Passages similar to: The Secret Doctrine of the Rosicrucians — The Sevenfold Soul of Man
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The Secret Doctrine of the Rosicrucians
The Sevenfold Soul of Man (24)
A writer has well said of this stage of consciousness: "As man unfolds spiritually, he feels his relationship with all mankind, and he begins to love his fellow-man more and more. It hurts him to see others suffering, and when it hurts him enough he tries to do something to remedy it. As time goes on and man develops, the terrible suffering which many human beings undergo today will be impossible, for the reason that the unfolding spiritual consciousness of the race will make the pain be felt so severely by all that the race will not be able to stand it any longer, and it will rebel and insist that matters be remedied. From the inner recesses of the soul comes a protest against the following of the lower animal nature, and, although we may put it aside for a time, it will become more and more persistent, until finally we will be forced to heed it. The struggle between the higher and lower natures has been noticed by all careful observers of the human soul, and many theories have been advanced to account for it. In former times it was taught that man was being tempted by the devil on the one hand, and helped by a guardian angel on the other hand. But, as all occultists know, the struggle is between the two elements of man's nature, not exactly warring, but each following its own line of effort, and the Ego is torn and bruised in its efforts to adjust itself. The Ego is in a transition stage of consciousness, and the struggle is quite painful at times, but the growing soul in time rises above the attraction of the lower nature, and its dawning spiritual consciousness enables to understand his real nature and his real place in the universe." The same writer has said: "The higher planes of the soul are also the source of the 'inspiration' which certain poets, painters, sculptors, writers, preachers, orators, and others have received in all times and in all lands. This is the source from which the seer obtains his vision—the prophet his insight and foresight. Many have concentrated themselves upon high ideals in their work, and have received rare knowledge from this source, attributing it to beings of another world—but the inspiration came from within: it was the voice of the Higher Self speaking to the Ego." The writer aforesaid, informs us as follows concerning the experiences of Inspiration and Illumination coming to the Ego from the regions of this Higher Self: "These experiences, of course, vary materially according to the degree of unfoldment of the individual, his previous training, his temperament, etc., but there are certain characteristics common to all. The common features are as follows: (1) A conviction of a sense of actual being—of immortality; this apart from faith or religious conviction, and coming seemingly from a deeper source than these—it has been described as 'the faith that knows .' (2) A total slipping away of all fear and the acquirement of a feeling of trust, certainty, and confidence, which is beyond the comprehension of those who have never experienced it. (3) A feeling of universal Love which sweeps over one—a Love which includes all Life, from those near to one in the flesh to those at the furthest parts of the universe; from those whom we hold as pure and holy, to those whom we have regarded as vile, wicked, and utterly unworthy. All feelings of self-righteousness and condemnation seem to slip away, and one's love, like the light of the sun, falls upon all alike, irrespective of their degree of development or 'goodness.' (4) A feeling of the utmost bliss and joy, the memory of which abides long after the actual experience. (5) A feeling of exalted knowledge and wisdom, in which all doubt disappears and a sense of understanding the deeper meaning of all things takes its place, for the time of the experience at least. To some these experiences have come as a deep reverent mood or feeling, which took possession of them for a time, while others have seemed to be in a dream and have become conscious of a spiritual uplifting accompanied by a sensation of being surrounded by a brilliant and all-pervading light or glow. To some, certain truths have become manifest in the form of symbols, the full meaning of which in some cases have not become apparent until long after the actual experience.
Chapter 16: Of the Seventh Species, Kind, Form, or Manner of Sin's Beginning in Lucifer and his Angels. (113)
On the other hand, the animated or soulish spirit of the devil, which ruleth in the outermost birth or geniture of man, is very terrible and angry, an...
(113) But when the astral spirits are enlightened from the animated or soulish spirit, which in the light uniteth with God, then they grow fervent, and very longing and desirous of the light. On the other hand, the animated or soulish spirit of the devil, which ruleth in the outermost birth or geniture of man, is very terrible and angry, and of a very contrary or opposite will.
Against Those That Affirm the Creator of the Kosmos and the Kosmos Itself to Be Evil (2)
We are to proclaim one Intellectual-Principle unchangeably the same, in no way subject to decline, acting in imitation, as true as its nature allows, ...
