AMYDON-EXETER CENTRE 113

Pratyahara

The fifth segment of the Yoga teaching, as it has been passed down over the ages in its purely oral form, is called Pratyahara, and has to do with understanding of the nature of mind, in particular the structure of mind, which is comprised of all the senses, and through which each person is in touch with the world in which he lives and moves. Through his own particular sense structure, his own mind, each person's world - the only world in which he lives - is created. The word Pratyahara means, in fact, this structure or sense organ1 - this most important passive organ of man's mind, by which everything coming from outside the individual's own etheric body is received.2 All etheric and physical data from the man's environment are received by this mental organ in himself; what is received, and how it is received depend upon the nature and development of this mental sense organ. Its nature is a reflection of the man's level of being, of the stage of his mind-development. To this structure of Pratyahara belong the two centres, or chakras, in man which have to do with the reception of impressions, both physical and etheric, from outside,3 that is, the Digestive Centre and the Solar Plexus. The Head Centre belongs only in part to the Pratyahara, insofar as it is the receiver of guidance or vibrations of help from the etheric world around a person. The Head Centre is primarily a focus for knowledge that comes from within the person's own etheric being, and so belongs to another aspect of his mind altogether.

1. Most contemporary books on yoga define Pratyahara along the lines of Patanjali (The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali) as a withdrawal or control of the senses. Patanjali speaks of a “withdrawal of the senses… from their proper business (so that they) are imitating… the nature of the mind” (II, 54: translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood). This means that the aim of the yogi is not merely a withdrawal of attention at will from the messages coming in from the senses, but being able to command the senses when and how to operate (Wood, Yoga, Pelican 1959, p.138).

Control of the senses in this way has never formed part of the oral teaching of Yoga. The aim was never to stop or control in any way the reception of impressions, or to prevent their re-direction to the mind. The aim was - and is - self-knowledge: knowledge about the working of this part of man's mind, observation of its actual functioning in the individual man, and growth or extension of personal awareness.

The oral teaching has never been concerned with any “withdrawal of the senses from their proper function”, but rather with what is, in a sense, the very opposite of this statement. Its aim is to do everything to cleanse and strengthen the vehicles through which man apprehends the universe around him, for an unimpeded and accurate reception and transmission to his mind of every kind of impression, sensual and etheric. Such is the function of the pranayama exercises. An entirely new stage is begun by a man after the development of his “new” will, when objective experience and the reception of objective reality begin to become possible. But every new stage reached by a man in the course of his spiritual evolution depends on the correct and proper functioning of every aspect of his being, according to its inherent nature. No true growth can proceed from a distortion of any part of a man's nature. A “withdrawal of the senses from their proper function” would lead to such a distortion (or perversion), and create an obstacle to real spiritual development.

In the same way, this oral teaching has never encouraged “the senses to imitate the mind of man,” as is obvious from all that is written above. For the senses are the mind of man, or rather form a large and coherent part of its structure, which takes in every vibration which he receives from his environment.

2. The Enneagram Triangle, which has already been discussed above, stands for the totality of man's mind. Point 3 on it stands for this passive sense organ, which receives everything coming into the man's mind from outside his own etheric body. A Culbone Visitor's note: Advertised Enneagram study courses often reflect a less traditional interpretation of this symbol, one that derives quite recently from Gurdjieff. Cfr Helen Palmer, The Enneagram - Understanding yourself and the others in your life (San Francisco: Harper 1991).

3. This mental organ of the senses has nothing to do with the registering of impressions, but only with receiving them in a certain way, according to its nature and development. The impressions which are only registered and not actually received, do not remain long, but gradually fade, and leave no memory-trace. So, also, the true nature of impressions does not remain with a person, but only that particular form of them in which they are received by his mind, or his own mental sense organ.

Mind is etheric in nature, and is, in fact - not merely symbolically, a microcosm of the whole etheric world in which all men live and have their being. Mind is a replica of the entire etheric universe of being known to man.

The mind of every person on Earth may be thought of as potentially a seven-storey house, every level of which opens out into a different sphere of existence in the etheric world. It may also be thought of as a house having fourteen possible rooms which a person may inhabit. These fourteen compartments open out into the seven “upper” etheric levels, through which each person will progress during the æons of his spiritual evolution, and into the seven “lower” etheric spheres or forms of life into which men can descend and where they express their inner states of distortion or perversion. Man's mind consists of fourteen kinds of mental state which open out onto fourteen kinds of place; these vary from the deepest forms of darkness and most negative or perverted states of being to one where light and truth are most perfectly reflected. The place of greatest darkness exists for a man when all light and truth have been rejected by his own will; in fact, were it not for the ‘darkness’ of a man's state of mind - of the states of mind of many people - such a place could not exist, for the place of darkness in the etheric sphere has been created by those people who have willed darkness rather than light and have created, first of all for themselves, mental states into which no light or truth could enter. As a state of mind reflects outwards and creates place so a person becomes enclosed in a world of his own making. On the highest level a man's mind will reflect all that exists in the etheric universe; for a man to reach this level, he must will to know and experience all things as they are. And so, in this same way, all gradations of darkness and light are created by a man's will and experienced both as state of mind and place.

Every man, whatever the stage of his being, has a mind which contains all fourteen possible states and opens out into the fourteen etheric levels or places. When a man passes out of his physical body he still possesses the same mind. Even at the seventh level of light, where the mind of a man is wholly cleansed and free of all divisions, it will still be a microcosm of the etheric universe for it will accurately reflect every level of darkness and light. And through his mind the person will then be able to perceive the whole Etheric and know the details of its meaning and structure. It will not reflect in the way any other mind reflects, for every mind is unique because it has been created by the person's own unique experiences. Only when that person goes beyond the Etheric altogether does his mind cease to reflect the etheric levels because he is outside their orbit; but when he re-enters the etheric spheres, his mind again reflects their entire structure in accordance with its own nature. A man cannot escape the nature of mind; he cannot alter the fact that it is, in a sense, related to everything in the etheric universe. He is, through his mind, indirectly connected with every level of despair and darkness and perversion - and, equally, with every level of hope and light and intelligence - in the universe. Even at the seventh level, when a man has gone through all the etheric experiences that belong to his own being and transmuted them, he is still connected with every etheric level and is, to a degree, responsible for all that exists in this universe. Until the whole of mankind is redeemed and regenerated, so long will all men remain part of and responsible for one another and all that exists in the etheric world.4

4. Buddhism provides an image of the person who, having achieved “en-lightenment” beyond the etheric sphere, nevertheless returns to that sphere - to help with the redemption of all mankind, and remains in that sphere, until all mankind is regenerated. This is the Boddhisattwa

All minds were created by Mind and are continuing to be created by Mind. State exists before place. All creation is through individual minds and there has been no creation apart from this. No abstract or impersonal forces ever created rock or plant or animal - let alone man. Nothing5 existed before individual mind, that is the minds of individual men.

5. I.e., no form of creation.

Through long æons of evolution, individual minds have created innumerable places of existence, first etheric and then physical, and structured and furnished them with inanimate and animate forms. Without knowledge of the laws of Creation to begin with, and unconscious of himself and the nature of the Etheric Substance, man created a whole universe through is own mind. Only at later stages in his evolution, did man begin to become conscious of himself and of the nature of the Etheric and so begin more consciously to explore and create. As individual men evolved, the nature of their states altered and, out of these altered states, they created new habitations. Others who followed after these “explorers” entered into the places or habitations already created for them. Every stage of evolution towards the light, every manifestation on the path of growth, is created by individual men who are truly explorers and trail-breakers. Likewise, all manifestations of perversion and distortion which exist in the universe are created by individual men. There is nothing in the etheric universe or beyond, no aspect of objective reality: no place or structure of place or denizen of place, which has not been created by individual men and women.

The mind of the individual person is not merely circumscribed and defined by its particular physical expression, in its limited physical body, but partakes of the whole extension of Mind. This means not only spatial extension - and extension into every possible place and state, but participation in the creative potentiality of Mind as well. The mind of every individual human being contains the ability to create, for good or ill. And every man, whether consciously or unconsciously, makes use of this ability.

Through their Creative Imaginations men create the worlds in which they live - or adapt and select from and work upon the world into which they have been born. All this proceeds unconsciously. Each person's mind, unconsciously and in accordance with its own nature, creates a “self” and a world for it to inhabit; this becomes “the world” through which that person apprehends and experiences every form of life around him. This creation of his own mind is his own subjective reality - not less real for its “subjectivity” than any other form of reality. This is what he takes as real and experiences as real. But however real it is for him, it is not real for other people; for subjective reality is not the same as objective reality.

Man's mind is also capable of creating not only those forms of reality which are true for him, but objective reality as well. The creation of all forms of objective reality is a result of the combined effort of Creative Imagination and Will. When a person's individual will - the sum of all his separate wills - enters into the act of creation, whatever the direction or form of its expression, the result is one of objective reality. For a man to will what his mind has created therre must be a certain degree of consciousness. Every kind of objective reality, every manifestation which has reality for other people as well as for the man who created it, is the result of his will and his consciousness. Subjective reality, which is only real for the individual person, is primarily the result of his Creative Imagination;6 for this subjective reality to become objective it has to be acted upon by his will and consciousness.

6. Will also enters into the creation of all subjective reality, but not consciously, and only insofar as it initiates, or calls into action, the process of creation.

Both kinds of reality exist at every human level. At every level men and women live and experience through their own forms of subjective reality. Slowly, these forms of reality change or are altered as the individual learns, grows, and evolves. Also, at every level in the long process of human evolution, there have been individuals in whom will has evolved more quickly and who have used their wills to create new environments for other people to dwell in as well as themselves. All the levels through which human beings evolve towards the light have been created in this way by individual persons, inspired by their Creative Imaginations, wills, and consciousness. This process of creation is still going on as men continue to evolve beyond the already-known states and experiences and places.

