Essay 1: A BODY OF TRUTH

“The operations of nature are the clothing of man’s will. The operations of destiny are the clothing of his mind. The experiences of freedom from nature and destiny are the clothing of his soul. And his soul folds around him with its still more profound mystery.” (Esoteric Philosophy page 23:2)

The body, as well as the body of affairs, that we see, touch, and experience with our outer senses has evolved to serve us well here on this physical plane. It serves to move us, identify us, protect us, and sustain us in a form that is ideally suited to this life on earth. For most humans, so attached to this bodily form, it would be difficult to make the case that our physical body contains no real Substance of its own. Millions upon millions are spent every year by people seeking to improve, enhance or modify their physical bodies with little or no regard to the real forces that orchestrate physical existence.

In Truth, the body is simply an instrument. It serves as a mere vehicle, an “effect” with no Cause inherent in it. The body, as well as the body of affairs it perceives, are in the service of what is Real, True and Original of us. This is the basis of Jesus statement, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). One can only imagine what the outpictured life would be like if even a small fraction of the time and resources directed at improving the physical body were turned within, to our other “bodies” and toward Cause.

When the Spirit is removed or is absent from the body or the body of affairs, what we call death ensues and those earthly demonstrations become again what they always were: shadows and dust. There is no life without Spirit, without the Intelligence of Cause. The body of the physical universe is the densest realm of Being and the most difficult to penetrate because of its will and its nature to show forth as forms. Well-defined, separate, and isolated from other forms by the illusions of space and time, the earthly perception can blind us to the Unity of all Life and cause us to become “spiritual segregationists.” Who among us can honestly say, that looking into the eyes of a new born baby evokes the same sense of God-ness we see in a snail or an earthworm?

If we take a journey back into Origin, back to our native state of Immortal Mind from our physical realm, we journey through other realms of consciousness, or “bodies” unseen by outer senses. These other realms are the stepping stones of Cause that the physical body shows forth from. These “bodies within bodies” were present and active before Creation, just as they are now.

The first stepping stone back of the physical body is the etheric body. The etheric body can be defined as the vital or life body. It is the pattern by which the physical form shows forth. Think of the etheric body as a dress pattern that a seamstress might use. The pattern is one-dimensional, somewhat transparent, and loosely defined, but includes everything but the material necessary to create a fully formed item of clothing. The etheric body is the memory of matter and the primary influence over the physical. It is less dense and less specific than the body of matter that we see, touch and experience in our earthly forms.

While the physical is influenced by the etheric, our next stepping stone, the astral body, influences the etheric. Our astral body is our closest association with Immortal Mind Presence and the seat of the soul. While the soul receives impressions from every incarnation and from every experience we have ever had, the realm of the astral body has its “operating system” in what Emerson called the “Oversoul.” Given this dynamic, the astral body is where idea and Ideal come together and are reconciled. The astral body remembers Substance and the realized Ideal is its “clothing.”

If the previously described bodies were an orchestra, then the conductor would be the one aspect of Being that lifts man above and beyond anything else that takes form, be it animal, plant, or mineral. That conductor is the element of Ego. It is through the Ego that Immortal Mind “gets personal,” which is to say, the Universal individualizes through the Ego. The Ego is the realm of free will and conscious choice. Of course, when the Ego enters existence in the material world, the illusion of duality is introduced and part of the Ego becomes the human ego activity that we are all familiar with. In order to fully and individually establish what IS, we must also experience what is not, through the activity of our ego.

          If we look at the Old Testament with Ego in mind, we can see that it is really the story of the ego journey of man, over many lifetimes and countless choices. This is the journey to Wisdom. This journey begins with the very first conscious choice made in the Garden of Eden and evolves to a point in human experience where God came to earth, individualized as Christ Jesus. In that moment, “the hope of Glory” entered the astral body (soul) of all mankind, individualized by the activity of Ego. While the human activity of ego experiences duality, the Original Ego remembers Truth. Ego is the seat of the “I” in the “I AM.”

Without Ego, race consciousness, group awareness or animal mind would be the extent of man’s journey toward Immortal Mind consciousness. Thankfully, the Voice of the Divine is whispering to us constantly through the Ego behind our human ego. In every choice we make, every freedom we exercise, and every outcome we experience, we hear “I praise you, for you are fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Ps. 139:14)