Friday, July 15th, 1983

Evolution of the Individual Mind

by Anthony J. Damiani

Paper V09MP

3-LETTER CODE: ASN

TOPIC: Astronoesis

SUBJECT: Soul

SUBSUBJECTS: Plotinus, "Purpose of Life," Second Soul, Evolution of Individual Mind, Cosmic Circuit, Ego, Astrology, Divided Line, Koshas, Yoga

ORIGINAL LOCATION & FILE NAME (of PDF used for typing): ASN MASTER SOUL 111-130.PDF (pp. 116-130); ASN MASTER SOUL 131-151.PDF (formerly ASN MASTER SOUL 131-150.PDF) (p. 131)

CONTENTS:

Purpose of life is the acquisition of true knowledge

Ideas being assimilated by second soul indicated by astrological chart

Knowledge must be lived or it becomes a source of infection

Many lives in the body are needed to achieve maturity in the philosophic life

Evolution of individual mind takes place through Ishvara's World-Idea

Planetary spheres = spontaneous wisdom functioning of cosmic soul

Individual mind translates cosmic functioning into perception and identifies with a body

Individual soul evolves rational mind, evolves to intellection, to introspection, to intrinsic self-awareness

Samsaric life finally leads to the question "Why?" and the dawning of reflective consciousness

Identity provided by individual soul, continuity provided by World-Idea; ego is combination of both

Ego must be accepted and denied

Plotinus, IV.8.5

Soul forced to attend to body and its experiences; later an evolution occurring at level of reasoning soul

KCB on reflection

Intrusion of rational brings about moral conflict

We must begin to choose to live by the higher

Moment of birth

Individual soul, symbolized by Sun in chart, source of subjectivity, tethers together instinctual functioning

Sun as individuating quality of the life; other six planets bring it to reflective self-awareness

Functioning of psychosomatic brings about appearance; this is the field upon which reasoning soul passes judgment; this results in building up of manomaya

Deeper level of our mind participates in cosmic soul's functioning without reflection

Yoga and samyama

Koshas and divided line; from sensible world to insight

BOOKS QUOTED FROM OR REFERENCED:

• Plotinus, The Enneads (MacKenna translation, 4th ed.)

• Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 1, "Studies in Samkhya Philosophy"

PLOTINUS QUOTES REFERENCED: II.3.17, III.8.6. IV.2.1-2, IV.8.5, V.3.6, VI.7.6

DIAGRAM embedded in this paper:

• FIGURE ASN MASTER SOUL-129. Koshas, Samadhis, Levels of Cosmic Manifestation, and Divided Line.

AD HANDWRITING: Typewriter typed, a few AD edits, extensive student edits

COMPLETENESS: Full Paper

PUBLISHABILITY: Yes, parts already published in Astronoesis

ALTERNATE VERSIONS: AD SUPP 996-1015 ASN Original.PDF, AD SUPP 1016-1035 ASN Originals.PDF. This paper is found, not always in order, on the following pages: 1005-1006, 1008-1011, 1013-1014, 1019, 1021-1024, 1026, 1031-1033.

DATE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS PAPER: 1983 0715

VERSION OF PAPER IN ASTRONOESIS: Parts of this paper can be found in Astronoesis on the following pages: 259, 261, 278-279, 282-283, 350, 352-353. Not all of the paper is published in Astronoesis.

RETYPED AND REFORMATTED by IT 2022

NOTES:

• RETYPED AD PAPER presented in class (V09MP).

• This is 1983 07/15b = Evolution of the Individual Mind Paper, and the second entry associated with this date. 1983 07/15a = Plotinus; Soul Class.

• This paper is read and discussed in WG Class 1983 0715a Plotinus; Soul.

• All spelling corrected, abbreviations spelled out, all quotes fixed to conform to published version.

