The Way of Man by Henry T. Laurency
8. AUGOEIDES
8. AUGOEIDES
My Augoeides: May your light show me the path and your energy give me power to walk it.
1The following does not agree with the teachings of theosophy. Besant as well as Leadbeater took Augoeides to be the causal being. Only in 1925 was D.K. allowed to say something about this matter.
2The name Augoeides is the Pythagorean term for man’s guardian angel.
3Augoeides is a deva and a second self (45-47), more exactly a high essential self (46:1). The Augoeides make up a special branch of the deva evolution and train themselves for future tasks by actively assisting men in their evolution. Augoeides fulfils his voluntarily assumed mission chiefly by three kinds of work.
4At causalization (the monad’s transmigration from the animal to the human kingdom), Augoeides leaves to the animal his causal envelope, a complete envelope of only mental atoms, for the keeping of the first triad.
5At man’s causalization Augoeides engages henceforth to supervise man’s development from the stage of barbarism to the stage of unity. This task he performs also for gaining experience of how to guide men in their consciousness development. It is obvious that he in addition does his own research in higher kingdoms. For everybody there are countless opportunities to learn and to serve.
6Augoeides serves as a causal self for man until the monad itself has succeeded in becoming a second self by acquiring full subjective and objective causal consciousness and has moved from the first triad mental molecule to the second triad mental atom. It is obvious that he in addition seeks to acquire higher consciousness. Everybody does so, man too, when he has decided to live for others.
7The causal envelope afforded by Augoeides is a protection for the human monad in a first triad. It can never incarnate in an animal body. This is the envelope that makes the individual a human being.
8Through this causal envelope man is united with Augoeides. The union lasts until man by acquiring the common consciousness has become a second self, that is, the monad in the second triad moves from the causal envelope to the essential envelope. In that connection the causal envelope is dissolved, and only then Augoeides has completed his work and is free.
9The causal envelope provided by Augoeides is the one that was liberated at his essentialization. This causal envelope is of causal self quality, consisting of mental atoms (47:1) only. Like all essential selves Augoeides is able to form his own causal envelope.
10Augoeides is the first self’s second self who has identified his causal consciousness with the first self’s various kinds of consciousness so that he can deputize as man’s own causal self.
11Augoeides is a member of a collective being, which is a collective of all men’s Augoeides, a collective having a common consciousness. Cooperation between the Augoeides is automatic whenever this is necessary.
12Group beings of various kinds have nothing that separates them from other group beings but are the outcome of common work on special tasks.
13They want to help not only individuals but all mankind, help it to solve the problems of physical life, for it is in the physical world that all “spiritual” problems must be solved. To that end they need men. Augoeides does not exist only for man’s sake.
14It is the Augoeides who, in close collaboration, supervise men’s incarnations, bring people together chiefly according to the laws of reaping and destiny, see to it that individuals from the higher emotional stage on have opportunities to activate higher kinds of consciousness and to acquire lacking qualities.
15Perhaps you understand what sacrifice they offer up who have engaged to guide consciousness development in these monads of repulsive basic tendency ever since the vegetable and animal kingdoms, monads who largely counteract them in their work.
16Symbolically it may be said that Augoeides is man’s soul and man’s god, helper, protector, saviour. He confers, when necessary, with authorities in the deva and planetary hierarchies. He is for man (the first self) his deputy causal self and for the causal self his deputy essential self.
17As for the rest, Augoeides does not concern himself much with man (other authorities do that) until he has reached the higher emotional stage, has acquired attractive qualities, has serious intentions with his life. Only then (48:3) his vibrations reach up to the causal envelope and he is able to apprehend the promptings of Augoeides (until then the warnings of “conscience” came from his subconscious) and follow them. If man does not do so, Augoeides can do nothing.
18Augoeides is no “nanny leading man by the hand”. No independent, self-responsible being would become of man in that manner, but just a helpless robot.
19Augoeides has no right to encroach on the law of freedom. Everything man does he must do on his own responsibility.
20According as man strives to “listen in concentration to the inner voice” Augoeides meets halfway with inspiration and may give something of his knowledge and energy.
21Man develops by becoming an instrument for Augoeides, who in his turn is an instrument for the planetary hierarchy. Augoeides has become even more important after higher demands for discipleship were laid down by the planetary hierarchy in 1925. Nowadays only groups are accepted as disciples.
22All man’s prayers go to Augoeides, who corresponds to the “holy spirit” of the gnosticians. “God” or Christos has other work to do than listening to life-ignorant egoists. The planetary ruler knows nothing of the individual until he has become a causal self. Christos knows nothing of him until he is introduced to the planetary hierarchy as a disciple of a 45- self.
23The theological conception of god is a fiction without counterpart in reality. The chiefs of the planetary hierarchy as well as the chairman of the planetary government (the planetary ruler) decline with thanks such a caricature. The absurdity is best seen in the fact that the cosmos as well as solar systems and planets are formed by collective beings (monads having the same kind of atomic consciousness and the same kind of common consciousness and being united in a collective). There are countless collective beings in the cosmos, from essential beings to the highest cosmic beings, thus 46 degrees. There are countless divine beings having omniscience and omnipotence in the worlds they have attained in the process of expansion and in accord with the law of self-realization.
24Augoeides does not correspond to what theologians call the “mediator between god and man” for such a mediator is not necessary and does not exist. He is, however, the “instrument of god”, the fulfiller of the Law, where man is concerned. Christos-Maitreya has nothing to do with that matter.
25The Augoeides have given their causal envelopes (47:1) to individuals at their transition from the animal to the human kingdom (causalization) and go on watching over the consciousness development of their wards. It is this arrangement that has made evolution through the human kingdom possible. Otherwise it would not have been possible to carry out the project of bringing together this bunch of unreasonable, more or less failed monads to our planet.
26The symbolic speech of the “fall (into sin)” and “original sin” was an attempt at explaining the existence of our degenerated mankind. The doctrine of atonement and of “redemption”, which was so totally misunderstood by theologians in all ages, chiefly by the uninitiated fathers of the church, was the result of Paul’s failed attempt at restating Christos’ work of salvation. Christos’ simple message to men was that man was “saved” by acquiring the consciousness of unity (“love”).
27Those who have attained the humanist stage, acquired common sense and loving understanding, have understood that the theological explanation must be false but have not succeeded in their attempts at reform, since they have not been able to explain the inherent evil of mankind. The fifteen per cent of mankind who had reached higher stages of development were too few in numbers to be able to assert with success that man is basically good.
28How it was possible for those monads to go so far astray will be explained to us some time when the esoteric history of evolution in our former solar system of the first degree is publicized. Our present solar system is of the second degree. In this connection it should be pointed out that the theosophical explanation of evolution (Annie Besant’s The Pedigree of Man, for instance) is abortive, even though correct in details.
1The knowledge of Augoeides may with some justice be called the true religion. That knowledge makes life immensely simpler, safer, and richer.
2It is the lord of wondrous love, 45-self D.K., a disciple of Christos in direct “apostolic succession” and Pythagoras’ foremost disciple Kleinias, who has given us the revolutionizing knowledge of Augoeides as our soul until we become causal selves and our god until we enter into unity. Admitted that circumstances of time made this possible, but D.K. is nevertheless that representantive of the planetary hierarchy who has given mankind more knowledge than the other teachers of the fifth and sixth natural kingdoms together. All members of hierarchies as well as governments (planetary, systemic, and cosmic) decline with thanks the title of “god”. They all regard themselves as servants of life and brothers of everybody.
1Every individual is in his individual character so different from all others that an outline such as this one must be rough and therefore must not be taken literally. The risk of all “rules” is that ignorance dogmatizes them beyond remedy. Any absolutifying is misleading.
2Augoeides has two main tasks. He makes his own contribution as a deva in the deva hierarchy. He supervises his protege and does what he can for his development. Actually he begins to take a serious interest in man’s consciousness development only when man has reached the higher emotional stage (has acquired consciousness in 48:3). Then man can benefit from the help given by Augoeides.
3You can reach Augoeides by striving for unity. Thereby the higher emotional vibrations (48:3) can be perceived in the unity centre of the causal envelope.
4When man has developed so that he can become a suitable tool for Augoeides in the worlds of man, then man can also contribute to the development of mankind. The work done by man is the merit of Augoeides even though the tool has its share in the enterprise and has thereby an opportunity to develop.
5The work of Augoeides for and with man concerns the proper work on functions from the causal envelope down through the envelopes of incarnation, his work on man’s consciousness development, and the “guidance” he gives in consultation with the various “authorities of destiny”.
6The task of Augoeides is to guide man’s consciousness development, to prepare for his incarnation according to the law of destiny (not the law of reaping) in accord with the horoscope fixed, to connect the heart centre of the emotional envelope to that of the etheric envelope at the moment of birth, and to sever the sutratma (the connection with higher envelopes) at the “death” of the organism. Augoeides does not concern himself with the first self’s own problems in the physical world, physical development, health, duties in the physical world, etc.
7It is no easy task to try to guide an individual who is isolated in a causal envelope how to acquire self-reliance and self-determination, to become sovereign in his envelopes of incarnation, to discover and learn to apply the laws of life according to the law of selfrealization, to learn to see that law is the condition of freedom (an esoteric axiom), that arbitrariness and lawlessness sooner or later result in failure and misspent incarnations. Anyone who has learnt how to supervise such an unruly being in incarnation and to take part in the choice of the “milieu of incarnation”, etc., thereby has qualified for “higher duties”.
8The essential task of Augoeides is to help man to become a causal self. He seldom agrees with man about the ways and means in doing this. Besides, it has never been explained in the occult sects that this is not possible until the individual has reached the mental stage. Augoeides cannot help as long as he and man are in opposition, man refuses to walk the way which “life” indicates and wants to go his own way. When man no longer “believes” but realizes clearly that “not my will but yours” is the true one, he is on the right track. Then he has acquired “divine indifference” to whatever happens to him, the necessary trust in life, trust in the Law, which is the prerequisite of passing the tests which clarify that nothing can make him act against the Law.
9Augoeides is a causal self insofar as he serves as our causal self until we have centred ourselves in the second triad mental atom. He is our deputy soul until we have acquired causal consciousness ourselves. But he is much more. He also lives in the planetary essential consciousness, collective consciousness, common consciousness, consciousness of unity. This means that he represents our share in universal brotherhood. He guides us through life according to the law of destiny. If he notices that we are becoming hardened egoists, less and less perceptive of his vibrations, that we are cultivating our worse qualities instead of strengthening our better ones, then it may happen that he, in order to wake us up, sees to it that we “fall”. Well it has been said that “lead us not into temptation” means: save us so from evil that you need not lead us into temptation.
10Augoeides is a second self. This indicates his capacity as omniscient and omnipotent in the worlds of the first triad. The statement that Augoeides needs to utilize man’s development in his causal envelope in order to acquire knowledge of the worlds of man (47–49) is not correct. In other solar systems in past eons he has qualified for his self-assumed task to accomplish his mission faultlessly in all respects. Without that experience he would be useless as a supervisor. However, his work with an individual of the human kingdom affords him knowledge for future greater tasks. Being a supervisor he is an ex-officio member of the planetary hierarchy. This enables him to discuss continually new plans for the physical future of the individual, constant changes in the life of the individual, with the various authorities that collaborate for this purpose.
11Augoeides has quite enough to do: he is to prepare for the incarnation of his protege, he is to afford this man all possibilities of having such experience (different at different stages of development) as is necessary to consciousness development, see to it that the intended purpose of the incarnation is realized as far as possible, that his “child” when at the stages of the mystic and the humanist is given more and more opportunities to learn and to serve.
12Augoeides can identify his essential consciousness with all kinds of consciousness of the first self, but since all consciousness activity that has not reached the stage of emotional attraction or the stage of essential unity violates the law of freedom, the law of unity, and the law of development, he is unable to help his protege at lower stages. As a rule he does not concern himself with man at lower stages but lets the authorities of reaping take care of the individual until he after some tens of thousands of incarnations has acquired so much experience of life that it is worthwhile to send an “inspiration”. Augoeides has also his own development to consider.
13You should be alive to the fact that Augoeides would be able to do immensely more for his protege than he is permitted to do according to the laws of life, which set bounds to his freedom of action. It is also important to know that he cannot act arbitrarily but obtains directions from the planetary hierarchy as well as from the deva hierarchy in all important matters. He is the supervisor and the executor.
14Simultaneously as Augoeides is the deputy causal self he is also a collective self. He is interested in his protege and his consciousness development but also in mankind as a whole. If the individual lives for himself and not for mankind, development, and unity, Augoeides can do very little.
