The Way of Man by Henry T. Laurency
7. THE CAUSAL BEING
7. THE CAUSAL BEING
1The goal of the monad in the first triad is to centre itself in the second triad. This requires a bridge between the two triads. That bridge is the causal envelope with the consciousness of its matter.
2The causal envelope is, like all other kinds of envelopes (except the organism), an aggregate envelope.
3The causal envelope is a gift from Augoeides. It is the causal envelope that makes the individual a human being. It cannot incarnate into an animal body. It can never be possessed by another individual. Obsession ensues when an emotional being succeeds in taking possession of the organism with its etheric envelope during sleep, when the rightful owner has left the organism.
4The most important functions of the causal envelope are as follows: to make up a permanent envelope for the first triad; to supply the self with centres of consciousness enabling the self to connect with the units of the second triad; to convey energies from the second and third triads to the first triad.
5The causal envelope is a causal being with passive causal consciousness. This consciousness cannot be perceived by any consciousness lower than 47:5, and even by this consciousness only sporadically. It will be the task of man to activate this passive consciousness and in so doing acquire subjective and objective consciousness in his causal envelope. This requires tens of thousands of incarnations by the causal envelope. As long as man is found at the physical stage of barbarism or at the lower emotional stage of civilization, any contact with causal consciousness is precluded. It is only at the higher emotional stage of culture, the stage of the mystic (48:3) that a contact is possible. Until then, incarnation is the only possibility for man to be conscious at all, namely, in his envelopes of incarnation in which his monad acquired consciousness already in the animal kingdom.
6Man must acquire subjective as well as objective consciousness in 47:3 and 47:2 before the monad can move from the mental molecule to the mental atom and become a causal self.
7When the monad can finally centre itself in the essential atom of the second triad, it becomes an essential self. Thereby the monad is able to form its own causal envelope through the vibrations of the second triad mental atom. Then the old causal envelope, the gift by Augoeides, becomes superfluous and is dissolved.
8The causal envelope is a channel for those higher energies which, through the triad units, vitalize the centres of the envelopes of incarnation as long as these envelopes are deemed necessary to exist for the purpose intended by the incarnation.
9The fact that all worlds and all material forms need to be renewed at certain intervals is due to the fact that all material aggregates are worn out as they are affected by vibrations of higher kinds (being so much more powerful than even the next lower kind).
10If diseases arise in the envelopes, this is the effect of dysfunction in their centres (overstimulation, inability to absorb the right vibrations, wrong distribution of vibrations received, etc.).
11Causal matter cannot be affected by disharmonious vibrations. Agreement with reality manifests itself as harmony, which is the explanation of Platon’s thesis that ideas are simultaneously good, beautiful, and, above all, energy.
1During incarnation, the causal being consists of two envelopes: the greater causal envelope and the lesser triad envelope. The triad envelope is the incarnating part of the causal envelope. It encloses the first triad and surrounds the envelopes of incarnation proper: the mental, the emotional, the physical etheric envelope, and the organism. The greater causal envelope, which Augoeides takes care of, remains during incarnation in the causal world. After an incarnation has been concluded and the envelopes have been dissolved, the triad envelope coalesces with the causal envelope.
2In the first self, the incarnating part of the causal envelope – the triad envelope – extends about 50 cm beyond the organism, surrounding all the other envelopes of incarnation. In the causal self, the causal envelope is not divided at incarnation. In this kind of self, the envelope has reached a great extension, having a radius of several metres.
3The triad envelope is for the monad in the first triad its particular envelope for a certain incarnation. The content of this envelope exhibits the stage of development the monad has attained. The stage also appears from the material composition of the lower envelopes.
4The molecules of the causal envelope have followed the triad envelope in incarnation thousands of times and have learnt from experiences they have had. These molecules have specialized in various domains of life according to their individual characters. The horoscope for a certain incarnation indicates what kind of “specialists” enter into the new triad envelope this time.
5The mental atoms (47:1) and causal molecules (47:2,3) making up the content of the greater causal envelope belong, like all matter, to the seven departments. Just as all other kinds of envelopes, the causal envelope is composed of atoms and molecules of all the seven departments, although some one of the seven always dominates. The dominant department is intended whenever the “department of the causal envelope” is mentioned, as if this were the only one. The “department of the causal envelope” is constant during a very long series of incarnations. Which department dominates the mental atoms making up the causal envelope depends on the individual’s mode of causalization.
6The new triad envelope formed before each incarnation is of a certain department. Which department this is depends on the percentage of atoms and molecules of this department. The selection of matter at the forming of the triad envelope is made according to the law of destiny. It has not yet been announced on what principles the selection of molecules is made in the individual case. We know, however, that the principle is always suited to the individual’s consciousness development with a view to his acquisition of lacking qualities and abilities. These are not acquired in one single incarnation but in percentages up to one hundred in a long series of physical lives.
7As long as man is in incarnation, there is an opposition between the causal envelope and the triad envelope and a tension between the energies of the two envelopes, not least because of the fact that they, but for some exceptional cases, are of different departments.
8The term, “twin souls”, which ignorance has picked up and about which it can only produce erroneous hypotheses, refers to the two causal envelopes. Also the tale of the twins Pollux and Castor, in its original version, bore upon the two envelopes. It is an unforgettable experience when the individual has the opportunity to directly compare between what he can do as Castor and as Pollux in the same thing. Then he is not important any more.
