, which previously was possible only to 42-selves. Those 43-selves are members of both the government and the hierarchy.
11Causal selves form groups whose members all are able to contact each other telepathically. This is thus a stage preliminary to the lowest kind of collective being with a common group consciousness, the lowest kind of essential consciousness. It is seen from this how the entire evolution is made possible through the collective consciousness and how the common consciousness is the principal factor of development. We understand what the ancients meant by “Platonic love” or “divine love” or the “community of souls” and other such symbolic expressions, which of course, as always, have been idiotized by the learned, who think they can understand everything.
12In order to emphasize the unity of existence (inescapable thanks to the cosmic total consciousness), esoteric literature often speaks of “the One”. That expression is misleading. In higher kingdoms, there are only collective beings, albeit an individual monad temporarily is ahead of the others in consciousness expansion. True, in each planet, in each solar system, in each aggregate of solar systems, there is a collective being, which is the “supreme being” (the one most advanced in development); personifying it by a symbol, however, is more misleading than giving the “order of rank” of the innumerable collective beings. Also the term “god” is misleading, because it is associated with a single individual. Without the collective there would be no individual.
1The entry into the common consciousness of the essential world does not imply that the “self is absorbed into the universal soul” and self-consciousness is annihilated. You cannot be absorbed into something of which you have always been an indestructible part: the share of the monad consciousness (even though unconscious in lower kingdoms) in the cosmic total consciousness.
2To counteract the all too common confusion of ideas it should be laid down that each and every monad (primordial atom) is an individual possessing an unlosable individual character and, upon its acquisition of an unlosable continuity of consciousness between triads and envelopes, also possessing an unlosable self-identity. After the monad has been introduced into the cosmos and its potential consciousness has been actualized, it has but one way to go, and that is (however long epochs it will take) to become a highest cosmic self (a 1-self in the highest cosmic world). The tempo of development of the different selves can be widely different. There are those who set records in developmental rapidity and developmental inertia; those who pass through the human kingdom in one eon and those who use eons in several solar systems until they decide to put their self-will at the service of evolution and not live for themselves, for their self-assertion, their power any more.
3Self-asserters will have everything their way, and others to comply with their will. To enter into unity, to become one with all, is impossible for them. It takes them absurdly long time to pay off their debts to all monads in all kingdoms. Debts must be paid to the last penny. That law of justice cannot be altered by anyone. We forgive others, and that is the best for us. For the law, however, there is no “forgiveness”, only redress.
4Potentially, all (all monads) are one, thanks to their unlosable share in the cosmic total consciousness. It is the task of the individual to actualize that unity by applying the law of self-realization, by acquiring ever higher kinds of self-consciousness in ever higher worlds and kingdoms. It is only as an essential self that the individual becomes constantly conscious of unity by living in it.
5Even at the stage of the mystic, however, he can for some moment reach up to the essential consciousness of the second triad and have the same awareness of unity and so the sense of being “one with god”, become conscious of his godhood (god immanent). At the mental stage, he can, through a sudden causal intuition, experience that the hylozoic view he has incorporated with his mental consciousness agrees with reality, and then he knows that he is god immanent, divine in essence, and that it is only a matter of time when he will become a second self.
6We are embraced by unity, whether we know it or not. Those who sense this know that the more we love, the more love pours through us to others and the more we seek to be a vibrant centre of fundamental universal love.
7We have entered into unity when we have come to consciously share in the cosmic total consciousness. This has nothing to do with the demand for so-called equality, which is ignorant of the enormous number of development levels from the lowest level of the mineral kingdom to the highest cosmic level. But it means that all are brothers on their way to the same goal.
8Unity is universality. In it, there is no longer a matter of individuality, love for some certain individual or thing, but for all without exception. Individuality, even the existence of your own self, then has lost its meaning. As long as the individual feels he is an individual he does not understand the state mentioned. In it, there is no awareness of opposition between me and you. This can be grasped by those alone who have entered into the consciousness of unity.
9In the conscious collective consciousness (that of world 46 and all higher worlds), all individual thinking disappears (there is no me or you) in the individual himself. He lives in collective consciousness, in common consciousness with others. To fully understand this it is of course necessary to acquire essential consciousness.
10The inept occult saying about the self and the not-self and the ultimate understanding that they are one can be better replaced with the explanation that the monad as well as its envelopes (with their atoms) share in the cosmic total consciousness and therefore are “one”. Everything makes up a unity, because there is only one single consciousness. Also the talk about identification is misleading, since it, too, implies opposites. It should be apparent from what has been said that actually even essentiality is beyond all human concepts. The essential perception of “self” is the same as the perception of everything, the life of the whole. The part is a unitary part of unity.