15Augoeides acts according to the laws of life and never against the Law. The horoscopes of the individual’s various envelopes indicate the limits of his authority. Arbitrariness is absolutely precluded. That “guidance” of the individual which can be ascribed to him must not infringe the law of freedom or the law of self. It rather consists in offering the individual “opportunities in life” when this is possible according to the law of destiny and the law of reaping. Least of all he is a “nanny” who leads the individual by the hand. No self-reliance or self-determination would be produced with such pampering. Augoeides must not help man with his merely personal problems, which it is his duty to solve on his own. Augoeides helps with advice when man has proved to perceive the advice and also willingly obeys the advice in accord with the Law. The help is given in such a way that man believes (and also should believe) that the inspiration has come from his own superconscious, believes that Augoeides is himself. Augoeides does not demand any thanks for his sacrifice. He makes his contribution to consciousness development and thereby acquires experience for further work on higher tasks. The only thanks he possibly reckons with is that man will use in the most purposeful manner the countless opportunities his enormous capacity offers to the idiot in life who otherwise would not develop. But instead he may hear the most senseless accusations against life.
16Augoeides can never encroach on man’s “free will”. Free will of course presupposes common sense and conscious choice. If the individual is controlled by his impulses, then his choice is not free.
17In order to fully understand the contribution of Augoeides you should consider the enormous consciousness development he has taken on him to supervise: the monad’s wandering from the animal kingdom through the entire human kingdom to the kingdom of the second self, implying the acquisition of mental as well as causal consciousnesses and all the pertaining qualities and abilities.
18Thus, during man’s incarnation, Augoeides does the work of man’s causal self until man becomes a causal self and can take over the causal functions of Augoeides.
19The causal envelope provided by Augoeides is, to begin with, little more than an outer envelope of mental atoms, filled with the lowest kind of casual involutionary matter (47:3). It is the task of man to supply this “shell” with activated tertiary matter capable of storing causal ideas from the causal world: on the higher levels of the stage of civilization, the lowest kind of causal molecules (47:3); at the stage of culture, those of the next higher kind (47:2); and at the stage of humanity, mental atoms (47:1).
20It is the Augoeides who, in cooperation with the planetary hierarchy and the deva hierarchy, guide the destinies of men to the extent that men let themselves be guided.
21In the opposite case, they are affected only by the energies of the law of reaping, not understanding what and why or rationally working up their experiences of life, being disoriented by their own and other people’s idiologies. In developmental respect this largely spells insignificant incarnations, even though the power of reflection has opportunities to develop slowly and so-called thinking does not solely consist in parroting and memory knowledge. In such incarnations, the individual is unable to judge situations of life on his own and he needs the good sowing of good reaping unless most of his efforts will fail.
22All the Augoeides within a nation cooperate. They confer and plan in order to bring together those who are able to help each other in various ways, sometimes to give the self an opportunity to do a good deed. They bring together those individuals who either have “unpaid debts to square” or can learn from each other or cooperate for the good of mankind. It is an endless planning with paltry results. For men seldom see these offers of life. When faced with the choice between two possibilities, they almost always choose wrong. A large portion of the work of Augoeides is wasted, and he may be forced to alter his course. Not very much time is left for his own development except where people at lower stages are concerned, such people as are unable to learn from their own experiences, not even feel the need of inquiring into the meaning of life. Such a man he can hand over to the authorities of the law of reaping. Augoeides pays especial attention to the law of destiny.
23Augoeides makes us have those experiences through all our incarnations which are necessary to our consciousness development, enable us to acquire knowledge, insight, and understanding. When people may believe they are misunderstood even by “god”, this is evidence of a grotesque feature of general disorientation. They believe they are alone when all life makes up a unity. They believe they are “abandoned by god” when they reap what they have sown, when they are to learn how to acquire missing qualities, when they are put to the test in order to see that they are not as clever as they think they are, a very important insight.
1Augoeides does the work of our causal self, our “soul” until we have become causal selves, our monad has definitively moved from the first to the second triad, and the self’s consciousness can identify with this kind of consciousness. Thereupon he is man’s essential self until man has become an essential self. Subsequently the former human monad is itself a sharer in the cosmic total consciousness, an “independent individual in the cosmos”. Symbolically, Augoeides is what in physical man corresponds to the heart and the brain. The causal self is sovereign in the matter aspect of the human worlds (47–49) but needs Augoeides both as the consciousness aspect in these worlds and for perception of essential consciousness.
2At causalization, Augoeides gives the animal his own causal envelope of mental atoms. Man keeps this envelope until, at essentialization, he liberates himself from it since he by then is able to form one himself. It is up to man to fill this envelope with activated causal matter, a process that goes on until he has become a causal self. But since the causal self cannot form his own protective envelope of mental atoms (47:1), this outer envelope is kept.
3Since “consciousness is one”, the consciousness of man and the consciousness of Augoeides are one, therefore the human self should regard itself “as if” it were the second self’s causal consciousness, essential consciousness, “as if” man were identical with Augoeides, and not make a difference between these two individuals. It is the task of Augoeides to make man regard his superconscious as being a part of its own self.
4Augoeides can identify himself with man, since he is himself an essential self and so can identify his consciousness with that of another, be another and at the same time be himself. Anyone who has entered into the consciousness of unity can do this. Thus Augoeides is practically the causal self of the first self, even though he in actual fact is another individual. People have difficulty in understanding this, and the confusion of ideas commonly seen in theosophists and others is evidence of that.
5Not even after man has become a causal self and is able to supply his causal envelope with causal molecules and thereby to shape his own causal being, has he been able to tell these two entities apart but has taken Augoeides to be this causal being. This circumstance has also given rise to mistakes at the description of these realities.
1In relation to his protege Augoeides represents the Law, especially the law of development and the law of destiny. You could call him the “fulfiller of god’s purpose with man” according to the particular function of the law of destiny in each incarnation, since his interest is almost exclusively directed to the consciousness development of his protege and to everything that may promote it, especially after man has acquired the ability of self-initiated consciousness activity, mental activity in particular, and is increasingly able to apply the law of activation.
2In addition, Augoeides pays attention directly to the law of unity and the law of reaping, indirectly to the law of freedom. By contrast, man’s relation to the law of self and the law of activation is his own private business. They are connected with the law of freedom. It stands to reason that Augoeides cannot act against the law of reaping and the pertaining authorities. Whenever and however sowing is to be reaped, he feels nothing but sympathy with the suffering man or with anyone who cannot use his good reaping in a sensible way. Augoeides is not “conscience” in the accepted sense of that word, but this is a reaction from latent acquired knowledge in complexes of the subconscious. No contact with Augoeides is possible until man has reached the higher emotional stage (48:3).
3Where the individual is concerned, everything is the result of the law of destiny and the law of reaping, and so man should not expect that exceptions from these laws be made. Augoeides is there for man’s consciousness development but not in order to intervene in man’s life at large, “putting things right”. It is our duty to learn about laws of nature and laws of life and to conform to them. If we do not do so, then we shall be thrown upon the resources that are available to man without the help of Augoeides. With his prayers the mystic aims at humbly bearing whatever his “destiny” ordains in accord with the Law, and to bear it with patience.
4The Augoeides consult with the planetary hierarchy in matters concerning man’s need of experience (the law of destiny, consciousness development); and with the deva hierarchy, concerning the law of reaping. Only regarding very advanced individuals (at or near the causal stage) are there deliberations between the hierarchies as to possible “adjustments” during incarnation in the application of the laws of destiny and reaping.
5In yoga philosophy, causal law (the law of cause and effect, karma) rules supreme. It recognizes neither chance, inevitable fate (fatalism), nor omnipotent providence, the three commonest hypotheses.
6To the esoterician, there are three different power authorities: Augoeides, the reaping authorities, and the planetary hierarchy. Man receives help for his consciousness development from Augoeides and, when he has reached the mental stage, also help from the planetary hierarchy through Augoeides. His physical problems, determined by his organism (brain, health, etc.), milieu, education, etc., fixed in his horoscope, are results of reaping which man has to master without help and which have been calculated in consideration of his possibilities on a given level of development. Man’s emotional and mental problems with the tendencies of these envelopes are also results of reaping. Thus there is a “plan” made for his incarnation, so in that case you can speak of “providence”. Man is not alone in the universe but is watched. The law of reaping is a law of justice. Man is given the possibilities he deserves. All that happens to him is his own work, apart from his share in the collective reaping (accidents, epidemics, wars, etc.), which is the common work of mankind. That race or nation which regards itself to be superior to others violates the law of unity, and this has consequences.
1It is quite a mistaken view that man should have a pleasant and comfortable life. The meaning of life is consciousness development, and that is such a difficult work that it requires the application of all knowledge and powers at man’s disposal. In that case Augoeides can only offer man opportunities to have experiences. It is our business to work them up so that we learn how to rightly apply the Law.
2At the planning of an incarnation, Augoeides pays attention first and foremost to the law of development and then to the law of reaping in the case of a man on a lower level and increasingly to the law of destiny as man reaches higher levels.
3The new incarnation in many respects depends on what Augoeides considers he is able to achieve with his new instrument, on man’s need of qualities that either are lacking or need to be strengthened, and on the prospects of furthering development. It is not the fault of Augoeides that man, at his present stage of development and in his self-glory, largely thwarts the plans of his Augoeides.
4During incarnation man is a monad in a triad in a triad envelope (the lesser causal envelope). The greater causal envelope is with Augoeides until the envelopes of incarnation have dissolved, the two causal envelopes have coalesced, and Augoeides withdraws till the next incarnation.
5It is among the tasks of Augoeides to select from developing foetuses the one which according to the laws of destiny and reaping suits best for the future incarnation of his protege.
6Augoeides supervises the very process of incarnation. At the moment of birth (usually at the “first cry”) he attaches man’s causal envelope through the sutratma to the heart centre in the etheric envelope of the newborn organism. If this does not occur, the child is stillborn. He has nothing to do with the genesis of the organism, however. The shaping of the etheric envelope (which is the groundwork of the organism) intended for a certain individual is done by devas as instructed by the authorities of destiny. If the result is not what Augoeides intended and if the development of the foetus does not conform to his plans, Augoeides refuses to attach himself to the newborn child, which then is stillborn. The problem of selection of course does not only involve the child’s organism but also the parents’ relation to the law of reaping, their economic conditions, cultural standard, milieu, etc. There is a multitude of factors to which attention must be paid. Practically always there is some expected child that meets his demands.
7Augoeides chooses the parents man is to have according to the law of destiny and the law of reaping. However, with the tendencies of sexual laisser-aller now prevailing, it happens that such parents do not exist.
8The departments of the envelopes of incarnation are determined by Augoeides. In so doing, he always considers man’s striving and efforts in lives past. There are many other things he must consider, such as lacking or insufficiently developed good qualities; there are lots of such qualities as we must learn to discover. Not many can be acquired during the same incarnation; we have to be content with the ones we consider to be the most important in our given situation.
9Augoeides selects for the triad envelope those molecules of the causal being which belong to a certain department. In this connection the subdepartments of the mental, emotional, and etheric envelopes are determined by the main department of the triad envelope. If the triad envelope belongs to the fifth department and the other, lower envelopes of the individual belong, for instance, to the first, sixth, and seventh departments, then 1:5 is obtained for the mental envelope, 6:5 for the emotional envelope, and 7:5 for the etheric envelope. Generally, the main departments of the envelopes of incarnation are determined by the departments of the molecules activated by the individual in his previous incarnation.
10The Augoeides do not concern themselves with incarnations of people who are at the stage of barbarism for whom just the law of reaping is taken into consideration, not the law of destiny (which concerns consciousness development). Barbarians have no mental life, no sojourn in the mental world between incarnations. They live for a short while in the emotional world whereupon they incarnate again. The entire process is rather an automatic one. It is only at the stage of civilization, when reason begins to awaken and thus the law of destiny gains some importance, that the Augoeides start their supervision of incarnations and sporadic attention to the individual.
11The individual incarnates in series according to the activity of the planetary departments and the department of his causal envelope. Not all seven departments are simultaneously active in the worlds of man; usually only four at a time. Of these four departments, one is dominant at a time. From the year 1950 dominates the seventh department, whose activity extends over 2500 years and fortunately coincides with the zodiacal epoch of Aquarius. That affords mankind a unique possibility of rapid development. It is to be hoped that this possibility is utilized.
1It is Augoeides who in the process of death severs the sutratma and thereby finally releases the emotional envelope from the etheric envelope. This is not done, however, until Augoeides with the energies of all the higher envelopes succeeds in pulling the etheric envelope apart from the organism. Thereupon Augoeides withdraws and leaves man to live his own life in the emotional world. That is a world, the abode of the black lodge, which neither Augoeides nor the planetary hierarchy at large even recognizes. It does not exist to them. It is a world where, in the best event, the lower mentality with its fictions is the highest reason but where imagination has an unlimited scope.
2When man leaves the physical world and passes to the emotional world, Augoeides has performed his task for that incarnation, since man is able to develop his consciousness only in his physical envelopes. Between incarnations man must “must take care of himself” by the aid of the emotional and mental capacity he has acquired. Perhaps it is understood why reincarnation is necessary.