But men do not only create positive environments or forms of expression for others to experience; they can also create distortions, demons, and places of darkness for people to inhabit. The process of negative creation is exactly the same as it is for a positive expression: it depends upon active willing and upon a certain degree of consciousness on the part of the individual.

People can spend part - even a large part - of their lives dwelling in a distorted or negative environment of their own creation; so long as it is their own subjective reality it does not directly affect other people. They are also in some measure, at some point in their physical lives - or later on - in an etheric existence, open to a form of help which can free them and make possible new expressions of growth. If, however, a person actively wills his own form of distorted reality he can create out of it a reality with objective existence which envelops everyone involved with that person in some degree of the same distortion. That person's ‘reality’ has not only been projected outside himself but actively created and given independent existence according to its inherent nature. The de-creation of this form of reality is much more complex and takes much longer to accomplish, for it is not only the mind of a single individual which is involved, but the minds of many individuals and a set of facts which has developed a life of its own.

The vast majority of men in physical bodies live out their lives in only one storey of the multi-storey structure of the etheric world, in one very small part of their total mind potential. In fact, most men take many many ‘lifetimes’ of etheric* experience on one level before they progress onto a higher level in their individual pattern of evolution. A few people are able to pass through many experiences and several etheric levels during a physical lifetime; this was the original intention or aim with regard to life in a physical body, but it is no longer usual. Most men spend their whole lives not only in one storey in the etheric - or mental - universe, but live in a very small segment of that storey. The segment in which they live constitutes what is real for them. The dimensions of their own personal reality remain relatively unchanged throughout their lives until they begin to realise that that they take for reality has, in fact, been created by themselves. Only then does the nature of their experience begin to change as their conception of reality becomes less rigid. When they begin to see that the mental forms which structure their thinking, seeing, and therefore their lives are products of their own imagination or the imagination of the society in which they live, so they begin to become loosened from that conception of reality which they have hitherto taken for granted.

* A Culbone Visitor's note: not “physical experience on Earth” - see Joan's earlier assertion regarding “once-only life on Earth” above.

Reality is never fixed or constant but always relative to the person and time. What is real for someone at one time, and in one state or on one level of being, becomes unreal at another. What one person takes as real and acts from as real, is real for him. It is in the nature of the kind of reality created by men at a certain level of existence that this fact of relativity is not understood, for at this level the forms of man's thinking are dualistic and absolute; absolutes are axiomatic to his thinking, definitions are rigid. At times of cultural fissiparation and when particular social cohesions begin to break down,7 the “absolutes” or axioms on which these cultures and their thinking/behaviour patterns are based are thrown into question; the thinking of the men living in these societies may become temporarily less rigid but is often confused. True relativity of thinking does not result from such cultural or social changes; individual men and women only learn to think relatively through growth in their own personal states of awareness.

7. Cultures or societies are usually seen to have a natural rhythm of growth, maturity, and decay - and, possibly, regeneration.

Reality is all that people take as real with their minds at a certain level. Regardless of the state of any particular culture or society, at any one time, it may contain individuals from any or all of the seven levels of being and with any of the seven possible forms of distortion. All these levels and forms can co-exist in the same physical society at any one time and each level or form will open out onto a different conception and experience of reality.

For every human being in any given society, there are three out of the many possible etheric levels or mental states which can be more or less real for him during his lifetime. The first of these is the mental or etheric stage which he inhabits most of the time, and the small segment or expression of it peculiar to himself. The second one is the negative counterpart, of distortion or perversion, to the positive stage he should naturally inhabit. This is the state into which he can fall or touch momentarily through his own wilfulness, strong emotion, self-imagination, desire for power - or which he can come to inhabit entirely. The third state which it is possible for him to experience is the one above his ordinary level which he can also touch occasionally and even unexpectedly. This is not necessarily another level of being, but may be a higher manifestation of the level he ordinarily inhabits.8 A person is not only able to touch or momentarily experience one or more stages other than the one he normally inhabits, he can also begin to inhabit either a higher or lower level of mind. Movement of being, either upwards or downwards, is not only possible for everyone, it is implicit in all human life. Such movement is even implicit in the smallest choices a person makes throughout his physical lifetime. Even where change in the level of being a person inhabits is not obvious, it nonetheless takes place in everyone, and the direction in which a man's choices tend will indicate the changes in his being. There is no such thing as a stable or static mental state for a man; there must be movement, and the direction of this movement is either upwards, towards the level above - even if its actual achievement may be many lifetimes away - or downwards towards a lower level, which is a level of distortion and abnormality.9

8. There are many recorded experiences of quite ordinary people, as well as of mystics, in which this “jump” in mental/etheric level is clearly illustrated. (See, for example, F. C. Happold's Mysticism, Pelican Books 1963.) A person in whom this happens suddenly finds himself on another plane of reality, where he experiences a mundane happening in an entirely new way, or an everyday object is unexpectedly transformed in appearance, or heretofore unrelated objects or ideas come together to form a coherent and meaningful pattern. What has, in fact, happened is that the person experiences another and higher mental level, which opens out onto another etheric level of reality. Wherever he is, in his thoughts, and in his external environment, at the moment of this happening, is transformed for him, because of the mental state through which he experiences it. The same “things” exist as before - the same trees, grass, landscape; the same thoughts, ideas, relationships - but the reality-tone of everything is different. The person experiences a new level of the etheric reality of everything around and within him. Some of the mental structure and limitation of the level of mind he usually inhabits no longer exist on the higher level, and so the reality he sees is “new”, although it is related to the previous one.

9. The movement “downward” is never back to a previous level in the etheric growth pattern through which a person has evolved, but always into one of the seven forms of distortion or perversion, depending entirely upon the mental state, and will, of the individual concerned.

Mind is etheric in nature; the Etheric Spheres can equally well be thought of as having a mental or psychological nature. The terms are interchangeable; even more important, the substances of Mind and Etheric are essentially the same substance. There is only one etheric substance.

Etheric Substance consists of one primary substance which has the possibility of limitless forms. These forms are created by the Creative Force which is, itself, part of the Etheric Substance. In other words, the Creative Force is not separate from the Etheric Substance, being the more active aspect of its nature. For the Etheric Substance combines both active and passive functions; it ‘creates’, and at the same time contains within itself all possible materials for the work of creation, and it is also the crucible within which the act of creation takes place.

But the Creative Force does not activate itself; it does not call itself into action or contain its own aims, motives, or direction. It is an agent that can only be called into action by will, that is, the individual will of a man. The activity of the Creative Force is always under the authority of an individual will (whether the person is in a physical or an etheric body makes no difference) from which derive aim, motive, and direction for the particular creation. All etheric forms of Organic Life, both plant and animal (excluding man), were called into being by this process of creation, prior to their physical manifestation. And the wills of individual men have initiated the physical creation of every living form on Earth. For out of the etheric forms of plant and animal life physical manifestation does not automatically proceed without a new direction of will. All creation - each new creation - starts with the will to create in which aim or purpose is embodied. This aim is impressed upon the Creative Force which then begins to act from it, on and within the Etheric Substance, selecting and developing the materials necessary for the creation of the particular form in which the aim will be embodied. This process of creation is the same in both the etheric and physical spheres; but in the physical sphere the Creative Force also continues to work within each form to maintain, repair, and heal it during the limited duration of its existence.

Mind is composed of Etheric Substance and contains all possible forms. But Mind does not create its own forms; it is, like all Etheric Substance, the material out of which all mental forms are created by man's faculty of imagination - which is the active aspect of Mind. The process of creation is the same in Mind as it is in the Etheric Substance. The Creative Imagination in a man is the mental counterpart of the Creative Force within the Etheric Substance; it is activated by man's will - or self will - through the medium of an aim, purpose, or motive held by that will. It is through his own mind that the aims or underlying motives of a man are given form and made real to himself.

The Creative Imagination in a man is not equal in creative power to the Creative Force because it derives from it. It has the capacity to create only what is real for itself, not what is real for anyone else. The Creative Imagination in a man possesses in itself only the ability to create subjective reality. Most of what it creates is unconscious or, at best, semi-conscious to the person, for the will which activates the Creative Imagination is dispersed, diffuse, and acts through many and unconscious motives. Where the will of a man is working with a higher degree of consciousness there can be a second act of creation which turns the subjective reality into objective reality. This is discussed in another place.

What is important here is the realisation that each man possesses the ability to create - and does create - his own mental world which he alone inhabits and which constitutes reality for him. The ‘gods’ or ‘demons’ he creates for himself, out of his own mind-stuff, have as great a validity for him as do the physical manifestations of Organic Life in the world about him. This fact can scarcely be over-emphasised: that each man inhabits a world which he has created for himself - or at least allowed to be created for him. The world he inhabits during his physical lifetime is not primarily the physical world as it is, or as it was created, but a world created out of his own mind. What he sees around him with his physical sight, and the sense-impressions he receives, are interpreted by this mental structure which forms the basis for all he takes as real.

Every person born into a physical body is born into an established cultural pattern of one kind or another; he acquires a certain kind of mentality from his family and, later on, from his school and the larger social context in which he finds himself.10 Apart from this social-cultural mind which each person in a sense inherits at birth, everyone without exception brings with him into a physical life experience his own mind. This is his own unique form of Etheric Substance which has been worked upon by his own evolving will, the forms of which were created over many periods of existence on other etheric planes. Every person comes into the physical world with this etheric reality which is unique to himself and will pre-structure all his experience on the physical/material plane. Each person arrives with a mind that also contains accurate memory-traces of his previous existences which, however, usually remain inaccessible to him during his physical lifetime.11 This is partly because of the way in which his physical mind becomes structured, but it is due even more to the kind of etheric mind he has built up over long periods of time. Most people are at the stage where their minds are built on more or less rigid conceptions of what is, this absolutistic rather than relative structuring having been built up in their minds long before entering upon physical life on Earth. It is through these mental structures that the new physical life is experienced and upon them that all new impressions are received.