(2) Therefore we must affirm no more than these three Primals: we are not to introduce superfluous distinctions which their nature rejects. We are to proclaim one Intellectual-Principle unchangeably the same, in no way subject to decline, acting in imitation, as true as its nature allows, of the Father.
And as to our own Soul we are to hold that it stands, in part, always in the presence of The Divine Beings, while in part it is concerned with the things of this sphere and in part occupies a middle ground. It is one nature in graded powers; and sometimes the Soul in its entirety is borne along by the loftiest in itself and in the Authentic Existent; sometimes, the less noble part is dragged down and drags the mid-soul with it, though the law is that the Soul may never succumb entire.
The Soul's disaster falls upon it when it ceases to dwell in the perfect Beauty- the appropriate dwelling-place of that Soul which is no part and of which we too are no part- thence to pour forth into the frame of the All whatsoever the All can hold of good and beauty. There that Soul rests, free from all solicitude, not ruling by plan or policy, not redressing, but establishing order by the marvellous efficacy of its contemplation of the things above it.
For the measure of its absorption in that vision is the measure of its grace and power, and what it draws from this contemplation it communicates to the lower sphere, illuminated and illuminating always.
The souls peering forth from the Intellectual Realm descend first to the heavens and there put on a body; this becomes at once the medium by which as...
(15) The souls peering forth from the Intellectual Realm descend first to the heavens and there put on a body; this becomes at once the medium by which as they reach out more and more towards magnitude they proceed to bodies progressively more earthy. Some even plunge from heaven to the very lowest of corporeal forms; others pass, stage by stage, too feeble to lift towards the higher the burden they carry, weighed downwards by their heaviness and forgetfulness.
As for the differences among them, these are due to variation in the bodies entered, or to the accidents of life, or to upbringing, or to inherent peculiarities of temperament, or to all these influences together, or to specific combinations of them.
Then again some have fallen unreservedly into the power of the destiny ruling here: some yielding betimes are betimes too their own: there are those who, while they accept what must be borne, have the strength of self-mastery in all that is left to their own act; they have given themselves to another dispensation: they live by the code of the aggregate of beings, the code which is woven out of the Reason-Principles and all the other causes ruling in the kosmos, out of soul-movements and out of laws springing in the Supreme; a code, therefore, consonant with those higher existences, founded upon them, linking their sequents back to them, keeping unshakeably true all that is capable of holding itself set towards the divine nature, and leading round by all appropriate means whatsoever is less natively apt.
In fine all diversity of condition in the lower spheres is determined by the descendent beings themselves.
In the Intellectual, then, they remain with soul-entire, and are immune from care and trouble; in the heavenly sphere, absorbed in the soul-entire, th...
(4) So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for the divine Intellect urges them to return to their source, but they have, too, a power apt to administration in this lower sphere; they may be compared to the light attached upwards to the sun, but not grudging its presidency to what lies beneath it. In the Intellectual, then, they remain with soul-entire, and are immune from care and trouble; in the heavenly sphere, absorbed in the soul-entire, they are administrators with it just as kings, associated with the supreme ruler and governing with him, do not descend from their kingly stations: the souls indeed are thus far in the one place with their overlord; but there comes a stage at which they descend from the universal to become partial and self-centred; in a weary desire of standing apart they find their way, each to a place of its very own. This state long maintained, the soul is a deserter from the All; its differentiation has severed it; its vision is no longer set in the Intellectual; it is a partial thing, isolated, weakened, full of care, intent upon the fragment; severed from the whole, it nestles in one form of being; for this, it abandons all else, entering into and caring for only the one, for a thing buffeted about by a worldful of things: thus it has drifted away from the universal and, by an actual presence, it administers the particular; it is caught into contact now, and tends to the outer to which it has become present and into whose inner depths it henceforth sinks far.
With this comes what is known as the casting of the wings, the enchaining in body: the soul has lost that innocency of conducting the higher which it knew when it stood with the All-Soul, that earlier state to which all its interest would bid it hasten back.
It has fallen: it is at the chain: debarred from expressing itself now through its intellectual phase, it operates through sense, it is a captive; this is the burial, the encavernment, of the Soul.