3Certainly man has the causal envelope of Augoeides and can come in contact with him through it. But this possibility is limited to physical life, since man does not need his guidance and assistance during the period of rest between incarnations. Augoeides can then devote himself to his own development in peace and quiet.
4Inasmuch as it is only in the physical world and in physical envelopes that mankind can acquire the requisite insights, qualities, and abilities, life between incarnations has become mere pauses of rest. Only those who have acquired esoteric knowledge are able to make use of this period for their further consciousness development. This explains why Augoeides considers that he can wholly devote himself to his own development during this time and need not bother about his protege. But those who know that Augoeides exists, need his help for their development, and in contemplation seek him, may of course reckon upon him as a furnisher of ideas. Abandon man he cannot, since he is still responsible for the old causal envelope which he has given as an envelope for the monad and which he must use himself in order to perform his duty as the “soul and god” of man; our soul until we have become causal selves and our god until we have become essential selves. The term “god” refers to the great distance in developmental respect. For it is a fundamental difference between those who are still outside and those who have definitively entered into the common consciousness of unity.
1Augoeides is a second self, an essential self, with collective consciousness, and can work directly with man only when man has acquired emotional attraction, which is the preparatory stage of collective consciousness, enables contact with the essential world and receptivity to essential vibrations with aspiration to unity and love for all.
2Augoeides represents unity (essentiality). By loving Augoeides as love, man activates his higher emotionality and so his power to be more and more inclusive and embrace increasingly greater groups: family, class, nation, etc. As always where consciousness is concerned, the level determines the ability. Much of what is said about Augoeides is grasped differently on different levels. Everybody might test himself.
3The exhortation “love god above all” meant that only he who has learnt to love Augoeides has any greater prospect of reaching him and above all of contacting him. That love is no product of imagination but is acquired only through knowledge of his existence and personal experience.
4Anyone who has learnt to “love god” and feels he is in contact with him thereby has unconsciously contacted Augoeides. It is by no means necessary to know who god is, for whatever other ideas we form about this being it is Augoeides that we reach by our thoughts.
5Some mystics have said that you may hate things. But love cannot hate at all, and “things” contain monads of the mineral kingdom.
6As long as man feels he is an isolated individual, without the sense of belonging somewhere, and is seeking Augoeides for his personal development and not in order to better serve life, he lacks a contact with essentiality in existence and he will vainly seek to contact Augoeides. Only those who love can reach him. Love, liberated from sentimentality, manifests itself rather as will, not as emotion. Love is unifying energy without reference to your own self.
1With some justice Augoeides can be called the god of the first self, and with full justice philosopher Plutarkos asserted that no spirit had more right to rule man than this one. Most simply it can be said that man’s soul is his only authority. This is the real ground of man’s self-reliance and self-determination and the cause of his self-realization.
2If it has any meaning at all, the concept of god connotes omniscience and omnipotence. Augoeides is omniscient and omnipotent in the worlds of man. As is true of all gods, his possibilities to use omnipotence are defined by the Law. Only men can, in their life ignorance and irresponsibility, conceive of such a thing as divine arbitrariness.
3Expressed most simply it can be said that Augoeides is man’s soul and man’s god.
4Augoeides is our second self, our causal self until we have become such selves. Just as he identifies himself with you, you should try to identify yourself with him. However, he identifies only with what is best in you, with that which not only wants to become, but already is, the Law.
5Augoeides should not be confused with that figure in emotional matter which, to man’s liking, plays the role assigned to him by human imagination, which automatically shapes such a thing as soon as man has learnt about the existence of Augoeides. Augoeides refuses to identify himself with this figure. It is too emotional: “the beloved one of my soul”. Clairvoyants take this emotional being to be their god. But Augoeides has as his lowest envelope the causal envelope he gave man at causalization, the very causal shell of the highest causal matter (47:1). Higher consciousness comprises all lower kinds of consciousness (consciousness is one) and so the matter aspect is of no account in that respect. Augoeides is never found in the emotional world, no more than second selves or third selves or gods of any other kind. Whatever appears to be such a being is a figment of human imagination.
6When the mystic has a “living contact with god”, it is either a contact with Augoeides or, via the unity centre in the causal envelope, a contact with essential energy or a contact with that live divine figure which imagination has shaped in the emotional world. The last alternative is the most frequent. That elemental matches up to every religious tenet and experience the mystic has incorporated with his consciousness and is a confirmation that the dogmas he has accepted agree with reality.
7His contact with Augoeides affords the mystic certainty of what he calls “god’s guidance in life”. And his contact with the energies of unity is his experience of “god as love”. Augoeides can use the image of god shaped by the individual for his own purposes, facilitate man’s acquisition of higher emotional consciousness and his contribution of service.
8On the other hand, Augoeides does nothing that can strengthen religious egoism. His assistance may be counted upon in and for the service of mankind, evolution, and unity.
9Anyone who has succeeded in establishing a continuous contact with Augoeides, anyone who has built his own antahkarana between the first triad mental molecule and the second triad mental atom, can say with Schiller: “Nehmt die Gottheit auf in eurem Herzen und sie steigt herab vom Weltenthron.” (“Accept the deity in your hearts, and it will descend from the throne of the world.”) He has no use for any concepts of god.
10The mystic (emotionalist) feels the presence of Augoeides (“god”), whereas the esoterician (mentalist) apprehends him mentally and knows who “god” is. That is a great difference, and the mental contact becomes a purposeful relationship. There is still an opposition between the human self and Augoeides, and it remains until the self has acquired causal consciousness and senses its oneness with Augoeides (“identification”) and finally becomes a causal self and knows what it really is, an undying, independent existence, conscious of its godhood, which the mental self has not yet experienced and so may very well comprehend but not understand, as the experience is lacking. The writings of mystics and yogis witness to the fact that the mystic can imagine himself into a state where he believes he has “entered” into god.
11Prayer is part of emotionality, meditation of mentality. Consciousness expressions of both kinds go to Augoeides. Therefore, the god Krishna (Augoeides) says in the Bhagavad-Gita to prince Arjuna (man): “All prayers go to me” (even if we address them to some other god with another name). Granting of a prayer may be expected if the desire accords with the laws of life, when the individual praying shows that he is ripe to rightly use the granting of his prayer. Prayer also implies an activation of higher kinds of consciousness that benefits the development of the praying man. Thus it is no matter of moving or otherwise influencing the granter.
12When the Christian is praying to god or to Christos, the Muslim to Allah, etc., his prayers go to his Augoeides, even though he does not know it. Neither those in the planetary hierarchy nor in the planetary government have any time to occupy themselves with individuals except their application of the Law.
13When the aspirant to discipleship is accepted, a certain member of the hierarchy becomes his teacher. And the disciple is informed that he must not try to contact his teacher but the latter does what he must. The human self has its Augoeides until it has become a second self. Only when the individual becomes a second self will he stand face to face with the planetary ruler.
14Augoeides always considers the desires (“prayers”) of his protege when he has reached the higher emotionality if they are of any importance to consciousness development, increase the percentage of good qualities, or benefit beyond the range of man’s individual responsibility (everything within it falls under the law of freedom, which sets bounds to the possible actions of Augoeides).
15Prayers concerning mankind, development, unity are forwarded to collector envelopes in the mental world where the planetary hierarchy utilizes them, reinforcing their energies to the benefit of the whole. If mankind in its great distress invokes a helper and demonstrates that it wants to use that help rightly, then the planetary hierarchy may send an avatar (possibly an interplanetary or an interstellar avatar), depending on the kind of necessary changes of conditions in mankind.
16We need not “pray to god for help”. He does everything he may. It is quite the other way round. It is he that begs us to help him. The one true “prayer” (attitude) would be the wish to become an ever better instrument for him in future incarnations. He needs us in order to accomplish his work.
17We need not pray to Augoeides for help. We receive all the help he is permitted to give when we need it. We can ascertain this later in life when we discern the “guidance” given us throughout life in spite of all our stupidities.
18Man is never alone even though ignorance thinks so. He always has his Augoeides, who is his soul and gives comfort and assurance whenever he “has faith in his god”, whatever idea of him he forms (according to his temporary religious ideas).
19Anyone who commits himself wholly to his Augoeides will find in him a “saviour” in life as well as in death. He helps man over to the next world and calls upon man’s true friends there, those whom he longs to see again. Thereby he has performed his task for that incarnation. He prepares the next one in accord with the law of destiny and man’s horoscope. Only he who lacks knowledge of reality and life can believe that Christos has the time to take an interest in all who “believe in him”. Every individual has his guardian angel who does all he may according to the Law. The esoterician learns to look upon an incarnation as the planetary hierarchy does, as a fresh opportunity to rightly use the offers of life, offers presented by Augoeides.
1In his causal envelope, man feels isolated, alone, and often abandoned until he has reached contact with Augoeides, which is possible only after he has acquired trust in life, trust in law, and thereby trust in self and self-determination. At the stage of the mystic it is an emotional union, and in clairvoyants it is not Augoeides but a self-formed figure in the emotional world. At the mental stage, self-realization is a long process; without esoteric knowledge, in self-assertion, and in opposition to Augoeides; with knowledge of Augoeides, an objective perception of reality and an assimilation of the causal ideas which are made the firm basis of the self.
2Only when the human self in its consciousness development has reached the higher emotionality (48:3) can Augoeides contact the self.
3The ideas (energies, vibrations) which Augoeides sends down into the envelopes of incarnation cannot be apprehended in the lower molecular kinds of these envelopes. They seldom reach lower than 48:3 and 47:5. Anyone who has not begun his emotional and mental consciousness development has no prospect (at mankind’s present stage of development) of apprehending the vibrations within these molecular kinds.
4At lower stages man has no prospect of living rationally or in accord with the laws of life. In order to be able to grasp the law of unity and the unity of all life he must (at the stage of the mystic) have experienced attraction and the happiness it bestows.
5Even after he has entered at the higher mental stage and become a mental self (47:5), he trusts his fictions more than the causal ideas with their seeming utopism. He must have acquired common sense before he is able to grasp a causal idea. Only then will he be within reach of the energies of the idea and be lifted up into the sphere where the idea is reality.
6In order to come into a direct personal and permanent contact with Augoeides, the monad in the first triad in the incarnating causal envelope must activate the second triad causal as well as essential consciousness: the causal consciousness in the second triad mental atom through the first triad mental molecule, and the essential consciousness in the essential atom through the first triad emotional atom via the centres of the causal envelope. The old term of this work was to “build the antahkarana”: to establish a permanent connecting link between the two triad units. The causal link alone is not sufficient, since Augoeides lives in the consciousness of unity and takes no interest in the separate problems of the first self. It is only when the human self decides to live for mankind, evolution, and unity, that it may count on the help of Augoeides in solving the pertaining problems of the monad. Augoeides must be assured lest the self abuses the knowledge and energy received.
7As regards monad consciousness in general, it is easiest to speak of monad consciousness in the triad and not in the particular molecular kinds of which we still know too little to be able to determine with certainty in most cases. This applies particularly to all those who work at establishing the link between the first and second triads.
8Augoeides is never found in the worlds of man (47:4–49:7), only in the causal world. (But a contact can be achieved in 48:3 and 47:5.) Those who claim to have seen him in the emotional world have found a replica of him, as is the case with all other kinds of “deities”. Devotion shapes unconsciously an emotional figure, which ignorance unfailingly takes to be the original. Also what mystics take to be the “feeling of god’s presence” is such a form that they have shaped themselves.
9Before man has achieved a direct contact with his Augoeides (incipient subjective causal consciousness in 47:3 and 47:2), he is reduced to using what is found in his waking consciousness and subconscious. When the link is established, Augoeides can transfer ideas to the waking consciousness from man’s own causal consciousness, which till then has been superconscious.
10It is not necessary to build the bridge between the first triad mental molecule and second triad mental atom in order to come into contact with Augoeides. He can meet man in the higher mental (47:4,5) if man has activated that kind of consciousness.
11All consciousness expressions from the higher mental (47:4,5) and the causal (thus from molecular kinds not activated by the monad) come from Augoeides. The pertaining energies perhaps do not become conscious until they have reached the emotional, and are easily confused with man’s own imaginings or telepathic receptions.
12At lower stages, it is only in rare exceptional cases or in serious crises, when man at the point of his highest tension reaches up in the higher emotional, that he may reckon on his Augoeides’ interest, since it is no use for Augoeides to contact when man cannot perceive him or misunderstands him irremediably.
13The percentages of the different molecular kinds in the envelopes are of the greatest significance. As long as there is anything of the three lower molecular kinds (48:5-7) in man’s emotional envelope, it would be useless for Augoeides to work with that individual.
14Whenever the individual serves evolution or unity in some way, he may always reckon on especial sympathy on the part of his Augoeides, even though he cannot ascertain this interest himself.