11Schiller’s oracular saying, “Nehmt die Gottheit auf in eurem Herzen und Sie steigt herab vom Weltenthron,” means that when we have acquired understanding of unity, we have solved the essential problem of life. So simple was his mystical saying and so impossible for human wisdom to grasp its meaning.
12A man who has not entered into unity, who has not become an essential self, is always outside unity. He can experience unity, in rare moments get into contact with the essential world, but cannot enter into it. He can become a saint (the highest emotional level with the emotional attraction to all living beings), but he is not therefore an essential self, has not entered into unity. On this point all religions are mistaken.
13The disoriented seeker has no perception of “god immanent” when doing all kinds of stupidities. That is so because the monad’s share in the cosmic total consciousness cannot be perceived by lower consciousness than the essential. It is only when you have attained level 46 that you become conscious of your share in cosmic divinity (1–46). We must now hope that countless fantasts who hear about this final goal will not, as usual, believe they are essential selves!
14A higher kind of consciousness enables the individual to acquire the pertaining knowledge, but that is a possibility which must be exploited through research and application. The entire development is continuous work for yourself and for others. The energy and knowledge to do it we receive from the individuals of higher worlds whom we shall some time be able to emulate in mutual give and take. Drones become laggards. For anyone who has entered into unity the service of life will be his supreme bliss.
15The esoterician experiences emotional consciousness as happiness, mental consciousness as joy, and essential consciousness as bliss. The essential self can say like Lohengrin: “I do not come from pain and darkness. From light and bliss I hither came”, and others sense it in his presence so that they learn that he knows what he is speaking about. No other “proofs” are needed. Then there are those who can deny, explain away that experience, which is one of the tragic features of human life. An animal would never have forgotten it.
1The essential self’s essential envelope is not an independent being similar to the first triad envelopes of incarnation. The envelopes of the second self are formed by the activity of the second triad and are dissolved at the moment when the monad leaves the second triad.
2Consciousness in the second triad can utilize dynamis in its worlds so efficiently that matter no longer appears to be matter, but energy. The consciousness aspect is sovereign; essential consciousness, with its knowledge of the pertaining laws of nature, dominates matter in worlds 46–49. Matter has turned into an obedient, efficient tool.
3The essential envelope is formed gradually through the increasing vibrational faculty of the second triad essential atom. When the lowest spiral of this atom starts functioning under the influence of vibrations from the higher spirals of the first triad emotional atom, the embryonic envelope begins to be filled with essential molecules of the lowest kind. Little by little the envelope grows until the monad, in the second triad mental atom, is able to move to the essential atom and there continue its consciousness activation. When the envelope is filled up with essential molecules of all six kinds, those matters can be replaced with nothing but essential atoms, following which the essential self can become a superessential self.
4The different molecular worlds are at the same time different kinds of planetary consciousness, different kinds of collective consciousness. The lowest kind of essential molecules (46:7) have common consciousness with each other in their world and with all lower molecular kinds (47:1–49:7).
1Essential consciousness is the lowest kind of common consciousness in collectives of sovereign selves (individuals with self-acquired knowledge and power and unlosable continuity of consciousness and self-identity in their worlds).
2Community of consciousness (“the union of souls”) remains an incomprehensible phenomenon until the individual has acquired essential consciousness. It is possible because the whole cosmic consciousness is common to all, because consciousness is one and a unity. Individual consciousness is bound up with a primordial atom, which enters into an enormous series of ever more composite atomic kinds, etc., because this is the only way in which to awaken the primordial atomic consciousness to self-activity. In this process, the monad consciousness can acquire an ever greater share in the total consciousness, which must be done step by step.
3In essential consciousness you begin to have a presentiment of the immense resources of the consciousness aspect. According to the epistemological axiom of esoterics, consciousness manifests differently in different worlds, subjectively as well as objectively. Nobody can say what consciousness is, only how it manifests itself in the worlds he experiences. You must not judge consciousness in one world by another world. Each world is a thing of its own and totally different from all the others.
4In the essential world, consciousness manifests itself as consciousness of community, or consciousness of unity, which perhaps is the better expression. Maybe this can be explained by the fact that in essential consciousness, all sense that they are one; in this consciousness of unity, me and you are not apprehended as opposites.
5If you follow the experience of consciousness in the physical, emotional, mental, causal, essential worlds and know that this expansion of consciousness goes on in an unbroken crescendo with each higher world, then you refrain from imaginative speculation on realities you cannot grasp, at least if you have the common sense of mental consciousness.
6The essential self has entered into the collective consciousness of the planet with everything that means as for access to collective memories of worlds and the different kinds of consciousness of other individuals. The essential self experiences the consciousness of other beings as his own consciousness, and this concerning all beings in lower kingdoms and worlds. This ability is what was originally meant by “intuition”. Nowadays, the word “intuition” is unusable because of the confusion of ideas provoked by abuse.