10. Everyone is born into that form of society which most nearly corresponds to the nature, structure, and stage of his own mind.

11. One of the principal aims of practical Yoga teaching is to re-connect with these memory-traces, which is possible through the kundalini sense.

If the a priori nature of mind is not recognised by most men, it is mainly because by the nature of his mental structure, which he has built up through successive experiences, man views each current life as the only life he has ever experienced. This very structure of mind excludes any sense of the continuity of life or the possibility of different life-expressions; it tends to repress or exclude any form of feed-back or inspiration from knowledge acquired in previous ‘lifetimes’, except indirectly. For most people on Earth, knowledge about ‘eternal life’ or spiritual growth through continuous life-expressions does not form part of their mind-structure when they come into physical bodies. They do not bring with them minds which are structured to accept the existence of more than one life - even though they have in fact already experienced numberless forms of life over a vast period of time. Each form of life has constituted for them the only life, either end of which fades into shadowy existence. In between existences, so to speak, in these shadowy wings, there is a fading out of memory so that each “on-stage” call appears like an original “first-night”.12

12. This applies to both Western and Eastern people, for even those born into cultures that use such terms as karma or reincarnation to explain life, do not find ready access to their own personal memory-traces

And yet, traces of personal etheric memory reach the consciousness of nearly everyone at some point during the physical lifetime. These memory-traces from previous life-expressions remind people in a fleetingly tantalizing manner of a place once visited, a familiar experience or condition, or of an intimate relationship beneath what currently appears casual or superficial. Few people are completely without an experience of déjà vue, and yet few people understand its nature or are able to bring any one of these experiences into focus because the mind in which they live is too limited and its terms of reference too narrow to incorporate an understanding of what these traces of memory mean. The minds which most people inhabit could not accommodate any real knowledge of previous existences, except in a fanciful way which explains them, for example, in terms of having been a particular - often historical - person in a previous life.13

13. It is the structure of mind of people on a certain level - that is, on a certain level of etheric or mental reality - which gives this interpretation to their intimations of previous existence. It is from this same etheric level that the theory of reincarnation was evolved, and it is to it that it likewise exclusively belongs. A Culbone Visitor's note: Cfr Meditations on the Tarot (tarotdex.htm) pp. 92-3 for a further helpful clarification of this.

Each person within Creation is on a certain etheric or mental level which, at any one time, defines reality for him whether his life is being pursued in a physical or an etheric body. The kind of body he is momentarily inhabiting does not in itself alter his mind or what he takes as real. The only possibility of change in his kind of reality - that is, a fundamental change in what he sees and experiences as real - is through a change of mind. Change in the kind of reality a person experiences comes only through an acceptance of the fact that the mind is the seat of his experience of reality, and it comes then only through a strong desire on the part of his will to experience new aspects of reality. This desire must be pursued consciously until experience loosens instead of reinforces the old structure and old forms, and truly new experience becomes possible. Each mind can be cleansed in time so that all its forms reflect etheric reality truly instead of limiting or distorting it. This is not only a possibility but a goal towards which all spiritual growth is tending. But this can only take place after a man has accepted that the reality he thinks he sees in in fact the mind he inhabits and, recognising this fact, takes responsibility for his mind by questioning each form it contains.

Etheric reality and the different levels of which it is made up may be represented diagrammatically as a ladder consisting of fourteen rungs. The seven upper rungs represent the stages or levels through which man progresses, through limitless experience and uncountable lifetimes, towards ever-increasing understanding and awareness. The seven lower rungs stand for the corresponding levels of distortion and lead from relatively minor states of mental distortion to a state of all-encompassing spiritual darkness. Although the rungs lead downwards in the sense that they represent states of decreasing light, they do not stand for any possible retrogression for man. A man cannot retrogress by descending through levels of darkness in the same way as he can progress and grow towards increasing consciousness and understanding. A man can descend into only one state of distortion at a time, the level of which depends upon the negative forms he has allowed to develop in his own being. From this state he does not retrogress further into still lower states, but, after much help from others and through his own efforts, he can return to the state - or stage - from which he came. His return to this state never involves a progression upwards through lesser states of distortion. The healing of each ‘illness’ - and these lower states can best be thought of as forms of spiritual illness - means a return to a state of relative health, not a long progression through other kinds of illness. For each of the seven lower states of distortion is in fact distinct in itself and corresponds only to the particular mental form of which it is an aberration; it does not actually relate to the other lower levels as to rungs on a ladder.

Each of the seven lower stages is a distortion, in some respects, of the corresponding upper level or stage of growth. Thus, the first level downwards corresponds in a certain way to the first level on the ascending ladder, and the second level downward represents a distortion of the second level on the ascending ladder, and so on. The highest etheric level - where Mind may be compared to a pure crystal, which truly reflects all life and where a man's consciousness includes the whole etheric sphere - has a corresponding level of distortion which is a place of rock-like density, to which the breath of spiritual life and growth can only with difficulty penetrate. But the correspondence of a particular level of distortion with an ascending level is descriptive, not specific or personal, and does not relate to the lives of individual men and women. A person on the second level of evolution, who allows himself to be drawn into a particular state of distortion, does not necessarily descend to the second lower level; nor does someone on the third level find that his own form of distortion leads automatically onto the third lower level. Each kind of state finds its correspondence in a particular place on the descending ladder, but there is no inherent correspondence between the kinds of distortion and the evolutionary level of a person's being. It is furthermore only possible for people on the first four rungs of the evolutionary ‘ladder’ to descend into states of distortion and places of darkness; after that a man arrives at the level from which such a descent is no longer possible for him.

The life of every man, whether he is in a physical or an etheric body, depends on the level he inhabits. Each level has its own dimensions, and the experiences of those who inhabit a particular etheric level cannot extend beyond its boundaries,14 and usually are contained within only a small segment of it. The manner in which a person experiences the ‘reality’ he sees, the structure of his knowledge: in other words, the totality of his life, is limited by the etheric plane on which he lives. The upper levels, however, always include the evolutionary levels beneath them, through which the person has already passed.

14. With the exception of certain rare experiences of extended reality, when a person may experience momentarily on a higher level. Usually, however, such experiences are based on an extended awareness of the level he already inhabits.

For most people, the etheric level or plane on which they live represents a limitless area, with vast unexplored and even unimagined regions. The experiences, knowledge, understanding, conception of ‘reality’ of a single individual on any one level are usually confined within very narrow limits; the boundaries of his particular plane are far distant and there is much to explore and learn before there is any possibility of moving on to another, higher etheric level. In fact, there can be no move at all until the person has exhausted all the opportunities to which his own will could attract him, and learned all there is to learn on any one level. He has to become conscious of his life and his own mind where he is before he can begin to move on to another level.

Movement exists on and within every level, everything is in movement, nothing within the Earth's etheric is at rest. For man also there is constant movement; there is no rest for man, his mind is either expanding or it is contracting. (Rest is not synonymous with passivity, nor is it the same as relaxation; motion or movement is not the same as activity or tension. Motion includes an alternation of activity and passivity.) On every level there is the possibility of either expansion or contraction for man. For man alone exists the possibility of vertical movement. Wherever he is in the etheric sphere, choice exists from moment to moment of affirming either upwards or downwards; from every point in the etheric there is an upwards and a downards movement - for man alone. Choice depends upon a degree of consciousness appropriate to his own level, for choice involves a man's will. When a person makes a choice he begins to take responsibility for his life; it may be the “wrong” choice, but the fact of choosing at all means he has come to the point in his own evolutionary pattern where he sees his life as capable of being structured by himself.

Choice only exists after a certain stage has been reached. When a man's choices tend ‘upwards’ he begins to spiritualise his life and everything and everyone related to it. This is the way of spiritual growth and change in level of mind, reality, and being.

From what has been called the “Summerland” there are six further etheric levels that extend upwards with ever-increasing degrees of consciousness. In certain respects these seven levels resemble the rungs on a ladder, but not every rung - or level - is entirely discrete or separate from all the others. The first four etheric levels constitute, in fact, a single vast sphere, within which movement is gradual and slow-growing; the fifth level is a separate sphere and represents a discrete evolutionary step; the sixth and seventh levels together constitute a single sphere, separate from the preceeding fifth level and within which progression is through manifold stages. Thus, the whole universe of man's etheric evolution consists of three vast spheres with expanding levels of experience, mentality, and consciousness. The first sphere contains the first four levels through which man evolves; the second and smaller sphere consists of the fifth and transitional level; and the third sphere comprises the two highest etheric levels of being. Each person inhabits the portion of that sphere which is appropriate to his own stage or level of mind. Movement for any person is possible only within that portion of the sphere he inhabits, to which the dimensions of his own mind approximate, movement throughout the whole of any sphere exists only for those people who have evolved through all its different stages. All people living within the same sphere are visible to one another in their etheric forms, but their etheric natures are not visible except to those who exist on a higher level of consciousness.15 People on the fourth etheric level, for example, appear as ‘beings of light’ to those on the first level, but the nature of their beings is not apparent to them.

15. This is the same as the situation on the physical Earth, where people with very different qualities of being or levels of mentality can live side by side, yet unconscious of the essential differences which separate them.

The Summerland may be thought of as a kind of reception centre for everyone who passes out of physical life and whose being corresponds to any one of the first four etheric levels. All awaken into a summer-land of reality which, like its name, gives off a radiance and vibration of sensual experience that exceeds the highest dreams and most vivid imaginings of the physical mind. Every desire, from the flightiest to the most earnestly-harboured longing, finds fulfilment there according to the nature of the person's being. The Summerland is, in a sense, a place of infinite response to request. If someone desires food and drink, he is able to obtain the greatest delicacies. And he may continue to eat and drink until he comes in his own time to the realisation that such sustenance is no longer necessary for him and another kind of desire supercedes this one. (If food and drink had been an obsession with him during his physical lifetime - if he were gluttonous or dissolute, he would not be in the Summerland but on a lower level of reality.)