Evolution of the Individual Mind

[File ASN MASTER SOUL 111-130.PDF Begins (pp. 116-130)]

III.8.6 [Read on 7/15/83] [Levels of Understanding traversed by I AM, known to Sage] [Note: Bracketed is student handwriting at top of page.]

The purpose of life, according to Plotinus, is the acquisition of true knowledge and the individual's life in the sensible world is for that purpose. The astrological chart can and does reveal the specific ideas being manifested by that life and assimilated by the individual mind towards that goal. This is the fundamental spiritual nature of astrology. There are many levels of meaning from the ideas hidden in the symbolism of the degrees, which we have referred to as the basic presuppositions and attitudes that are the person. These basic ideas orientate a person toward certain goals in his life and this activity furthers the contemplation carried on by the mind. This contemplation or 'in-seeing' is the silent assimilation of those reasons which the second soul is garnering from the experiences in the sensible, because it could not achieve it directly in the Intellectual realm. Plotinus goes on to say that the purpose of the journey through the cosmic circuit is to acquire some good. What possible good could this be? It is the acquisition of those ideas by the mind--the second soul--to complete the vision resident in the logos. So it is rather a straightforward affair to discern that the purpose of all this activity is to ultimately possess the object of contemplation, the ideas or reason principles that are being manifested by life. This understanding will eventuate in the fulfillment, the peaceful smile of a Buddha.

But now we must consider the more immediate consequences involved in acquiring this knowledge. The knowledge must be applied to the facts of experience and to the yet unresolved picture of the world. The mind must make its own that which it knows. Knowledge must be lived or it becomes a source of infection and these ideas must therefore be applied in their place in the lower world, that is, by being translated into ethics, morality, and the virtues, otherwise it is not yet knowledge actualized.

The briefness of this explanation should not delude us into conceiving that this is a process that can be accomplished within the mortality of the ego. It is a process spread over an indeterminable amount of time and involves the assumption of many bodies to secure the necessary observations. To grasp the meaning of this process, assume the existence of a secondary soul that has set out to fulfill its vision. Through its own activity it descends into the lower world and procures the body necessary in order to understand certain reason principles which sensible experience can provide. The accompanying natal chart would indicate those reason principles that will sensibly manifest as this entity and its experiences from which the second soul extracts the essence. The repetition of an indefinite number of such bodies would provide the second soul with all the reason principles necessary to achieve its vision. Many lives in the body are needed by the evolving understanding to achieve maturity in the philosophic life. Only in this very wide context can the last paragraph of this tractate of Plotinus be understood.

"The Sage, then, has gone through a process of reasoning when he expounds his act to others; but in relation to himself he is Vision: such a man is already set, not merely in regard to exterior things but also within himself, towards what is one and at rest: all his faculty and life are inward-bent." (III.8.6)

[Note: In this version the following sentence is crossed out and brought in again after "…environment which is provided by the Cosmic Soul" a couple paragraphs down.] Our mind or the lowest phase of our Soul is conjoined to the lowest phase of the Cosmic Soul. The evolution of the individual mind is taking place through the World Idea that is being manifested by our Ishvara. The intricacies of this process we hope to indicate, nonetheless it will be quite fragmentary, a mere shadow of an outline. It was previously pointed out that our Solar Logos has an intellectual and reasoning phase in the Nous but its so-called lower phase is manifesting its idea of the entirety. Insofar as the Cosmic Soul participates in the idea of the 6 holy forces it will have these powers at its disposal in order to bring about a manifestation of its own Idea of the World. These powers are sensibly represented by the Chaldean planets (and our attempt to correlate and itemize these powers with the planets is tentative and mainly provocative). The perpetual spontaneity of their ordered functioning -- and our childish attempts to discover something about this abiding wisdom…

This cosmic activity is received by the individual mind and translated into space-time perceptions, on the one hand--a sensible presentation--and on the other, a perception of the sensible prior to the bifurcation into an empirical subject-object. This is a view that belongs to the 'Witness I'. But being here implies the identification of that unknown witness with a body or psycho-somatic organism through which it can intensely experience its own functioning. What is becoming explicit in this exegesis is a theory of the endless evolution of an individual's soul [sic: individual soul's] awareness of its content. Through reasoning on the content of the World-Idea which it is manifesting, the soul evolves its understanding until intellection becomes predominant, and this is brought to bear on its own self-nature. If the inquiry is pursued, this process will result in intrinsic self-awareness.

