The Self or Soul
The self, according to Carl Jung, is the mid-point of the personality around which all the other systems are constellated. It holds the systems together and provides the personality with unity, equilibrium, and stability. It is life’s goal, which motivates humans to seek for wholeness. The psyche, Jung adds, is purposeful and has a natural urge to grow to wholeness.
The self is a wholeness that transcends all consciousness. To reach transformation, one lets go the persona, face the shadow, inner darkness, and recognize the contra-sexual side of one’s nature – the anima or animus. One must own all those aspects of oneself that were projected into others.
Before a self can emerge, it is necessary for the various component of the personality to be developed and integrated. For this reason, the archetype of the self does not become evident until the person has reached middle age. At this time, the person begins to make a conscious effort to change the center of the personality from the conscious ego to one that is mid-way between consciousness and unconsciousness. This mid-point is the province of the self.
From the viewpoint of esoteric psychology, Jung’s concept of the self is equivalent to the soul, the entity that lives across lifetimes. The soul is an energy vortex or consciousness center, which draws matter from still subtler realms. It may also refer to the momentum of the essence as it goes through the process of individualization.
The soul, as the essence of the perfect human being, having a quality of its own, is possible, because it can be conceived by the personality. While it is separate from the personality, it is nevertheless always a part of the personality. The soul provides the ideal and serves as the guide towards itself, as the essence. The personality together with the soul essence develops the ego, the particular note of the human being.
The soul enters the world at the time of the baby’s physical birth and guides the child in the latter’s innocence. It may, however withdraw and remain in the causal realm when the personality becomes enmeshed in the material world and adopts a rigid persona or mask. It can only express itself as the individual gains a new function, a new way of perceiving reality.
Just as the function of breathing begin at birth and the new function of abstract reasoning at the end of childhood, so at the moment of maturity, the new function begins, based on man’s consciousness of his existence and of his relation to the universe, to sustain his creative power and express his essence.
Evolution and Soul Development
Evolution as used here means the advancement of consciousness power in overcoming physical limitation and all conscious states that would inhibit the full expression of the spark of Love in all kingdoms of intelligence.
True evolution is "spiritual evolution" whereby the consciousness vehicles evolve toward the divine self in concert with one another. Spiritual evolution coordinates the enlightenment of consciousness vehicles giving sustaining purpose to life through Love and Wisdom.
As the personality draws more experiences as a human being, it then comes closer to the ideal, the soul. At the same time, it enables the soul to become more and more manifested reality in the personality.
This process is known in Sanskrit as yoga, union, or antakarana the bridging, the gradual upward movement of the personality towards its essence on one hand, and the gradual downward movement of the soul, as essence, to connect with the personality, on the other hand.
The process may be likened to a butterfly undergoing metamorphosis. Initially, the personality, as the worm, only perceives itself as a worm. Eventually, as the person reflects on human essence and the more he separates his aim from the habits and failings of the personality, the more intense he will become conscious of self, in the process building a cocoon. Inside the cocoon, gradually, the person’s most hidden weaknesses, self-indulgences, excesses, longing, capacities and aspirations will be drawn into the light of the new consciousness. Eventually, he becomes the butterfly, a transformed self.
In the course of the development of the individual’s consciousness, life reaches him in two ways, by tuition that the world gives and by intuition, the working of the inner self. As one develops, intuition increases and one does not depend so much as before on the instruction that the world provides.
The new function, awakened at maturity or at the peak of the person’s life, may reveal to man a sudden vision of the whole, of which the other functions have given him but partial and conflicting glimpses. Sometimes in the same awakening, it may also reveal to him a new expression of the whole, to the fulfillment of which all the rest of his life will be dedicated.
The awakening enables man to perceive directly and personally a cosmos in its unity. Only in the discovery of such a new function enables man to continue to ascend to a different level of maturity. This new function is referred to Abraham Maslow’s drive for self-actualization.
These realizations or apprehended expansion of consciousness are under natural laws, and come in due course to every soul. In normal degrees, they are undergone daily by every human being, as his mental grip of life and experience gradually grows, accompanied by the expansion of knowledge. These experiences become initiations into the wisdom when the knowledge gained is consciously sought for and is applied to life, willingly used in service for others and intelligently utilized on the side of evolution.
Bridging Personality and Soul
The antahkarana, “the bridge” between personality and soul involves two major processes.[1]
First is the integration of the bodies of the personality - the physical, emotional and lower mental bodies, anchored in the physical body. Such integration manifests as a “balanced personality”, and characterized by a person whose physical body; instincts and emotions are under the direction of reason.
Source: escuelakryon.com
The second involves the process of soul expression through the personality. It will be recalled that the soul is composed of matter from the higher planes of the fifth (will), fourth (intuition) and higher mental level (the abstract mind). These bodies form the upper triad of man, which reside in the causal body (matter from the higher mental plane). The attempt of the soul, the three-fold essence of man, to come down to the level of the personality, may be represented as an inverted triangle or pyramid, reaching down to the personality through the facility of the mental plane, as it were, it reaches down to the abstract level, while the personality reaches up through reason (lower mental).
The antahkarana has three stages, in terms of the shift of focus. First, the mind would be set working at a geometric pace with the transference and unity of the concrete mind with the abstract mind. This implies the shift from ordinary function of the intellect, to the higher function of abstract thinking. With this bridging, the person begins to draw more matter from the higher mental plane. He thus thinks in terms of the world of ideas, of beauty, perfection and the attributes associated with God – all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing. The world of the formless can thus manifest in the world of forms.
The third aspect relates to the bridging, first of the root center (physical) to the crown center (atmic or will), then of both, with the brow center (balance and harmony). This implies the marriage of matter and essence, but this time with the consciousness of the individual soul. Thus, the soul manifests as a threefold being in the personality; the individual becomes integrated with the essence. It then enters the soul-path towards integration with spirit as an Adept. This is symbolized in the “Star of David.”
The awakening of consciousness is preceded by a period of gradual development, with the awakening being instantaneous at the moment of self-realization, succeeded by another period of gradual evolution. This period of gradual evolution, in its turn, leads to a later crisis, called “initiation.” From a thinking entity, the human being is gradually initiated into an intuitive and spiritual existence.
When the unity is achieved, then the personality is absorbed into a different higher form, a consciousness equivalent to an adept or a sage who has attained wisdom. The soul, as the essence of the perfect human being, also recedes (or ascends) and becomes a different essence, a different ideal, the essential “spirit-self,” which is the individual link to the origin of life itself. The spirit-self is the unit of consciousness, the “breath of life” or monad from a First Cause.
[1] Dr. Douglas Baker and Celia Hansen, Superconsciousness Through Meditation, Samuel Weiser, Inc., NY, pp. 15-16
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