Every real desire or longing that has remained hidden in a person during his physical lifetime is revived after his passing and finds expression in the Summerland; here he can learn to paint or play a musical instrument, study any subject in any field of learning, or engage in any activity which is either new or familiar to him. If he were a gardener in his physical life, he may continue to garden and find new scope and new expressions under different and easier conditions. If he had been a librarian, he might pursue his work in the vastly extended libraries and places of learning in the Summerland. Anyone concerned with the discovery of Truth, in whatever form, can find at last those infallible Records of true human history which will quench all thirst for Knowledge.* Opportunities exist for every possible form of learning or activity and they are open to everyone. If the desire is present, the person soon discovers the way to its fulfilment. There is response to every harmless16 request in a way undreamed of in physical life, where physical and material limitations structure the form and degree of every response.

* A Culbone Visitor's note: Cfr. Meditations on the Tarot pp. 562-70 & 584.

16. Requests, desires, inclinations harmful to the person or to others - if persevered in - draw that person to its fulfilment on one of the seven lower levels.

There are limitations, however, even in the Summerland. Not all responses to request are in accordance with the person's imagination about himself and his needs - although they are always in response to that conception of reality upon which the person's being (or feeling of “I”) is based. All responses operate in accordance with a law of Affinities or Correspondences. This means that the person receives according to the nature of his own being. For example, his ‘house’ in the Summerland - and everyone in the Summerland finds that a dwelling of some sort awaits him - corresponds to the kind of mental environment in which he lived while on the physical plane. It contains the things he loved or gave attention to, and much that gave him pleasure in that life. But it is also furnished with the dark and miserable and distorted, if these were the thoughts he inhabited during his physical lifetime. His etheric home is a reflection of, or embodies, his old familiar self because it is his home; it is an externalisation of all that he has valued or cared about, and of the place he occupied in his mind. If it contains dark corners or places filled with mould and bird droppings, it is because these represent the thoughts with which his mind was occupied. His etheric home can never be the embodiment of an abstraction or fantasy but reflects truly the state of his own being.

The central meaning of the Summerland - the key to its existence both as an etheric reality, to be experienced most fully by people who are not in physical bodies, and as a level of mentality which a person may inhabit during physical life on Earth as well - is longing or desire to have and its fulfilment. A person's desire to have something for himself, whatever it may be - providing it does no harm etherically either to himself or others, finds fulfilment in the Summerland. It may be for parties and birthday cake, skill in playing the violin, or the opportunity to study the structure of minerals. The meaning central to these and the most varied expressions is the desire to have: to have enjoyment, to have proficiency, to have knowledge. If the mind of a person centres around any kind of desire to have something for himself, whether material or non-material, then he already inhabits the Summerland, even if he is currently entered upon physical life on Earth, and he will, in time to come, receive every opportunity to give fullest expression to his desire.17 If the desires are of a material nature, he will find a response on this level18 until such time as he is satisfied and the nature of his desires changes. Summerland is the land where ‘missed opportunities’ and unfulfilled desires from a person's physical life find expression and satisfaction. It is also the land where each person's desires and enjoyments can undergo gradual transformation and spiritualisation as his own being, through the learning process of these experiences, becomes increasingly refined in its nature.

17. “Paradise” of every form and shape is an expression of man's highest conception of possession, of that ambience in which he would most like to live or experience himself: the Heaven of heavens, the “floating life”…

18. Desire for the tangible, or for a material result, finds a response more easily on the etheric plane than on the physical plane.

People inhabiting the Summerland are at widely divergent stages in their own patterns of growth. Some people may be at the commencement of their own evolution and have vast periods of experience to undergo before the desire to move on to a stage beyond that of desiring to have or possess takes shape in them. There will also be people in the Summerland whose beings have already evolved to the frontier of the next stage but who still feel they are ‘missing’ one thing or one opportunity, and who need to remain where they are to give expression to this one desire before the impetus to move on is complete in them.

The next stage in the evolution of a person's being and mind, after all desires to have have been expressed and satisfied in the form peculiar to each individual, may be described as the desire for self expression. Out of the desire to express, the self develops, in the course of a person's evolution through this second level, the desire to create forms, and, finally, the desire to find self fulfilment in some form of service to other people. Thus, the second level contains many aspects of self expression and people who are at vastly different stages in the evolution of their desires for self expression. Only after a man has gone through numerous forms of self expression does the will to express for other people, or to become active in the service of others, begin to take root and grow in him.

The condition of a person who has acquired something - that is, the more passive state of satisfaction which may be reached again and again in the Summerland - soon becomes one of satiety and is a condition in which few people can remain for long, whether during physical life or life on an etheric plane. Minds soon become restless and desire activity through seeking other goals, pursuing other aims. This impetus to change: to activity, movement, and, eventually, to spiritual growth, is inherent in the nature of man, as distinct from all other forms of Creation. In his own time, and sometimes only after long ages of seeking down many different paths, a man arrives at the frontier of a new country of activity, beyond the Summerland. This country is characterised by the desire to express himself: to express the experiences he has had and out of which his self has been built up or constituted. Every desire for self expression, every desire to create, belongs to this new stage, this second level of etheric reality.

When the person arrives at this new stage, limitless opportunities again open out before him. His life changes because his aim in life has altered - because the motive forces within his own will, in terms of which he sees and hears and pursues his life, is no longer the same. Although he continues to live in the Summerland in one sense, he is no longer of it in the same way; his eyes are open to new aspects of it which he did not notice before when he was pursuing his own interests from the desire to have or acquire. He can now see other people and their activities in a different light; in fact, people inhabiting the first etheric level may now become transparent to him mentally. Their thoughts, emotions, motives, and their aims can become increasingly visible to him. However, they do not see any change in him. He will appear to them the same person he always was, except for the fact that he may be engaged now in some other activity in which they do not share; he doesn't seem to have as much time for them as previously: he is moving out of their orbit or place of habitation. In this way he begins to inhabit a new etheric or mental country.

Some occupations in the Summerland can open out more rapidly onto this new level of activity for the people engaged in them, without any real consciousness of change19 or movement on their part. They will be doing what is already natural to them and something which they learned during their physical life - or even before that, on the etheric plane of a previous existence. The teacher, doctor, social worker - the list of possible occupations and professions is long - is concerned with some form of service to others, although not everyone who engages in any one of these occupations is motivated by the desire to serve or even the desire for self expression. The desire to have or acquire may be the primary motivation, whatever the ‘profession’ or activity in which the person is engaged. But when a person stops looking at the world through the eyes of what it can give him and begins to see it instead from his own desire for self expression and, later on, from a sense of what he can give it, then the world itself changes for him. He is no longer where he was: either in himself or in the kind of reality he inhabits.

19. No “consciousness of change”, but certainly an increase in consciousness beyond that which exists among the inhabitants of the first etheric level, for growth in consciousness is one of the primary characteristics of man's evolution.

.The Creative Artist, whatever the nature of his work, belongs to the second etheric level. Many people go through this stage of creative activity, whether on a physical or an etheric plane; but it does not belong to everyone's pattern of evolution. There are many degrees of creativity, extending from the beginning stages of the second level to its furthermost boundary with the next etheric level. But everyone who engages in creative activity at all has already evolved beyond the desire to have for himself and has become sensitive to other desires moving within him - even if they are as yet only vague intimations of a new direction. It is from - or though - these inner promptings or desires, which indicate a new growth of will, that the material as well as the impetus for his creative activity derives. The person himself may look on his creative activity only as forms of self expression and fail to recognise the fact that creative activity involves not only an expression of thought, desire, and motive from within (that is, an expression of intuition), but also the desire to communicate these intimations of within-ness with other people. This desire to communicate is an integral part of all true creative activity; it is one of the earlier stages in the evolution of the desire to serve others. Without this desire to communicate what is within to other people, through the medium of particular forms, there can be no real creative activity.20 In the course of time, through many different kinds of experience, the desire to serve becomes increasingly refined in the Creative Artist. He may become more and more a vehicle for the expression of those forms and symbols which encourage and help other people in their own spiritual evolutions. But to become such a vehicle, the Creative Artist must evolve in will and consciousness himself to the point where his desire to serve the spiritual needs of others predominates over the desire for mere self expression. When he reaches this stage, at the frontier of the second etheric level, his intuitions will have become clear and distinctly formed and there will be a direct flow into the shapes he consciously creates in colour, material, or sound-vibration.

20. “Creative” activity, in which the person is solely concerned with self expression, is not necessarily creative at all. It may derive from the desire in the person to have something for himself - possibly a sense of importance, or adulation from others, or the experience of sensationalising - and belongs to the first level of etheric reality, or the Summerland. It could be the expression of someone on a lower etheric level. True creativity can only begin when the desire to communicate to others has been born in the person.

On this second etheric level are to be found all the people who have begun to think and act from the desire and will to serve others in whatever occupation or activity they have chosen to engage in. This takes place in the higher stages of the second level, when the desire for self expression becomes transformed into self expression for others, and the direction of a person's activity begins to alter accordingly.

Service on behalf of others, as it evolves on the second etheric level, is directed to people who are in the Summerland and on the second level.21 In fact, the administration of all the needs and activities, which constitute life on these two etheric planes, is carried out by people who are evolving through the second level. This includes ministering to the new arrivals in the Summerland - those who have newly shed their physical bodies and need help in one form or another: rest, treatment, comfort, before they can enter fully upon a new existence.22 The maintenance of this vast etheric world, consisting of the first two levels of evolution, is the responsibility of those who are evolving through that stage of the second level where they are willing and desirous to serve. From the one who tends the gardens to the doctor in the ‘rest home’, all who are in service, although responsible in the first place to themselves and having freedom to express their own wills, are nonetheless under the direction of ones from a yet higher level. These persons are in control of and ultimately direct all activities on the first two etheric levels; but each person in service - like everyone on all etheric levels - has complete freedom of will to accept or reject this direction and even to carry out an activity in his own way. (He is, however, always prevented from causing harm of any kind to another person.)23

21. They do not have anything to do with people who are engaged in lives on the physical plane, for they are ministered to by people from a higher etheric level.