9In elementary presentation, the two envelopes are not distinguished, but both are called the “causal envelope”. This is also psychologically suitable in order that man learn to view these “twins” as the unity they are. This also makes it easier for the self to identify with the consciousness of its causal envelope. As long as the self remains in its triad envelope, it is an unconscious causal being, but it should work at becoming a conscious causal being. Realizing this is very important for it facilitates the self’s contact with and development of causal consciousness. “I am a potential causal self although I am not yet conscious in my causal envelope” is a good mantra. It will raise you above much of the everyday bustle and liberate you from identification with lower envelopes.
10Purposeful methods for the activation of consciousness have been lacking in the West. That is why yoga philosophers with their eastern views and methods, which are unsuitable for Westerners, have caused seekers unnecessarily complicated and often misleading work. It is important that the eastern methods are superseded by western ones. The western methods, put upon the groundwork of esoterics, can be made considerably simpler, since esoterics is the knowledge of reality, which the yoga philosophy is not. The works of Laurency are attempts at simplifying this psychological procedure.
1That causal envelope, which the individual receives from Augoeides at causalization, is only the outermost protective shell of mental atoms (47:1). To begin with, this shell is filled with causal involutionary matter of the lowest kind (47:3) whose consciousness passively reflects the ideas of the causal world. It is the task of the self first to activate that causal involutionary matter and then to change it for causal evolutionary matter and to fill up the envelope with it.
2This is done in the course of incarnations to the extent that the self acquires understanding of the correspondences in the physical world of the causal ideas and applies the knowledge so gained in living life. That passive causal matter, which accompanies the triad envelope when it incarnates, is involved into man’s lower envelopes of incarnation and thereby it becomes activated by the self. Understanding of ideas also has the effect that activated causal matter from the surrounding causal world is incorporated with the triad envelope. Later, upon the conclusion of the incarnation, all involved causal matter is incorporated with the triad envelope and, when the two causal envelopes coalesce, also with the greater causal envelope. Thus grows the greater causal envelope in extent as the individual develops more and more.
3The causal envelope serves in the beginning only as a collector envelope for the activated causal matter supplied by the self during its thousands of incarnations. At mankind’s lower stages of development, this supply is extremely sparse and consists of causal molecules of the lowest kind (47:3) only.
4When the original shell has been filled up with activated causal matter of the lowest molecular kind (47:3), and the individual has attained the highest emotional level (48:2), 47:3 molecules start being exchanged for 47:2 molecules. When, at the humanist stage, the envelope consists equally of molecules of these two kinds, they begin to be exchanged for mental atoms (47:1).
5After the envelope has been filled up with only mental atoms, it can begin to swell and reach a considerable size. Just as the mental envelope grows in extent the more mental ideas are supplied to it, so the causal envelope swells the more esoteric ideas (second self’s ideas) the individual assimilates.
6In the beginning of its existence, the causal envelope appears colourless and void, since its molecules are in an inactive, passive state, being activated only by vibrations in the causal world. Inasmuch as the monad, during tens of thousands of incarnations, supplies the causal envelope with matter it has itself activated, the matter of the envelope grows increasingly luminous, so that, when man’s consciousness development is concluded, the causal envelope shines in various colours: rose (impersonal affection), yellow (intelligence), blue (devotion, worship, admiration), green (sympathy), violet (aspiration).
7The causal molecules that compose the triad envelope are only partially the same at the subsequent incarnation. However, a sufficiently great part of them follow along, so that the new incarnation presents an ongoing continuity also in that respect. Upon the conclusion of the incarnation, the triadal and causal envelopes coalesce, and the causal molecules that have incarnated are mixed with the others making up the causal envelope, so that, after a number of incarnations, all molecules have incarnated and have been activated by the first triad, this on the condition that the self in its development has reached the emotionality of 48:3 and the mentality of 47:5.
8“Skandhas” are such atoms of tertiary matter as are taken from man’s envelopes of incarnation, are attached to the first triad, and follow it at subsequent incarnations. When the individual’s causal envelope and first triad are dissolved, also the skandhas are dispersed. Their constituent monads thereby pass into quaternary matter and can begin their own evolution.
1In lower as well as in higher kingdoms, the individual always belongs to a group. The monads in the three lowest natural kingdoms have their group-souls. The monads in the superhuman kingdoms enter into collective beings. The human kingdom is the only natural kingdom in which the self is cut off from direct contact with the consciousness of other beings. Therefore, the human kingdom is the most difficult kingdom of evolution.
2Man’s causal envelope is an isolating envelope separating the self’s consciousness from the collective consciousness. In this isolation the individual must, through self-reliance and self-determination, acquire unlosable self-identity, self-consciousness, learn how to apply the laws of life without friction, especially the law of self-realization. Without these self-acquired abilities, the individual, when in the collective consciousness of higher kingdoms, would be useless as an independent co-worker and would be a mindless robot, always dependent on the insight of others, the will of others.
3When man has acquired such an experience of life that he no longer is a danger to other beings, has acquired freedom by granting freedom to everybody (also freedom from criticism and any other encroachment on the life of another), has realized that law is the limit that protects others from his arbitrariness and recklessness, then he is ready to become an aspirant to discipleship. As a disciple he works purposefully to become a second self with a right to knowledge of reality and life in order to realize the power of true freedom, to become a highest cosmic self.
4It is in the causal envelope that the self receives the proof that it is divine, “god immanent”, a co-sharer in the cosmic total consciousness. It is in the triadal envelope, however, that the self as a first self must reach that insight before it receives the final proof of its potential godhood. According to the law of self-realization, the individual must seek by himself, find by himself, realize by himself. He never has confirmation that his insight is correct until he has found it by himself. Only esoterics (a gift from the planetary hierarchy) can provide the world view and life view that self-acquired common sense will finally accept and also find the proofs of its correctness.