15As soon as man has ceased to be the “centre of his circle” and lives to serve mankind, evolution, and unity, he is in contact with his Augoeides, whether he knows it or not. That contact has nothing to do with individual emotionality, but manifests itself only at contacts with people in admiration, affection, and sympathy.
16Even after man has achieved a contact with Augoeides, there is always a risk that he confuses his inspirations with telepathic “inspiration” from countless directions. It is therefore important not to accept anything that wars against common sense or the laws of life.
17Even if you are unable to become aware of the presence of your Augoeides, it is a good habit, once you have decided to serve mankind, evolution, unity, to consult him in everything concerning this. That habit turns into a tendency to activation of the superconscious. In due time this must yield results and facilitate contact.
18If man has once grasped the fact that Augoeides exists and cares to listen to his inspirations (via mental molecules in the mental envelope), then he may as well put his trust in “his god”. So doing he forms with Augoeides an ever stronger link, which remains unbroken, even though man in a new incarnation does not know of it. This link also implies a simultaneous attachment to a centre in the causal envelope, though this has no great effect to begin with.
19The mystic understands that “being” is a greater realization than knowing and doing. By his striving to be in contact with his Augoeides he can receive from him energy for ever greater loving understanding and can help the receptive people to the same.
20The esoterician lives in a state of consciousness, which the ancient mystics called the “feeling of god’s presence” or the secretary of the hierarchy calls “standing in spiritual being”. It has different individual expressions but is a constant present awareness resulting from a conscious or unconscious contact with Augoeides. It does not in any way impair the efficiency of man’s daily work, does not claim his attention.
21At the stage of humanity, there is often a feeling of insufficiency in all respects, of ignorance, helplessness, and impotence. But these symptoms disappear at the contact with Augoeides. Then you see that nothing is useless. Every thought has its effect and the greater the more you see this.
1The better oriented in life literature (not light literature bereft of ideas) man is, the greater are his prospects to perceive the ideas from his Augoeides and to become a fit tool with loving understanding of man’s various needs at his different stages of development and of his ways of satisfying them.
2It would be the purpose of the ideal history of ideas to enable man to assimilate the collected ideas of mankind. Such a history of ideas will be elaborated in the future. Only then will true “education” be possible. Quality literature will then supersede quantity, and an excellent private library will go into one single bookcase.
3Augoeides has often and very rightly been called the “genius of man”, inspiring him to do important work. If Augoeides considers that such a work can be of value to promote general understanding of life, then he may very well contribute with his inspiration to its formulation.
4Augoeides makes the most of all opportunities to use the skills of his protege whenever he deems that his work benefits the individual and the collective.
5The collective work of all the Augoeides is exceedingly illustrative of all the various hierarchies’ manner of working in secret. Mankind has no idea of the fact that the reality ideas which eventually are revealed are inspirations from the Augoeides and from the planetary hierarchy (who have used the Augoeides for their communications until human mental selves have been accepted as disciples). Of course this in no way belittles the work of those who have proved to be receivers of the ideas. They have very rightly been regarded as pioneers.
6This work in secret, without any claim to recognition, is something that disciples of the planetary hierarchy have to learn. If they appear in public, they do it because it is unavoidable and also because they so doing promote the cause by their publicity. They need not the praise of men. Their only aspiration is to perform a task, to be instruments. Regrettably, incurable human curiosity makes it almost impossible for them to be anonymous writers. These must be unmasked by doctors of literature bent on qualifying scholarly feats.
1The art of living consists in studying and applying the methods necessary to consciousness development, the laws of life enabling a life without frictions. Augoeides, who is impersonal law of development, law of destiny, and law of reaping in one person, does whatever he can and may to lead man towards gaining insight, understanding, and ability.
2The supreme art of living is to be able to listen to the voice of the silence, the Sokratean daimonion. It is the voice of Augoeides, a mental inspiration from Augoeides. It is the voice of that silence which is had when man via concentration and meditation reaches contemplation and therein a contact with Augoeides.
3The voice of Augoeides is perceptible only after the vibrations of emotional illusions and mental fictions have ceased, if it is perceptible at all on higher mental levels (47:5). It affords you clarity and, if you obey his prompting, energy as well.
4The symbolical term, “silence”, and the symbolical saying, “the voice is perceived only in the silence”, have reference to the consciousness of the emotional and mental envelopes, the robot activity under the influence of the vibrations of the emotional and mental worlds. When this has been brought to stillness, the superconscious vibrations can be perceived and assimilated. The vibrations of the emotional and mental envelopes are subsequently unable to attract the attention of the self and “all is still”. The attention is moved from everything of the matter aspect and of the normal consciousness aspect and is directed towards the superconscious. In that consciousness, the planetary collective consciousness, Augoeides lives and can be reached. Also, his attention can be called for, even though it be momentarily directed to the consciousness of his own higher envelopes.
5In what manner the voice is perceived depends on the individual character. It can be perceived as intense mental clarity. It is not always as easy as it may appear. Wise Sokrates would have to wait for hours, in deep concentration, before he succeeded in coming into contact. If for instance the emotional envelope has got into a state of affect, with a gush of emotion like a stormy sea, then it may take as much as 48 hours before the billows have subsided, the shivering envelope has been stabilized, and the self has got the stillness it needs to achieve the contemplation.
6Add to this the fact that so many other “voices” want to claim the attention in the physical, emotional, and mental worlds. Many people make the mistake of listening to false voices. Many there are who impersonate our Augoeides:
“You listened to voices from far away
and deep in the wood they led you astray.”
7The Hindus call something corresponding to the consciousness of the causal envelope (or Augoeides) the “silent witness”. However, Augoeides is not silent to those who have acquired the ability to perceive his voice.
1Man’s ability to contact Augoeides brings about incredible changes in his first self and affects every atom of his etheric envelope and organism. He becomes like “another human being”.
2By and large it may be said that our good thoughts come from Augoeides (our soul), the bad thoughts from the subconscious of past incarnations or from the swamp of the emotional world.
3When the monad in the first triad (during incarnation in the triad envelope) is not in contact with Augoeides and is not influenced by his vibrations, it is unstable, easily swayed by changes from repulsive to attractive vibrations (expressing in countless, most often not even observed or observable, fleeting moods), critical, and fault-finding. Under the influence of Augoeides, the monad is as though lifted up above its true level of development, to sink down to it again when the contact is broken. Only when man has attained the stage of humanity, and been firmly attached to the “ideals”, can he be accepted as a disciple of the planetary hierarchy.
4Anyone who (of course unbeknownst to himself) sometimes succeeds in contacting Augoeides in his superconscious, notices only too plainly what a difference the “product” makes if it is a result of Castor (man) or if Pollux (Augoeides) has contributed.
5Most people consider themselves remarkable, always in some respect (often in many respects), consider they understand, know, and can do things. The esoterician knows, however, that he does not know, understand, or can do it. That is why he is a fit channel for those who know and can do. His entire previous education has had just one purpose: to give him the opportunity to receive whatever his Augoeides wants to use him for. By feeling remarkable you plug up that channel, and then you remain Castor when you could be Pollux.
6To become a channel means no self-effacement but is a self-determined act based on the insight that this is the only way for the monad to build the bridge from the first to the second self.
7One experience the esoterician has is that it makes a big difference in your conception of what you read (what you notice) as well as in your ability to express, in your own words, what you have read, if Augoeides is present and interested or not. Also, without his contribution there is no understanding of any symbols whatever. The “spirit” was absent from the fathers of the church and from the participants in the synods, and so the result was misinterpretation of everything. The theological hatred, the conflicts, the disputes, the interpretations of wiseacres, it all prevented true understanding.
8People think they are very clever when they comprehend and understand. They do not suspect that they would not be able to do so without the help of Augoeides and thanks to the vibrations he sends down into the envelopes of incarnation whenever he sees that man tries to comprehend and understand. For without causal-mental vibrations comprehension or understanding would be impossible. And the individual does not bring them about himself, at least not at lower stages. They can be transferred from the teacher to the pupil by telepathy, of course. But comprehension comes from without or from the superconscious; what you have once understood comes from the subconscious. Whatever of “rational content” the individual produces himself is abortive. Why do they not use history for typical examples of how useless human thinking is? Studying what millions have thought during two thousand years should give a small hint as to how reasonable it is. Besides, you only need to study modern literature. How much of that piffle remains one hundred years hence? Most of it will be rejected in the next ten years already. That is what life-ignorant human thinking looks like. Why not seek to contact Augoeides, who lives in the causal and essential worlds? He allows himself to be found by those who only desire the truth for the benefit of the whole.
1The wisest thing a man can do is to become a disciple of his Augoeides and do everything he can to become a useful tool for him. When man is “best favoured”, he is a tool of his Augoeides. His one and only wish for his next incarnation is to have the opportunity to become an even better tool. This does not in the least mean some rapid career to higher selves but unique opportunities to serve and so learn. It is man’s reward for giving Augoeides opportunities to serve in his turn. It is also a triumph for Augoeides that he has been successful in the art of handling something as intractable as a human individual of this planet.
2Anyone who puts himself at the service of Augoeides as a willing tool can reckon on having opportunities in subsequent incarnations to develop the qualities and abilities that he has use for in the physical world.
3The longing for “more light” is satisfied when the individual uses the light he has. In realization is manifested the need for greater insight.
4By becoming an expedient and efficient tool of Augoeides we identify ever more with his second self consciousness and we build the bridge that our monad must use to pass from the first to the second triad.
5For Augoeides to be able to use man as his tool it is required that this tool by study and education has enabled his brain to apprehend the ideas that Augoeides wants to communicate. If understanding is absent, Augoeides’ ideas will make no impression at all. The more allround orientation in life the tool has, the more he can be inspired. The more comprehensive learning man has acquired, the more suitable tool he is for Augoeides, the more ideas and facts can he perceive and formulate correctly. Out of a well-organized brain, well prepared for the reception, he can make a major genius (making important contributions in several areas). At mankind’s present stage of development, it is not a small achievement to acquire such a comprehensive understanding of reality and life that the individual can become a tool for the intentions of Augoeides. If in addition the genius has esoteric knowledge and does not block inspiration by giving himself the credit for his work, then his achievement will be of the highest quality possible.
6The theoretical learning man acquires by esoteric study enables him to perceive inspiration from Augoeides. All too many people give themselves the credit for their work, as they do not suspect whom they owe their inspiration. They think the preparatory work they did before receiving their ideas was the essence of it and conceive of the ideas as a logical outcome. In his ignorance, man imagines that the ideas given him are his own findings and discoveries.
7Ideas from the causal and essential worlds we can receive directly when we have acquired the ability to contact those worlds. Until then we are wholly dependent on the ideas from our Augoeides. Also the ideas we receive from the planetary hierarchy are conveyed through Augoeides, for he represents (is) man’s superconscious until man has become an essential self.
8A truly esoteric paradox: Man must (when he has activated his mental consciousness) work positively to make his envelopes negative (receptive) in relation to Augoeides, so that the latter can use them as his instruments. When this is successful, the monad automatically performs what is necessary to become a causal self and to be able to take over the work of Augoeides.
9Augoeides needs a tool for his work among men. But a tool that is unhappy, hateful, thinks he is important, thinks he understands better than others, thinks he is wise, such a tool is useless. The monad must have learnt much from its unsuccessful incarnations, come to see man’s insufficiency, that man counteracts his own development by his hatred, his craze for possessions and lust for power, his conceit, his vanity and all the other ridiculous qualities. He could have learnt sufficiently by observing the behaviour of others, learnt from history what a miserable wretch man basically is. Anyone who cannot see that, and it is quite impossible at lower stages, has much yet to learn. When man has once seen it, however, he is glad to be only a tool for someone who knows and can do, because this someone wants to help and serve and is in contact with the exhaustless resources of higher kingdoms.
10It is by being a tool of Augoeides that the monad acquires knowledge of reality, selfreliance, and self-determination, and learns to rightly use the energies from higher worlds.
11Apart from the fact that the willing monad is a conscious tool of Augoeides, men are by and large unconscious tools. This appears in how circumstances interlock, which ignorance calls “chance”. If people took things in the right way (in accord with the laws of life), then everything would sort itself out to the best of all concerned. As it now is, they constantly thwart the plans the Augoeides make in collaboration and let the opportunities life offers pass them by.