If we retrace our steps and consider Plotinus' remarks about the second soul--that part which is said to be divisible among bodies, (IV.2.1, 2) then starting at the lowest we may understand how this germ now reascends through the various levels of the environment which is provided by the Cosmic Soul.

Insofar as the animal body is composed of the traces of prior activity of Cosmic Soul, inherent in it are the impulses, desires, etc. which we refer to as the subconscious and this is the life that the ordinary man lives. We may refer to this as the descending spiral where the Soul of man identifies more and more with the not-I. It has its joys and sorrows but finally leads to satiety--this is the samsaric life, the endless round of birth and death which finally leads to the question "Why?" and the dawning of reflective consciousness.

It is important at this junction to point out that the moment-by-moment manifestation of the World Idea includes these bodies which individual Souls will inhabit in order to experience a world appearance. It is not to be forgotten that those bodies are being produced and manifested moment-by-moment and have a sort of continuity which is provided by the World-Idea. The individual Soul imparts to that body a subjectivity or consciousness which is characteristically self-identical. The combination of these two distinct levels gives rise to the personal ego, a spurious entity that is constituted by a self-identical Consciousness and a body being instantiated. So within this same entity there is an image or traces of the Cosmic soul powers which fabricated it as well as traces of an individual soul consciousness and its evolutionary status. It should be noticed that the basis of the ego, its body or psycho-somatic organism, has no self-identity from one moment to the next for it is part of the vibrating World Idea, but the feeling of there being a self-identity comes from a completely different level of reality, that is, it appropriates this consciousness of the lower phase of the Soul as its very own.

This confluence between the two separate items . . . the body or psycho-somatic organism--which is part of the World-Idea that is being instantiated and the consciousness that identifies itself with the body are intermingled so that what arises--ego--must be accepted and denied accordingly. That is, it must be developed so that it can become a medium for the Soul's experience and has its place as part of the World Idea. But it must be emphatically denied the status of an 'I'. Plotinus reminds us in II.3.17 that the nature of the matter which constitutes our body insists on making the past present--a combustion process that is objectifying and actualizing its illusory self-identity and the bitter consequences of identifying with that process.

P.B. Ideas Orange, XIII, p. 27 #19 and (IV.8.5 quote)

The Soul by inhabiting a body prepared for it by the World Idea is forced into a development and actualization of its powers. (quote last para of IV.8.5)

"Thus, in sum, the Soul, a divine being and a dweller in the loftier realms, has entered body: it is a god, a later phase of the divine: but, under stress of its powers and of its tendency to bring order to its next lower, it penetrates to this sphere in a voluntary plunge: if it turns back quickly all is well; it will have taken no hurt by acquiring the knowledge of evil and coming to understand what sin is, by bringing its forces into manifest play, by exhibiting those activities and productions which, remaining merely potential in the unembodied, might as well never have been even there, if destined never to come into actuality, so that the Soul itself would never have known that suppressed and inhibited total.

"The act reveals the power, a power hidden, and we might almost say obliterated or non-existent, unless at some moment it became effective: in the world as it is, the richness of the outer stirs us all to the wonder of the inner whose greatness is displayed in acts so splendid." (IV.8.5)

But it is the peculiar way in which this is done that has baffled investigators and questers, and of course is completely unavailable to the uninstructed, unillumined astrologers.