7How much of the consciousness of others you experience depends on your own acquired ability of essential consciousness in ever higher molecular kinds. And the same is true of the subsequent consciousness development in ever higher worlds. The whole process appears as a gradual expansion of consciousness: your own monad consciousness becomes ever more conscious, and ever more intensely, of more and more beings who are all present if sought for.
8The acquisition of intuition does not imply, as many appear to think, that you are suddenly omniscient. It is a slow process and laborious. Little by little you may also discover more and more in the planetary memory of past events, of “facts and ideas”.
9Thanks to its ability of common consciousness, the intuition receives ideas and facts from the consciousness of other beings. If essential selves want to ascertain facts in the matter aspect of the worlds of man, they do so through the mental atom of the second triad.
10One of many paradoxical features of the consciousness of unity is the fact that the individual is free from personal dependence on any other individual. He belongs to all and nobody.
11The very faculty of “impersonality” is a condition of identification with the consciousness of other beings, independence, unconcern.
12The common consciousness cannot be divided against itself. Its prerequisite thus is unity. Consciousness of unity is acquired step by step, just as all other consciousness. It begins by attraction and longing for community, work at acquisition of loving understanding, until you see, by gradually experiencing the bliss of community, that this is the only life worth living. In the common consciousness the potency of individual consciousness strengthens and is increasingly intensified with each expansion.
13It is only at the stage of culture or of the mystic that the monad activity succeeds in reaching the spheres where the attractive vibrations create the possibility of grasping the reality of the consciousness of unity. At first this appears as something “mystical”, something that cannot be grasped in its boundlessness, and so the mystic experiences these states, in the expansion of his consciousness, as mentally incomprehensible and therefore mystical until perspective consciousness is aroused to life and begins making itself felt.
14In the essential world, you understand what is meant by freedom and unity. Everybody has his individual character (freedom), but this is never antagonistic, but all the expressions of individual character are in agreement with that common unity without which life would be divided against itself. There are seven basically different ways of looking at everything in every world. The synthesis is found in the next higher world, which everybody will see when he shares it.
15Essential consciousness is both love and wisdom. It is, moreover, two different paths and can be reached in two different ways, which are roughly intimated by the Indian bhakti and gnana yoga. Both manifest themselves in karma yoga, the yoga of action. These Indian methods are popularized. The esoteric methods will remain esoteric until mankind has reached the stage of humanity. The two pertaining esoteric religions are the true teaching of the Buddha and the true teaching of Christos. The subsequent falsifications do not agree with what the two world teachers (43-selves, second department of the planetary hierarchy) intended with their teachings.
1The term “intuition” has been much abused. Remembrance from the subconscious, rapid conception, psychological understanding, or telepathic communication are not intuition.
2The term “intuition” is used in esoterics exclusively in reference to the kinds of consciousness activated by the monad in the second triad. In other words, “intuition” is the common designation of the consciousness of the second self in the three units of the second triad. The first self has no intuition as a first self but only when contacting the second self. Two characteristics of intuition: it is by nature collective and it always contains some prevision of the future. From this it should be evident that what ignorance calls intuition cannot be true intuition. The concepts of the first self are fictions.
3Using more precise terms you can speak about causal intuition, essential intuition, superessential intuition, according to consciousness in the three units of the second triad.
4Causal intuition is objective. It has reference to the matter aspect in the worlds of man. It involves full objective perception of the matter aspect (matter in all its compositions) in the worlds of man.
5Essential intuition is subjective. It involves a live insight in everything concerning the consciousness aspect. It is essential consciousness, unity consciousness, common consciousness, collective consciousness, the power of identifying your own consciousness with that of others so that you experience others as yourself (also the consciousness of animals and plants). Essential intuition is (like all intuition) independent of past time and in addition always contains something of the prospects of the future or what will be reality some time.
6Superessential intuition involves full sovereignty in the three aspects of reality of the five lowest atomic worlds (45–49).
7Intuition cannot contain anything repulsive, anything related to hatred, since by nature it is unity. It is fortunately so well arranged that the true knowledge of reality (the second self’s reality) cannot be acquired by those who want to use it for their own good, for their own profit and power. Everything egoistic is part of the first self; a fact of great importance when judging. For selfish people, the theoretical knowledge can never become a live reality.
1Second self love shows in right action and right human relations, free from emotionality and sentimentality, which of course does not preclude personal affection.
2So-called divine love is not love for a certain person (however high this being is), but realization of the unity of life. Attraction is a cosmic force. We have a right to love, we cannot avoid loving (and that is true also of the highest beings); only this must not encroach on our relation to lawfulness.
3The old saying, “love makes blind”, is true only of emotional attraction (lacking the objectivity of the higher mental, 47:5, judgement), not of essential love, which is wisdom as well.
4Theologians speak of “Christian” love. True love is essential consciousness, and cannot be monopolized by life ignorance and human complacency. It has been expressed in all individuals, of all religions who have contacted the essential world.
