Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul - Esoteric Psychology I - Section I

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Esoteric Psychology I - Section One - II. Certain Questions and their Answers

We shall now answer five questions that I have formulated and answered for the reader.

Question 1
What is the Soul? Can we define it? What is its Nature?

Here I shall give but four definitions which will serve as a basis for all that follows.

A. The soul can be spoken of as the Son of the Father and of the Mother (Spirit-Matter) and is therefore the embodied life of God, coming into incarnation in order to reveal the quality of the nature of God, which is essential love. This life, taking form, nurtures the quality of love within all forms, and ultimately reveals the purpose of all creation. This is the simplest definition for average humanity, being couched in the language of mysticism, thus linking the truth as found in all religions. It is necessarily inadequate, for it fails to emphasize the truth that what can be posited of man can also be posited of the cosmic reality, and that just as a human appearance on Earth veils both the quality and purpose (in varying degree), so does that synthesis of all forms or appearances, within that unity which we call a solar system, veil the quality and purpose of Deity. It is only when man is no longer deluded by appearance and has freed himself from the veil of illusion that he arrives at a knowledge of the quality of God's consciousness and at the purpose which it is revealing. This he does in a triple way:

He discovers his own soul, the product of the union of his [37] Father in heaven with the Mother or the material nature. This last is the personality. He then, having discovered the personality, discovers the quality of his own soul life, and the purpose for which he has "appeared."
He finds that this quality expresses itself through seven aspects or basic differentiations, and that this septenate of qualities colors, esoterically, all forms in all kingdoms in nature, thus constituting the totality of the revelations of the divine purpose. This, he finds, is essentially a septenary aggregation of energies, each energy producing differing effects and appearances. This discovery he makes by finding that his own soul is tinctured by one of the seven ray qualities, that he is identified with his ray purpose - whatever it may be - and is expressing a particular type of divine energy.
From this point he proceeds to a recognition of the entire septenate, and upon the Path of Initiation he gains a glimpse of a Unity, hitherto unrealized, nor even sensed.

Thus from a consciousness of himself, man arrives at an awareness of the interrelation between the seven basic energies or rays; and from that he proceeds to a realization of the triple Deity, until at the final initiation (the fifth) he finds himself consciously at-one with the unified divine intent lying behind all appearances and all qualities. It might be added that initiations, higher than the fifth, reveal a purpose wider and deeper than that which is working out within our solar system. The purpose of our manifested Logos is but a part of a greater intent. It might also be noted that in the fourth kingdom of nature, on the path of evolution and of probation, a man arrives at a knowledge of his individual soul, and glimpses the quality and purpose of that soul. On the path of discipleship and of initiation, he glimpses the quality and purpose of his [38] planetary Life, and discovers himself as a part of a ray Life, Which is appearing through the form of a planet and is embodying an aspect of the divine purpose and energy. After the third initiation he glimpses the quality and purpose of the solar system; he sees his ray life and energy as a part of a greater whole. These are but modes of expressing the emerging quality and the hidden purpose of the graded Lives which inform all appearances and color them with quality.

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