The Position of Man in Evolution
From the point of view of evolution to the three preceding kingdoms of nature – mineral, plant, animal kingdoms – there is a correspondence to man’s physical body, his etheric body and his astral body. A fourth quality, the mental body, was later developed. This enables people to think and be aware of themselves.
The integrated personality
The ability to think was initially still rudimentary; during many incarnations man was only part of the diversity of people without conscious contact with the soul. The spark of soul hidden in him was also felt at best as the voice of his conscience.
The more man develops his thinking and expands his consciousness, the more he learns to consciously take decisions and responsibility for his life. The more an increasing integration between physical body, etheric, astral and mental body happens, the more man becomes, as it is said by Master Djwal Khul, “an integrated personality”, that now has the ability to think and to make conscious contact with the soul.
In further incarnations, this personality can become more and more self-aware and come into closer contact with the soul until it finally becomes one with it.
In this process of becoming one, of integration, we can roughly distinguish three stages:
- At an early stage of development, man lives a self-centred life, more or less oriented only towards his own needs, without being aware of himself and the larger context in which he stands.
- As the development progresses, the personality is increasingly aware of the existence of the soul. She struggles with the soul energy which represents a different value system less oriented towards the individual being of the personality. Over the course of many incarnations, the emotional and mental life develops further and further away from a self-centred state to an increasingly awakened state of consciousness. In this state, man recognises more and more the relationships that are superordinate to the individual life. This also results in dying after each incarnation at an alert level of consciousness.
- At an even more advanced level of consciousness, the personality finally unites with the soul and becomes one with it. Now the laws of the soul are no longer those of personality: man now assumes responsibility within larger contexts. He becomes – according to Master Djwal Khul – a serving tool of the divine plan. The standards of his actions are no longer determined by ego-oriented criteria of the personality, but by the standards of the soul. However, the goal of his outer activity in this world continues within the objective, concrete world, which is also on its path of evolution to a higher level.
At this level, the conscious person, now determined by the soul, can lay down his etheric, emotional and mental bodies fully awake when dying. He will also be able to depart willingly.
The ability to think
The ability to think and thus expand our consciousness more and more is what makes us humane and distinguishes us from mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. With this ability, we are at the forefront of evolution on our Earth. Evolution will continue in this field of consciousness and thought: The development of each individual person and the development of humanity as a whole are determined by our mental development. It has the goal of making us become an integrated personality that will eventually become one with the soul, so that we can live and act from this level.
Responsibility for our thoughts
We are not used of giving this ability to think such a significant place in our everyday consciousness. We usually experience our thoughts as random and fleeting. We do not ascribe any significant content to them unless they do not immediately lead to a concrete action. We are usually unaware, or at least do not account for the fact that we do and make a difference with what we think.
Our thoughts are usually not, as we might think, purely rational, i.e. determined by our intellect. Rather, depending on the degree of development that the individual’s mind has reached, they are based on emotions – coloured by our desires and shaped by our individual mental abilities.
It is important to realise that it is we who create our thoughts as the individual that we are. Thus we are – this is decisive – responsible for our thought-forms thus created. They are our work and have as a concrete fact a certain significance in the world, and they also have a task and a goal. They give us the possibility to consciously or unconsciously change or move something in the world, be it on the physical, external level or by influencing ourselves as the creator, the thinker of thoughts, and also on other people, be it for good or evil.
Thinking and human language
Human language is the medium that makes our thought processes tangible for other people in the outer world. Only through language we can transmit our thoughts to others, work together with others, achieve something together with others that goes beyond the possibilities of an individual. And hand in hand with further development of our thinking, language is also evolving It becomes differentiated so that what was previously unthinkable, what we could only guess or at best grasp in images, can be expressed in words. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word …”, this is how the Gospel of John begins. Here we can feel the comprehensive dimension in which we are moving.
Thoughts and feelings
Most of our thoughts are caused, coloured and shaped – either out of ourselves or in interaction with other people and with external circumstances – by positive and negative emotions, by moods and irritabilities, by selfish aspirations, by envy, anger, hatred and rage, by depression, despondency and despair. We often do not feel good with these thoughts, we feel that thoughts on such a background prevent us from being the person we actually want to be, and we are looking for better ways of dealing with these mental obstacles.
The effect of hatred
From Master Djwhal Khul we learn the following:
“- A strong thought-form can act like a boomerang. It can return to the one who sent it. A strong hatred dressed in mental matter can return to its creator – charged with the energy of the hated person – and wreak devastation in the life of the one who sent it.
– A thought-form can also act like a toxic agent, contaminating all sources of life. It may not be strong enough to get out of its creator’s aura and find its goal in the aura of another, to gather strength there and return to where they came from; but it may have an independent life force that can devastate the life of the thinker….”
- How can we handle our thinking responsibly?
- How can a person protect himself from these dangers?
The Tibetan Master offers possible answers to these questions:
Practice of harmlessness
First and foremost, through constant practice of “harmlessness” (being without harm), the state of mind of not causing harm or injustice to anyone. This includes harmlessness in speech, in thought and consequently in action.
Discipline in thinking
Secondly, by daily standing guard at the gates of thought and a constant supervision of the thought life. Certain thinking habits are not allowed; certain old thinking habits are abolished by the institution of constructive creative thoughts; certain preconceived ideas get into the background so that new horizons may be seen and new ideas can gain a foothold. After that, the thinking ability of ideas and no longer thought-forms are used.
Everyday world and world of ideas
Thirdly, by refusing to live exclusively in one’s own world of thoughts and by deciding to enter the world of ideas and the stream of human thought waves. The world of ideas is the world of the soul and of higher mind. The stream of human thought and opinion is that of public consciousness. Man must move freely in both worlds.
Letting go of thoughts
Fourthly, man must learn to detach himself from his own thought creations and release them, so that the purpose for which he sent them out to be fulfilled.”
We have given the topic of thinking a lot of space because dealing with the ability to think is so crucial for the adequate development of our consciousness and thus for a meaningful shaping of our lives. The better we manage to deal with our thinking according with these indications, the easier our dying will be.
…will be continued
Literature:
Alice A. Bailey: Death: The Great Adventure
Contact:
Photo: © Pixabay
Comments are closed.