5Christians make a great mistake when trying to limit the work of Christos to Christianity. Besides, Christianity has never understood Christos. He came in several incarnations to all human beings of all religions. Hands off!
1Only essential consciousness (consciousness of unity) affords the true “psychological” understanding of people. That is why so-called loving understanding (due to contact with essential consciousness via the unity centre of the causal envelope) makes a fairly correct judgement possible.
2You will have full understanding of the individual characters of other people only when your own monad consciousness can experience the consciousness of others as your own consciousness. They have tried to describe this as identification of consciousness, although the expression is improper, since it presupposes opposition. Even the saying “all souls are one” is improper, since it seems to abolish individual character and unlosable self-identity.
3In order to identify your consciousness with that of another in the right way you must be emancipated from the consciousness of that individual and you must not be in any respect attached to it.
4“True understanding presupposes identification with mankind.” (D.K.) “All men are one and I am one with them.” Men find it so easy to believe they understand, but this is self-deception. It is one thing to see that this is correct, it is another to realize unity. It may take several incarnations, but the outcome is certain, since the powers of life are on the side of anyone who wills for unity. Anyone who has definitively taken his stand under the law of unity thereby is “written up into the book of life” and need never more fear to go astray. It is only a matter of time when he will enter into the world of unity.
5In the New Testament there is mention of Christos as a man of sorrows. Egoists, who are unable to experience other sorrows than their own, have expounded this as though it was because of his own sorrows. It was the horrendous suffering of all mankind he was able to experience in his consciousness of unity with all. Another example of the power of live insight, compassion, and understanding of suffering mankind was the slandered Schopenhauer, who was able to paint this suffering as no one else.
1It takes many incarnations from man’s first spontaneous contact with superconscious worlds (or molecular kinds) until he has developed an ability to contact them methodically. It is the same with the acquisition of lacking qualities; it may take a hundred incarnations before a certain quality has been acquired fifty per cent, unless the individual strives after it methodically and systematically. It is an enormous difference between being “intuitive” one per cent and, as an essential self, one hundred per cent. There is reason for the saying, “you are never finished”. Besides, how many are able to tell the difference between a brainwave and a vibration from the essential world?
2There is every reason to assert emphatically also to occultists that the normal individual is unable to determine whether his “freaks” are intuition, come from his subconscious, or his emotional superconscious, or from Augoeides, or are essential in character. Common sense is his only guide. Essential intuition is inaccessible to all who are not in everything governed by the will to unity and the service of life.
3Strange as it may seem, it is easier for man to contact the second triad essential consciousness than its causal consciousness. Because the essential world is contacted through the first triad emotional atom (via the unity centre of the causal envelope) and not through the mental molecule to the second triad mental atom (via the intelligence centre). This explains why Christos attached such importance to “loving god”. That is the fastest way to develop. If the individual has a knowledge of how to establish the connection between emotionality and essentiality and then to keep it unbroken, he is also able to use essential intuition, which is infallible. That knowledge is obtained in esoterics. This shows that esoterics is very important also to the life view. The only connection between the individual and essential consciousness is his emotional atom. Mental consciousness can contact only causal consciousness. The contact with superessentiality goes through the physical atom. That is why physical incarnation is necessary.
4The quickest way of contacting essential consciousness is to strive for loving understanding of everybody, liberated from the vulnerability and infantility of the first self, unconcerned by everything.
5The planetary hierarchy assures that there is no aspirant who cannot intensify his consciousness of unity, which should not be confused with emotional attraction.
1Essential consciousness is acquired through emotional attraction via the unity centre of the causal envelope. Long before this is possible, however, the individual must be able to “live” in the regions of attractive consciousness and to constantly meditate on the purpose and expressions of impersonal “love”. You do not acquire love by making up your mind to love, by mere will to unity.
2No good qualities are easily acquired in a spiteful world. Love is the most difficult of all. In man (before he has become an essential self), it is an energy expression from the second triad through the causal unity centre when the contact has been achieved.
3Patient endurance through many incarnations is required before you are able, via the highest emotionality and the unity centre of the causal envelope, to reach the essential world and receive energies from it. Only then you are able to truly love everybody under all circumstances.
4The individual acquires collective consciousness through realizing “universal brotherhood” in the physical world. Telepathy, leading to common consciousness, is the first step in this realization. Universal brotherhood is something quite different from the notions of equality, etc. held by life-ignorant sentimentality. It is the result of a process of consciousness carried through.
5The acquisition of essential consciousness is a slow process, which is begun on the higher levels of the first self through the acquisition of emotional attraction. The way goes from 48:2 of the emotional envelope via 47:2 of the causal envelope to 46:7 of the essential envelope. In order to reach essentiality, the mental self must make use of his emotional consciousness. The emotional sovereignty, which the mental self has acquired but often neglected during several incarnations, the monad must activate anew, using the visualizing and actualizing energies of emotional dynamics in its attempt to reach the stage of unity.