12Man is the instrument of Augoeides in the worlds of man, and Augoeides sees to it that this, his tool, is shaped to become increasingly expedient. When this is perfect, the monad as a causal self can use its envelopes in the right way. You need not worry about your development. Augoeides only demands that you are willing to be a tool and work to make this tool function physically, emotionally, and mentally. We develop automatically by working for mankind, evolution, unity; that gives us sufficient problems to solve, sufficient opportunities to have necessary experience. It is no use waiting for initiatives from Augoeides. Man shall develop his faculties by his own work, according to his possibilities. Only so doing can he become a tool of Augoeides. When man does his best, Augoeides can unnoticedly give him opportunities to have new experience to solve some of the countless tasks that Augoeides sees can be solved within man’s domains of life. Only on higher levels does man see the meaning of the work he does, which can often appear insignificant and meaningless, as a preparation for more important work. No kind of work is insignificant; that is a truth which is hard for men to grasp. “Him we can trust under all circumstances, and his faithful service is pledged to us come well, come ill… He is one who may make innumerable mistakes out of excessive zeal but never is unwilling to repair his fault even at the cost of the greatest self-humiliation; who esteems the sacrifice of comfort and even life something to be cheerfully risked whenever necessary; who will eat any food, or even go without; sleep on any bed, work in any place, fraternise with any outcast, endure any privation for the cause.”
13“Consider what duties, responsibility, and contacts your Augoeides has in the worlds of man.” Even though this is said to a disciple, it may give food for thought also to others. What do we do to help him with his tasks, we who are his tools in these worlds? Just as he identifies with us so we should try to identify with him. That will give us another view of life and that is the way of becoming a causal self.
1Anyone who has esoteric knowledge and seeks to apply it as best he can may reckon on receiving the necessary directions from Augoeides where aid in the service work for mankind is concerned. This requires, of course, that he has learnt to distinguish the various kinds of telepathic promptings: vibrations from mankind’s emotional collective consciousness, from the subconscious, and from the superconscious.
2The initiative comes from the self, who in contemplation seeks to contact Augoeides in order to know his view on the problem, being certain that he has the best understanding. Augoeides meets such attempts at contacting him half-way and clarifies the situation so that the self can make the right choice. It is a process in the highest molecular kinds of the mental envelope, a process that man can perceive in contemplation, the highest stage of the process of concentration resulting in illumination. It is then the task of the self to apply the insight gained in a rational way. Application is a work where no assistance is given. Eventually, through countless failures, man acquires the requisite abilities and qualities.
3As soon as man decides to strive after becoming a second self, he may reckon on the contribution of Augoeides, for that is precisely what he wants man to do. He will do everything he can to help the individual in his serious attempts. Every measure of energy the individual directs towards his higher self is met by the corresponding energy from Augoeides. Man receives “power from on high” to achieve things he would otherwise be unable to do. That power comes from the second triad through Augoeides.
4Inasmuch as man forms a new view on life, with understanding of the meaning of life and the causes of events and thus can make quite another contribution to evolution, Augoeides will see to it that the external conditions making this possible are improved as well.
5Energies pour down from higher worlds through the envelopes. Man always receives more energy than he needs for his functioning. Thus he need not “pray for power”. The quality of the envelopes (according to the law of reaping) is quite another matter. So is the individual energy distribution through the right centres. It is up to man to learn that by rightly handling his envelopes. All energies go through the causal envelope. Long before the aspirant is accepted as a disciple, his teacher has scrutinized his prospects, and the adjustments that possibly though exceptionally were necessary have been conveyed by Augoeides. Everything goes through Augoeides.
6We need not pray for power. We have more than enough of that stuff. We need not pray for help. Augoeides takes care of that matter. It is the planetary hierarchy that needs man, not the other way round. That knowledge of reality and life which man needed was always available in the esoteric knowledge orders and is nowadays publicized. It is sufficient for discipleship and beyond. Most people do not need it at all. Theology, philosophy, and science provide for them, and abundantly.
1In the worlds of unity, the self perceives no opposition between me and you. Although all are individuals with their individual characters preserved, they are simultaneously a collective being, and that “perception” is the primary and dominant one. Also, all collective beings are one. Since all monads in lower kingdoms enter into potential collective beings, there are nothing but collective beings or, more properly, one single cosmic being. Anyone who has entered into unity is one with everything in a community of life that is indissoluble.
2It is man’s business to get into such a relation to Augoeides that he does not appear a you, another self, but man’s own soul. This happens at the stage of the mystic and has been formulated in the mystics’ writings in many different ways - man’s sense of being divine, being god, being one with god, etc. - paradoxal to anyone who has not had the corresponding experience. That is the experience had when contacting the essential world through Augoeides.
3We understand why the planetary hierarchy when teaching disciples does not differentiate between man and Augoeides but speaks of the “soul”, man’s causal being, which is Augoeides until the causal envelope is dissolved and Augoeides is discharged of his mission: having given up his causal envelope shell to man.
4Augoeides takes little interest in the individual before the stage of culture when the latter strives to acquire the qualities of attraction, the first indication of the will to unity. Augoeides lives in the consciousness of unity. Anyone who in his consciousness development has not reached up to the understanding of unity as the necessary condition of freedom and power has still much to learn. There is no other way when the individual has reached self-determination: either the unity of all or the war of all against all.
5It is to the interest of Augoeides to free himself from his assumed task of supervising the development of the human individual. Logically, this should contribute to his doing everything he can for his protege, whenever a possibility arises. How many disappointments we cause him with our idiocy, our blind egoism, our indifference in life upon life appears in the study of man’s series of incarnations. One has the impression that most people do everything they can to delay their own development and get themselves painful incarnations.
6It is not to be wondered at that the Augoeides flee to the essential world and leave men at the mercy of their robots, when they see that they can achieve nothing with men at their present stage of development. The Augoeides belong to the deva evolution and develop through the law of self, which in their case allows them to be occupied with their own selves. In contrast, men develop by forgetting their own selves and everything belonging to them, by living for others. The human monads on this planet have pursued the path of self-assertion, have lived as parasites in the vegetable and animal kingdoms and have to relearn in the human kingdom, a task that seems impossible when studying their attitude to life in the five rootraces during millions of years.
7Augoeides often has the opportunity to be amazed at the immense amount of consciousness energy wasted by the monad on the condition of its envelopes, the well-being of its organism, diseases, dietary problems, etc., instead of forgetting its first self and directing its attention to the immensely more important problems of causal consciousness for the transition to the second self as well as to the problems of mankind. By the cares of our ignorance we disturb the automatic functions of the envelopes of incarnation, which actually only at sleep may take care of themselves with good results.
8How many people think without a direct physical or emotional impulse? Mental inactivity is a characteristic trait. In his thoughtlessness man of course never forms any conception of how repugnant it must be to Augoeides to contact the being to whom he has given his soul; something corresponding to the feeling we have when we have ended up in a physical or “spiritual” slough, a dirt-house, a pigsty. In a figurative sense, he can hardly breathe. It is a sacrifice he makes, how great we cannot grasp without analysing thoroughly people’s thoughts and feelings in the lower emotional and mental regions, quite apart from their physical occupations. Listen to the content of people’s gossip about other people, then you will have an inkling of how it is in their mental and emotional life! Listen to the content of their conversation! How much good will, reason, sound judgement is there in that never-ending stream of words?
1The task of Augoeides is to contribute to man’s consciousness development and acquisition of good qualities. He does nothing to forestall man’s self-caused misfortune or the consequences of his mismanagement of his envelopes. He is not concerned with the problems of the organism, diseases, causes of death, etc. All such things fall under the laws of nature or the law of sowing and reaping. The causes of disease can lie back in previous lives, and to those causes man must attend as best he can. They fall under the inevitable law of reaping. It is through the energies from his causal envelope that the individual’s envelopes of incarnation are kept alive and can function perfectly. Disease ensues when this is not the case.
2The conflict arising between the first self and Augoeides is largely due to the tendencies (skandhas) which the envelopes have acquired during the monad’s tens of thousands of incarnations. That conflict entails frictions in the centres of the envelopes, so that diseases can arise in the organism. The heart is especially afflicted, which explains why disciples of the planetary hierarchy often suffer from heart disease.
3Friction also ensues when the organism, adapted to the vibrations of lower molecular kinds, is exposed to the much stronger vibrations of higher matters.
4It should be pointed out that disease may occur in all envelopes of incarnation. For disease in the emotional and mental envelopes there are so-called healers of the soul, spiritual advisors, psychosynthesists, etc.
5When man turns to Augoeides, complaining that he is “very tired”, he answers: “It is your own fault. Take care of your health rationally, so that you get energy! That is entirely your own business.” He may cure only if man is free of debt. He never helps man if he shares in some responsibility, never saves him from the consequences of his own mistakes. So-called mental healing must be effected by men. The only true mental healing is possible if the healer knows about the particulars of the disease, knows which energies he is to use and which centres of the etheric envelope are to be influenced.
6We must be fully alive to the fact that mankind must itself find and realize everything it can as a whole achieve. Only such things as lie beyond the powers of the first self, of the monad in the fourth natural kingdom, may be given to us if it benefits consciousness development. Everything else must be discovered and realized by mankind itself.
7Augoeides cannot help us with such things as we know nothing of, wholly strange matters, since we are then quite unable to receive possible “inspiration”. The more facts we possess in various areas, the more knowledgeable we are in various respects, the greater the prospects of Augoeides to use us. The better oriented we are in esoterics, the more easily Augoeides can supply us with new esoteric ideas, which we always must test out in order not to fall victims (as most people do) to vagaries of all kinds. Such hypothetic data should never be accorded the same value of reality as the categorical data from the planetary hierarchy, since we can seldom determine whether we have received them from Augoeides. The ignorant think that the ideas that seemingly spontaneously appear in the waking consciousness are proof of their own genius, and they deem themselves quite remarkable, not suspecting where the ideas come from. They may come through telepathic transference or from our own causal consciousness and, before this has been activated, from Augoeides. The ideas that make up syntheses of our own material we have worked up come from the subconscious.
8Augoeides cannot supply the individual with anything that does not already exist potentially in his triads, which have been formed in the many different processes of manifestation he has gone through, what of the three aspects of the pertaining worlds his individual character has enabled him to incorporate with his triad units. Augoeides can help the individual to go through such experiences as are necessary to self-realization. But he cannot supply the triads with anything that is part of the monad’s individual character.
9Augoeides does not produce mental ideas (47:4-7) only supplies causal ideas, which it is the task of man to scale down or concretize. He can emotionally affect individuals as for the kinds of consciousness that lie within the two highest emotional (48:2,3). When the individual has reached the higher mental (47:5), he has via 48:3 a prospect of consciously contacting Augoeides. Before then it would be meaningless. The ideas would be misinterpreted and their energies misused.
1People are found on 777 different levels. We cannot tell which level the individual is on. We cannot know which experiences he has to have. We must leave it to his Augoeides to fix that matter. Religious people have very small “faith in god” when it comes to others. Then they must rule. Intolerance is a basic error in life, and our opinions of individuals are extremely superficial. Esoteric knowledge affords us a theoretical learning about the five stages of development, but that does not suffice for us to judge others or even ourselves. We do not know where we stand.
2At the stages of barbarism and civilization, Augoeides cannot do more for man than put him into situations where he has opportunities to learn, acquire knowledge of reality and life, qualities and abilities. It is up to him what use he will make of these possibilities. Generally, it is on the higher levels of the stage of civilization that he starts asking about the meaning of life and begins his seeking in theology or philosophy. Science with its physicalism is of no avail to him in this. When the individual gives up his interest in his own important personality and begins striving for the “community of souls” by emotional attraction, he thereby demonstrates that he has acquired a spark of common sense. Only then can his Augoeides do something for his protege.
3It is true that Augoeides can begin to influence the individual at the stage of the mystic (48:2,3). Only at the mental stage, however, does his influence become so strong that the individual experiences his causal ideas not only as revelations of reality but also as normative laws of life. Only then does Augoeides find it worthwhile to teach man about existence and the manner in which to realize the meaning of life purposively. This is not possible at the emotional stage, where the individual is unable to understand that knowledge of reality which is available in the causal world, is the victim of his illusions, in which the facts of esoterics inevitably, for lack of mental control, end up in wrong contexts.
4After his incarnation as a saint (48:2), man enters at the higher mental stage (47:5), which means a series of incarnations with considerable risks for the individual. He has acquired sovereignty in his emotional envelope, self-reliance and self-determination, wants to be his own master. He refuses to accept anything that cannot be accepted by his common sense whose limitation he does not suspect. He regards his “freedom”, won at a high cost, as his supreme good, ignorant as he is of the subconscious of the triad, of the skandhas, of the telepathic influences in his envelopes. However, only when the individual has liberated himself from the collective views, idiologies, the authorities of sects, can Augoeides try to appeal to his common sense. But experience has taught the human self to be on its guard against all “brainwaves”, and it refuses to listen to the inspirations of Augoeides. A “battle of ideas” ensues, a tough tussle in which the self often looks upon the ideas of Augoeides as hostile. Man is “sufficient unto himself” during a whole series of incarnations. Only after countless failures in life upon life does he learn to see the folly of his own wisdom. He then enters at the stage of the seeker where he examines the logical and experimental tenability of the various idiologies, proceeding by trial and error. Man discovers that life is ruled by laws in everything and he is increasingly sensitive to influences from the world of ideas. According as the individual acquires causal consciousness, Augoeides withdraws from his causal envelope and leaves its centres to him.