How does the Soul participate in the wisdom of the Cosmic Circuit and how is it instructed by it? Insofar as the ego is part of the World Idea, it evolves within that World Idea; secondly, the Soul as identified with the ego as part of the World process is forced to attend to the body and its experiences and must absorb, even if unconsciously, the ideas inherent in it. But there reaches a point when the development of ethics and understanding will lead to an evolution occurring at the higher level or the reasoning soul--the phase of the individual Soul conjoined with the transiting Chaldean planets.

There can be many causes or reasons which bring the ego to a temporary standstill and when the mind ceases to be preoccupied with living out the animal compulsions--even temporarily--it can become a medium or apparatus wherein the rational process can be reflected. Even more precisely, instances can be shown within a natal chart when such a crisis is reached and the normal functioning is inhibited so that reflection on that life can proceed. We can speak of this as an intrusion of a higher level of understanding or the presence of the rational mind mingling with and illumining the instinctual life and evaluating it. (quote KCB)

"Reflection is at all stages a freeing process, the mind freeing itself from the body or from itself as a subtle body of the self. The process is spiritual in the sense that it is as much conative as intellectual, a detaching activity which may be indifferently called the will to deny will (will to nivrtti) or the knowing function. It is in reflection that the self-assertive will (will to pravrtti) is known to have been one with the body that is sought to be freed from; and it is in reflection that the given object is negatively willed to be detachedly known. In Samkhya there is really no will to deny will as in Yoga: it is just the knowing process, knowledge as mental being a process. In Samkhya the consummation of this reversion of the will, which is the knowing process, is conceived as viveka which is not eternal quiescent knowledge which would be the self but the mind distinguishing, defining or detaching itself from the self and thereby losing itself in unknown or unmanifest Prakriti, the self consequently standing in its eternally manifest solitariness." (KCB, "Studies in Samkhya Philosophy," pp. 143-144, para 17)

Thus it is inevitable that a moral conflict ensues, demanding a growth of ethics and understanding that is spread over an indeterminable amount of time.

The growth of this understanding in the process of individuation necessitates the notion that one's evolution and spiritual growth requires his conscious participation; or that one must take a hand in the game of life. We must begin to choose--and it is our choice--to live by the higher, the ideas, or to continue to be led by the compulsions inherent in the animal body. Especially valuable at this time would be the acquaintance with any doctrine that is conducive toward that goal. We are reminded here of Plotinus' remark in V.3.6 that "our way is to teach our Soul…"

If we use picture language, mind which is formless can be conceived of as coextensive with the planetary spheres. Its entrance into a body is indicated at the moment of birth and the first breath imprints the quality of the rational Soul on the organism. At this moment that aspect of the Soul which is divisible about bodies is identified with the organized body, forming the animate or ego, the rational remaining above.

A moment of that spontaneous activity of the undivided mind contains the peculiar characteristics or traces of that Soul--this coincides with the peculiar evolutionary status of the individual incarnating Soul. The individual Soul at that moment brings with it into the body those peculiar compulsions, fixed ideas, etc. and it will be the Source of life and consciousness for that individual entity. This ray of individual Soul will be the source of the subjectivity, the individual I-ness which tethers together all the instinctual functioning of that entity. The Sun symbolizes this life principle; and one way of viewing the natal chart is to see the Sun on a certain degree as symbolizing that life circumscribed by the purpose indicated and the other Chaldeans as manifesting that central purpose. (insert example from Steiner)

The Sun degree in the chart may be used to symbolize the individuating quality of that life, being brought to self-reflective awareness through the function of the other six powers within the organism. The resulting functioning of this psycho-somatic organism brings about the appearance which is the field upon which the reasoning Soul passes judgment. From this complex interaction the result is the building up of the manomaya or sunlike body. This sheath is provided by and is concomitant with the functioning of the Cosmic Soul--the Sun and its rational powers--and so may be aligned with the sun-centered view of the cosmos, i.e., rational mind. We find that this deeper level of our mind, the subtler vestment which the light of soul has put on in its descent, is participating in the Cosmic Soul's intelligent functions without deliberation or reflection, and so above our ego awareness.