1In the process of evolution, the monad has begun activating physical consciousness in the mineral kingdom and emotional consciousness in the vegetable kingdom to reach contact with mental consciousness in the animal kingdom. When the monad has reached the highest animal species, it is on the verge of being impressible from causal consciousness. Thereby the animal monad can causalize, go through that process in which it is endowed with a causal envelope. In the human kingdom, it is the task of the monad to acquire consciousness in that envelope. When the human monad has succeeded in acquiring full active subjective and objective consciousness in the two kinds of causal matter 47:2,3, it has become a causal self. Consciousness in the third and highest kind of matter of the causal envelope, mental atoms (47:1), is attained only by the essential self.
2The purpose of the causal envelope is to make causal consciousness possible, which is required to understand the meaning of life, to understand ever higher worlds and kingdoms. When this consciousness has enabled the self to ascertain facts in the worlds of man, the worlds of the envelopes of incarnation, the self has acquired sufficient knowledge of reality and life to see that further development means consciousness development and ever increasing participation in the cosmic total consciousness. Thereby the second triad essential atom and essential consciousness are activated in a process that goes on until the self is able to enter into the consciousness of unity or community, to acquire by itself an essential envelope, move from its essential atom and liberate itself from its causal envelope. That envelope has thereby fulfilled its mission and can be dissolved.
3Thereupon the self has to form its own causal envelope by the aid of the vibrations of the second triad mental atom and to attract the mental atoms that entered into the old envelope with their consciousness and self-acquired experiences.
4For the essential self there are other possibilities than the memory of the causal envelope to acquire knowledge of the past. The self can read it from the causal memory of the planet or in the subconscious of the first triad, which now becomes accessible, if the self has cared to preserve the first triad in its new causal envelope.
1In the causal envelope exist all the mental atoms provided by Augoeides and possessed of his own causal knowledge. In addition, the causal envelope contains all the superconscious knowledge the self has acquired through its incarnations, all we can grasp by our own selfacquired understanding. That is how it always is, all the way through ever higher kingdoms. Facts we may receive but we must ourselves put them in their correct places in our own “system”, our fund of self-acquired understanding. This implies an inevitable limitation that remains until we, as higher selves, have had experiences according to the law of selfrealization.
2The esoteric (causal) facts we gather exist as causal molecules in our causal envelope and present themselves automatically in the brain-cells when they are needed. They make up a fund that automatically, gradually attracts similar facts and ideas. It is no use for the self in the first triad to try to do that work by itself. Then you produce nothing but fictions; precisely what is the great, seemingly irremediable mistake all occultists do. They believe they comprehend what lies beyond the capacity of mental consciousness.
3All that knowledge which our self can acquire and reproduce in the consciousness of its material envelopes we can communicate to others and we can apprehend better and better as our experience increases. However, we cannot communicate to others that knowledge which makes up the central nucleus of our individual character’s understanding. Now occultists must not believe that the knowledge they are unable to communicate is part of their individual character. It is a matter of something wholly different, far beyond the level of those who still believe something.
1Mental, emotional, physical (thought, feeling, action) is the path the energies of life take through the chain of incarnations from the causal envelope (including the triad envelope). The individual’s prospect of purposefully assimilating the energies pouring down from the causal envelope into the lower envelopes is due to his stage of development, and to the quality of his envelopes, which in its turn depends on his stage of development. At lower stages, the individual is not sufficiently receptive to energies, which can be absorbed only by higher molecular kinds already activated. In such cases the consciousness in the envelopes can give energies a wrong direction, which has abortive results.
2The energies of the three main departments stream down through the three centres of the causal envelope: those of the first department, through the will centre; those of the second department, through the unity centre; and those of the third department, through the intelligence centre. Into the energies of the third department enter the energies of the four lower (4–7) departments. At mankind’s present stage of development, departmental energies can manifest themselves but imperfectly.
1By and large, statesmen belong to the first department; real philosophers like Platon, thus not to be confused with imaginative speculators, to the second; the great psychologists, to the third; the cultural pioneers in literature, art, and music, to the fourth; scientific pathfinders, to the fifth; religious reformers, to the sixth; and the great financiers, to the seventh department. They have eventually become conscious in the department to which their causal being belongs, which indicates where their future contributions as causal selves are to be expected. The department of the causal envelope is often important also to the self’s further development as a second self. Essential consciousness, consciousness of unity, displays two tendencies: wisdom and love. Extravert types usually follow the line of wisdom; introvert types, the line of love.
2People who have the first department in their causal envelopes have particular difficulties, receptive as they are to energies coming direct from the planetary government. In humans, these energies often have a destructive effect. Only when people are able to rightly apprehend the will energies and use them in the right manner, will their activity be constructive, but then of great significance to the individual, the nation, to mankind. Ataturk of Turkey was, on the whole successful, whereas Stalin failed, instigator of the cold war as he was, not to mention his domestic policies.
1The causal envelope makes up the connection between the first and second triads. This connection is supplied by a bridge between the first triad mental molecule and the second triad mental atom. The bridge is the so-called twelve-petalled lotus, which has the central position in the causal envelope and consists of four centres, each having three overlapping “petals”. Often there is mention of just three centres, since the fourth, the inmost centre, develops only in the causal self.
2The “petals” of the lotus centre “open” as consciousness in them develops. The “petals” are connected with the three units of each of the three triads. This connection is made up of the sutratma and the antahkarana. (These Sanskrit designations, totally misinterpreted by yogis, originate from the esoteric knowledge order instituted by Vyasa.) The “lotus” is man’s “soul”, although in the lower degrees of the knowledge orders they were content to call the causal envelope itself the “soul”.
