The Truth is a brilliant, many-sided diamond.  
The Great Light fills this gem and colors gleam from every side. 
Mystics, messengers, sages and teachers of all ages, races, and beliefs have spoken of a different face of this common Eternal Truth.

Our Selfhood
part 2

Virtual Circle Lesson February 14.02
  

Our  Heavenly Father, Your Name is Sanctified,  In the Heavens and so in Earth.  Your Will Be Done.  On Earth as it is in Heaven.  Amen

    From the previous lesson concerning the basic outline of our Selfhood, we continue with the Permanent Personality.  As noted before it is the Permanent Personality, which projects a part of itself in the worlds of Existence incarnating as a Present day Personality.  Or simply call it our personality.  This is the personality associated with our current incarnation.  But what about Soul?

    Do we have a Soul?   When Daskalos would raise this rhetorical question during a Stoa lesson, he would sometimes sit back in his chair, fold his arms across his chest and watch the reaction of his audience.  You could sense a hesitation in the students as each considered their pre-existing ideas concerning the Soul.   After a long and pregnant pause, he would continue empathically, “No! Definitely, we do not have a Soul!   We are a Soul that has a body”.   Daskalos’ meaning is that only the Soul Self Awareness has a right to call this and that its own and not our personalities.   This is a completely different accent on the relationship of the personality and the Soul.  This accent gives us a more accurate understanding on the true nature of this relationship,

    The expressive part of the Soul, the Permanent Personality (Soul Personality)  projects itself into time and place.  Each projection is a unique incarnation. Its nature is eternal, yet it clothes itself in temporal matter giving life to its new projection in the Worlds of Existence.  Each new projection creates a new and unique personality for each new incarnation.   When our  earthly life is complete and the material body dies, our personality along with its core (The Permanent Personality) withdraws to the Psychical Planes. Here we continue living as the very same personalities with the identical set of emotions and thoughts as on Earth.  Here, as on Earth, our Permanent Personality is not separate or distant but is within us.  Now on the Psychical Planes our reasoning Permanent Personality continues its work collecting the impressions, interpreting them and correcting the reactions of the personality.   When this is complete, the Permanent Personality again withdraws the personality, this time from the Psychical Planes into the Noetical Planes and the process continues.   Again the Permanent Personality continues collecting and recording the experiences.  Where does the Permanent Personality record all these experiences?   Metaphorically, we could say that it keeps a journal.  This journal is the book of our lives detailing our experiences in time and place.  Recorded in this book are all our incarnations – the very essence of each of our various personalities’ experiences in each incarnation.   In our system, we call this book the Permanent Atom.   From the Noetical Planes of existence, the personality is eventually withdrawn into the Noetic State where the assimilation of impressions continues.  This whole process from earthly life to the Noetic State is only a single incarnation.   There is much more to one lifetime that most people realize. 

    After absorbing the impressions in the Noetic State, comes a period of rest for some while others are immediately ready for a new incarnation.  Now we come to our teachings on reincarnation.  Here the teachings of the Researchers of Truth differ from the popularized ideas concerning reincarnation.   We often hear the personalities of spiritual seekers referring to their past incarnation.  They speak of being this personality or that personality in a past life.  Sometimes several personalities will lay claim to the same historical personality such as Cleopatra.

    For us a single incarnation is the projection of the Permanent Personality into time and place, manifesting a temporal existence on the material, psychical and noetical planes and then withdrawing back again.  We can think of each of these incarnations as a chapter in a book – the book of all our lifetimes.   In each incarnation, the Permanent Personality dons an incarnation as a new personality.  If a personality's  incarnation  represents a single chapter in the book, then the Permanent Personality represents the entire book.    Thus chapter two in a book can not claim to have been chapter one.  And so, no incarnated personality can rightly claim to have been an incarnated personality from the past.  Only the book itself can claim to be chapter one, chapter two and so on.  So too, only the Permanent Personality can legitimately claim to have been all the past incarnations.  

    This brings us to an interesting point.  The Permanent Personality contains the sum total of all Present Day Personalities each having a different name.  So what is the name of our Permanent Personality?     Our parents wishes name our personality at birth, but does our Permanent Personality have a name?   If you ask a personality who they are you most often receive the reply, I am John Jones or I am Jane Smith, etc…  John Jones is the name of that specific Present Day Personality.  The name of our Permanent Personality is not unique but is the same for us all.  It is the “I am I” or simply “I am”.   So when you ask someone their name they first give the name of the Permanent Personality, “I am”.  Then they follow it with their given temporary name, such as John Jones.  The “I am” is the center which receives the impressions from the life experiences of all our personality.

    The characteristics of your Permanent Personality are the same as that of your Soul, which are: Absolute Self Sufficiency, Total Wisdom, Total Love and Total Power.  Yet as a limited time and place personality, we are but a shadow of our Permanent Personality. The Permanent Personality is also called our Inner Self.  We as personalities must find our Inner Self.  We must penetrate through the layers of our personality to reach our real Self-Awareness. 