22. Although people on the second etheric level minister to new arrivals in the Summerland, they are not responsible for the direction or organization of this ministration. They carry out orders, as would a nursing staff, given by people from a higher level of consciousness and understanding, who know the needs of each new arrival, and have prepared the structure necessary for their rehabilitation.

23. This is one of the laws which operate on all the etheric levels through which man evolves, that no one is allowed to be harmed in any way. A person may harm himself, but never another person against his will. This means that each person's spiritual growth is protected absolutely from interference or harm by another. Through the person's own free will alone can his downfall, or distraction, or distortion come about. The desire to pursue the self-will, even to the point of harming others, can cause that person to descend to a lower level. The exercise of the self will on any one of these first four etheric levels, to the detriment of others, and in sole pursuit of self interest, can cause the person to “fall” to a lower level. A person can fall in many ways, and many times. A Culbone Visitor's note: Saint John Bosco (1815-88), Master of Education, developed his sistema preventivo, dreamed of a Salesian Garden, and formed the Salesian School of paedagogy with this principle very much in mind. Cfr. P. Braido, Il Sistema Preventivo di Don Bosco (Torino: SEI 1956).

The dimensions of the Summerland lie in a different plane of being to those of the second and succeeding etheric levels. A new growth in being, a new point of departure, is necessary before a man can leave the Summerland and enter upon a different kind of life. Externally he may still inhabit the same place, although his mind has become differently structured and his experience of the place is different to what it was before. No external gulf exists between the Summerland and the second level, nor is there any barrier between the second and third levels; but as each etheric level is constructed on the basis of different mental dimensions, so each one may be said to express a different plane of being. People move through every plane of being in their own time, expressing in their own unique growth-patterns the meanings which characterise the particular plane. So a man grows in relation to the second level from the initial stages of self expression, through his own forms of creativity, to the development in him of the desire to use these forms of self expression in the service of others. In this way, after many kinds of experience and often long periods of time, the person reaches the further borders of the second etheric level and the frontier of a new plane of being.

The third etheric level is, in certain respects, a place that exists and functions parallel to the second level for it is inhabited by people who are also performing a service, but of another kind. These are people who have experienced and passed through that stage of service to others which characterises the second level; so the third plane may be thought of as both an extension of the second level and a place of growth in consciousness and understanding beyond it. As self interest recedes and the desire for self expression becomes redirected towards serving others, so the ability of the person to learn more about the true nature of people's needs and what is possible for them increases. One of the principal characteristics of someone on the third etheric level is the desire to increase the value of his service to others through an extension of his own knowledge, not only about the particular person or persons he is helping but about the nature of human life in general, its structure, origins, aims - and about the nature of the universe in which this life moves and has being. In fact, man's experience on the third plane of being is characterised by his desire to serve the real needs of other people rather than merely to use his own forms of self expression in their service. This is the essential difference between the third and second levels.

An increase in knowledge is possible for everyone at every level, whenever a person's desire is strong enough to find expression, because there are Halls of Learning of every kind throughout the entire etheric country. Wherever there is the desire for knowledge, followed by a clear formulation of request, there is always a response according to the nature of the person's will and the stage of his being.

Slowly, as both knowledge and sensitivity to other people and to the nature of life grow, the person becomes aware of another kind of work being carried on from this third level, of which he had previously been unaware. This is the work of service to people on the physical Earth. This is the focus of all activity on the third etheric level.

The work of service to the physical Earth is manifold in its expressions and total in its compass. It covers every possible aspect of physical activity on Earth and requires the greatest patience, steadiness of purpose, and intelligence (which means both adaptability and the willingness to learn the principles and techniques for communicating with and helping people in physical bodies) on the part of those who serve. The third etheric level is the lowest level of service to the physical Earth;24 on all the succeeding and higher levels are to be found numerous people engaged in all kinds and degrees of Earth work.

24. All people undertaking work on the Earth through physical mediums are either on the second etheric level, or else on one of the “lower” planes. Such work is undertaken by the free will of the individual concerned. It could never belong to, or proceed from the third etheric level, where the dangers of this kind of work are understood; for mediumistic work generally causes more harm than good overall to the people involved, and can cause serious distortion to the beings of people who are in physical bodies.

The desire to become involved in service to the Earth always evolves out of a man's personal experience in connection with the physical plane - usually from something which occurred in his own physical life. He may have an overwhelming desire to help someone (or ones) he has known during his own lifetime in a physical body, whose needs he now recognises and understands. In time, this desire to help will become the focal point in his life and he will then attract the persons who can instruct him in how to commence his work of service to the Earth. Sometimes a man is contacted by friends or family already working on this etheric plane, who can help him and with whom he may be able to work. There are many rightful ways and paths along which the person desiring to help someone can be guided when he has reached the appropriate stage in his own evolution.

One kind of personal experience which, in time, can inspire a person with the desire for Earth service is the need to rectify or put right some train of events, casual sequence, harm or distortion which he has brought about - intentionally or unintentionally - during his own life in a physical body. For there awakens in everyone, in the course of time, the desire to help in some way the ones he harmed or to state the truth where he had previously conveyed a deception. When this desire becomes the strongest motive in a person's life, the opportunity will be presented for service to the physical Earth.

A third way in which the desire to serve the physical Earth may awaken in a person is through the profession in which he worked during his own physical life or which he has taken on since his arrival on the etheric plane. For example, a doctor may desire to use his professional skill in the service of people who are still in physical bodies or to collaborate, from the etheric plane, with colleagues working on the physical plane.25 When this desire becomes the overriding one in a person's life, the opportunity will be presented for its fulfilment - but usually only after some period of preparation.

25. He may be precipitate, and commence this work from his self will, before he is properly prepared for it through his own spiritual evolution, and so cause more harm than good to others, and delay or side-track his own growth of being.

This is the personal basis out of which all work on the Earth plane commences on the third etheric level and from which all subsequent work evolves. In part it is concerned with a deepening or spiritualising of the physical experiences and relationships of the people involved. But it is not until a person reaches the third level in his own evolution that this work can be undertaken for the benefit of all concerned.

The journey towards higher states of consciousness and wholeness of being, which man thinks of in terms of at-onement with God - the god within - commences on the third etheric level. It starts from the desire and willingness of a person to accept his own life (in all its previous forms) and become responsible for it and all the relationships connected with it. If this stage begins while he is still in a physical body he can journey forward more rapidly than is possible for him on a purely etheric plane of existence, through assuming additional forms of responsibility towards people with whom there is no apparent personal connection. In this way, the person arrives eventually at the fourth etheric level. He never grows to this point through solitary meditation or the performance of spiritual gymnastics of any kind, but solely through taking on increasing degrees of responsibility for himself, the relationships in his life, and towards all other forms of life around him.

This gradual movement from the third to the fourth level of reality comes about through a simultaneous growth in a person's consciousness and in his ability to take responsibility. This may occur while the person is still in a physical body, but it usually takes place more slowly after he has passed on to another form of life on the etheric planes. It commences when the person begins to take on additional responsibilities without neglecting his more personal relationships. But gradually the desire to “personalise” experience lessens and his own involvement or relationship with people becomes less personal, in the sense of being less self oriented, and therefore more real. He begins to learn what is possible and desirable for them as individuals and so there is less of his own self will in his activities on their behalf. This does not mean that his old relationships die or become “cold”, but a new quality of concern enters into them which is not possible so long as they are dominated by his self will. This new concern comes from his Heart Centre - it is the first intimation of the awakening Heart Centre from which a new kind of growth becomes possible - and is guided by his Head Centre and its intuitions; it is not connected with the personal self26 which still desires its own expression and satisfaction in every relationship. A move to the fourth level of reality means, in fact, the beginning of a shift in emphasis within the person from the personal to the non-personal. Personal relationships - the personal self and its desires - do not fade away completely at this stage; but the centre of balance for the person on the fourth etheric level becomes in time a new quality of concern for the true nature and potentiality in other people, which in-forms and guides the person's awareness and activities.27

26. The personal self is the habitural or traditional “self”, composed during the long ages of different experiences, built up and modified over æons of time, in which the person's feeling of identity is centred. It is based as much on what it excludes, as on what it includes.

27. The personal self will is expanded here to its uppermost limit, reaching out to include all who are in need. It is, nonetheless, still this self will, from which the desire to be of service springs; the totally new feeling of concern - awakened in the Heart Centre - arises only after this desire of the self-will to be of service has reached its uttermost limit Greater responsibilities, on a far larger scale, become possible for the person who is evolving on the fourth etheric level. These responsibilities may be directed towards the higher administration of the first and second etheric levels, for all direction and administration of these first two levels comes from the fourth level - as does all work for the help and regeneration of people on the first four ‘lower’ levels. (All missions to these four lower spheres are directed from the fourth etheric level.) A person on this fourth level may also have responsibilities on the physical plane of Earth, where he can organise and carry out special missions concerned with the healing or protection of large numbers of people. He may also be engaged in the vast missions of ‘rescue work’ for people who experience either violent or ‘unprepared’ death and who are unable to accept or comprehend the ‘new conditions’ in which they find themselves.