But in spite of all it has, for ever, something transcendent: by a conversion towards the intellective act, it is loosed from the shackles and soars- when only it makes its memories the starting point of a new vision of essential being. Souls that take this way have place in both spheres, living of necessity the life there and the life here by turns, the upper life reigning in those able to consort more continuously with the divine Intellect, the lower dominant where character or circumstances are less favourable.
All this is indicated by Plato, without emphasis, where he distinguishes those of the second mixing-bowl, describes them as "parts," and goes on to say that, having in this way become partial, they must of necessity experience birth.
Of course, where he speaks of God sowing them, he is to be understood as when he tells of God speaking and delivering orations; what is rooted in the nature of the All is figuratively treated as coming into being by generation and creation: stage and sequence are transferred, for clarity of exposition, to things whose being and definite form are eternal.
Chapter 16: Of the Seventh Species, Kind, Form, or Manner of Sin's Beginning in Lucifer and his Angels. (110)
The spirit alone understands this hidden secret, which spirit must fight daily and hourly with the devil, the outward flesh cannot comprehend it;...
(110) The spirit alone understands this hidden secret, which spirit must fight daily and hourly with the devil, the outward flesh cannot comprehend it; also the astral spirits in man cannot understand it, neither is it comprehended by man at all, unless the animated or soulish spirit unite, qualify and operate with the innermost birth or geniture in nature, in the centre, where the light of God is set opposite against the devil's kingdom, that is, in the third birth or geniture, in the nature of this world.
The object of the Intellectual Act comes within our ken only when it reaches downward to the level of sensation: for not all that occurs at any part o...
(8) And- if it is desirable to venture the more definite statement of a personal conviction clashing with the general view- even our human soul has not sunk entire; something of it is continuously in the Intellectual Realm, though if that part, which is in this sphere of sense, hold the mastery, or rather be mastered here and troubled, it keeps us blind to what the upper phase holds in contemplation.
The object of the Intellectual Act comes within our ken only when it reaches downward to the level of sensation: for not all that occurs at any part of the soul is immediately known to us; a thing must, for that knowledge, be present to the total soul; thus desire locked up within the desiring faculty remains unknown except when we make it fully ours by the central faculty of perception, or by the individual choice or by both at once. Once more, every soul has something of the lower on the body side and something of the higher on the side of the Intellectual-Principle.
The Soul of the All, as an entirety, governs the universe through that part of it which leans to the body side, but since it does not exercise a will based on calculation as we do- but proceeds by purely intellectual act as in the execution of an artistic conception- its ministrance is that of a labourless overpoising, only its lowest phase being active upon the universe it embellishes.
The souls that have gone into division and become appropriated to some thing partial have also their transcendent phase, but are preoccupied by sensation, and in the mere fact of exercising perception they take in much that clashes with their nature and brings distress and trouble since the object of their concern is partial, deficient, exposed to many alien influences, filled with desires of its own and taking its pleasure, that pleasure which is its lure.
But there is always the other, that which finds no savour in passing pleasure, but holds its own even way.
The Kind, then, with which we are dealing is twofold, the Intellectual against the sensible: better for the soul to dwell in the Intellectual, but,...
(7) The Kind, then, with which we are dealing is twofold, the Intellectual against the sensible: better for the soul to dwell in the Intellectual, but, given its proper nature, it is under compulsion to participate in the sense-realm also. There is no grievance in its not being, through and through, the highest; it holds mid-rank among the authentic existences, being of divine station but at the lowest extreme of the Intellectual and skirting the sense-known nature; thus, while it communicates to this realm something of its own store, it absorbs in turn whenever- instead of employing in its government only its safeguarded phase- it plunges in an excessive zeal to the very midst of its chosen sphere; then it abandons its status as whole soul with whole soul, though even thus it is always able to recover itself by turning to account the experience of what it has seen and suffered here, learning, so, the greatness of rest in the Supreme, and more clearly discerning the finer things by comparison with what is almost their direct antithesis. Where the faculty is incapable of knowing without contact, the experience of evil brings the dearer perception of Good.
The outgoing that takes place in the Intellectual-Principle is a descent to its own downward ultimate: it cannot be a movement to the transcendent; operating necessarily outwards from itself, wherein it may not stay inclosed, the need and law of Nature bring it to its extreme term, to soul- to which it entrusts all the later stages of being while itself turns back on its course.