    A word of caution: the egoism of the personality likes to mislead and even masquerade as the Permanent Personality – our Inner Self.   Saint Anthony in the third century AD wrote in detail about how demons and the human created demons (negative elementals of egoism) present themselves to mislead us.  “They are treacherous,” he writes, “and they recite sayings from the Scriptures.  And even when we are reading, they are able to say right away, as if in echo the same things we have read.  They first attack and place stumbling blocks in the way.  Their stumbling blocks consist of evil thoughts.  But we need not fear their suggestions.”   As we integrate the practice of Daily Introspection into our lives, this is one of the first challenges  we discover.   Introspection is one of the aptly named Golden Keys to the kingdom of the Heavens in our system.   Daily Introspection is of prime importance to us as we begin to break our entanglement and misidentification of our Inner Self with the shadows of egoism.   
 
    Self Realization for us is the personality’s assimilation with our Permanent Personality into Soul Self Awareness.  Excellent, we have realized our Self as a perfect luminous Soul.   Now what is the Soul and what is its origin?  We can say the origin of our Soul is our Spirit and the origin of our Spirit is of course God.  To understand this let us follow this lineage from God, the Absolute Beingness, to the Self-Aware Soul.  

    We call God in Its first discernable manifestation, Absolute Beingness, because It is composed of an innumerable number of Eternal Self-Sufficient Beings – gods.  They are gods within the true God and as such are similar in nature to God.  This is the multiplicity of God.  This does not mean we have more than one God.  We can think of these Spirit-Beings in absolute oneness with God as cells composing the body of God.  Similarly, our material body, which is composed of countless individual cells, is nonetheless one body. In our system, we call these cells within God, Holy Monads.  A human being is a god – a Holy Monadic Being in the Multiplicity of God.   This is what a human being is, was and will always be.   During our descent into the Worlds of Existence our Holy Monadic Self never separates from its oneness with God our Father.

    The process of humanization originates with the will and the pleasure of God and these Holy Monadic Beings to manifest themselves.   Think of these Holy Monadic Beings as suns.  Each of these suns emanates rays of light.   Some of these rays from different Monads pass through an archetype within the Divine Plan called the Human Idea or Heavenly Man.    A Spirit, a Self Super-Conscious Being, emanates a ray of its Self through the Human Idea forming the Soul (The Soul is not created but formed).  As Spirit, we are Self-aware Life, and at the point the ray of Spirit passes through the Human Idea, we gain Soul Self-awareness.  The Soul Self–awareness is complete, perfect and yet has a sense of distinct individuality. 

    Some of the rays (not just one ray) emanating from the same Holy Monad are destined to become humanized. Other rays from the same monad as well as from different monads are destined to pass through another archetype - the Archangelic Man. Rays of Spirit passing through this Archangelic Idea become the Archangels of the various orders.  Thus we can rightly say the Archangels are true brothers of Spirit to the human beings.  Many human beings have originated from the same Holy Monad.  Human Beings with the same Holy Monadic Self as their source have strong identification with each other.

    We have mentioned the personality’s Self Realization in its assimilation with the Soul.   But we also have the Self Realized Soul’s assimilation with its true nature the Spirit-Ego-Being in God.  This is called Theosis.  Theosis is the expansion of Self-Consciousness into Super Self-Consciousness, which means absolute awareness in Beingness and Existence.  This is the meaning of the parable of the prodigal son returning in Super Conscious Self-Awareness back home to his loving father mentioned in the Bible.  This is the ultimate aim and the destiny of us all.  Theosis is the last step on our journey back to our source.

    We have now traced our Selfhood from the petty personality in the Worlds of Existence to the Permanent Personality and on to the Soul and Holy Monad in the realms of Beingness.  A Human Being is indeed a rich and immeasurable offspring of God.  We give this most basic outline of Selfhood to establish the theoretical framework necessary to begin our approach to Self Realization.   In the future lessons, we will provide practical information on the approach itself. 

God Speed to your good work,

Daniel
02.14.02

First of all relax completely your material body, from toes to head. Start relaxing from the feet, the knees, the thighs, the belly. Relax completely the chest. Breathe deeply, comfortably, without any effort. Without tension. Relax the hands. Feel them relaxed. No emotions. No desires. No feelings now. Everything stands still. No thoughts coming from the sub consciousness disturbing you. You feel you are completely calm. Completely relaxed, mentally, psychically and materially.

