Esoteric Psychology — The Inner Life The Soul The Egoic Lotus, the Causal Body & the Nature of Immortal Consciousness
Each individual soul has reached its own specific stage of unfoldment along the evolutionary arc. Every soul must endure every possible phase of experience that life in the material world can offer — the good and the bad, the bitter and the sweet — learning from each encounter until the essence has been fully extracted and assimilated from all that physical existence can offer. At that point, the urge to withdraw from the three worlds and return to the Father’s home becomes paramount. This is the arc of the soul’s journey through matter: descent into experience, extraction of essence, and return.
The esoteric student requires a working definition of the soul. These six principles clarify what the soul actually is and how it functions:
In esoteric literature the soul is frequently symbolized as the egoic lotus — located on the third level of the mental plane. This is a symbolic representation, not a literal structure, but it is nonetheless an apt and precise one. The soul is pictured as the jewel in the center or heart of the lotus, enclosed by nine petals arranged in three concentric circles of three petals each.
Before the awakening of the soul, the bud is still closed. The nine petals tightly enfold and conceal the jewel at the center. With progressive spiritual development — step by step, life to life — the individual petals begin to unfold one after another, radiating both color and light as they open. By the time the human being achieves perfection in the earthly career, all nine petals have fully unfolded, displaying their full spectrum of color and thereby revealing the glowing Jewel now fully exposed at the center.
The Tibetan states that it is impossible to paint an adequate picture of the egoic lotus when fully unfolded. At that stage it radiates brilliant fire and constantly scintillates owing to the ceaselessly vibrating streams of energy by which it is vitalized. Every petal is sparkling with quivering points of fire and vibrating life, and this vitality is reflected by the beauty of the Jewel at the center. This glowing Jewel radiates streams of energy which may be directed toward any focal point in the system it co-ordinates.
Another term that frequently appears in esoteric writings is the causal body. Like the egoic lotus, this is a symbolic representation of an abstract concept, but a functionally precise one. The causal body is the temple of the soul — the divine storehouse where the essence of life, the good and the valuable garnered from the experiences of many lives, is stored and accumulated across incarnations.
It is the figurative sheath or vehicle of the soul, functioning as a central receiving and transmitting station. At the close of each incarnation, the gleaned essences — the distilled wisdom and quality extracted from that life’s experiences — are retained in the causal body. The accruing benefits are carried forward from life to life, which is what makes genuine spiritual progress cumulative rather than lost with each death of the physical form.
By extracting and assimilating the essence from experience gained during each incarnation, the soul initiates the unfoldment and evolution of the consciousness.
Aart Jurriaanse — Bridges, pp. 130–131About the Author: Aart Jurriaanse produced a number of compilations drawn from the books of Alice A. Bailey, including Of Life and Other Worlds, Prophecies, Ponder on This, Serving Humanity, The Soul, and The Quality of Life. He is also the author of Bridges, a full commentary on the Bailey teachings from which this article is excerpted.
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