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Advanced Souls and the Coming Age
The words above, excerpted from Entering the Age of Light (ETAOL), are packed with meaning, so I will be careful in “unpacking” the text to capture the full intent of the message. I will examine this statement one “parcel of light” at a time.
First, we are told, “Advanced souls (in times past) have always managed to find their way to the light of Spirit…one at a time.” What—the reader might ask—is an advanced soul? The “Glossary of Terms” in When the Soul Awakens offers the following definition:
| Old souls [advanced souls] are individual “units of consciousness” who have garnered the fruits of many lifetimes in the schoolhouse of Earth. Having been tested and tried in the crucible of human experience, they have progressed beyond the point of ordinary human evolution.2 |
This general definition is helpful in explaining that it takes many lifetimes to learn the lessons that enable us to progress on the spiritual Path. Yet, more explicit knowledge about the nature of the Path and what is required of aspirants to meet the trials of human experience may help us to correlate this message to the wisdom teachings. After all, as explained previously, the goal of this series of essays is to shed light on the “core ideas” of Entering the Age of Light by taking a closer look at the teachings of the Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, known as DK.3
DK is of one the great Teachers known in the wisdom teachings as Masters of Wisdom. He is:
| …an Elder Brother—one who has passed before us on the path of evolution [to]…become a full-fledged member of the spiritual kingdom.4 |
What would DK say about “the requirements of the Path”? This is a broad subject, but in general terms he tells us that “character building, clean living, controlled emotional reactions and right thinking” are the hallmarks of spiritual achievement. And he tells us more. He gives specific methods and techniques for achieving these ends. It is beyond the scope of this piece to provide detailed instructions for discipleship training, but suffice it to say that to build character, live cleanly, and control both emotions and thought, the spiritual student (or aspirant to higher knowledge) must learn to work with energy.
DK states this explicitly:
| It is not easy to remember that as we live purely and rightly, we are verily and indeed working with forces, subjecting energies to our needs, subordinating elemental lives5 to the requirements of spiritual being… Nevertheless, it remains a fact…6 |
To “live purely and rightly” we must work with forces to bring our lower natures into harmony with our spiritual selves. This means learning how to lift the denser energies that constitute our lower nature into higher levels of expression.7 This is part of the Science of the Soul taught in the Ageless Wisdom. It concerns the Science of the Centers (or chakras), and pertains specifically to the conscious control of force and energy through the power of thought, imagination, and will.
It involves, as DK indicates above, learning to live “purely and rightly”—subjecting the energies of our bodies (physical, emotional, and mental) to our higher spiritual aspirations. A brief example will illustrate this process.
In a moment of crisis, we experience a powerful urge to react emotionally. But then we “stop to think” and “get hold of ourselves.” Through the power of mind we begin to control our reactions. When we do so, we are actually “subjecting energy” to our higher goals. We are taking conscious control of emotional force and shifting our point of focus from a lower to a higher center of awareness. We are, in this instance, lifting the emotional force anchored in the solar plexus center8 upward to the heart center, located “above the diaphragm.”9 We are, as the teachings might phrase it, learning to “think in the heart.”
The heart center is the anchoring point for “the light” (and life) of Spirit alluded to in the excerpt from Entering the Age of Light. Rephrasing the message from ETAOL in the language of the Tibetan, we could say that “advanced souls” find their way “to the light of Spirit” by lifting the force of their personal nature10 to the center of “love and light” which is the heart.
The heart center is the “seat of life” and the anchoring point in the etheric body for the “soul thread”—the sutratma or atmic thread of life energy—which issues forth from soul realms to “fix” the soul in physical-etheric form. The love aspect of the soul shows itself through the heart via this thread, and it is through the heart that “love energy” enters the body. DK stresses its importance in a section of Esoteric Healing where he discusses the major principles of good health:
| The love aspect shows itself through the heart, the circulatory system and the nervous system. This is in many ways most important for you to understand, for it controls paramountly the etheric body and its assimilation of prana or vitality. This prana works through both the blood and the nerves, for the life force uses the blood stream and psychic force works through the nervous system.11 |
In essence, the soul finds living expression in the outer world through the “portal” of the heart.
Armed with these basic facts about the inner constitution of man, one can see the importance of lifting emotional reactions from “below the diaphragm” to the heart chakra. As we learn to do so, we demonstrate conscious control of force through the ability to transmute force into energy—the energy of inclusive love.12
Inclusive love is the opposite of the “separative unhappiness”13 so common to personality experience. It is a fundamental attribute of the soul, characteristic of the spiritual beings that dwell in “higher realms” referred to in ETAOL as the “inner Teachers.” It is from these inner spiritual realms that members of the Kingdom of Souls work—guiding human evolution by “dropping parcels of light” into the minds of the advanced members of the human family.