All missions from this level are self initiated and stem from both the personal desire and the non-personal concern of individuals at this level, although every help or aid is placed at the disposal of anyone seeking to take responsibility for any kind of mission. There is no ‘higher authority’ to control them or interfere unless harm is being done in any way to others, in which case the mission would be withdrawn (by persons from a still higher level) and the person responsible would be drawn to the lower level appropriate for acting out his experience and learning the consequences of his actions. Such a removal to a lower level would be in no sense retributive, for there is no such thing as retribution on any etheric level that resembles, in any way, the systems of judgment and penal retribution devised by men on the physical plane. (All conceptions of harsh, retributive justice derive, in fact, from the lower levels and are the invention of human distortion.) A person ‘falls’ through his own choice, and is attracted to a lower level according to the law of affinity: of like attracting like, not because of any punishment meted out to him by a “higher authority”. It is only through the Law of Protection that missions can be interfered with which endanger the spiritual natures of other people. This is a law28 which operates on all the etheric29 levels through which man evolves, including the Summerland, and predicates that no one - indeed, no form of life - is allowed to suffer through the action of another. A person may unintentionally cause harm to another, in which case he immediately becomes aware of it through experiencing in himself what he has caused the other to experience. (This also applies in cases of unintentional suffering caused to animal or plant life.) This law operates on all the etheric levels that lead towards growth of being. If the person perseveres in causing suffering, he becomes involved in doing harm wilfully to another. (He might not think of it as ‘harm’ or imagine that the “end justifies the means”.) If this happens, he is attracted through his actions to a lower level where this law does not operate and where he can pursue his activity with impunity, until such time as he becomes truly aware of what he is doing and desires change and betterment with his whole being.

28. “Law” means two things here. It refers to a non-personal force - although originally created by persons - which operates on all the higher etheric levels, automatically, to protect all life from harm. It also refers to the sequence of events or occurrences, which follow, again automatically, from people's actions. In this case, the operation of the Law of Protection draws into simultaneous operation the Law of Affinities, through which the person either suffers the results of which he is the cause, or else is attracted to a lower sphere, where his distortion may be expressed freely.

29. It does not operate automatically on the physical level.

From the third or fourth etheric level onward people can be chosen as spiritual companions to accompany those who are about to enter upon physical life on Earth, remaining with them throughout the whole of that life. The rôle of the spiritual companion30 is to protect, guide, inspire, and instruct the person whom he accompanies so that he can make the best possible use of physical life for his own spiritual evolution. All people born into a physical body from any of the normal etheric levels, including the Summerland,31 have spiritual companions32 who accompany them throughout their entire physical lives. Even people who have, from their own free wills, elected to be born ahead of time - before the time intended for their physical experience (that is, the best time from the point of view of their spiritual evolution) - have spiritual companions if they are born with normal (i.e., not distorted) minds.33 But people who are born from the lower spheres, with some form of mental distortion, do not necessarily have spiritual companions assigned to them from birth.34

30. Called by many people the Guardian Angel. Sometimes people are “chosen”, or asked to perform this mission by someone from a higher level or stage than themselves; in other cases, people make their own decisions to accompany someone on Earth from a sense of responsibility towards that person. A Culbone Visitor's note: Cfr Meditations on the Tarot pp. 375-8, etc.

31. Not all people are born onto the Earth from those levels on which alone spiritual evolution is possible. Approximately 40% of all people born onto the physical Earth in the twentieth century have been born from one of the lower spheres, with some form of mental distortion.

32. Most people have only one spiritual companion or Guardian Angel, although some people have more than one at certain times, when they have crucial task to perform, for example, through their positions in society, or when they have taken certain responsibilities, of a personal or spiritual nature, upon themselves.

33. All people born before their time from the Summerland or one of the higher levels have some affinity with a lower level, or they would not have been born prematurely. They have all spent time on a lower level, and it is through their connections with it that they are born before their time. This applies to only about 25% of the people born before their time, for the majority of such people are born from one of the lower levels of distortion.

34. They may have around them invisible companions from the lower levels to whom they are attracted, and may not be in a state where they could receive spiritual guidance - or act upon it, if they could receive it. They are not usually concerned with spiritual growth, so a spiritual guide would be wasting his time. But should a change come about in their beings, in the course of their physical lives, a spiritual companion would at once be attracted to them.

It is in the very nature of the human creation that no one can remain static; but perpetual movement for the human being, unlike the other forms of creation, does not only mean movement in one place but linear movement: growth, evolution - and, more frequently, retrogression. The inner being of every man (which is his divine will), working in the etheric medium on either the physical or the etheric plane, is restless and longing, impelling him continuously towards greater consciousness, increased understanding, a larger sense of responsibility. However long the man dallies or delays, the being within him never ceases from its restless probing, searching, and will always break through the limits within which it confines itself from stage to stage.

This is true at all stages in a man's evolution, from the lowest to the highest. When he reaches the outermost limits of the fourth level of reality, so the same restless desire of his will makes itself felt eventually by breaking through every position of responsibility which the person has built up and forcing upon him a new beginning.

By the time a person has reached the latter states in his evolution through the fourth level, two centres of gravity have become fully developed in him. One is the old feeling of “I”, centred around his desire for self expression, which has evolved through many phases, expressed through many forms, and become formulated as a “self” over vast periods of time that involved many kinds of experience. The second centre of gravity begins to form in a person when he is still on the third level of reality, around a growing sense of responsibility towards people with whom he has no personal relationship. It develops more fully on the fourth etheric level as a new focal point in the experience or feeling of concern connected with the person's Heart Centre and postulates a non-personal yet caring relationship to other people and to the whole living world around him. By the time the person has reached the furthermost froniter of the fourth level, these two centres of gravity co-exist in him, equal to one another in significance and strength and therefore creating, for the first and only time, a real dichotomy of interest, desire, and will. For there are many times when the two poles in him are in basic disagreement over aim and direction. There is no other point in the whole etheric evolution of man when such inner dualism exists. This is a stage to which every person comes at the appropriate time in his own evolution and through which experience of tension, and often confusion, he has to go. For neither centre of gravity is capable in itself of outweighing the other; the desire or will that is reflected in concern or caring can never become strong enough in itself to overshadow the self, with its long history of experience, and dominate its desire for expression. After a long period of time - the exact measure being appropriate to each individual's pattern of growth, when the tension has become almost unbearable, a third factor enters into the experience of the person, silently and at first almost imperceptibly. This is the point at which the person enters upon the fifth level of reality.

This new factor which has awakened within the man, making possible his entrance upon a new and discrete level of experience, is the desire for at-onement with G-d. This is the central focus of meaning for all life and all experience on the fifth etheric level; for every individual the fifth level becomes a spiritual journey towards at-onement.

Every experience and all forms and expressions of life that existed on the fourth level continue to exist on the fifth level as the media through which each individual journeys at this stage. He does not leave or neglect the forms of activity which structured his life in the latter stages of the fourth etheric level, but they become centred around a new motivation which is his search for G-d. He does not reject the forms of mind which delineated all his thinking, but they become for the first time not so much tools as objects to be searched for clues or waymarks on the journey. Everything in the person's life becomes part of his search, upon which the intensity of his longing for G-d- becomes focussed. The urgency of this desire for G-d in a person eventually supercedes completely, if only temporarily, both the desire for self expression and the sense of caring or concern which had formerly existed in him as a dichotomy of opposing wills.

At no other stage in the evolution of man is there a spiritual journey of this nature, for at no other stage - on no other level before this one - is man one-centred in his desire or will, purpose, and direction. Religious writings - particularly Christian and Gnostic - and the literature of the mystics contain many descriptions of journeys, but none is the journey of man at this stage in his evolution. Some of them use a sexual imagery which relates to another aspect of life altogether. Many form part of a particular religious tradition, expressing its terminology and structure of belief. But the true spiritual journey, when it takes place at the right moment in every man's pattern of evolution, is contained within no religious form of any kind and expresses no doctrinal beliefs or particular faith; for all religious forms belong at their highest to the fourth etheric level and may belong to an experience of the Summerland or to the lower levels. The spiritual journey is not formal or ritualistic; there is no established pattern for its expression, no archetypal structure for it to follow. Each spiritual journey is unique and expresses within the individual's experience and relationships; and the person derives from this journey a ‘treasure’ which is uniquely his own.

The life of the person becomes immensely simplified in the course of his journey through the fifth level - and refined or purified of all that is superfluous to his search for G-d. For, in time, this search lights up each experience and every relationship which belongs to the whole of the person's etheric life, and in the process of clarification the irrelevant and the less important gradually disappear.

The fifth level of reality may be thought of as a place of transition, an intermediate country between two very different spheres or two fundamentally different kinds of mentality. It is a bridge between the world of subjective realities and the world of objective reality, where the desire or will to find G-d, in order to achieve what may be called mystical union (or Samadhi), becomes transformed slowly into the search for Truth. When the desire for Truth becomes so formed in the individual that it is the focal point in every experience and in all relationships, then he has entered upon the sixth etheric level.

The search for G-d - the desire for mystical union - which grew out of the opposition between two different expressions of will in a person, becomes transformed into the search for Truth within the practical context of his life, within its pattern of activity. It can never come about through an artificial withdrawal from life into some form of contemplative state.35 When this desire to find G-d is expressed in the midst of experience (whatever the nature of that experience) or in a relationship, G-d becomes the touchstone of Truth within that experience or relationship. G-d, being within the experience, reveals to the person its true nature and meaning. In this way G-d gradually becomes Truth for the person; imperceptibly, over a long period of time, his search for a personal G-d becomes transformed into a search for non-personal Truth.

35. The state of withdrawal into contemplation means withdrawal from the person's own life, exclusion of his responsibilities, limitation; it represents, at every stage, a retrogression, and all techniques or ideologies that encourage it, are destructive of the very essence of human nature and purpose.

The experience of Truth transcends and brings together in the person the two different and often opposing expressions of his will. The Truth reveals to him both the nature of his caring or concern and the structure of the self and its desire for expression which had evolved over vast periods of time. The search for G-d, which marked his entrance into the fifth etheric level, becomes the search for and receptivity to Truth at its further border with the succeeding level of reality; and the desire for mystical union, or Samadhi, is transformed through living experience into a re-uniting or making whole of his entire being. For as Truth reveals to him what is: its history and structure, its purpose and direction, so every facet or aspect of his being falls into perspective and finds that place in which it can serve most usefully his expression of life in the highest etheric sphere.