3The three centres have been given the following names starting from the outermost:
the intelligence or knowledge centre
the unity centre
the will centre
4These names are justified in so far as they indicate the dominant tendency in the three units of the first triad: intelligence in the physical atom, aspiration to unity in the emotional atom, and synthesizing will in the mental molecule. The names are improper in so far as all three centres are connected with all three units of the first triad.
5The three centres of the causal envelope receive energies from the three units of the second triad to send them on to the first self’s envelopes of incarnation. From the mental atom of the second triad energies pour down through the knowledge centre to the mental molecule of the first triad; and through the mental envelope, to the throat centre and the brain-cells of the disciple. From the essential atom of the second triad, energies stream through the unity centre, the first triad emotional atom, and the emotional envelope to the heart centre of the etheric envelope. From the superessential molecule of the second triad, energies stream through the will centre to the physical atom of the first triad, and to the crown as well as basal centres of the etheric envelope.
6The knowledge centre of the causal envelope receives energies also from the unity and will centres; and the unity centre, also from the will centre.
7Each one of the three centres of the causal envelope has its particular function. The knowledge centre makes it possible, through streams of energy from its three “petals”, to express knowledge, love, and will in the two physical envelopes. The three petals of the unity centre are, analogously, the condition of emotional knowledge in the emotional world, emotional love (attraction), and emotional will. The three petals of the will centre make mental knowledge, mental attraction, and mental will possible.
8These energies from higher to lower worlds and envelopes are to be assimilated by the individual himself according to the law of self-realization. The pertaining abilities show the individual’s stage of development in so far as they have opportunities to manifest themselves in the physical world through the etheric envelope.
9The three centres of the causal envelope are activated through the acquisition of consciousness in the three kinds of causal matter (47:1-3): causal reason, causal unity, and causal will with the cooperation of energies from the three units of the second triad through Augoeides.
10The knowledge centre has three contacts: physical, emotional, mental. According as the man begins to acquire subjective causal consciousness, the monad comes in contact with the knowledge centre of the causal envelope via the thread of consciousness from the brain (the crown centre of the etheric envelope) through the mental molecule of the first triad.
11Until man has become an essential self, the unity centre makes up his connection between emotional and essential consciousness. Emotional consciousness thus is the energy factor that is necessary for the self in the first triad to move to the second triad. The three contacts of the unity centre are developed through co-operation, loving understanding, and universal brotherhood.
12The will centre is activated by active sympathy, right attitude to life, and acts of sacrifice.
1Human (self-acquired) objective consciousness never reaches beyond 48:2, the highest emotionality.
2As a disciple of the planetary hierarchy man, from being a mental self, can become a causal self and, as a causal self, acquire mental-causal objective consciousness (47:2-7) beside objective consciousness in worlds 48:2-7 and 49:2-7.
3Thus no individual in the human kingdom can acquire consciousness of a higher kind than causal consciousness. If anything else is asserted, then it is a case of self-deception, unfortunately a common phenomenon.
4It has proved increasingly necessary to establish these limits to human consciousness against the unfounded claims of innumerable occultists, clairvoyants, and yogis. They are unable to determine the limits to their own consciousness. Only individuals of the fifth natural kingdom are able to do that.
5There is a perfect confusion in this respect within the occult sects. Theosophists have the most exaggerated ideas of the capacities of a causal self, an essential self, and still higher selves.
6The study of previous incarnations is of importance only insofar as it concerns the self’s consciousness development and acquisition of the fundamental qualities belonging to the different stages of development. The only human envelope where this consciousness development can be read off at all is the causal envelope. Thus only causal selves (with incipient essential consciousness, 46:5-7) are able to make such studies. Any other alleged study of previous incarnations is unessential and will easily mislead those who engage in it.
7The imaginings of occultists and clairvoyants about their own and other people’s previous incarnations are part of the speculation to which those categories unresistingly fall victims.
1People are found at different stages of development, which is due to the age of their causal envelopes, the time when the monads passed from the animal to the human kingdom.
2Since the cosmos is a gigantic process of development, all kingdoms in nature are also age classes determined by the different times when the monads were introduced from chaos to the cosmos, which is from the beginning of small dimensions but grows unceasingly in extent through this very supply of monads. The higher kingdom the monad has attained, the older it is in the cosmos.
3The majority of those who causalized on our planet some 21 million years ago are still at the stage of barbarism. Those who are found at higher stages have mostly causalized earlier on another planet or in another solar system, where they certainly were laggards but nevertheless had reached a higher stage of development.
4It is easier to understand the time periods mentioned when you know that monads incarnate in series and moreover spend most of their time asleep in their causal envelopes. The series of incarnations are determined by several factors. As a rule the decisive factor is the possibilities of development existing for the individual (more exactly: the clans to which the individual belongs). The higher the stage of development the individual has reached, the more factors make themselves felt.
5The different stages of development, determined by the age of the individuals’ causal envelopes, afford the explanation why there are such great differences in understanding of life, independently of formal education in school and at the university. On the other hand, they do not explain such so-called talent as is due to the quality of the brain. Nor do they explain skills, talents, genius in technical respects. The latter are due to the fact that some particular ability has been cultivated during several incarnations and the possibility has been given in a new incarnation to resuscitate it. There are latent geniuses who on account of the quality of the etheric envelope (the reaping envelope) and the absence of certain horoscope vibrations suffer from “unrequited love” for some certain art, etc. To realize this in time may save the individual from many disappointments.
