Commandment 5:
Function as a Soul, not as a Personality
This indeed is the best of the practices in daily life. This is a challenging instruction. It is the best of the challenges that one can face – to practise to remain as soul and function through personality. To recollect oneself as soul while one is interacting with the world through the agency of personality. This is the step. Each one of us is a soul. We are not our personalities. We are not our minds. We are not our bodies. The body, mind and personality constitute our vehicle to relate to and function in the world of objectivity. The soul is the master. The personality with its mind and body is the facilitator. Without personality, mind and body, the soul by itself cannot function in the world of objectivity. Personality is man’s equipment, but not man as such. This distinction between oneself and one’s personality has to be firmly established in oneself. If not, the soul immerses in the personality. It is like sinking into the world. A person sinks when he is within the personality. He should remain a person and work through the personality.
Person is called in Sanskrit Purusha. The word Purusha gives a better message. It means ‘the one that entered into the personality’. Soul develops personality and enters into it to conduct the life in objectivity. Just as a person builds a house and enters into it for work. The person is the entering one. The personality is the dwelling place for the person. The person should be able to move in and move out of the personality, just like a man enters into and exits from the house. Unfortunately the person identifies himself with his personality and loses the original identity of being a person. Soul is the person that builds and enters into the personality. Thereafter by identifying with the personality the identity as the soul is forgotten. The original state is forgotten. The transformed state is taken as the original state.
That is how each one of us feels: I am male, I am female, I am Indian, I am Swiss, I am German, I am Spanish and so on. I Am is neither Indian, nor Swiss, nor German, nor Spanish. I Am cannot be American, however great the Americans feel. Americans feel great and use the word great many times. But I Am consciousness is greater than the great.
Then again there are other identities: I am a businessman, I am a teacher, I am a ruler, I am young, I am old and I was an infant and so on. There is another category who feels I am a disciple, I am a Master, I am a Mason. All these identities are incorrect identities. They relate to the personalities, they do not relate to the soul. Soul remains I Am. At best it can be That I Am, or I Am That I Am. The rest is build-up. One cannot be his build-up. One cannot identify with his build-up. The building needs a builder. The builder is the soul. Recollecting that one is a soul, a person, is much more important than remembering the build-up. Without the soul there cannot be personality, there cannot be mind and body. But without personality, mind and body the soul can be.
Being and Becoming
The soul is the being. It builds the equipment of personality, mind and body for doing. Without the being, there is no doing. Without doing, there can be being. The being is primary, doing is secondary. In times of ignorance secondary things become primary. Primary things are purely forgotten. Today when we speak of soul, the personalities vehemently argue that there is no such thing as soul. Such affirmations are natural when there is strong identity with the personality. A king feels he is the king. He forgets that he was not the king by birth. He became a king. On the way he became a prince before. After some time he becomes the former king, meaning he is replaced by another king, who could be his son. He was infant, he was prince, he is now king, and in due course he will be a former king. All these are becomings, different becomings at different times. When he is dead and gone, who knows what he will be? He will be just a being, until he once again becomes something else.
Being is eternal. Becoming is temporary. Being is the natural state. Becoming is a transformation for a purpose. One cannot be his transformation. He should remain original at all times and handle the transformed state. Being is immutable. Personalities are mutable. The immutability cannot be known when one is sunk in the mutable. During the day, as I said earlier, we play so many roles. For each role we become a different personality; we become a spouse, a parent, a co-born, a friend, a worker, a traveller, a speaker, an eater and so on. But in all these the being is constant. The being is one continuous principle. The becomings commence and conclude. To live in those things that commence and conclude is to live in the cycles of birth and death. Birth is a commencement. Death is the conclusion. But the being is before birth and after death and is during the entire incarnation. The being at all times is. It existed before it incarnated. It exists during incarnation. And it exists after death. It exists at all times, regardless birth and death. But a personality takes birth and dies, with every birth. A soul has different personalities in different incarnations. It may have a male personality or a female personality. It may have an Asian personality or a European, an American, Australian or African personality. These varieties of personalities are varieties of vestures, just like pants, shirts, sarees or panjabies. Identifying oneself with the envelope is ignorance. Identifying with the indweller is knowledge. For this reason Sanat Kumara reminds that each one of us is a soul and we therefore have to function as a soul, a being, a person, a Purusha. It would enable us to realise the brotherhood of souls.