6Mental consciousness can contact the intelligence centre of the causal envelope. But it is through the emotional attractive energies that the first self, via the unity centre, reaches essential consciousness.
7Mental consciousness is necessary to build the bridge between the first triad mental molecule and the second triad mental atom, but it is through the “will to unity” of emotional attraction that contact is achieved between the emotional atom and the essential atom.
1The causal self becomes an essential self through self-acquisition of an essential envelope, the monad’s transition from the second triad mental atom to the essential atom, and the dissolution of the old causal envelope.
2The gnosticians called this process the “crucifixion”. The monad, in its second triad, hovers in the void, as it were, when passing from the causal to the essential envelope, separated from everything it has acquired hitherto, with a paralysing sense of having lost all, without certainty that all will be found again in the essential envelope. This is said to be the most horrific experience in the entire process of evolution, a “condensed eternity”, and so it has been given the horrific designation. How would theologians understand the symbol without a knowledge of reality?
3We understand that many causal selves hesitate to the very last before the transition. How great is the strain appears best from the fact that there are those who did not stand the test but fell back into their old causal envelope.
4Such a failure is intimated in the gnostic legend (in the Gospels) about Christos’ conversation with the “young man who had great possessions” and who asked Christos about the conditions of “eternal life” and who “went away sorrowful” when he had learned this, that you give away everything you have.
5The transition involves a “sacrifice”. Whatever the first self has acquired in the human kingdom, all qualities and abilities, knowledge and insight, everything of cherished individuality, all this is contained in the causal envelope. All this must be sacrificed without any guarantee whatever of true compensation. At the transition everything seems to be lost. But he will retrieve it all, in the second triad essential atomic memory as well as in the collective memory of the essential world, which also contains the course of events of lower worlds.
6When the old causal envelope has been dissolved, the essential self produces his own causal envelope by vibrations of his second triad mental atom.
1When the monad has become an essential self and entered into the collective consciousness, it has a perception of having become one with the “universal soul”, as it were, become one with the all and that the all is its true self.
2Later, as a third self, the monad has a perception of being the very force, and that “everything is force”.
3In the first self dominates the matter aspect (“everything is matter”); and in the second self, the consciousness aspect (“everything is consciousness”). In the third self, the motion, energy, or will aspect asserts itself with such intensity that the two other aspects appear insignificant (“everything is force”).
4When the monad has centred itself in the second triad essential atom, the monad has become an essential self. It remains, however, to learn how to utilize all the resources of the perfected essential self. The corresponding is true of all the other selves. You are not “perfect” at once, which explains quite a few phenomena also in mental and causal selves.
5The essential self lives in the consciousness aspect, shares in the collective consciousness of the essential world and identifies his consciousness with the consciousness of all beings in lower worlds. He no longer needs to consider the matter aspect, since he has complete mastery of matter, which automatically complies with his every consciousness expression.
6The essential self can identify with lower but not with higher kinds of consciousness.
7Some essential selves have dissolved their first triad in connection with the dissolution of their old causal envelope at their transition to the essential world. This means that henceforth they reach the individuals of lower kingdoms through the consciousness aspect (the collective consciousness the material basis of which is nothing but primordial atoms). Therefore, they work solely with the individuals’ consciousness and not with their material forms. They can, if they so wish, shape envelopes of their own in lower worlds, but this means an extra burden to them. From this we understand that it is the task of the human planetary hierarchy to supervise consciousness development in lower worlds. The matter aspect is the special task of the deva hierarchy.
8The causal world is the highest world of our planet, and that is why causal consciousness is the highest kind of consciousness within the very planet. But the planetary consciousness is part of the consciousness of the planetary chain, and that of the planetary chain is a part of the collective consciousness of the solar system.
9The causal self is conscious within the planet. Thanks to his consciousness sharing in the collective causal memory of the planet, there is to the causal self no distance and no past time within the very planet. To the essential self (46), the same is true as to the seven globes of the planetary chain; and to the 45-self, as to the entire solar system.
10The essential self is a planetary self who has access to the collective consciousness of the different planetary worlds (atomic worlds 46–49). Having unlosable self-identity and inseparable unity with all he can continue that expansion of his monad consciousness the final goal of which is the total consciousness of existence. He acquires knowledge of ever higher worlds and the ability to apply the Law in those without friction. Having his divine individual character he is free from every kind of individualism; he is identical with the ever expanding collective consciousness and its purpose determined by law.
11By degrees he enters into ever larger groups with expanding tasks in the process of manifestation.