You are completely relaxed. Yet, you are you. What are you? Who are you? An Ego. Forget your name. Forget your sex. Just ask yourself "I am a living being - what am I as life? I am I - that "I" I want to know. I have covered that I with a name, male or female. I want it out. What is really interesting me is that "I" and that "am", which means "I am" in the world of Beingness, beyond the world of existence. This "I am" is what is interesting me now. I am trying to feel this "I am" as my personality now. I am I - what is this "I"? Complete the circle. I am I. What am I? This feeling of being?

Try to understand what you are at this moment. I am feeling that I am in this material body which is built up most wisely by the Lords of the Elements. I am the one who is causing what we call illnesses. I shouldn't do this. I must calm down. Now I am in this material body, living in it, and I am entitled by the Grace of the Infinite Beingness to feel it as mine. By being in it I am possessing something precious, more precious than any material thing around me - this body I am calling mine. Every moment Holy Intelligences, the Archangels of the Elements, are building it, keeping it in good order and in good health.

Now, I am feeling I am in this body, from the toes to my head. Since I am in this body I want it to be healthy.

This elemental you are creating now will make your body healthy, even if it isn't.

I want this material body of mine to be healthy always. After all, this is the purpose of the Holy Archangels of the Elements - building and keeping the body in good order. So, I'll cooperate with them. I'll not go against their creative work.

I want this material body I call mine (yet, knowing very little about it) to be in good health, siding with the creative Lords of the Elements in me. I want perfect health for my material body.

Breathe deeply and feel in your heart, Simply, feel your heart. I want all my emotions, all my desires to be under my knowledge and control - to know their nature, to control all that exists in my sub consciousness, the elementals composing my personality. I want all my emotions to calm down so that I may be able to shape them, control them and use them.

Feel you are in the head now. I want all my thoughts to be under my control. I want my thoughts not to be the slaves of my emotions and desires, but - masters. I want to use the thought for better life of my personality. I want to know more about myself as a person and as a Soul.

This is the most important request of yours. I'll repeat it.

I want to know more about myself as a personality and about myself as a Soul. I want all the negative thoughts and negative elementals I have in my egoism, attacking my personality, causing me troubles and weaknesses, to be now under my control.

Now, see your material body in white light. From your heart see a ray of rosy light spreading and say to yourself: "No hostile elemental from others may enter in my personality and affect me." Enough.  ~ Daskalos

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T O P

Daskalos Exiting the Stoa

From The Stoa Lessons
by Daskalos:

“Since the nature of the Holy Monad is divine total wisdom, total love and total power.  Therefore our Self Holy Monad is.  This cannot be perceived with thoughts and images of time and place that can be created through thought. 

It is a radiance.  From a certain moment that radiance becomes an entity.  The radiance of your holy monad self came through the idea of man.  From that moment on, it takes form because the idea tends to give form.

I’ll give an example, but a very poor one since we cannot have any better. Suppose I have an open window and this room. The light from the Sun comes through that window and shines on the floor. Now, the light from the Sun to the window and the light from the window to the floor is the same. No obstacles in between.

Yet, on the floor I see now a square light (or a triangular light, depending upon the shape of the window), though the quality of the light coming from the Sun and passing through the window to the floor  is the same. So, our Soul is immortal God and is the same as our Spirit-Ego Self. Now, all religions and especially Christian speak about the Spirit and the Soul without defining them. I think it is better to define them.

The Spirit-Ego and the Soul-Ego are the same - It is God, immortal, everlasting. What about the light on the floor now? The human being is there. So, the light on the floor has the shape of the window, and so we have our human form. We as human beings are the light on the floor.

Yet, what is now this light on the floor? What is its relation with the light coming from the window down to the floor and from the Sun to the window? There is much difference in the light. Now I have the light flat on the floor. In other case I have the light from the window to the floor and then the rays of the Sun to the window.

Now, what is the human intelligence that we are expressing now? The light on the floor, on a surface. Not more than that. This is what I call the common human intelligence, the common human consciousness. But, is that human common consciousness not able to ascend and be at the same time on the floor and yet traveling on the rays be the rays of the Sun? Of course, since the light is the light. Weather it is flat on the floor or weather it is coming from the Sun, the light is always the light.

So, this is our relation as human beings with our Self, with our Soul. That's what I said yesterday that even in a human being, in our bodies, our Present-Day-Personality is God. God covered with clay, with earth, and with Mind Substance whose vibrations we call emotions, desires thoughts and many other things.

 ~ DASKALOS

Note:  Ego
When Daskalos uses the word Ego with a capital E - he is not referring to the egoistical tendencies of our Present Day   Personality.  Ego is used here as our Quintessential "I-ness" our Individuality.

Present Day Personality
See Esoteric Teachings page 65

Permanent Personality
See Esoteric Teachings page 104

Self-Aware Soul -
See Esoteric Teachings page 196 & Esoteric Practices page 161

Holy Monad –
See Esoteric Teachings  page 34, 40 & 50

 © 2.2002 Daniel Joseph all rights reserved worldwide

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