To be a soul is to be a being, a pulsating being, a pulsating being with awareness. Be-ness, awareness and pulsation are the three fundamental characteristics of the soul. Awareness has its effulgence. Pulsating life has its golden aura. Be-ness pervades the effulgent light and the golden aura. Such is the soul which we are. Personality is the envelope that we build. Just like the snail builds its shell or a spider builds its web. You can’t look at the shell and say, that it is a snail. The snail is different from the shell. The snail is with the shell and is not of the shell. The soul too builds its personality. Soul is not personality. Soul is with the personality. Soul is not of the personality. Personality is of the soul, emerges out of the soul. As much as one holds this understanding, so much he stands with his head above the waters, the waters of life. If not, it is like the head sunk into waters. Therefore be a soul. Function through your personality. After the work is done, remain again as soul. Do not remain as personality. Personality is a house. A Master of Wisdom does not lay his head in the personality. He keeps it away from or above the personality. Jesus Christ mystically said this, “The son of man has no house to lay his head”, meaning, a Master does not sink his head into personality and behave as personality. He behaves as a Master, Master of the personality, the soul.
Establish the Soul Consciousness
But where does the soul emerge from? The soul emerges from the three qualities of Nature. Beyond this triple nature is the Universal Soul, which is male-female, Existence-Awareness. Its nature is to pulsate. Pure Existence is beyond the Awareness and Pulsation. This Existence is called That. The soul is called I Am. That I Am therefore is the truth. In Sanskrit That I Am is called Soham. Establish in you through recollection that you are such a soul and not its reflection, its offshoot.
Daily while contemplating upon oneself as I Am, the soul, the student is recommended to enter the daily life with that awareness. When he meets forms during daily life, he is instructed not to lose sight of the soul in the forms. One needs to observe the soul as well, not only the form and the behaviour of that form. Unless one is really interested in occultism, he cannot observe the soul, he cannot develop this insight. Insight is a word that aspirants frequently use. Occultism is also a word, which aspirants generally use. Occultism is the ability to develop insight. Insight is to see the inside of a form, whether animate or inanimate. The aspirants meet the threshold of form in all inanimate forms. They meet a double threshold of form and behaviour in the animate forms. Men of mind see the form and observe the behaviour, and thereby judge the other being. Men of insight see beyond form and behaviour the hidden soul. Seeing the soul in the surrounding forms enables one to function as a soul. The contact for an occultist is soul to soul. He connects with the soul and interacts with the personality. Then it is truly called a transaction of light and of love. Anything less than that suffers from the veil of behaviour and of form and is therefore considered an illusion.
The one who sees, who contemplates upon the soul and, who observes the soul during daily life in all that surrounds him, would gradually see the soul all around and its light. He sees beyond form and beyond behaviour. Such a one enters into the kingdom of light, which is called the kingdom of soul. “Entry into the kingdom of light is not denied by anyone. Each one denies it by himself or herself”, says Sanat Kumara. Humanity is mostly engaged with forms and the behaviour that expresses through the forms. They get busy in judging good and bad and right and wrong. By this division they remain divided. Thus they choose to be in duality. But when one walks further, beyond the veil of behaviour, one would find initiates who judge not. “Judge not”, is an instruction pronounced by every initiate. So did Jesus, who lived and moved as a soul, not as a personality.
Functioning as a Soul
Initiates move as souls, they interact as souls, they give the touch of the soul. They do not dump concepts of wisdom. Only intellects dump concepts of wisdom. Initiates do not. They give the touch of the soul. They use their personality as a vehicle to move and to give the touch. Their personalities are infused by the soul and are therefore resplendent. These resplendent personalities are described in the occult terminology as the ‘white robes’. For a person who functions as a soul, the personality is transparent and resplendent with light, which is called the ‘white robe’. Putting on white robes of cloth is totally different from holding the inner white robe.
Initiates are examples to follow for all occult students. Occultism is developing insight and vision. Occultism is being unmindful of outer cleavages. There is a prayer given which is followed by many groups on the planet:
“Let vision come and insight.
Let the future stand revealed.
Let inner union demonstrate and
outer cleavages be gone.
Let love prevail, let all men love.”
This prayer comes from Shambala via Hierarchy. Humanity utters forth this prayer through many groups on the planet. It is only expressing a wish. It is realised only when one starts functioning as a soul. To start functioning as a soul, there are two prerequisites. One is to contemplate oneself as I Am, thereby disassociating from personality identity. The second is to see the soul throughout the day in all the forms surrounding oneself. When this practice becomes continuous, the aforesaid prayer becomes a reality. Until then it remains a wish. To fulfil the wish of the prayer, to make it a reality, one has to work with himself. For this purpose another prayer also came to be: “May the light in me be the light before me.”
I am sure, the instruction is clear.
… to be continued
Taken from the book
The Teachings of Sanat Kumara
Dhanishta Publications: dhanishta.org
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