12As general consciousness development goes on, the conditions of the acquisition of higher consciousness are tightened, from aspirants to discipleship to all higher selves. Thus the capacity of an essential self nowadays corresponds to what formerly was that of a superessential self. The world consciousness increases correspondingly in respect of intensity. Thereby the overall planetary resources for the reception and emission of cosmic energies increase as well. In connection with this, consciousness in lower natural kingdoms is also stimulated. There is no standstill. The capacity of the human brain is enhanced as well. Then it of course depends on the individual how he will use these prospects.
13To the essential self, the individual is universal and the universal, individual. Everything within the bounds of his consciousness is himself, since he is one with all. He is not merely a self (“I am”) but “all this is me”. He is for ever inseparable from everything conscious and for ever shares in the cosmic total consciousness as far as his consciousness extends in this. To fully understand this attempt at comprehension it is of course required to have the pertaining experience.
14This share in the cosmic total consciousness (collective consciousness) enables the essential self to experience the consciousness of all in atomic worlds 46–49 as his own consciousness. If the individual collective consciousness is extended to world 45, then worlds 45–49 make up one single consciousness. Perhaps we understand what is meant by “space is a unitary being”. The matter aspect has receded to the consciousness aspect, and “space” (the planet) is apprehended as live consciousness. To the highest cosmic consciousness, the entire cosmos is also a “being”. The primordial atoms in the cosmos make up a cosmic total consciousness, and this consciousness is experienced as his own consciousness.
15The essential self is a collective self, has entered into the collective. This entails a totally new view of life. Everything belongs to all. This does not mean, “all yours is mine”, as is sometimes heard. It means that everything we have acquired (received, inherited, etc.) is goods held in charge, held in trust in the most purposeful manner for the good of the whole. We shall be held responsible for the manner in which we use our money. It is not our property, which you will see when you study your incarnations. Wealth is good reaping but also a test as to how you look on wealth and how you administer it. The current view of all human conditions is abortive, which the esoterician sees soon enough. The esoterician has to “rethink” in all respects, and not once but many times. Before you know how this has happened you ask yourself how it is possible that everything has turned so perverse.
16Without laws of nature the cosmos would be a chaos, and without laws of life there would be no consciousness development. With his knowledge of both kinds of laws, the essential self realizes that law is the condition of freedom, that freedom is acquired through law, through the acquisition of knowledge of law and through faultless application of law.
17In the collective consciousness of the essential world, every individual must have acquired the view of everything given by his individual character. All work for the same goal: evolution, and the condition of their cooperation is unity, lawfulness.
18It is up to the individual to acquire self-consciousness to ever higher degrees of the collective total consciousness, and this is the meaning of evolution.
19The essential self acquires knowledge chiefly through consciousness. He has access to the collective memories of the different worlds and to the knowledge of other individuals without their even knowing about it. A necessary condition, however, is that he must himself be able to ascertain those facts and to judge their exactitude.
20Besides, all ascertainable facts that have been worked up are also found in their right contexts, being accessible in the atomic (atomic, not molecular) memories of the different worlds.
21From the esoteric description of this process, we easily get the impression that consciousness has become substantial. But the three aspects of reality cannot be confounded or converted.
22A glance at a man’s aura (its light and colours) is enough for an essential self to determine the developmental stage of that individual.
23The esoterician knows that only essential selves are in a position to render the true history of ideas, since they are able to study the objective matter aspect in the four lowest atomic worlds, 46–49, and also the consciousness aspect of individuals and collectives in times past. Without these faculties the historian is reduced to the use of subjective assumptions found in the collection of legends called history.
24Human helplessness best appears in the fact that we can all make any blunders whatever until we have become essential selves and entered into unity. Even causal selves can prove to be unbelievably injudicious. There is some truth in the exaggerated saying that before we have become essential selves we are idiots in respect to life. So we human beings have no reason to think we are remarkable.
25It is only as an essential self that the individual is absolutely free from the illusoriness of the emotional world, and so because he has access to the emotional atomic consciousness (48:1). Strangely enough causal selves can be misled in the pertaining respects, which explains the mistakes made by Blavatsky as well as Besant and Leadbeater. Therefore, causal selves should not be regarded as infallible authorities, which regrettably has been the case to a great extent and forced the secretary of the planetary hierarchy, D.K., to intervene with corrections.
26Disease is distinct proof of the fact that the individual is not an essential self, something to be borne in mind, since many have been falsely given out as essential selves. Many mental selves, who have been liberated from their dependence on the lower emotional (48:4-7) and via the unity centre of their causal envelope have contacted essential consciousness, have believed that they are essential selves, a very serious misjudgement, which demonstrates how easily the first self falls a victim to emotional illusoriness and mental fictitiousness. Causal selves are not second selves, even if the monad has centred itself in the second triad mental atom. Only essential and superessential selves are second selves. When incarnated, essential and higher selves may be regarded as avatars, albeit of different degrees. If they live among men, they remain unknown to all except their disciples.