The soul's operation is similar: its next lower act is this universe: its immediate higher is the contemplation of the Authentic Existences. To individual souls such divine operation takes place only at one of their phases and by a temporal process when from the lower in which they reside they turn towards the noblest; but that soul, which we know as the All-Soul, has never entered the lower activity, but, immune from evil, has the property of knowing its lower by inspection, while it still cleaves continuously to the beings above itself; thus its double task becomes possible; it takes thence and, since as soul it cannot escape touching this sphere, it gives hither.
Chapter 10: Of the Sixth qualifying or fountain Spirit in the Divine Power. (45)
I have read the writings of very high masters, hoping to find therein the ground and true depth; but I have found nothing, but a half dead spirit,...
(45) I have read the writings of very high masters, hoping to find therein the ground and true depth; but I have found nothing, but a half dead spirit, which in anxiety travaileth and laboureth for health, and yet, because of its great weakness, cannot attain perfect power.
What does such a soul want with the generation which is in pleasure, or the restitution which is in it to a natural condition, since such a soul is ab...
(2) For consider, if you are willing, the last of divine natures, viz. a soul purely liberated from bodies. What does such a soul want with the generation which is in pleasure, or the restitution which is in it to a natural condition, since such a soul is above nature, and lives an unbegotten life? Why, also, should it participate of the pain which leads to corruption and dissolves the harmony of the body, since it is beyond all body, and the nature which is divided about body, and is entirely separate from the harmony which descends from the soul into the body? But neither is it in want of the passions which precede sensation: for neither is it detained in body, nor inclosed by it, so as to require corporeal organs, in order to apprehend certain other bodies which are external to these organs. And, in short, being impartible, and abiding in one and the same form, and also being essentially incorporeal, and having no communication with a generated and passive body, it cannot suffer any thing either according to division, or according to a change in quality, nor can have any thing which is allied to any kind of mutation or passion.
Just as angels preside over the elements, so does the soul rule the members of the body. Those souls which attain a special degree of power not only r...
(11) Nor is it only by reason of knowledge acquired and intuitive that the soul of man holds the first rank among created things, but also by reason of power. Just as angels preside over the elements, so does the soul rule the members of the body. Those souls which attain a special degree of power not only rule their own body but those of others also. If they wish a sick man to recover he recovers, or a person in health to fall ill he becomes ill, or if they will the presence of a person he comes to them. According as the effects produced by these powerful souls are good or bad they are termed miracles or sorceries. These souls differ from common folk in three ways: (1) What others only see in dreams they see in their waking moments. (2) While others' wills only affect their own bodies, these, by will-power, can move bodies extraneous to themselves. (3) The knowledge which others acquire by laborious learning comes to them by intuition.
According to the secret doctrine, man, through the gradual refinement of his vehicles and the ever-increasing sensitiveness resulting from that...
(38) According to the secret doctrine, man, through the gradual refinement of his vehicles and the ever-increasing sensitiveness resulting from that refinement, is gradually overcoming the limitations of matter and is disentangling himself from his mortal coil. When humanity has completed its physical evolution, the empty shell of materiality left behind will be used by other life waves as steppingstones to their own liberation. The trend of man's evolutionary growth is ever toward his own essential Selfhood. At the point of deepest materialism, therefore, man is at the greatest distance from Himself. According to the Mystery teachings, not all the spiritual nature of man incarnates in matter. The spirit of man is diagrammatically shown as an equilateral triangle with one point downward. This lower point, which is one-third of the spiritual nature but in comparison to the dignity of the other two is much less than a third, descends into the illusion of material existence for a brief space of time. That which never clothes itself in the sheath of matter is the Hermetic Anthropos--the Overman-- analogous to the Cyclops or guardian dæmon of the Greeks, the angel of Jakob Böhme, and the Oversoul of Emerson, "that Unity, that Oversoul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other."
The Life and Teachings of Thoth Hermes Trismegistus (30)
For this reason, earthy man is composite. Within him is the Sky Man, immortal and beautiful; without is Nature, mortal and destructible. Thus, sufferi...