5Whatever during this entire process has occurred in the superconscious of the mental and causal envelopes, the monad knows nothing about it and will come to know it only as a causal self. When man will once reach the insight that Augoeides is his provisional causal self, only then will he have a rational attitude to life.
6In the mental self as an aspirant to discipleship there comes a period when this self no longer blindly trusts his own judgement or his own ability but instead begins to confide in the leadership of Augoeides, to find that the only safe way is to become a tool of “his soul”. It is the monad’s groping attempts at acquiring subjective causal consciousness and identification with Augoeides, united in the second self’s lowest kind of consciousness. The indication of this is that self-consciousness is determined by reality, and no longer by the thoughts of reality with their illusions and fictions. Augoeides has objective consciousness in the four or five lower atomic worlds (45-49) and man only in the three lowest molecular kinds of the physical world (49:5-7). In addition, Augoeides has access to the planetary and deva hierarchies and can access further knowledge from them.
7In order to come in contact with Augoeides you must be able to think in accord with reality. How else could he make himself understood? That is why, at mankind’s lower stages of development and also faced with man’s general ignorance of life, he regards it as meaningless to try to make him understand. Whatever he has to say, man will not understand it, will not heed it, and so it will be without effect.
8Inasmuch as man finds the knowledge of reality and starts thinking in accord with it, Augoeides is able to inspire him in the right way and it is worthwhile for him send down ideas, since they will be perceived rightly. The higher the stage of development, the less socalled coincidences, the more often opportunities. The more you trust your Augoeides, the more he can help if the Law allows him. He wants nothing more keenly, if the individual wants to go by the Law.
1Both the planetary hierarchy and the deva hierarchy use the Augoeides as a performer of their intentions regarding consciousness development as well as the fulfilment of destiny for each incarnation. Discipleship is quite another matter, a personal relation between man and teacher, when man at the higher mental stage is ripe for his transition to the fifth natural kingdom. Quite erroneous views of the conditions for discipleship have prevailed, particularly in theosophical circles. It is not as easy as they think to be accepted even on probation. Most people said to be disciples would not stand a chance.
2Before the aspirant is accepted as a disciple he must have been in contact with his Augoeides in many incarnations. It is through Augoeides that the prospective teacher inspires his future disciple. All communication with higher worlds goes through Augoeides.
3When a 45-self brings together a number of disciples into a group, he thereby assumes the responsibility for his disciples, even though Augoeides assists until man has become an essential self. Augoeides will be fully free only when his causal envelope is dissolved at man’s transition to the essential world.
4Anyone who cannot gain discipleship can always offer himself as a tool of his Augoeides, who in his capacity of man’s supervisor always is in contact with the planetary hierarchy.
5Many think they are called to be important persons in spiritual matters; many are afflicted with the Messiah complex; many believe they are particularly attended by some member of the planetary hierarchy, etc. They need to be informed of the fact that such notions are selfdeception. Before a man can live in communion with his Augoeides, it would not be worthwhile for the planetary hierarchy to take any especial interest in that individual. If someone is really fit to make such a significant contribution, then this is done through Augoeides. A direct contact with some member of the planetary hierarchy occurs only when some individual is accepted as a disciple, when Augoeides has performed his task, man has become a mental self and acquired the necessary qualities and abilities.
6If those in the planetary hierarchy want to avail themselves of some disciple in the physical world, they use the disciple’s “thread of reason” (antahkarana), the connection between the brain, crown centre of the etheric envelope, and the second triad mental atom, which connection must then be activated. If this is not the case, they communicate only through Augoeides, who then conveys the message, which in that case is intended for a collective and never for the individual himself. Other people than disciples have no chance of entering into direct contact with the planetary hierarchy.
7All who wholeheartedly are esoteric aspirants and live to serve evolution must reckon on opposition from the enemies of evolution. How such opposition is expressed can never be foreseen. There are untold possibilities in physical as well as emotional and mental respects. It is true that Augoeides can provide a sufficient protection. This is seldom the case, however, before he has become the determining factor in the life of the aspirant.
8If and when “a man disclaims his humanity”, which is the condition of his entrance into the black lodge, his Augoeides ceases to take responsibility for the monad in the first triad mental envelope, and takes back that causal envelope which he once gave the individual in the animal kingdom. Subsequently, that individual can never more be reborn as a man, until he has acquired a new causal envelope; an exceedingly long process, requiring many eons. If he incarnates, it only remains for him to be reborn as an animal. After this possibility has been used up, he remains a prisoner of the emotional world until that world dissolves some time.
1The disciple is taught the right method of meditation which is partly one method common to all, partly an individual one. How much they differ from the current methods is best seen in the fact that contemplation implies a conscious contact with Augoeides, corresponding to the theurgy of the gnosticians.
2In the esoteric literature, the individual is encouraged to acquire intuition almost as though it concerned the faculty of mental judgement. Intuition is a faculty of the second self, however, and to acquire it you must at least be in contact with the essential world. Thus the faculty intended can only be a contact with Augoeides, as he can convey mental ideas. Intuition requires a connection with the second self, and that is achieved by building the antahkarana between the first and second triads, via the unity centre of the causal envelope.
3“Left to themselves” after Christos’ return to the planetary hierarchy as the chief of its second department, the gnosticians sought for a method of individually contacting their Augoeides. They elaborated a ritual (a methodical procedure) that enabled them, via the first triad mental molecule, to have objective contact with their causal envelopes and so with their Augoeides. That ritual was called “theurgy”. Typically, encyclopaedias explain “theurgy” as being magic or the alleged art of conjuring up spirits.
4In Bulwer Lytton’s novel Zanoni there is a portrayal of the meeting of man and his Augoeides. The author permitted himself to romanticize that meeting, probably to make it comprehensible. Augoeides does not physicalize, however, and he does not appear in the worlds of man. Only with causal vision, achieved momentarily in theurgy, is it possible to see him. But of course not for such reasons as are described in Zanoni.
5Using esoteric knowledge it is possible to establish a link between the highest emotional consciousness (48:2,3) and essential consciousness. The self can activate essential consciousness by realizing universal brotherhood in the worlds of man, particularly the physical world, by living for mankind, evolution, and unity. Before that, however, the monad must have become a mental self (47:5). All emotional energy has then become only dynamic, without anything of that falsifying sentimentality which of tradition is called “Christian love”. It is a considerable difference if an emotional self or a mental self activates essential matter with emotional energy. In the latter case the individual has become free from any thought of salvation and reward, any calculation. He serves because he cannot do otherwise. So doing he contacts the wisdom and unity of essential consciousness.
6Emotional attractive energy must, via the unity centre of the causal envelope, activate essential matter for man to become a causal self (to acquire the lowest consciousness in the second triad). The disciple learns the pertaining method from his teacher.
7Quite intentionally Laurency gives no information about methods of meditation. There are too many already; most of them unsuitable without knowledge of the individual’s stage of development, exact horoscope, the departments of his causal and triad envelopes, whatever he possesses latently. In any case, everybody has to develop his own method and apply it until he receives personal instructions as a disciple of the planetary hierarchy. Anyone who seeks contact with his Augoeides and observes what is necessary to rouse his active intervention also learns how that tie is to be strengthened.
1There is in man’s life a “guidance” about which he cannot and should not know anything, since such a knowledge would infringe on his striving for self-realization. It is a guidance that stretches through the whole series of incarnations and to which one incarnation (the only one man knows anything about) is like a day in a 500 years life. It is a guidance according to the laws of life where any kind of “injustice” is quite impossible. Augoeides can only deplore that man is blind to the offers of life which Augoeides has prepared, blind to the possibilities he constantly arranges, despises and rejects his chances, all those missed opportunities. In life upon life the individual throws away his possibilities and then accuses life for his own stupidities. The true tragedy of human life is when man by his own mistakes foils the possibilities that Augoeides has carefully prepared, often in detail.
2During the current emotional eon, mankind is found at the emotional stage of consciousness development, and the majority are in the regions of repulsive emotions. At this stage, attempts made by Augoeides to help man are largely without the intended result. The perverse instinct of life, the disorienting idiologies (idios = one’s own, logos = reason), the faintly developed reason (seldom reaching beyond principle thinking, 47:6) immunizes man to all attempts by Augoeides. It is understandable that he often in sheer desperation lets the fool take care of himself. The same things are repeated in life upon life. Only exceptionally does he manage to get the knack of the imbecile. Until man approaches the levels of the cultural stage, he has no prospect of following the “promptings of his reason”.
3Whatever ideas of god man forms in his life ignorance, in his fear of unknown life, in his need of a helper, Augoeides is the god of man. Only at the causal stage does the individual know the significance of Augoeides as a guide, helper, director of his destiny.
4At the higher emotional stage, the stage of the mystic, Augoeides has to put up with being the object of adoration, for the mystic has a need of an outside person as the object of his devotion, his need of love and worship. And as always Augoeides makes the best possible of the situation and tries to use it to make man act in accord with the laws of life. To the mystic, he is man’s superconscious and man’s source of inspiration in his aspiration to unity.
5As to “divine guidance in human life” it can be established that man to begin with is guided by his subconscious (the instinctive experience of tens of thousands of incarnations) until, at the stage of the mystic, he begins to come in contact with the superconscious of his second triad (first the causal superconscious), activated by Augoeides. It is man himself who shapes his life and his destiny (his future incarnations). He is no slave under any inevitable destiny, no slave under any other being. According to the law of freedom and the law of selfrealization he has to develop his consciousness (his higher emotionality and mentality) himself and to acquire ever higher kinds of consciousness and thereby ever “freer will” and so doing increasingly become the “master of his own destiny”.
6Whenever he allows himself to be guided by other beings (in the emotional world), he is the victim of his own life ignorance. He has a potential free will, and this he is to develop and so doing become ever freer and reaching ever greater insight and understanding of life. When he comes into contact with his superconscious (his Augoeides), he realizes that he is on the right track, the one leading to the acquisition of causal and essential superconsciousness. It is up to him to develop these kinds of consciousness, and in this work he gets all the help he will need from his Augoeides. The essential of this process is that man realizes that he must take the initiative and that all consciousness development is the result of self-initiated consciousness activity.
7Often we are faced with problems, which the first self is quite unable to solve with his abilities. This may for instance concern the choice of a path in life. Then the contact with Augoeides is vitally important. Many mystics delay their decision, waiting for clarity or expecting that circumstances will force the final choice. Both methods may prove insufficient.
8Until man has acquired causal consciousness, he knows as good as nothing of reality (beyond physical reality), of life, and of himself. He “is wandering in darkness”. None of this is important for those who know that Augoeides is practically man’s “soul” and that he knows everything he needs to know for the monad to be able to live the “perfect life”. By entrusting itself to its soul the monad possesses wisdom, freedom from fear and anxiety, learns more and more every day, and draws nearer to his superconscious causal consciousness.
9Only when man has acquired a knowledge of reality can Augoeides efficiently guide man on the “right path”. Before that, he can only sporadically, at rare occasions, influence the individual in his choices.
10Instead of staring at man’s first self, the esoterician tries to understand what plans his Augoeides has for him. We do not know what path of development man pursued in the past nor what path Augoeides has planned for his future incarnations. Everybody walks his own path, which is due to countless factors (such as involution through the different stages down to the mineral kingdom, through the group-souls of the different natural kingdoms, through causalization, through the different stages of development during tens of thousands of incarnations, through the envelope departments of the present incarnation). An individual who has reached the mental stage can sometimes demonstrate an obvious tendency in the direction of his life as to his future contribution to evolution. It can be seen that his Augoeides sometimes urges him forward, sometimes keeps him back until he has acquired the necessary qualities and abilities. This is mostly done by the influence of external circumstances.
11“The deputy of your future second self until you have become a second self” is perhaps the best definition of his task and function. We are not alone. We are not the sports of Fortune. Augoeides represents “divine guidance in human life”. Our lives have a meaning which we do not know more of save the fact that we shall some time become second selves. It is up to us when that incarnation will be possible: whether in twelve, or one hundred or one thousand incarnations hence depends on our own purposiveness, the interest and work we devote to it. Our path is called the path of service.
12Our life is our own doing. In the past we have arranged our future. We have no right to blame an arbitrary or unjust destiny.
13The existence of the Augoeides ? those supervisors and mediators, from higher authorities, of measures taken for the best of human beings ? makes it clear that “everything is very well”, as well as it can be with those beings who ruin everything with their acts of folly. If it still goes wrong, it is the fault of men. The people of hatred do everything they can for life to be and remain a hell.
1That inner security which stems from the will to unity, the striving to do the right as far as one sees, always helps man through difficulties in life. He is on the right track and is guided by his Augoeides, even though man be unaware of it, when he trusts his Augoeides to help him after he has done his utmost. Man can then be sure that whatever happens is the best, even though he does not understand it.