6The teaching of predestination is a false teaching. The fact that out of human beings, whose causal envelopes are of the same age, some reach the fifth kingdom before the others is due to the previous experience of the monad?the self. Besides, all do not learn equally fast; many there are who tarry in the worlds of man, since they do not want to liberate themselves from their dependence on the pertaining kinds of consciousness. Such people are irresistibly attracted by physical life.
7The older the causal envelope and the higher the level of development, the more active are the centres of the envelopes of incarnation, the stronger the vibrations, the more the energies pouring in work together, the greater the effect of the energies pouring out of the various envelopes.
8The expedient distribution of the energies of the etheric envelope to the glandular system, heart (blood), and nervous system is due to the individual’s level, as well as to his general attitude, and to the departments of his envelopes. That general attitude which brings about automatic development includes aspiration to unity, forgetfulness of one’s own self, measures taken to promote inner harmony from which follow outer harmonious relationships.
1In the incarnations following causalization, passive causal consciousness is not aware even of the envelopes of incarnation. It is only after a long series of incarnations, in which the causal matter activated in the triad envelope has been supplied to the greater causal envelope, that passive causal consciousness can as a silent witness observe the experiences of the envelopes of incarnation. Even subsequently the causal envelope by and large serves only as a collector envelope of activated causal molecular kinds. It is only as the knowledge centre of the causal envelope begins to be activated that the causal envelope shares in the experience of the envelopes of incarnation.
2Consciousness in 47:3 largely corresponds to the knowledge centre of the causal envelope; consciousness in 47:2, to the unity centre; and consciousness in 47:1, to the will centre. In the incarnations in which the triad envelope belongs to the second department, 47:2 molecules are particularly activated, which facilitates the self’s striving in 48:2 to come in contact with essential consciousness. The corresponding is true of the first department in the triad envelope and 45-consciousness: an active, energetic life, whether rightly directed is another matter. Only at the higher emotional stage and at the mental stage is man able to make use of the pertaining possibilities and opportunities.
3It is interesting that the difference there is between the collective consciousness of the causal envelope and the causal self’s self-acquired power of identification with causal consciousness applies analogously to the self’s consciousness expansion through all the worlds of ever higher kingdoms. The worlds are collective consciousnesses, and it is with those that the self must gradually identify itself to reach sovereignty in the three aspects of reality of the various worlds.
1If anything of the causal ideas is to be apprehended by those who are not causally conscious, it must be scaled down into idiologies for intellectuals and into poetry for mystics. A typical example of emotional scaling down is Walt Whitman. He studied everything published by the writers of his time, Emerson, Blavatsky, etc., and made poetry out of the ideas he managed to pick up. It is characteristic that the Mao Chinese appreciate him as the foremost Western poet and translate his poems into Chinese.
2A serious obstacle to the scaling down of ideas is the fact that national languages are in want of words by which to rightly describe (define) the content of reality. It is one of the purposes of esoterics to present mankind with new words (preferably international words) for hitherto unknown realities just as science coins new words for new discoveries.
3In this connection it should be emphasized that Laurency does not write for occultists but in order to supply philosophers and scientists with an acceptable ideology when, a few generations hence, they will be forced to look about for such a one when they have seen that their fiction systems are both untenable and hostile to life.
1Only the esoteric knowledge can rationally explain self-consciousness. Without this knowledge man remains uncertain of his own self, uncertain what the self is.
2It is causal consciousness that makes self-consciousness possible. Self-identity is the individual’s first contact with causal consciousness, the indication of the fact that the monad in the first triad is found in a causal envelope and has become isolated (in this envelope) from the group-souls of lower kingdoms as well as the collective beings of higher kingdoms.
3It is the isolation of the monad in the causal envelope that makes the monad consciousness aware of the opposition between self and not-self, an opposition that disappears when the self has acquired self-consciousness in the essential envelope. It is as an isolated self that the individual has to acquire self-reliance and self-determination before it can enter into unity with its self-identity preserved.
4In general it is at the age of three that the matter of the causal envelope has penetrated the physical organism in man in a new incarnation and the child becomes self-conscious.
5At the dissolution of the envelopes, the self’s continuity of consciousness vanishes, and so the individual in each new incarnation believes that he is another individual. He acquires unlosable self-identity only by acquiring objective causal consciousness, which enables him to study all the incarnations the causal envelope has done ever since its formation at the monad’s transition from the animal to the human kingdom.
6The loss of his continuity of consciousness is actually the greatest disaster that can befall the individual.
7At the remould of the solar system, all material forms of the system, and thus all individual envelopes, dissolve. Those who have not by then acquired cosmic consciousness (42) will remain unconscious until they are able, in the new solar system, to self-activate their latent capacity, which may be a long time in coming.
1The monad’s active consciousness in causal matter is usually called “intuition” in esoterics. Since the word “intuition”, on account of the abuse of words by life ignorance, has become ambiguous and thus unusable, it is most suitably replaced with the exact term, “active causal consciousness”. This denotes that causal consciousness that only the causal self acquires. However, if it is clear from the context that a causal self is intended, it is sufficient to use the shorter term “causal consciousness”, provided you remember that you mean the active, permanent causal consciousness and not the passive, sporadic one that may occur at the stages of culture and humanity.
2Most typical of active causal consciousness is its ability to see the causes of effects, which its very name indicates. Subjective causal consciousness perceives the world of causal ideas. Objective causal consciousness sees the causes of events in the material worlds of the three lowest atomic kinds (47–49).
3The subjective consciousness aspect does not suffice to ascertain the course of events. That would require access to the collective consciousness of the planetary government. To ascertain the course of events in the worlds of man, it is necessary to have objective causal consciousness, to be a causal self.