(30) "Nature, beholding the descent, wrapped herself about the Man whom she loved, and the two were mingled. For this reason, earthy man is composite. Within him is the Sky Man, immortal and beautiful; without is Nature, mortal and destructible. Thus, suffering is the result of the Immortal Man's falling in love with His shadow and giving up Reality to dwell in the darkness of illusion; for, being immortal, man has the power of the Seven Governors--also the Life, the Light, and the Word-but being mortal, he is controlled by the Rings of the Governors--Fate or Destiny.
We will now explain, in detail, to the best of our ability, certain works of God, of which we spoke. For I am not competent to sing all, much less to...
(11) We will now explain, in detail, to the best of our ability, certain works of God, of which we spoke. For I am not competent to sing all, much less to know accurately, and to reveal their mysteries to others. Now whatever things have been sung and ministered by the inspired Hierarchs, agreeably to the Oracles, these we will declare, as far as attainable to us, invoking the Hierarchical inspiration to our aid. When, in the beginning, our human nature had thoughtlessly fallen from the good things of God, it received, by inheritance, the life subject to many passions, and the goal of the destructive death. For, as a natural consequence, the pernicious falling away from genuine goodness and the transgression of the sacred Law in Paradise delivered the man fretted with the life-giving yoke, to his own downward inclinations and the enticing and hostile wiles of the adversary--the contraries of the divine goods; thence it pitiably exchanged for the eternal, the mortal, and, having had its own origin in deadly generations, the goal naturally corresponded with the beginning; but having willingly fallen from the Divine and elevating life, it was carried to the contrary extremity,--the variableness of many passions, and lead astray, and turned aside from the strait way leading to the true God,--and subjected to destructive and evil-working multitudes--naturally forgot that it was worshipping, not gods, or friends, but enemies. Now when these had treated it harshly, according to their own cruelty, it fell pitiably into danger of annihilation and destruction; but the boundless Loving-kindness of the supremely Divine goodness towards man did not, in Its benevolence, withdraw from us Its spontaneous forethought, but having truly participated sinlessly in all things belonging to us, and having been made one with our lowliness in connection with the unconfused and flawless possession of Its own properties in full perfection, It bequeathed to us, as henceforth members of the same family, the communion with Itself, and proclaimed us partakers of Its own beautiful things; having, as the secret teaching holds, loosed the power of the rebellious multiplicity, which was against us; not by force, as having the upper hand, but, according to the Logion, mystically transmitted to us, "in judgment and righteousness." The things within us, then, It benevolently changed to the entire contrary. For the lightless within Our mind It filled with blessed and most Divine Light, and adorned the formless with Godlike beauties; the tabernacle of our soul It liberated from most damnable passions and destructive stains by a perfected deliverance of our being which was all but prostrate, by shewing to us a supermundane elevation, and an inspired polity in our religious assimilation to Itself, as far as is possible.
Chapter 10: Of the Creation of Man, and of his Soul, also of God's breathing in. The pleasant Gate. (41)
Now the Anguish has the first Principle iin Possession; seeing it stands in the Darkness, it is another Essence than the Essence in the Light is,...
(41) Now the Anguish has the first Principle iin Possession; seeing it stands in the Darkness, it is another Essence than the Essence in the Light is, where there is nothing else but mere Love and Meekness, where no Source [or Torment] is discovered; and the Quality which is generated in the Center of the Light, is now no Quality, but the eternal Skill and Wisdom of whatsoever was in the Anguish before the Light [broke forth:] This Wisdom and Skill now always comes to help the conceived Will in the Anguish, and makes in itself again the Center to the Birth, that so the Sprout may generate itself in the Quality, viz. the Virtue, and out of the Virtue the Fire, and out of the Fire the Spirit, and the Spirit makes in the Fire the Virtue again, that thus there [may] be an indissoluble Band. And out of this Mind which stands in the Darkness, God generated the Angels, which are Flames of Fire, yet shining through and through with the divine Light. For in this Mind a Spirit can and may be generated, and not else; for before it in the Heart and Light of God, there can no Spirit be generated, for the Heart of God is the End of Nature, and it has no Quality; therefore also nothing comes out of it more, but it continues unchangeably in the Eternity, and it shines in the Mind of the Quality of the Darkness, and the Darkness cannot comprehend it.