2We have nothing to worry about. We are well cared for if we just use the offers of life. Augoeides does what he can to guide our development, and all the Augoeides cooperate in helping. It is the fault of men that they prefer living by appearances instead of reality. It is incredible how they make life difficult for themselves and others. It need not be like that. If men lived for unity, we would live in a paradise and we would share in the knowledge of Augoeides.
3We need not worry about our “spiritual status”. Augoeides takes care of that matter. When everybody follows the “light” he has, he will develop in the most efficient way. It is great to be faithful in that which is least, and life rewards every trouble a thousandfold, even if we cannot see it on account of difficulties existing.
4Those causal selves who have studied their own and other people’s series of incarnations (the largely imaginative studies of clairvoyants are not intended here) can unanimously affirm an absolute trust in life. Their Augoeides have proved their sovereignty by teaching their proteges precisely what was necessary for them to acquire qualities and abilities, to attain ever higher stages of development. They have demonstrated their omnipotence in the worlds of man by often being able to pilot individuals through the most “hopeless” payment incarnations unto the ultimate triumph, however abortive it appeared to life-ignorant mankind and posterity.
5The esoterician is to learn the very hard lesson of desisting from all expectations of life, of people or circumstances. He must realize that nothing in the worlds of man holds to build upon. What remains for him is only trust in the laws of life and in his Augoeides, whose task it is to teach him that trust. The meaning of life is development, and the goal of man is the fifth natural kingdom. Everything counteracting this development turns into obstacles on the path. Consciousness development is a continuous process through the incarnations according to the laws of development, and these laws are the laws of life. Anyone who does not apply these laws must not complain. It is not a matter of new laws. They have always been proclaimed to people even though in other ways and perhaps in unsuitable formulations. But at all times initiates have led the way. It was no fault of theirs that they could not openly describe them as laws.
6How could we be other than humble when we have once seen that everything is given to us by the powers of destiny, first and foremost our Augoeides, the tools of destiny, and that our misery is self-inflicted? Every kind of defiance to life is presumption and a proof of life ignorance, lack of judgement and missing qualities of life.
1The trust that Augoeides wants us to acquire is not the trust in another being (“god”). It is the impersonal trust in our own potential godhood (god immanent), the knowledge of the fact that we shall some time become what we are potentially, the trust in “Life”, the trust in the unshakable laws of life.
2That old saw, “it’s all for the best”, may be the resigned consolation before the inevitable, but it is useless as a motto. What people bring about usually is the most perverse thing, and that cannot be the best. It is quite another matter that we can learn from everything. The individual may (even if seldom) be “without debt” in everything that enters into the collective bad reaping of mankind. The theosophical notion that nothing can happen to anyone who is “free from bad karma” is wrong. He may very well be killed in a car accident out of sheer carelessness.
3Man receives all the help he needs to develop. But the work for development he must, according to the law of self-realization, do himself. He must learn self-reliance and selfdetermination, not to lean on others, who have more than enough of their own work to do. It is abortive to “pray to god” to do what we can do ourselves and must do to acquire knowledge, insight, understanding, the necessary qualities and abilities. It is no use praying to “god” to do what we must do ourselves (stand, suffer according to the law of reaping). We may pray to “god” for power for consciousness development, but it is our business to rightly use the powers we receive for that. “Leaving it all to god” and passively waiting for it to be done (as quietists preach) is the devil’s own invention. It is practically the same as allowing evil to play its game undisturbedly. Whatever happens to us when we have done our duty, is according to the Law, is part of the monad’s necessary experience of life. There is never any real reason for fear, because everything that happens is according to the Law and for our own good, which Augoeides is able to judge, as he can survey the possibilities of our future incarnations. Anyone who knows that an incarnation is like a day in a 500 years life may get the right perspective on existence and does not worry about what happens to him during a certain incarnation. We shall all become second and third selves and ever higher cosmic selves. It is in our interest to make our incarnations as free of friction as possible, since this facilitates our acquisition of higher consciousness.
4Seek the truth yourself and trust to your own judgement, however it is! That is better than bothering about what people say, think, and try to make you do. The individual must learn to trust to his reason and to his Augoeides, who enlightens him when he may do so. There are two kinds of criterion of truth: the esoteric knowledge system with the knowledge of the laws of life and the proof of unity.
5As soon as man knows, sees, and understands, Augoeides’ responsibility ceases. Anyone who subsequently is waiting for an impulse (“inspiration”) from Augoeides is mistaken. Augoeides has done his bit. Man is responsible.
6Augoeides cannot free man from emotional illusions but certainly from mental fictions. Illusoriness must be destroyed by man himself with mental analysis. If that faculty is lacking, as is the case with most people, then man will unfailingly fall a victim to his illusions.
7At any cost man must learn to stand on his own feet and to do it all by himself. The law of self-realization is an unshakable law: man must learn to acquire self-reliance and selfdetermination before he is finished as a first self. When he has once become an integrated first self, he must find his bearings in the worlds of the first self. It is the foremost task of Augoeides to teach man to see this and how man can reach that goal. Man must, independently of any other individual, solve the problems of life that occur in the worlds of the envelopes of incarnation, the problems of life that are due to a first self.
8Of course it is a matter of laws of life at the highest human stage of development, on the verge of the worlds of the second self. Before that, the individual must have seen his dependence on the human collective. Those who imagine they are ready for that final test (which certainly most people with their usual lack of judgement do at all stages) must learn to see their mistake over and again in many incarnations.
9The great risk of publicizing the esoteric knowledge is that everybody is informed of things intended for those at the stage of discipleship and so thinks it applies also to those at lower stages, thinks that it applies to himself. That risk was forestalled in the esoteric knowledge orders with their several degrees. The initiate was informed of what was required of him to attain the next higher degree, not what was required for the highest degree.
10Regrettably, the political idiology called democracy has contributed to the illusion that all are equals having all the necessary qualifications to do all the labours of Herakles, if only they are “given a chance”. You fancy you hear the five-year-old boy who thought he was so strong that he could lift a house. The 99 per cent have yet to learn neither to overrate nor to underrate themselves and to try to perceive where they stand on the gamut of development.
11Man’s relation to his Augoeides should not be a sentimental dependence, not the relation of the slave to his master, not that of the suppliant to the distributor of favours. Augoeides wants to make the human self an independent individual who dares to live, dares to think, dares to act, for that is the one right way to learn from experience. Anyone who wills for the right is on the right track, and anyone who does as best he can has no reason to torment himself. Augoeides demands nothing absurd. He is the very common sense.
12We understand why the knowledge of Augoeides was not given out to a mankind that worries about everything, that desires everything and demands everything, that finds everything unjust, that sees everything as proof of lack of love, that finds life unbearable, unsupportable, that feels sorry for itself. For such a mankind it is better to know nothing of Augoeides. It is fortunate that most people doubt his existence.
13Many people confound Augoeides with someone of the many teachers who exist in the emotional world and are eager to guide those in the physical world; and those who are inclined to mediumism and ignorant of the facts of the matter come under their influence. It is typical of Augoeides that he does not guide man so that he is aware of being guided, but he thinks that it is his own doing. Augoeides appeals to man’s own common sense or to whatever man himself can see to be the truth. Anyone who apprehends Augoeides as another individual than himself has fallen the victim of a false guide. Whenever an individual has become dependent on some non-physical being, it can be firmly asserted that such a guide operates from the emotional world, that consequently he cannot be Augoeides nor a member of the planetary hierarchy
1Augoeides has undertaken to supervise the monad’s consciousness development through the fourth natural kingdom (thus from the third to the fifth). A wee bit of reason or reflection should clarify that it is to his own interest that the human monad becomes a second self as soon as possible, so as to set Augoeides free for higher tasks, and also that it depends on the monad’s interest in the matter how many incarnations will be needed for that process. If man imagines himself able to judge what is necessary for this better than Augoeides, then the latter can do nothing with such an idiot, but he must wait some incarnations until a spark of reason finally lights in the mental envelope of that individual.
2With our lack of skill to rightly use the opportunities Augoeides offers us, to rightly adapt to given conditions, we often thwart the plans for the future prepared by Augoeides and force him to look for other and worse expedients to help us.
3At lower stages, man is dependent on public opinion or on the collective opinion in groups and sects. Since mankind in past millennia has not had the knowledge and does not even now care about the knowledge of reality, most people have small prospects of liberating themselves from the views which they have assimilated and which mislead them in life. As long as we live in the imaginary world of emotional illusions and mental fictions, Augoeides has but scanty chances of helping us. His energies would only serve to strengthen conceit and selfishness.
4The lesson which Augoeides tries to bring home to his protege but which he seldom succeeds with until at the final stage is that “only by law can life endure and only by application of law is development possible”.
5However unsatisfactory world history (and any history) appears to the causal selves, who are able to study the planetary memory, yet it should have made it clear that mankind is largely found at and near the stage of barbarism. It is only after science started to explore the nature of physical matter that common sense has been able to make itself felt at least in this respect.
6Thus it is not strange that the Augoeides of the individuals have not been able to accomplish much for the consciousness development of their proteges. Approximately 15 per cent of (the incarnating part of) mankind have reached beyond the lower emotional stage, and it is only at the emotional attraction stage (the stage of the mystic) that Augoeides can accomplish anything at all for the individual’s development.
7However, the interest in the so-called occult, gaining ground more and more (after the publication of the knowledge in 1875), has given Augoeides greater prospects to work through man’s superconscious. According to the planetary hierarchy, this has happened somewhat more generally than expected, notwithstanding the increase of general disorientation in culture during the current transition from the Piscean to the Aquarian epoch. The interest in superphysical knowledge has been transferred from the “metaphysics” of philosophical imaginative speculation (nowadays in process of being abolished) to occultism, regrettably mostly its degenerate species, spawned by fantasts with the Messiah complex who have set themselves up as authorities. People ignorant in esoteric matters are unable to see through the incompetence of such “prophets”, and so the general skepticism of life ignorance about such matters has proved to be a protective asset. It is better to doubt than to be gullible (to accept without self-acquired insight). Since there is no other possibility to reach higher worlds and higher kingdoms than through self-realization, you probably see that it is up to the individual to acquire common sense and judgement. Blind acceptance (usually under the influence of emotional energies) becomes a hindrance to the self-acquisition of insight.
8What would man be without his Augoeides? An intelligent beast of prey on this planet of sorrow. Without Augoeides mankind would be embroiled in a war of all against all, filled with hatred of all and everyone, totally disoriented in reality, without understanding of the law of development and the law of self-realization, without longing for higher reason, and without compassion for other living creatures.
1Anyone who has a knowledge of the cosmic organization, the organizations of the solar systems and the planets, sees clearly that all beings in higher worlds have their own special problems and that individual supervision and treatment of human beings (such as religions teach) is an absurdity, that god cannot watch over each particular individual, knowing his desires and needs. Needs (but seldom desires) are satisfied by the Augoeides, who have undertaken that thankless task on this planet of sorrow. If evolution proceeds without friction as on other planets, then there is no suffering (no organisms, only aggregate envelopes for the monads), but all is joy and work is a play. There evolution follows its even course without frictions and so no Augoeides are needed to help men reach the fifth natural kingdom, but it is all more like an automatic procedure.
2On certain other planets, the individuals of the vegetable and animal kingdoms appear similar to those on our planet, but those plants and animals are of other kinds, and higher forms of life have only etheric envelopes. Human beings, however, have aggregate envelopes also of the lowest physical molecular kinds so as to be able to have experiences in that matter.
3The Symbols of Dzyan are incomprehensible without facts about the solar system preceding ours (the first solar system) of which the present (second) solar system is a continuation. The commentaries to the Symbols of Dzyan that have seen the light are largely abortive. The history of our two solar systems still remains inaccessible, and what has been said about it is part of legend and typical of mankind’s mania for speculation. It has been vouchsafed our century to falsify all kinds of history with unrestrained cynicism.
4The Augoeides chose no easy path of development when they assumed the responsibility by giving their causal envelopes to those beasts whom they saw would be an immense strain and burden in their attempts at humanizing them. It is understandable that the majority of those faced with this option declined the offer with thanks. We human beings have evidently done our utmost to obstruct them in their work. How do we show our gratitude for their sacrifice? We behave worse than animals after more than 20 million years of attempts by the Augoeides at humanizing us. We accuse life of our own idiocy and bestiality. We persecute our own pioneers. Small wonder then that our planet is regarded as the veritable madhouse in our globe of seven solar systems.
1There is mention of Augoeides in occult literature and also in fiction literature under many different names and always in vague terms, most often erroneous as well.
2Augoeides is man’s true “causal self” until he can become a causal self himself. This fact has caused a confusion of ideas that it is apparently very hard to remedy. He is presented as our true self, so that you get the grotesque notion that man is made up of two or, in case also the Protogonos is mentioned, three different individuals.