4By and large, extraverts are objectivists and introverts subjectivists in their attitude to reality. Introverts find it easier to come in contact with essential consciousness; extraverts, with causal consciousness.
5Causal consciousness affords us knowledge of material reality and essential consciousness of the reality content of consciousness. This holds the solution of the problem of the possibility of knowledge, a problem that philosophers are unable to solve. Normal man can acquire knowledge of the gross physical, “visible” world. Those having etheric vision (improperly called clairvoyants) can acquire knowledge of 49:3,4, and emotional clairvoyants can observe phenomena in the emotional world though they are unable to judge their reality content. That is the limit to man’s possible objective knowledge. Anyone who has a clear idea of these matters need not fall a victim to authorities and prophets of all kinds.
6Before the self can acquire active causal consciousness it must have liberated itself from emotional illusoriness and mental fictitiousness, the imagination and speculation of ignorance in the worlds of man.
7Causal consciousness is joy. The cultivation of joy is a way to conquer causal consciousness. The esoterician knows that all will be well in the end. Everybody has a causal envelope, everybody will become a causal self, everybody will enter into unity. That knowledge is the ground of joy.
1The quintessence of the first self’s experience is collected automatically by the subconscious of the first triad. This store is only a fund that the self has to go on building, a fund that is the condition of a general understanding of life. Unlike this subconscious of the triad, which only makes up the latent memory of things experienced, causal consciousness absorbs “essentials”. For the causal being is during incarnation not just a passive collector of experience of life but also an active participator in the work of Augoeides.
2It is true that at lower stages human experiences and interests are of such a nature that causal consciousness has no use of them. But when the individual has reached the higher emotional stage (the stage of the mystic), begins to take an interest in the unity of life, and makes his contribution in some respect for mankind, evolution, and unity, then his experience of life becomes important also for the causal self in the making.
3The first self makes a real contribution only when the individual begins to work up his experiences in order to get perspectives on existence. When the individual has gathered sufficient experience to see the absurdity, relatively speaking, and limitation of the first self’s striving and has not much more to “learn from life”, then he will be actively prepared to understand more and more. Then, too, he will be ripe for that expansion of consciousness which a conscious contact with causal consciousness entails.
4In order to clearly understand these processes you must know the difference between the causal being (causal envelope), Augoeides, and the causal self. Those are three realities which most occultists have not learnt to differentiate. Often they use terms such as the “Ego” or the “soul” without discrimination about all three. More about this in the section on Augoeides.
5The “causal being” terms the causal envelope and man as a possessor of such an envelope. This term does not differentiate between the greater causal envelope and the lesser triad envelope.
6Man is a causal being, since he received a causal envelope at the monad’s transition from the animal to the human kingdom. In this envelope he is an evolutionary monad in a first triad. As a causal being he is still a first self and remains a first self until he becomes a causal self.
7“Causal self” terms that stage of development where the human monad has become selfconscious in the causal envelope. Man can momentarily become subjectively conscious in 47:3 or 47:2 or, as in theurgy, meet Augoeides long before he has achieved fully active subjective and objective permanent consciousness in his causal envelope, long before he has become a causal self.
8The causal envelope (causal being) is to begin with the collector envelope of the experience of the self in the envelopes of incarnation. It is from the beginning the “silent witness” that sees, hear, and records everything with an unlosable memory of all incarnations.
9The passive consciousness of the causal envelope can be activated by Augoeides, by the causal self in the causal world, and by vibrations from higher worlds. That consciousness can begin to be activated by the self when it has reached the stage of culture, the emotional stage of the mystic (48:3). Having so acquired the energies of attraction, the self can, via the unity centre of the causal envelope, reach its second triad essential atom in the lowest molecular kind of the essential world and thereby begin to activate the causal consciousness of the second triad.
10When the consciousness of causal matter begins to be activated, primarily the matter of the triad envelope is activated. When the incarnation has been concluded and the triad envelope coalesces with the causal envelope, the activated matter of the triad envelope mixes with the matter of the causal envelope. Therefore, the total causal matter is ever more activated with each incarnation. Finally, the monad is able to be equally active in the greater envelope as in the triad envelope. Thereby the monad is a causal self.
11The first sign that the subjective causal consciousness begins to assert itself is the sense of responsibility, not just for the individual himself and his small circle of relatives and friends, but for everybody.
12It is in the triad envelope that subjective causal consciousness expresses itself before objective causal consciousness has been acquired. This subjective causal consciousness is often mistaken. Such mistakes can also be directed to Augoeides in the greater causal envelope and cause conflict with him.
13Also the material energies that Augoeides sends down through the envelopes of incarnation cause conflict between the envelopes. This he does deliberately in order that the self develop by solving the problems that arise in the process.
14Control of consciousness and daily meditation are conditions to acquire causal consciousness. The usual meditation exercises may be good preliminaries to the right, not yet publicized esoteric ones. It is through esoterics, the knowledge of reality, that the individual gets the requisite meditation materials for the right activation of causal consciousness and contacts that consciousness.
15Without this knowledge, meditation is a random search, most often resulting in an emotional system of illusions or a mental system of fictions of which religious, philosophical, or occult systems are examples. All too many of the occult systems of meditation are abortive, misleading, and some of them even harmful. You do not play with consciousness energies without paying the penalty.
16Like philosophers, occultists apparently have an incurable tendency to believe that their vagaries are true ideas. When will they learn to see that the knowledge is acquired only in the second triad and that the way to that goes through discipleship? Regrettably, there are “black masters”. Anyone who lives for unity (the opposite of repulsion, division, exclusion of people), however, need not become their victim.
