Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul - A Treatise on White Magic

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A Treatise on White Magic - Introductory Remarks

3. Psychic. There are two types of the above force in manifestation as far as the human kingdom is concerned, and these must be clearly grasped. There is the force which animates the subhuman kingdoms in nature, - the ensouling energy which, brought into conjunction with the energy of matter and self, produces all forms. The effect of this junction is to add to the embryo intelligence of substance itself a latent sentiency and responsiveness that produces that subjective something we call the animal soul. This exists in four degrees or states of sentient awareness:

The consciousness of the mineral kingdom.
The consciousness of the vegetable kingdom.
The consciousness of the animal kingdom.
The consciousness of the animal form through which the spiritual man functions, which after all is but a department of the former group in its highest presentation.

Secondly, there is that psychic force which is the result of the union of the spirit with sentient matter in the human kingdom and which produces a psychic center which we call the soul of man. This psychic center is a force center, and the force of which it is the custodian or which it demonstrates, brings into play a responsiveness and an awareness which is that of the soul of the planetary life, a group consciousness which brings with it faculties and knowledge of a different order than that in the animal soul. These supersede eventually the powers of the animal soul which limit, distort, and imprison, and give man a range of contacts and a knowledge which is infallible, free from error, and which admits him to "the freedom of the heavens". The effect of the free [13] play of the soul of man serves to demonstrate the fallibility and relative uselessness of the powers of the animal soul. All I desire to do here is to show the two senses in which the word "psychic" is used. Later we will deal with the growth and development of the lower psychic nature or the soul of the vehicles in which man functions in the three worlds, and then will seek to elucidate the true nature of the soul of man and of the powers which can be brought into play once a man can contact his own spiritual center, the soul, and live in that soul consciousness.

4. Unfoldment. The life at the heart of the solar system is producing an evolutionary unfoldment of the energies of that universe which it is not possible for finite man as yet to vision. Similarly the center of energy which we call the spiritual aspect in man is (through the utilization of matter or substance) producing an evolutionary development of that which we call the soul, and which is the highest of the form manifestations - the human kingdom. Man is the highest product of existence in the three worlds. By man, I mean the spiritual man, a son of God in incarnation. The forms of all the kingdoms of nature - human, animal, vegetable and mineral - contribute to that manifestation. The energy of the third aspect of divinity tends to the revelation of the soul or the second aspect which in turn reveals the highest aspect. It must ever be remembered that The Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky expresses this with accuracy in the words "Life we look upon as the one form of existence, manifesting in what is called Matter; or what, incorrectly separating them, we name spirit, soul and matter in man. Matter is the vehicle for the manifestation of soul on this plane of existence, and soul is the vehicle on a higher plane for the manifestation of spirit, and these three are a trinity synthesized by life, [14] which pervades them all." (The Secret Doctrine Vol I, p. 79,8O.)

Through the use of matter the soul unfolds and finds its climax in the soul of man, and this treatise will concern itself with the unfoldment of that soul and its discovery by man.

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