1The first self lives in the gross material worlds 47–49. It should be easy to see that the matter aspect is the aspect closest to the first self, the aspect he most easily perceives. Thus when observing reality, the first self must start from the matter aspect.
2To second selves, the consciousness aspect is the dominant aspect, since they live in the collective consciousness and draw all available knowledge from their own and other beings’ consciousness. The second self has a clear conception of the three aspects of existence (matter, motion, consciousness) and starts from the consciousness aspect as the essential aspect.
3The third selves have already automatized the matter and consciousness aspects. In them, the motion aspect becomes the essential aspect as energy becomes power.
4In the causal world, the matter aspect still dominates, but the consciousness of matter begins to be perceived as ideas.
5Causal consciousness enables the monad to have an exact objective perception of the matter aspect in the worlds of man. Lower kinds of consciousness are objective only apparently, are illusory or fictitious. The consciousness aspect is evident only when the self enters into the essential collective consciousness. Thereupon the self can identify with all kinds of consciousness in the three lowest atomic worlds (47–49). The causal self can study the objective consciousness expressions in lower selves but cannot identify himself with their monad consciousness. The causal self can ascertain the universal brotherhood of the monads in the worlds of man. The essential self, however, has become a conscious member of the cosmic total consciousness, if only in its lowest layer. He knows that he is a part of this consciousness, lives in the consciousness aspect and understands what is meant by consciousness and by unity. He knows that all monads are one single consciousness.
6The essential self apprehends the consciousness content of the atoms as his own reality in which process the matter aspect has practically been eliminated from apprehension.
7The matter aspect is the basis, the medium of the consciousness and energy aspects, and beyond that it is without significance for second selves and higher selves.
8Subjectivism is the second self’s, actually the essential self’s and the 45-self’s, way of looking at things. The philosophical subjectivism (the philosophy of illusion, advaita), which denies the existence of matter and thereby leads to sheer absurdities in the worlds of the first self, demonstrates the error of judging the perception of reality in one world by that of another world. Everything is different with another dimension.
9At the essential stage and only at that stage, there is a justification for subjectivism. Essential consciousness rests on the unshakable objectivity of the causal stage, and on that foundation there is no risk for the arbitrariness of ignorance. The essential self always knows where he shall go to have exact knowledge of whatever he cannot ascertain himself. The knowledge in possession of the various hierarchies is always at the disposal of this self, and if that is not sufficient, there is a possibility to obtain facts from the planetary government with its cosmic connections.
10When there is mention of “subjective worlds” in esoterics, this refers either to those worlds which are invisible to normal man in the physical world and thus are perceptible only in his subjective consciousness, or to the consciousness aspect of those worlds. Such improper terminology has of course given rise to a confusion of ideas, as most esoteric terms have.
1It is only as he acquires collective consciousness, the ability to live in the consciousness aspect of existence that the individual can become a true psychologist, one able to understandingly follow consciousness development in the different natural kingdoms. The immensely limited possibility of exact perception of reality, for the individual’s part also in the physical world, is hinted to us, where the matter aspect is concerned, in the history of natural research. Where the consciousness aspect is concerned, we are as yet illiterate. We are in no position to follow the self in its instinctive striving after increased consciousness, increased perception of objective, material factuality, increased subjective conquest of the cosmic total consciousness.
2Leadbeater’s descriptions of the past incarnations of certain people, with accounts of their physical circumstances, are typical of a causal self of the fifth department. An essential self of the second department had scarcely noticed the individuals’ matter aspect but had experienced their consciousness states and the understanding of life they had acquired in their incarnations, thus their consciousness development.
3The causal self is able to study the external “karmic” relations in the different incarnations. To understand the effects of the various consciousness influences, however, it is required to have essential consciousness. These intimations perhaps facilitate the conception of the difference between causal and essential consciousness.
4It is required to be at least an essential self to see the meaning of the different incarnations and to ascertain the minimal progress made in each incarnation. How slowly it goes, how little it progresses at lower stages, is best seen in the fact that about 150 000 incarnations have proved necessary to become a mental self, and this also because the elite as a collective has succeeded in attaining as far in the collaboration of all through the various cultures. If he were isolated, the individual had still remained at or near the stage of barbarism.
5An individual’s stage of development does not appear so much in his exact concepts, distinct conception and his ability to account for his understanding of life as in his automatic, direct, instinctive right conception which at once sees the correctness of esoteric truths when they have been formulated. Then he says: “It is exactly as if I had said it myself.” He can do it only afterwards, however, not before. But afterwards it is “obvious so it needn’t even be said”, which is evidence of his lack of psychological understanding. The instinct was there, the latent understanding, but not the mental clarity of concepts.