17A contact with causal consciousness is achieved through 48:2,3 as well as through 47:4,5. Those kinds of matter thus must be activated. The humanist must become a “saint” again in order to be able to affect passive essential consciousness into activity.
18Anyone who thinks in accord with reality attracts more and more ideas from the world of ideas (molecules from the causal world).
19In order to become a second self, the individual must disregard the matter aspect and try to live in the consciousness aspect. From having been a “body that has a soul” he must become a “soul that has a body”, an essential difference.
20The condition to acquire causal consciousness is also that the individual, through sufficient experience of life (level achieved), has acquired the necessary trust in his Augoeides, the planetary hierarchy, and the Law. The ancients (initiates) called this trust in life “faith”, an abortive expression whose use has had the most deplorable consequences in everything connected with religion.
21Every causal quality that the self acquires automatically as a first self (the understanding of others, for example) is a power and a step on the path to the causal world.
22We develop by solving the problems of life, and those problems we solve by serving life, for it is in service that we find the problems and their solution. On lower levels, service entails a good sowing, and on higher levels, when we have learnt how to think and act in accord with the laws of life, it entails ever higher syntheses.
23Serving mankind, the will, the ability to help people where they are standing is a source of joy and makes its easier for us to forget the egoistic self.
24Through loving understanding man activates the causal as well as the essential part of his superconscious until he can sense these consciousnesses spontaneously as “intuition” in his waking consciousness. In this work he receives help from Augoeides, who always strengthens every effort towards unity. It is through the energies of unity that causal consciousness is activated.
25That is why in esoteric history Christos’ teaching of love is regarded as a step forward beyond the basic orientation intended by the Buddha’s teaching of wisdom. Both were totally misinterpreted, which was perhaps inevitable at the general stage of development mankind then was found at. It remains to be seen whether mankind nowadays has reached sufficiently far to rightly conceive the teachings of the two. The unspeakable suffering mankind has gone through during the zodiacal epoch of Pisces, of 2500 years, should have taught mankind something; should have taught it what hatred and selfishness, phenomena of the lower emotional stage, must result in. In their total ignorance of life and blindness in life people accuse life of the reaping they have sown themselves.
26Most people wander in darkness without knowing it. Only when you sense the darkness it becomes a real burden to you. And that is the lot of man until he has acquired causal consciousness. It is true that esoterics grants a vision of existence and shows the way. Walking the way, however, is what we all have to do, facing the countless problems of action and an uncertain future.
1To the human monad in the first triad, the causal being is the “god in man”. The monad itself is potentially divine as a sharer in the total consciousness. Through evolution, it actualizes its potential divinity.
2The causal being is man’s “soul”. By himself, man can know nothing of this soul during his entire sojourn in the human kingdom as a man. The first self cannot ascertain the existence of his “soul”.
3Thus the causal envelope is man’s proper being, even though he is not conscious in that envelope. The first conscious contact with that envelope he can achieve at the higher emotional stage (48:3) and one more possibility of contact at the higher mental stage (47:5). The acquisition of subjective causal consciousness is a slow process through the incarnations. Objective causal consciousness is possessed only by causal selves.
4Three stages of the self’s relation to the causal being can be distinguished: the self without consciousness in the causal envelope (at the stages of barbarism and civilization), the self slowly waking up subjectively in the envelope (at the stages of culture and humanity) but therefore not aware of the existence of the causal envelope, the self as a causal self with full, active subjective and objective self-consciousness (the “I am I” of self-identity) in the causal kinds of matter 47:2,3 and in the human worlds (47:4—49:7).
5As a first self and before the self has become a causal self, man is unconsciously a victim of the energies in the matters of his worlds. He cannot understand why his incarnation is abortive. It is considered to be abortive if man does not succeed in becoming a causal self. That is of course impossible for others than mental selves.
6It involves a sacrifice to liberate yourself from the personalities you love with selfish love, but this is facilitated by the realizations that, in so doing, you are able to benefit their higher selves (their causal beings) the more, and that egoistic love does not free people but binds them.
7At the present stage of mankind’s development, the self in the first triad in the triad envelope is mostly centred in the emotional envelope but moves to the etheric envelope or mental envelope if the departmental energies in them call for the self’s attention.
8At the same time, Augoeides in the causal envelope is able to activate the causal being and to assert himself in some other envelope. This can result in problems that must be solved.
9The self becomes a causal self when in the second triad mental atom it controls the two molecular matters of the causal envelope (47:2,3). That is a process and a work which man achieves as an aspirant to discipleship. When he has finally performed it, he becomes a disciple.
10In and through the causal envelope, man prepares his transition to the fifth natural kingdom, the community of essential consciousness, the first conscious contact with the cosmic total consciousness. The causal world, the world of ideas, is of course the goal of man as a first self, but it is only the beginning of “ever higher life”. Until man has acquired essential consciousness, he is not free from lower influences; there always remains some egoism of the individual, clan, class, or national kind. That old saw, “kill out desire”, is wrong, as usual. Emotional energy needs to be rerouted and directed to acquisition of higher kinds of consciousness.
1Until the year 1925 the causal world was the common meeting-ground for all members of the planetary hierarchy. Nowadays, the essential world is their lowest world. The globememory of the causal world contains that knowledge which causal selves and the causal consciousness of higher selves have thought and which is preserved in causal molecules and mental atoms. That is why the causal world is the world of “ideas”. The very globe-memory is made up of the collective memory of mental atoms (47:1), accessible to all essential selves. The causal memory is at the same time the planetary memory proper. The 46-memory is the collective memory of the planetary chain, and the 45-memory is the lowest systemic memory common to all the planets, the remembrance of all vibrations that have ever occurred in the five lower systemic and planetary atomic worlds. The higher memories contain the lower ones.