The sixth and seventh levels of reality comprise a single sphere in which the experience of Truth gradually reveals to man the nature of his own being and the true nature of the whole etheric universe through which he has evolved, which is its Objective Reality. Truth works in each person who has reached this stage through the mind which has evolved in him, through his own unique experiences. Even at the highest level, there is no abstract Truth; for Truth is unique - although not merely subjective - with every individual, and each person knows only that part of Objective Reality to which his own experiences give him access and which his mind is therefore able to reflect.

The mind of man is essentially crystalline in structure; it was created with the capacity for becoming many-facetted through experience and, eventually, reflecting Truth as the facets of a crystal mirror the world about it. So long as a man lives through various modes of self expression, experiencing himself as separate and closed off from the world about him, the mind he inhabits is personal to his own desires and will and the world it reflects is also coloured by what is personal to him. His mind cannot truly reflect what is around him, but rather colours and structures all his impressions. It reflects likewise his imaginings and fantasies. When the personal, isolated, and imaginary are transcended, after a long process of evolution, so his mind can begin for the first time to exhibit the nature of its underlying structure, as a special kind of crystal.

All the levels, stages, and aspects of life in the etheric universe, through which a man has evolved, can become reflected in the crystal of his mind, as if in a mirror, once the distorting agent of personal identifications and imagination is dissolved. But this is not achieved in the “twinkling of an eye”; it is the ultimate goal of a process which commences on the sixth etheric level and extends throughout the entire sphere to the highest stage at the seventh level. The achievement of a mind structured like pure crystal is the work of long periods of time and the goal at the far end of that country through which every man will progress eventually. Such is the ultimate nature of the etheric mind, and this is its purpose: to reflect accurately, truly, and without any personal distortion all that exists in the etheric sphere which the person has himself experienced. All thirteen36 levels of reality are then reflected in his mind.

36. The reflective mind is the fourteenth.

In order to understand the significance of this reflective mind it must be seen in relation to the preceding stages in the growth of mind. At the first stage, individual mind forms part of group mind and possesses little independence of expression and choice. This stage exists on the etheric plane as well as among so-called primitive people on the physical plane. The second stage in the evolution of mind is delineated in terms of personal like and dislike or desire and rejection. A man's awareness of the world around him at this stage is largely defined by these categories and his awareness of himself is comprised largely in terms of states ranging from happy to depressed, according to the world's response to his personal desires. Endless impressions of all kinds from the world about him impinge on his being, but his mind receives them on this structure of personal “desire and rejection” and his awareness extends very little beyond it.37

37. The dimensions of conscious awareness are identical with those of the person's mind, in this sense, consciousness is synonymous with mind. However, a person's awareness can extend beyond consciousness into the penumbra of his mind to pick up, in a shadowy way, impressions which it cannot accept consciously, or which do not completely fit into his present mental structure. Some of these may come from stages of experience through which he has passed in previous forms of existence

This stage of mind, or kind of mentality, extends throughout the first two etheric levels which every man has to live through and experience, in various ways, for a long period of time. Even on the second level, where a man is no longer totally absorbed in seeking pleasure or interests for himself - or in self expression for its own sake, but has arrived at the stage of concern for other people, this structure of mind still exists but in an enlarged form. The scope of his personal “liking” has expanded with the desire to express himself for other people, to use his talents and interests on their behalf. His consciousness now includes the people whom he can “help” through his own personal forms of self expression; but the kind of mentality through which he lives his life on this level remains the same, for it is still determined by personal desires and his actions are moved largely by the same kind of fluctuations in his own states as before.

The third stage in the evolution of man's mind commences with the third etheric level, for this stage is denoted by the re-structuring of mind in terms of responsibility. The idea of being responsible for his life and for the people in his life first occurs to the person as a seed thought when his mind has expanded to the point of being able to receive it. This seed takes root slowly and grows through many experiences on different planes. When the person's will has wholly responded to this idea of personal responsibility then it transcends and ultimately replaces the former structure of mind based on like and dislike, varying desires, and fluctuating emotional states. It is this new mind, formed around the will-to-personal responsibility, that grows eventually into an instrument which the person can use in ministering to others and which now provides a continuity of purpose and effort.

It is through many expressions of service on the third and fourth etheric levels and through the slow growth and expansion of this new mind, on this mental level, that the person begins to form and fashion the various facets of his mind. Each kind of experience creates a new facet of mind, in much the same way that a sculptor chisels into rock. And each mental facet, cut and formed out of the crystal-like potential of mind, represents the ‘treasure’ harvested from the particular experience, out of the man's perseverance and learning through that experience. Earlier experiences and relationships, which belong to the person's previous evolutionary stages in the Summerland and on the second etheric level - even on lower levels - and are purposefully reworked on the third or fourth levels, form definite facets on the person's mind. Each facet constitutes an indestructible part of the person's etheric mind, capable, eventually, of reflecting all other similar experiences being undergone by anyone, anywhere in the etheric sphere.

Every experience which a man can have, on whatever plane of life, is capable of adding a new facet to his mind with which he can then ‘see’ and understand. But the creation of any facet of mind depends, first of all, on his assuming responsibility for the experience, understanding its nature, and working it through completely until the essence of the experience has achieved a certain crystallisation in him. Sometimes the treasures which his mind gathers through many experiences appear in the form of ‘gifts’ or talents and sometimes they are not visible at all.

The kinds of personal experience, out of which the facets of a man's mind are shaped, belong to all the etheric levels up to and including the fifth level. On the two highest levels, experience is no longer personal and does not lead to the formation of new facets. But until the mind is fully formed and so long as personal experience is necessary, the person will continue to gather it until the structure of his mind is complete. Then, only, when he has reached the stage where the desire for Truth has absorbed every other desire or will, does another process begin which has as its aim the creation of the fourth level of mentality, or the reflecive mind. Before this new process can commence, which concerns the cleansing of every facet on a person's mind, this mind will have reached its greatest extent as a personal mind, having gone through all the experiences which are possible for that individual.

From the sixth level onwards the individual mind becomes perfected. Its structure, having been formed like rock-crystals in the crucible of personal experiences, is fixed and the man's task consists in cleansing and polishing each facet so that it accurately reflects what is. Then he becomes able to use his whole mind as a perfect tool in the service of all life for which he is responsible.

The two etheric levels, six and seven, form part of a single sphere in which this process of cleansing and purification takes place, through which a man's mind gradually becomes able to reflect, truly, the nature of the etheric sphere and to perform with understanding all the tasks and services which have ever belonged to him, throughout the whole of its extent. The clearer the crystalline nature of man's mind becomes, the greater his consciousness of all things and the more enlaged is his sense of responsibility. Any conception of “blissful inactivity” as belonging to a higher level of consciousness is totally irrelevant and imaginary.

Much of the work and service of people on the fifth, sixth, and seventh levels is concerned with those who inhabit the seven lower etheric levels. This is long and often arduous work, for it can take a considerable period of time before people caught up in distorted forms of mentality are able to begin the process of working their way back to the place from which their natural course of evolution began to deviate. This “process of working their way back” is different for each person, on each of the lower levels, but all such processes have to do with some form of coming to life again. For all the lower levels may be thought of as various forms of spiritual deadness, a kind of animated but lifeless existence - often represented, and sometimes actually seen on the physical plane by people with spiritual sight, as differing degrees of ‘darkness’. At each level of distortion, and within each particular manifestation of darkness, the person has to work his own way back gradually to that spiritual life which had temporarily been suspended in him.38

38. The “working back” is different with each person, and relates solely to his own state, and the kind or degree of distortion into which he has entered. It has to do with re-tracing his own steps - back to the state and condition of spiritual aliveness from which his distortion originally began. It does not involve a “journey” through any other forms of distortion, or levels of lesser “darkness”, for these are not relevant to his pattern of life at that time.

All the levels “downwards”, towards increasing darkness and more complex or wilful forms of distortion, are discrete etheric or mental levels. They do not interpenetrate one another, nor do they represent retrogressive stages through which a person may descend. Each one is related loosely, and only in a certain sense, to the corresponding rung on the ladder of human evolution. Such correspondence is only approximate and does not mean that someone at the fourth level of evolution, for example, would fall automatically to the fourth level of ‘darkness’, if he allowed his mind to become structured by distortion; he could be drawn down to any level depending on the nature of the distortion. But the correspondence between upper and lower levels, however slight, makes possible a clearer understanding of the nature of those spheres in which people live different kinds of distorted lives.

All persons inhabiting the seven lower levels may be thought of as being stuck to something that needs to be broken down before they can again enter the path of spiritual evolution. There are many degrees of attachment or identification; at the lowest levels people's minds may be “crystallised” into a kind of rock-like rigidity that requires long work and perseverance to break down. There are also differences between the kinds of mentality which hold people bound to states from which no spiritual growth is possible. In all cases, on all the lower levels, the point of rigidity or crystallisation colours and distorts the person's conception of reality to the point where the place he inhabits etherically corresponds exactly to the nature of his mind. From the third level downwards the person's mind actually creates its own forms of reality which become objective reality39 to the person concerned and those around him who are capable of being influenced by his mind. On every level of distortion people's minds are warped or disfigured in some way; on the lowest levels a mind may be twisted into hideous or grotesque shapes. Since the mind is both observer and also what is observed - state, as well as place of habitation, the person is able to see only the disfigurement or hideousness of his own mind around him. The life of a person's Inner Being will not be able to find expression in either the fifth, sixth, or seventh spheres of ‘darkness’. At the lowest level of all a person is said to be in complete darkness because he is totally cut off, through his own mind, even from the voice of his own conscience.40

39. On the first and second levels the forms of attachment and distortion are “real” only to the person himself, and, therefore, constitute subjective reality.

40. But, on all the other levels, a person's conscience can still reach his conscious mind, and keep him open to the ministrations and help, with which he is always surrounded.