On the Integral Omnipresence of the Authentic Existent (1) (14)
The one soul reaches to the individual but nonetheless contains all souls and all intelligences; this, because it is at once a unity and an infinity; ...
(14) But, admitting this one soul at every point, how is there a particular soul of the individual and how the good soul and the bad?
The one soul reaches to the individual but nonetheless contains all souls and all intelligences; this, because it is at once a unity and an infinity; it holds all its content as one yet with each item distinct, though not to the point of separation. Except by thus holding all its content as one-life entire, soul entire, all intelligence- it could not be infinite; since the individualities are not fenced off from each other, it remains still one thing. It was to hold life not single but infinite and yet one life, one in the sense not of an aggregate built up but of the retention of the unity in which all rose. Strictly, of course, it is a matter not of the rising of the individuals but of their being eternally what they are; in that order, as there is no beginning, so there is no apportioning except as an interpretation by the recipient. What is of that realm is the ancient and primal; the relation to it of the thing of process must be that of approach and apparent merging with always dependence.
But we ourselves, what are We?
Are we that higher or the participant newcomer, the thing of beginnings in time?
Before we had our becoming Here we existed There, men other than now, some of us gods: we were pure souls, Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, members of the Intellectual, not fenced off, not cut away, integral to that All. Even now, it is true, we are not put apart; but upon that primal Man there has intruded another, a man seeking to come into being and finding us there, for we were not outside of the universe. This other has wound himself about us, foisting himself upon the Man that each of us was at first. Then it was as if one voice sounded, one word was uttered, and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing, possessed through and through of what was present and active upon it: now we have lost that first simplicity; we are become the dual thing, sometimes indeed no more than that later foisting, with the primal nature dormant and in a sense no longer present.
Chapter 21: Of the Cainish, and of the Abellish Kingdom; how they are both in one another. Also of their Beginning, Rise, Essence, and Purpose; and then of their last Exit. Also of the Cainish Antichristian Church, and then of the Abellish true Christian Church; how they are both in one another, and are very difficult to be known [asunder.] Also of the Variety of Arts, States, and Orders of this World. Also of the Office of Rulers [or Magistrates,] and their Subjects; how there is a good and divine Ordinance in them all, as also a false, evil, and devilish one. Where the Providence of God is seen in all Things; and the Devil 's Deceit, Subtilty, and Malice, [is seen also] in all Things. (17)
We set down thus much here, to the End that the Region of his World may be understood. And thus we give the Reader exactly to understand and know how ...
(17) But we should not here again wholly set down the Ground of the Deity, so far as it is otherwise meet and known by us, we account that needless [here,] for you may find it before the Incarnation of a Child in the Mother's [Womb or] Body. We set down thus much here, to the End that the Region of his World may be understood. And thus we give the Reader exactly to understand and know how the Region of Good and Evil are in one another, and how it is an imperishable Thing [or Substance,] so that one is generated out of the other, and that also the one goes forth out of the other into another Substance [or Being,] which it was not in the Beginning; as you may learn to understand this in Man, who in his Beginning, in the Will of Man and Woman, viz. in the Limbus, and in the Matrix, is conceived in the Tincture, and sown in an earthly Soil; where then the first Tincture A Desiring or Attracting. Dispels. (in the Will) breaks, and his own Tincture springs forth out of the anxious [or aching] Chamber of Darkness, and of Death, out of the anxious Source [or Property,] and blossoms out of the Darkness, in the broken Gate of the Darkness in it, as a pleasant Habitation, and so generates its Light out of the anxious Fierceness out of itself; where then (in the Light) there goes forth again the endless Source of the [Thoughts or] Senses, which make a Throne and Region of Reason, which governs the whole House, and desires to enter into the Region of Heaven, out of which it proceeded not. And therefore now this is not the original Will, which there desires to enter into the Region of the Heaven; but it is the preconceived Will out of the Source of the Anxiety, [which Will is a Desire to] enter through the deep Gate of God.
Chapter 5: Of the Third Principle, or Creation of the material World, with the Stars and Elements; wherein the First and Second Principles are more clearly understood. (3)
For you find in the Root of the Original of the Spirit of the Soul, in itself, in the Substance of the eternal Birth and incorruptible eternal Band of...