1The extravert mental selves (having the third department in their triad envelope) are more interested in the matter aspect of existence; the introverts (having the second department in their triad envelope), in the consciousness aspect. The introverts more easily become typical mystics or subjectivists in philosophy. Also, they find it easier to acquire subjective consciousness in the unity centre of the causal envelope and through this to reach essential consciousness.
2The extraverts more easily acquire subjective consciousness in the intelligence centre of the causal envelope. They could be said to be “predestined” to become typical causal selves, just like the introverts become typical essential selves. As essential selves the extraverts usually follow the line of wisdom (the 1–3–5–7 line); and the introverts, the line of love (2–4–6) in the essential world.
3The essential world is called the world of perfect wisdom and love.
4The individual continues and concludes the all-round orientation in the worlds of the planet which he began already as a mental and causal self. Those who belong to departments 1–3–5–7, the line of wisdom, chiefly devote themselves to the world view and other things of the matter and motion aspects, whereas those of departments 2–4–6, the line of love, in their work devote themselves to the problems of life view belonging to the consciousness aspect. Everybody in that world walks the way of development alloted to him by his individual character.
5Buddha can be said to represent the line of wisdom, which begins with the union of mental and causal consciousness; Christos, the line of love the condition of which is the union of emotionality and essentiality. It is evident from this that only esoterics can explain what those two 43-selves taught their disciples.
6Those who walk the way of love usually make a more rapid career in solar systems of the second degree such as our solar system (especially suitable for those who preferably live in the consciousness aspect). Which way the monad chooses to walk is its own business and free choice when entering the sixth natural kingdom.
7In this connection it should be pointed out that the individual, although in every world he learns how to control all three aspects of reality, nevertheless always trains to become a specialist in order to perform a function in future processes of manifestation.
8Each higher kingdom has its own special functions, supervised from still higher worlds. Nobody is entrusted a function that he does not master perfectly. Nevertheless supervision is necessary, since in the processes of manifestation everything is changing and every change entails adaptation.
1Irremediable confusion of ideas has been caused by the fact that the esoteric symbols had different meanings, which were revealed one by one in ever higher degrees. Symbols fell into the hands of the uninitiated and then of course could have only one meaning, usually the least important. The term Christos meant a historical personage as well as essential consciousness.
2The gnostic saying, “I and the Father are one”, referred to the essential self’s and all higher selves’ conscious share in unity (“all are one”), as well as the 43-self’s access to the planetary government. The essential self, who had entered into unity, had become “one with the Father”, become conscious of his oneness with the cosmic total consciousness; by “sacrificing” the second self he could become a third self and join the planetary government (“become one with the Father”). A distinguished yogi asserted that anyone who had acquired the faculty of samadhi (a very vague term) could say the same as Christos in the Gospel. But no yogi has become a causal self (for then he would no longer be a yogi), but this is an instance of confusion with an experience in the higher regions of the emotional world.
3The saying attributed to Christos in the Gospels, “No one cometh unto the Father, but by me”, has several meanings as do most gnostic sayings. By “the Father” they meant manifestal consciousness (43). To reach that world consciousness you must of course first have entered the consciousness of unity. The supreme head of the second department of the planetary hierarchy is the obvious initiator at the individual’s admission to the hierarchy. That office was held by the Buddha before Christos.
4An esoteric saying by Christos has obviously slipped into the Gospels (intended for the uninitiated) by an oversight, the mention of those who had tasted “second death” and resurrection. The gnostic saying “first death” meant the dissolution of the envelopes of incarnation. “Second death” meant the dissolution of the causal envelope as a condition for the monad to become an essential self. Thereupon ceases the necessity of incarnation and it remains for the monad to do a voluntary incarnation to become a perfected second self, a 45-self.
5They have wondered how the apostle Paul could write “the crucified Christos” when he ought to have known that Christos was stoned to death. Paul was a mental self on the verge of becoming a causal self and had as a young man joined the Essene Order. Later he was also (contrary to current practice) admitted to the Gnostic Order following which he called himself Paul. Jeshu, who was a causal self, became an essential self in that incarnation, and such an incarnation is still called the incarnation of crucifixion. Jeshu was the one “crucified”, not Christos. This was never meant to allude to the symbol of Golgotha. At the dissolution of the causal envelope before the monad enrobes itself in the essential envelope, man hangs for a moment like crucified “between the two worlds”. Besides, that incarnation, the life of final reaping, is a veritable incarnation of suffering. Where the very expression “crucified” is concerned, the gnosticians called all incarnations “crucifixion”, since man is symbolically “crucified on the four spokes of the revolving wheel of time”. As for the Epistles of Paul it should be added that the father of the church Eusebius rehashed them. Thus they are not “genuine”.
Endnote by the translator into English
11.3.11 The Schiller quotation means “Accept the Godhead in your hearts, and it will descend from the throne of the world.”
The above text constitutes the essay The Essential Self by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book The Way of Man by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1999 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.