2All knowledge of everything in the human worlds is contained in the ideas of the causal world. We acquire knowledge by receiving ideas and by ascertaining the reality content of these ideas, their agreement with reality. All human knowledge comes from the world of ideas. That is an esoteric axiom. The idea is the primary thing. Reception of causal ideas has nothing to do with the new discoveries we may accidentally make in connection with what we already know. The knowledge also depends on remembrance anew, which is a consequence of the fact that it has been acquired in a previous incarnation and subsequently remains latently in the subconscious of the triad. But originally we received it from the world of Platonic ideas, which contains everything knowable about the physical, emotional, and mental worlds.
1Every esoteric writer has his own terminology so that there is a thorough muddle with ensuing confusion of ideas in their readers. One example of this is the traditional term “soul” in the esoteric literature.
2The ancients called the causal envelope the “soul”. Only the Pythagoreans had a special term for the monad, or the self. All the other esoteric schools used the term “soul” also in this sense as in several others. Thus they mean by the “soul” now the monad (the individual, the self), now the causal envelope, now the causal self, now Augoeides, now the second triad, now the second self, now even the consciousness aspect generally. It is said that the “soul is omniscient and omnipotent” (in the human worlds). Then it is said that the “soul incarnates in order to have experiences”, that the “soul makes the mistake of identifying itself with its envelopes of incarnation”, etc. One esoteric writer calls the incarnating triadal envelope the “human soul” and the greater causal envelope, now the “soul”, now the “over-soul”.
3Such carelessness must of course entail obscurity and confusion of ideas. If the intention of the writers was to cultivate the intuition of their readers by forcing them to learn to understand what in various contexts is meant by “soul”, then the writers have probably underrated the difficulty or overestimated the prospects of non-initiates to comprehend before they have got the basic concepts clearly defined once and for all.
4In order to differentiate between monad?individual?self and temporary incarnation, the theosophists called the greater causal envelope the “individual” and the incarnating part the “personality”, a practical distinction provided you know what the terms mean. This division was misleading because, when incarnating, the self (individual) goes along in the triad in the lesser causal envelope and the difference between “individual” and “personality” in reality disappears. The lack of facts caused much obscurity, a circumstance that has prejudiced theosophy and still deters researchers who think logically. You cannot help wondering what the result would have been if, from the very beginning of theosophy, the Pythagorean mental system had been presented in the logical form required by Western thinking or if Saint Germain had been permitted to publicize the Rosicrucian system. Instead, the theosophical pioneers planned to reform Buddhism, which met with a complete failure.
5In the occult literature there is still much confusion about the nature of the so-called Ego. “The Ego puts down a fragment of itself into the personality in order to experience the vibrations of the lower planes.” (Leadbeater) That is supposed to be a description of the division of the causal envelope at incarnation. (Personality = the incarnating causal envelope = the triad envelope.) However, this is not done by the self (the monad), but by Augoeides. The self sleeps in the causal envelope until it is awakened through a new incarnation. The “Ego” is taken in a double sense: the causal envelope and the second triad. Augoeides of course needs no such experiences, which are over and done with in past eons. Those Augoeides, who supervise the human consciousness development, follow a particular line of cosmic evolution thanks to their experience of monads with basic repulsive tendency of the worst kind.
6The causal envelope corresponds to the “holy spirit” of the gnosticians; the essential envelope, to the “son”; and the manifestal atom, to the “father”. Causal matter, however, is no more “spiritual” than any other matter, if by “spirit” you mean, like Pythagoras, the consciousness of matter. All matter is “holy”, for it is formed out of primordial atoms sharing in the cosmic total consciousness. Thus all worlds are holy. The planetary hierarchy makes no difference between holy and profane. That division is a theological mistake.
7So far from understanding reality are theologians. There is no “sin” (crime against an infinite being), only mistakes about the laws of life; mistakes which all make and of which they must reap the consequences until they have learnt to apply the laws rightly. Mistakes retard consciousness development and increase the number of incarnations.
8The whole cosmos consists of individuals (primordial atoms), and everyone is found somewhere on the way to the final goal of life. The guarantee that they will reach their goal some time is their inalienable share in the cosmic total consciousness, which is “god”. That is also why “all are one”.
9There are risks to publicizing esoteric facts. For sooner or later they will be picked up by some mystic with a Messiah complex who believes he is called to proclaim the one and only truth. After such a sect-founder has misunderstood these facts he puts them into an imaginative system by which he manages to dupe a lot of ignorant people.
10That gnostic symbol, “transfiguration”, has of course, like all esoteric symbols, been misinterpreted. A modern occult sect, Lectorium Rosicrucianum, has expounded it as the “practically used teaching of how man is born again”. If the true explanation is given, there is a risk that it will be deftly exploited in some new sect, yet it should be given. The very formulation “born again” (taken from the Gospels) has been turned into a theological construction. “Transfiguration” was the gnostic term of that consciousness process which a disciple of the planetary hierarchy went through when his monad moved from the first triad mental molecule to the second triad mental atom. The process had the result that the mental self became a causal self.
11The founder of the said Rosicrucian sect, J. van Rijckenborgh, also managed to pick up an esoteric axiom that only in 1950 was allowed for publication, namely “primordial atoms”. This he of course misunderstood, which appears in the following piffle: “As long as the outer man does not correspond to the inmost meaning of his life, his primordial atom...” When the individual, upon the completion of his evolution and at the end of tens of thousands of eons, reaches the highest cosmic kingdom, then and only then will he “correspond” to his primordial atom.
The above text constitutes the essay The Causal Being 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.