3The fact that Augoeides is called “man’s soul” has also contributed to the confusion. The causal envelope is man’s soul, whether it is a gift from Augoeides or a causal envelope formed by the second self (the monad in the second triad) itself. In order to explain how this causal envelope at incarnation could be split into two parts (the greater causal envelope remaining in the causal world and the incarnating triad envelope) they invented the legend of the “twin souls”, which of course was idiotized, as usual, and gave rise to the most deplorable errors. (People on the look-out for their twin souls among the opposite sex and suchlike follies.)
4Augoeides is that “spirit of truth” Christos spoke of. What Christos said verbatim was very little known to the gnostic legend-writers one hundred years afterwards. They used the general, “popular” gnostic expressions, which led to a total distortion of the gnostic symbols. That Augoeides would guide the disciple (who was an initiate) to the truth was an expression of the gnostic insight that Augoeides is able to help efficiently only when the need of worship that is in emotional devotion has been eliminated. When Christos, according to the gnostic legend, said of the children that their angels always behold the face of the heavenly father, he thereby referred to the Augoeides, wanted to intimate their existence and the fact that they are counted among the planetary hierarchy. Only in our times has it become possible for esotericians to elucidate the true function of the Augoeides.
5In the esoteric literature, Augoeides has been given many different names: agnishvatta, manasa-deva, asura, fire dhyani, son of fire, nirmanakaya, son of mind, solar god, solar angel, solar pitri, adonai, etc. Adonai is the name the Jews used for god instead of Jahve, thought to be too sacred to be used. Some Rosicrucians used the handy adonai for Augoeides, since the name Augoeides was only for initiates. This multitude of different names has caused confusion, of course. Researchers have been misled to believe that different classes of beings are intended, and they have never been able to find the way out of the labyrinth. Add to this the fact that the term “nirmanakaya”, for instance, has reference to functionaries of various kinds and should be reserved for the “preservers of energy” working between the higher natural kingdoms, supplying cosmic energies for future needs.
6The Bhagavad-Gita of the Hindus, originally from Atlantis and later revised, describes the meeting of Augoeides (the god Krishna) and his protege (prince Arjuna), “prince” symbolizing an individual at the stage of the disciple. The author of the poem, a “rishi” in Atlantis, elaborated several motifs in it. He wanted to direct man to his own personal god in the superconscious. He wanted man to cultivate his higher emotional consciousness, “mysticism”. He wanted to influence the inactive people to purposeful activity.
7At the emotional stage, most people are in need of some higher being to resort to, to worship. Only at the mental stage can man begin to acquire subjective causal consciousness and to identify with his causal being (his “soul”) and with Augoeides as his deputy causal self until he has become a causal self himself. It is an individual matter whether he conceives of Augoeides as his own causal being or as another individual.
8“Prometheus Bound”, known from the Greek tale of the same name, symbolized the first self (the monad encapsulated in the first triad). He was set free by Herakles (Augoeides in the second triad).
9The twins Castor and Pollux were an esoteric symbol that had several meanings: the first and second selves, the incarnating triad envelope and the causal envelope, man and his Augoeides, the disciple and his teacher (an individual of the fifth natural kingdom), corresponding to Arjuna and Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita. The all-pervading idea is that man can reach higher only by the help of the higher and by gratefully receiving that help.
10Attempts have been made to replace the name Augoeides with “solar angel” and “angel of the presence”. Probably, many people want the classical name to be retained.
1The prevailing confusion about Augoeides has had the effect that also experts on esoterics deliver misleading explanations. Some of them do not distinguish between the causal being, Augoeides, the causal self or even the second triad, but call them all the “soul”. Thus for instance one expert thought that the “soul, which is omniscient and omnipotent, of course could give an exact account of all its incarnations, if the individual wanted it”. Here, the “soul” can only have reference to Augoeides, and he gives no such accounts, since that is not his business and cannot benefit man’s consciousness development in the least. They have obviously confused Augoeides with man’s self-activated causal consciousness. The latter is not omniscient, although it can of course study past incarnations. The causal self must do that some time in order to be fully clear about his own path of development and see what debts to other people remain to make good. The causal self is subsequently grateful if he is spared further contacts with such miserable matters.
2An esoterician never speculates with his own assumptions and suppositions. He waits until mankind receives new ideas and facts from the planetary hierarchy. Regrettably, Besant as well as Leadbeater were guilty of speculations inevitably resulting in mistakes. They did not know that Augoeides and the human self are two different individuals (monads), but they confused Augoeides with man’s own causal being, which possesses only passive consciousness. Leadbeater called the causal envelope of 45-selves Augoeides, which is a basic mistake. He had not seen that the causal envelope of a 45-self is a product of the monad (at that stage), working through the second triad mental atom. Nor had he seen that Augoeides leaves the supervision of the human monad when that monad has acquired an essential envelope and no longer needs the material shell that Augoeides supplied.
3In theosophical literature, the self is presented as possessing knowledge of higher worlds, seeking incarnation in order to acquire knowledge of the worlds of man. This is misleading. They have mixed up two different individuals (monads): Augoeides (a deva monad) and man (a human monad). Man incarnates in order to acquire self-consciousness in his causal envelope. The Augoeides supervise incarnations in order to learn how to guide evolutionary monads in lower kingdoms, especially the fourth, the human kingdom. The Augoeides thereby prepare themselves for greater tasks, for future supervision of collective consciousness development in these kingdoms.
4If man’s causal envelope is taken as a double being (the division into “twin souls” at each reincarnation), the incarnating lesser part (the human monad in the first triad) can be called Castor; and the greater part remaining in the causal world, Pollux, Augoeides. The twin souls are two envelopes. Man and Augoeides are two individuals.
5In the old literature, the second triad is called the “soul” and the third triad, the “spirit”. They are presented as active beings belonging to the superconscious of the human monad. This is certainly true, since all consciousness is one. But it is equally true that those beings are individuals who use the triads for their own development until man (the human monad) can take over them.
6Soul and spirit are envelopes of the self, the monad. The soul is the causal envelope, the spirit the submanifestal envelope. The self, the most secret of all secrets, is never mentioned save as the “point of light, eternally present”. As an emancipated primordial atom in the highest cosmic world the self is a cosmic sun.
7The term “soul” has been used in so many different meanings, has been used for all three triads and their envelopes and even for consciousness itself. In the process the term has become utterly meaningless, and therefore it should be eliminated from usage.
8Mankind’s enormous ignorance of life appears in the fact that people may deny the existence of an undying “soul” (self-consciousness), independent of material transformation, while using expressions such as “save our souls”, as though the soul (Augoeides) were in need of salvation. It looks like one big medley of contradictory ideas.
9Augoeides is a second self (an essential self) able to use man’s second triad and causal envelope. At the same time he helps man by supplying him with requisite energies and also in other respects, as far as need be. Everything is utilized and nothing may lie idle, which the higher triads would do if they were not used to serve several purposes. At an earlier stage this could not be explained, and so the triads were symbolically presented as though the individual consisted of three individuals. With the additional facts we nowadays have, especially concerning Augoeides, there is no reason to go on using the old misleading symbolism just because it is traditional and convenient for writers though not for readers. Man is a monad, a primordial atom that has been introduced from the chaos into the cosmos and from the highest cosmic world has been involved down into the lowest physical molecular kind, from there to work its way up through the different worlds and natural kingdoms to the highest cosmic world and kingdom. The fact that the monad in this process always receives the assistance necessary to its consciousness development is a consequence of the fact that all exist for all, make up a cosmic collective and that those in higher kingdoms participate, to the extent of their capacity, in the process of manifestation. This is the hylozoic view of existence and makes up the basis of the esoteric world view. With this modification you can in addition accept that knowledge of reality which has been presented symbolically by Patanjali (interpreted by D.K. for Alice A. Bailey), in the Bhagavad-Gita, by Mabel Collins in Light on the Path, by Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine, by Alice A. Bailey in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire and several other works. They all originate from members of the planetary hierarchy. Once again it must be pointed out that such works are symbolical and must not be taken in a literal sense and that actually only causal selves or disciples of the planetary hierarchy are able to interpret them correctly. That is a fact which readers of those books forget all too easily. Literalism will probably go on spawning countless occult sects, each one with its own prophet.
1You may well understand why the planetary hierarchy has been reserved about Augoeides when you consider what ignorance, theologians, occultists, and all manner of fantasts would have made out of him. There would have been no end of speculation and of course nothing but superstition. When the first self gets hold of a new esoteric fact it is soon made a new never-ceasing source of idiotization. Only such things as are part of physical knowledge and can be treated mathematically may without risk be communicated to a mankind that believes itself able to comprehend reality, a mankind that has not even learnt how to live rationally in the physical world. Until man has acquired knowledge of the laws of life and their absolute necessity, he would be constantly discontented with his angel and so make his work more difficult. Even as it now is there arises an unconscious conflict between man and his Augoeides who does what he can to guide the individual onto the right path, usually against man’s will or even belief that he knows best.
2That the life-ignorant and injudicious will blame him for all the troubles of life, etc. they have caused themselves, is just what you have too good a reason to fear. Accusing life of one’s own stupidities has its consequences, however. As mankind perverts everything, we understand all too well why the planetary hierarchy asks before each new idea whether it (this new fact) is not publicized too early.
3The risk of this teaching on Augoeides is that all who hear of him believe they are in contact with him and take their vagaries and brainwaves to be inspirations from their Augoeides. Clairvoyants, having their guides in the emotional world, will take them for their Augoeides (and the guides will certainly be very flattered). Fantasts will believe they know the desires and plans of their Augoeides, etc. That risk must be taken, however. We must count on the fact that everything esoteric is misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misused. So it has been and so it will remain until a dominant part of mankind has reached the stage of ideality ten million years hence.
1We understand that the planetary hierarchy refrains from giving out more than a few facts about Augoeides as long as mankind is found at a stage where everybody gives his imagination free rein, making any kind of folly out of things those fantasts have heard of. The entire fiction literature through the ages is to the researcher into reality a proof of mankind’s irremediable infantilism. It is impossible to stop this flummery, for imagination is such a wonderful toy, and it is so immensely interesting to replace facts with imaginative excesses.
2We may thus expect that literary people, spiritists, occultists take charge of this new knowledge and make Augoeides everything except what he is in reality. We may also expect that a lot of clairvoyants will meet Augoeides in the emotional world and have him deliver plenty of balderdash of the usual kind. It is probably no use explaining that only causal selves can meet him, and only in the causal world, that he does not appear in the worlds of man (the first self), he just as little as other second selves. For those fantasts believe in everything they fantasize. So doing they manage to idiotize lots of credulous people, for so it will always be as long as mankind remains at the emotional stage, the imaginative stage. They have never learnt to be silent but they should bear in mind that if you bear witness of yourself, your witness is not true. Their lives, no witnesses, bear witness of them. Public confessions of sin are seldom sincere and in any case they are invalid, since nobody can bear witness of himself.
1A “loving heart”, a living compassion with all and everybody, is the best control of thought and speech. It affords us the joy that leads to the contact with our Augoeides and affords us the power to wander the path of love more easily.
2May the light of Augoeides light up my reason so that I may kindle the torch of light for others on their path.
3May the love of Augoeides subdue my lower nature and lead me on the path of love.
Endnotes by the translator into English.
In the Swedish original there is a clear distinction made between Augoeides in the singular and in the plural. This distinction is indicated in three different ways: 1) the name is capitalized only in the singular, and never in the plural; 2) the word is used in the plural with the normal plural ending; 3) when the word is the subject of the sentence, the associated verbpredicate agrees with it by displaying singular or plural ending according to the normal rules of grammar. In my attempt to match the distinctive clarity of the Swedish original text it was possible to apply rule 3) only. To compensate for the lack of distinctiveness that would otherwise have ensued, I have when translating this Section of the Way of Man introduced these rules: 1) When the word Augoeides is used in the singular, it is treated as a proper name and so never has the definite article. 2) When the word Augoeides is used in the plural, it is treated as a specific name and so always has the definite article when possible. Paragraph 8.1.11 gives some clear examples of these rules in action: “Augoeides [sing.] is a member of a collective being which is a collective or all men’s Augoeides [plur.], a collective having a common consciousness. Cooperation between the Augoeides [plur.] is automatical whenever this is necessary.” Being thus informed the reader should have no difficulty in grasping everywhere the meaning intended, whether singular or plural.
8.22.3 An allusion to the Gospel of Luke 16:10: “… faithful in that which is least”.
8.12.6 As to these two lines of poetry I have not been able to establish whether this fragment is part of some known work by another author or the creation of Laurency. I have merely translated it from the Swedish, taking care to preserve the sense, metre, and rhymes.
8.14.12 “Him we can trust under all circumstances,” etc. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, Letter no. 4.
The above text constitutes the essay Augoeides 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.