The expression “dropping parcels of light” into the human mind is an allusion to the process of spiritual impression, which is connected directly to the Science of Meditation. The Master DK makes reference to packages of light in his instructions on group meditation. In Discipleship in the New Age he counsels his disciples on lifting the energies of the solar plexus into the heart using the phrase “higher psychic gift waves” to identify the packets of energy transmitted by the Teachers to sensitive disciples. Disciples, he assures us, can increase their sensitivity to “the higher issues of life” and learn to control “lower psychic” or astral forces through the process of transmutation.
DK stresses the importance of group work in creating a new civilization and instructs his disciples on cultivating “right group impression or responsiveness” to spiritual energies. He emphasizes the awakening of “the heart center into greater potency” as a prerequisite for right impression, and gives meditation techniques to foster “group unity rooted in love.”14 He tells his disciples:
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The activity of the heart centre never demonstrates in connection with individuals… [and]
Only from the heart centre can stream, in reality, those lines of energy which link and bind together.15
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With these words, the Tibetan ties together the opening of the heart and the emergence of group consciousness. Both of these occurrences are signs of the soul awakening and are fundamental to the ability to receive impression. Both are heralds of the future when “large groups of souls will enter the higher realms” under the guidance of the “inner Teachers.”
The inner Teachers are citizens of the Kingdom of Souls, and are, by definition, “group conscious,”16 as are all members of the spiritual kingdom. Group consciousness17 is a key attribute of soul identity and, like love, wisdom, and the spirit of service and sacrifice (basic qualities of the soul), group awareness finds expression in the outer world through the heart.
The heart of humanity is awakening, and group consciousness—the keynote of the coming Age of Aquarius—is increasingly emerging into living expression in the world. Fostering group awareness is foundational to the work of the Tibetan Master, who is working with other Guides of the Race to prepare humanity for the coming cycle. The emergence of group awareness on a wide scale is reflected in the idea that in the future, large groups of souls will advance together into the higher realms, as stated in the excerpt from ETAOL.
Thus, it might be said that “advanced souls” are simply individuals who have mastered the right use of force, and have developed the ability to transmute the energy of the lower centers into that of the higher. They are those among us whose hearts are open, who are in touch with their souls and are thus group conscious, and receptive to higher impression. They are sensitized, awake and aware individuals, lovingly responsive to the “higher psychic gift waves,” the “parcels of light” that the Guides of the Race are dropping into the minds of awakening humanity.
[1] Entering the Age of Light, p. 22.
[2] When the Soul Awakens, p. 218.
[4] When the Soul Awakens, pp. 216-17.
[5] Elemental lives are ethereal beings existing in an “elemental” state of development. They are sometimes referred to as “nature spirits” and are the “lesser builders,” which form the substance of our physical-etheric, astral, and mental bodies. On the Path of Return we learn to control these “elemental forces” in order to progress spiritually.
[6] A Treatise on White Magic, pp. 191-92 (Italics added).
[8] The solar plexus is the point of focus for the desire nature and is the “door of entry” into the astral world. It is the point of contact in the etheric body for our emotional nature.
[9] Shifting energy from the solar plexus to the heart is one of several energy transfers that occur on the Path of Transformation. Always the goal is to move energies from a lower to a higher center. For example: solar plexus to heart; sacral to throat; base of spine to crown.
[10] The personal nature includes both emotional and instinctual aspects, both of which find expression through the energy centers in the etheric body that are located “below the diaphragm.”
[11] Esoteric Healing, p. 106.
[12] Transmutation is a spiritualizing process carried forward “under the pressure of daily life experience, under the magnetic effect of soul contact, and as the inevitable result of evolution itself.” [See The Rays and the Initiations, p. 279.] Through this process “material force” is transmuted into “spiritual energy.” Force is generally associated with the world of form, whereas energy is related more closely to formless (subtler) realms.
[13] Esoteric Healing, p. 268.
[14] Discipleship in the New Age, Vol. II, p. 114.
[16] Group conscious souls are “actuated by pure unselfish purpose” as reflected in the axiom “I am that”—which asserts the capacity of an individual to identify unselfishly with others.
[17] All souls are group conscious on their own plane. Some, however, are more advanced than others. Masters of Wisdom, for example, not only possess the ability to identify with other souls (a demonstration of group awareness), but are also capable of identifying with the “Kingdom of Souls” as a whole, and are thereby responsible for its evolution.
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