(3) For you find in the Root of the Original of the Spirit of the Soul, in itself, in the Substance of the eternal Birth and incorruptible eternal Band of the Soul, the most exceeding horrible enemicitious irksome Source, wherein the Soul (without the Light of God) is like all Devils, wherein their eternal Source consists, being an Enmity in itself, a Will striving against God [and Goodness,] it desires nothing that is pleasant or good, it is a climbing up of Pride in the Strength of the Fire, a bitter, [fierce, odious, Malice, or] Wrathfulness against Paradise, against God, against the Kingdom of Heaven; also against all Creatures in the second and third Principle, lifting up themselves alone, [against all this,] as the Bitterness in the Fire does.
Chapter 19: Of the Entering of the Souls to God, and of the wicked Souls Entering into Perdition. Of the Gate of the Body's Breaking off [or Parting] from the Soul. (8)
There then the poor Soul in the first Principle moves in the Door of the Deep, being clothed with the Virtue [or Power of the Dominion or] Region of...
(8) There then the poor Soul in the first Principle moves in the Door of the Deep, being clothed with the Virtue [or Power of the Dominion or] Region of the Stars, appearing in that [Shape or] Form of the Body, which it had here; and many of them desire this or that, which was their last Will, in Hope thereby to attain Abstinence, and [Quietness or] Rest; also many by Night (according to the syderial Spirit) show themselves very disquiet with Tumbling and Tossing of the Body; which our learned Men from the School of this World ascribe to the Devil, but they have no Knowledge [or Understanding] in it.
Chapter 19: Of the Entering of the Souls to God, and of the wicked Souls Entering into Perdition. Of the Gate of the Body's Breaking off [or Parting] from the Soul. (65)
The Soul of Man is generated out of the Gates of the Breaking-through out of the Outward into the Inward, and is gone forth out of the Inward (in the...
(65) The Soul of Man is generated out of the Gates of the Breaking-through out of the Outward into the Inward, and is gone forth out of the Inward (in the Out-birth of the Inward) into the Outward; and that [Soul] must enter again into the Inward; if it remains in the Outward, it is in Hell, in the deep great Width, [Vacuum or Space,] without End, where the Source, [or the rising tormenting Quality,] generates itself according to the Inward, and in itself goes forth into the Outward.
What can it be that has brought the souls to forget the father, God, and, though members of the Divine and entirely of that world, to ignore at once...
(1) What can it be that has brought the souls to forget the father, God, and, though members of the Divine and entirely of that world, to ignore at once themselves and It?
The evil that has overtaken them has its source in self-will, in the entry into the sphere of process, and in the primal differentiation with the desire for self ownership. They conceived a pleasure in this freedom and largely indulged their own motion; thus they were hurried down the wrong path, and in the end, drifting further and further, they came to lose even the thought of their origin in the Divine. A child wrenched young from home and brought up during many years at a distance will fail in knowledge of its father and of itself: the souls, in the same way, no longer discern either the divinity or their own nature; ignorance of their rank brings self-depreciation; they misplace their respect, honouring everything more than themselves; all their awe and admiration is for the alien, and, clinging to this, they have broken apart, as far as a soul may, and they make light of what they have deserted; their regard for the mundane and their disregard of themselves bring about their utter ignoring of the divine.
Admiring pursuit of the external is a confession of inferiority; and nothing thus holding itself inferior to things that rise and perish, nothing counting itself less honourable and less enduring than all else it admires could ever form any notion of either the nature or the power of God.
A double discipline must be applied if human beings in this pass are to be reclaimed, and brought back to their origins, lifted once more towards the Supreme and One and First.
There is the method, which we amply exhibit elsewhere, declaring the dishonour of the objects which the Soul holds here in honour; the second teaches or recalls to the soul its race and worth; this latter is the leading truth, and, clearly brought out, is the evidence of the other.
It must occupy us now for it bears closely upon our enquiry to which it is the natural preliminary: the seeker is soul and it must start from a true notion of the nature and quality by which soul may undertake the search; it must study itself in order to learn whether it has the faculty for the enquiry, the eye for the object proposed, whether in fact we ought to seek; for if the object is alien the search must be futile, while if there is relationship the solution of our problem is at once desirable and possible.