In order to become aware of our higher nature, various systems have been devised. For example in the Yoga system the transition to the sunlike body which they refer to as the manomayakosa and the subsequent subtler levels as a conscious attainment cannot be accomplished without the technique of meditation. They speak of it having a threefold aspect--there is concentration on the thought resulting in the stillness of the empirical mind which leads to an inwardization of consciousness and then silence. This technique is called Samayana [sic; Samyama] in yoga terminology. This meditation leads us out of the empirical mind into the mind of light, the first of a series that leads finally to the formless contemplation of the pure Soul and Nous. The first level of meditation, if successful, would lead to the disidentification with the phenomenal or lowest sheath, to the viewpoint of the sunlike body. The successive application of the threefold technique on this and the following levels leads to a series of transitions through the sheaths or forms of thought, leading up to the I AM or Overself. Apparently, although the transition between levels does involve a cessation of thought at each level, the pure light of the soul, or the I AM principle, does not become immediately available in normal practice, because of the immediate appropriation by the next subtler level of thought with which it becomes identified. We may represent this process by using our pictorial representation of the sensible world.

[FIGURE ASN MASTER SOUL-129. Koshas, Samadhis, Levels of Cosmic Manifestation, and Divided Line. KWF = Knowing Willing Feeling. Facsimile scan from ASN MASTER SOUL 111-130.PDF, p. 129.]

The two lowest sheaths--manas and the combined prano/anno can be portrayed as the sensible world of Plato's divided line whose author is our sun. Once the awareness of the Sunlike body is realized and actualized, which may be spoken of as living the rational life, freed from the overwhelming compulsion of the memories and habits, there is the further need to participate and evolve within us the clearer intuitive vision and efficacy of the Ideas through the triple modes of super-reflective willing, knowing, and feeling. That each individual human soul must apply these powers to the understanding of the World Idea and of their role within it is to understand at the same time the universal reason principles that are manifesting themselves or working themselves out through and within the World Idea. Here we must think not only in terms of developing the rational soul powers, but must align these to the intelligence of the Ideas which are manifesting themselves. At this level we make available the spiritual function of Reason, or the Noeron, which informs the functioning of the rational mind, and recognizes the higher or universal knowing principles, those principles which are the higher knower or the intelligence of the sphere of the inerratic Ideas. These spiritual Presences are brought into manifesting by the functioning of Uranus Neptune Pluto in relation to our natal chart. Similarly the transits of the Chaldean planets can be used to illustrate the intrusion into the ego of the rational mind. (see VI.7.6)

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[File ASN MASTER SOUL 131-151.PDF (formerly ASN MASTER SOUL 131-150.PDF) Begins (p. 131)]

The intellectuality within us, (that is represented by the inerratic spheres), particularizes itself (becomes available to each individual Soul) through its un-unifiable triple function of Knowing, Willing, and Feeling. This could be conceived of as an image of the multiple organ of Intellect's self-vision in the Nous. The Soul through these transcendent functions is the recipient of the Ideas--a spiritual gnosis often referred to as the vijnanamaya kosa--that includes the rational Soul's content. After the full development of Knowing Willing Feeling and their being brought into coalescence arises the possibility of insight or true self-cognition of the Overself. The reason principles that robe the pure I--or light of the Soul--are referred to as the anandamaya kosa, the joy of existence and the inherent Intellectuality of the Ideas available to the I AM or Overself.

[The following is found in student handwriting at the bottom of the page: "If Ananda = presence of Nous -- (not image) then it is higher Knower. If not, Ananda is highest level of World Idea."]

[File ASN MASTER SOUL 131-151.PDF (formerly ASN MASTER SOUL 131-150.PDF) Ends (p. 131)]