Expansion of consciousness is the goal of the evolutionary process. It is achieved through contact with impressions coming from without, and further expansions as a result of contact with impressions coming from within. As consciousness evolves in time, so do the forms which contain it. The improving of equipment as a result of the demand of consciousness is the secret of the evolutionary impulse down the ages.
Our physical mechanisms (head, heart and guts) have developed naturally over time in response to forces emanating from the surrounding environment. The unfoldment of the five physical senses are the result of sensitive response to sound, heat and cold, light, and the need for sustenance from the outer world.
Consider the marvellous development of the eyes in response to incoming light which provide for the reflection of precise images of the physical world; the ears in response to a wide range of sounds; the surface of the skin, sensitive to the slightest touch and atmospheric conditions; the tongue and nose, as sophisticated mechanisms for the appreciation of taste and smell. These sense mechanisms have evolved over eons for the Observer (the soul) within to receive clear impressions to guide it accurately and appropriately along the course of evolution.
We have come a long way–in course of time and through the long evolutionary process–in responding to emotional contacts from the astral/emotional and to the concrete levels of the mind. For some, it includes the gain of telepathic contact from the world of higher mind. So it is, in this way, that we learn to share communal living whilst embodied in the physical, emotional and lower mental activities of the three worlds which constitute our personality environment.
What we imbibe in this life of continual impression is mostly dependent upon our abilities to create from the environment and to draw from it what we need in all the various parts of our being.
Our thoughts, feelings, words and deeds have an ongoing effect on ourselves and on others as we create a continual stream of action and reaction in our collective living. Whether or not we accept this premise, the fact remains that our actions and responses within these three realms of human endeavour, are ever potent for good or evil, for further expansion, or lack thereof. With this understanding of the dichotomy between the Soul and personality comes the never-ending choices in the drama of life to play our part for the greater good or not.
The effects of our interplay in the three worlds become clearer to see when we learn to look from the point of view of the Soul, the detached Observer. From this vantage point, personality activities are seen more accurately and the process of intelligent adaptation to surface contacts can be applied more intelligently to meet the needs.
In the sifting of the true from the false, emphasis may be laid upon the ideal and the spiritual, and not, as is so commonly the case, upon the material and physical. This shift in attitude sets the stage for further expansions and experiences of more subjective worlds.
The comprehension of life depends upon where we, as individuals, lay the emphasis. For a long time the soul is locked out as the consciousness identifies with the daily field of experience–the three lower worlds which constitute the ring-pass-not of the personality–and remains ignorant of the higher Self. As time passes and experience is gained, often through suffering, the centre of identification shifts and we become less identified with the habitual field of personality experience and more aware of the presence of the soul as the true Self.
In the growing acknowledgement of goals attained through the long evolutionary cycle within the three lower worlds, there lies for us the guarantee of achievement in more subjective worlds which have always existed but of which we are still often unaware. The state of consciousness is ever a question of what ‘impresses’ us at any given moment and the manner in which it conditions us.
What should be borne clearly in mind is that the soul is a body of light, our higher centre of consciousness and the means of further expansion. The personality self which is conditioned by the three lower bodies (physical, emotional and mental) are its centres of contact with the outer world through which experience is gained, until a point is reached when the two are integrated to become one guiding light in service to the world. This point requires deeper reflection.
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