These are the principal characteristics of life on the lower etheric levels.

The first level of distortion is inhabited by people who are identified with a particular negative, personal emotion. This emotion has become a kind of block in the person and cannot easily be altered by any change in the circumstances or conditions of his life. Not even the death of his own physical body will necessarily alter this negative formation in his mind. In many cases, but not all, the negative emotion is caused initially by an experience which occurs during physical life and the person's mind creates forms which assure its perpetuation as a stumbling block beyond the death of the physical body. Identification with a particular emotion and its complex of mental forms means that the person inhabits etherically the place to which his mind of mentality corresponds.

The constellation of mental forms is created slowly, over a period of time, while a particular emotion becomes a kind of focus in the person's life. The emotion is sometimes the result of a nodal experience in his life - that is, the way he relates to that experience - and it acts as a magnetic pole, attracting to itself related experiences until there is a complex structure of interconnected forms that evoke and reinforce the primary emotion. All the person's experiences are eventually coloured by this unresolved structure of emotion and mental forms.41 Help from another source - from other people - is usually needed before the bonds of emotional identification are broken and the person becomes free and able to return to his normal form of existence.

41. His experiences are not wholly limited by it.

Many forms of identification on this first level of distortion are centred on the experience of fear and the accompanying mental images which have been created partly by the person's own imagination and which evoke and reinforce the original emotion. Resentment is another characteristic emotion which can arise in situations involving family relationships, more frequently it is brought with a person when he enters physical life and manifests as a “predisposition” to feeling wronged or slighted or neglected. Resentment, like every form of negative emotion, grows and becomes more complex unless it is dealt with in the beginning with reason and understanding and if the person's will does not allow his mind to create different forms of expression. Although the minds of people on this level are not wholly distorted, nor are all their relationships coloured by their negative feeling of “I”, nevertheless, real growth is suspended for them so long as it exists.

The second level of distortion has many similarities with the first; but the point of identification which holds people to this second level of mentality (and reality) is far more comprehensive and rigid than it was for people on the first level. It affects all the person's relationships, colours his entire mind, and ultimately draws on all his energy. If the person is living on the physical plane, it makes him “absent” to much of life about him and periodically withdrawn into some shadowy existence of his own.42 The first and second levels of distortion are the only two lower levels which are not completely separate from one another but represent different degrees of intensity of the same mental problem. And the possibility of descent from the first to the second level exists for anyone who shuts out the voice of his own Inner Being or fails to respond to the help which is offered him.43

42. If the person is living on the physical plane, the true nature of his mentality and the structure of his being are not readily apparent to those about him. The aspects which are observable are usually attributed to extraneous causes.

43. This possibility of descent to a still lower level does not exist on any of the other levels.

On the second level the whole etheric being of the person can become directed to the expression of one negative emotional complex, this being frequently connected with a feeling of resentment and a sense of having been “wronged”.44 In such a case it is not a question of having been wronged in only one aspect of life or in one set of relationships; the person may believe that his whole life has been ruined. The direction of the resentment or grievance is often impersonal: fate or circumstance has ruined his life by placing him in a certain situation, preventing the development of certain opportunities, hindering the acquisition of particular possessions or the expression of other relationships, by depriving him of good health, and so on. It can also take a more personal form of expression. Resentment against a parent can draw to itself every other possible grievance until the whole life becomes focussed on this one negative expression and it is the excuse for every failure to act or to be.

44. Resentment is always involved, but it is not always the central feature or cause of this structure of negative emotion; there is always a relationship on which the person is “hung up”, and which has crystallized in its negative form, and thus affects the total life of the person.

Discontent is like a virus infection that can spread rapidly throughout the entire body once it has taken hold and absorb all a person's strength and energy. Some people come into their physical lives with an already-formed state of discontent; everything they experience during physical life can reinforce this discontent, unless they become aware that it is their state of mind and not circumstance which is its cause. Only such awareness on the part of the person himself can enable him to use his own will to allow this complex structure to be broken down by the ones who seek to help him and to create new positive forms in its place.

If the person is “born before his time” - born before the resolution of difficulties which become far more intractable on the physical plane than on the etheric - he “wastes” the opportunities for evolution which physical life is intended to offer.45 Most people whose minds are so structured, and who inhabit this lower level of etheric reality, are not able to develop an awareness of the true nature of their state of being while they are in physical bodies, and physical life experiences tend to confirm or strengthen the existing structure of mind. An autocratic parent can call it forth; difficult or depressed, narrow or poverty-stricken circumstances in the life can nourish it; and, if the will of the person allows, it can grow into a deep and lifelong bitterness. Partial discontent can become all-embracing through the experience of disappointment or failure - but only if the will of the person allows it to happen. His will almost always does allow it, because the will of a person whose mind opens out onto this second level of distortion is subject to the same confusion and distortion of thought and emotion as is his mind.

45. Only 10% of those who incarnate from this second lower level are able to retrace their steps, to their natural level of being, while in a physical body.

It is necessary to understand the rôle of the will at every etheric level, but it is especially important to see what happens to a man's will on this particular level. For on this level the will of the person allows his being to become increasingly absorbed by its negative states; it allows the confusion of mind to persist and grow, so that in the end he can do nothing except express his discontent or resentment. On all succeeding and more dense levels, the person's will does not merely acquiesce in the negative structure of mind but becomes actively engaged in its creation. On the second level, however, the person's will usually becomes immobilised so that he is unable to do anything; he can neither seek what is positive nor does he actively create negative forms through which to express or experience. This level may in fact be characterised by an entropy of the will. This person needs help from outside himself to become free from his mental imprisonment; but it usually takes a long time before such self-inflicted immobility will give entrance to those forms of help which seek to arouse the will and call on it to ‘see’ and to make effort for itself.46

46. The illness of autism, which has only been fully identified in recent years - and appears to be on the increase, is an illness or distortion of will. Children born in the state of autism are often intelligent, although they present a picture of withdrawal and of wiful refusal to relate. The causes always lie in previous forms of existence, for they are the most serious manifestations of that form of distortion in the will which structures the minds of all people on this second lower level. Autism represents the worst state of entropy into which a person can get, and there is only the rare possibility of real change during a physical lifetime. They will usually remain at least partially paralysed, while the person is still in a physical body.

The third level is a different kind of place to the first and second levels. It is not a place where people's wills have become helplessly ensnared in an emotional complex from which they cannot extricate themselves, where they may go on for a long time (in and out of a physical body) reliving their fear, resentment, discontent, until their will to make effort is re-awakened, little by little. On the contrary, on the third lower level the person's will is actively engaged in creating situations which encourage the expression of the negative forms which structure his mind and with which he is usually obsessed. The person's will actively encourages his identification with resentment, discontent, pride, or jealousy and activates them through every opportunity. The will is active on this level, not passive.

The person whose mind creates the third lower level as an habitation for himself does not experience it as any imprisonment or restriction on his life and self expression, because he is actively engaged in its creation. It constitutes reality for him and it is true not only for himself but has a certain objective validity because it is a creation of will, through the agency of his Creative Imagination. This is the primary difference between existence on this level, and the mentalities of which this level is composed, and existence on the two preceeding lower levels. For on the first two levels mental reality is subjective and possesses validity only for the individuals concerned; they are at the mercy of it - although not continuously - but do not actively seek to project it beyond themselves.

The mental structure of a person existing on the third lower level has objective reality for him and he sees other people in terms of this “reality”; he does not seek to impose it on others for there is no violence at this stage. No one wilfully does violence to themselves or to other people on this level. But these “other people”, whatever their own levels of being, will find it difficult to disentangle themselves from the web of “reality” woven about them and to distinguish truth from what is, in fact, fantasy, because it is so compelling.

People who inhabit this kind of mind or lower etheric level manifest an obsessiveness towards other people which is often overpowering and can sometimes injure47 the minds of those with less forceful personalities or who are more sensitive - and often more highly evolved spiritually. These people also exhibit a strong sense of their own “rightness”, for their reasoning is oriented towards supporting their obsessions whenever necessary - and whatever they may be, and is convincing on its own terms. Their thought-processes are always self referential and circular; they begin and end with the particular attitude or obsession with which they are most strongly identified as characterising “themselves”.

47. They can “injure”, but not do violence to, or affect permanently the mind of another person. If a person's mind includes doing violence to others, he inhabits not the third, but the fifth lower level.

But people inhabiting this kind of mind are not entirely enveloped by their own forms of self absorption; however obsessive their attitudes and expressions, however distorted the conception of reality associated with their obsession, opportunities still exist for a less self oriented kind of expression and for another kind of relationship to be experienced. It is possible for other ideas and other conceptions of reality to penetrate the structure of the person's mind.

All people who are experiencing physical life on Earth, the nature of whose mentalities opens out onto this particular level, were born with this kind of mind. It is never the result of a physical life but always precedes it. Most people born onto the Earth with this particular structure of mind are born at the right time for themselves, and it can be altered more easily and the person return to a new growing point during his physical lifetime.48

48. This is in contrast with the second level, where it is only with great difficulty that a person is able to become free from his particular negative and introverted mental state during a physical life on Earth.

So long as a person is still in a physical body and in reasonable health, he or she will manifest other characteristics besides the ones which reflect his particular obsession. Because of these other forms of expression and the nature of physical life on Earth, it is easier for him to become conscious of the underlying negative structure of his mind and its obsession while still in a physical body; for he is surrounded by these other points of contact, opportunities, and challenges - often in the form of other people whose minds are very different from his own. If he passes out of physical life before he has become conscious of the nature of his obsession with himself, it becomes more difficult for him because he is then surrounded by an etheric “reality” which is solely the reflection of his own mental state.

In a certain sense the lower levels should not be thought of as ‘levels’ at all but rather as places which are distortions of the stages through which man grows. In the Summerland it is possible for people to become ‘trapped’ in their own desires, their own wanting, or their own frustrations, and this can lead them into a state which is wholly structured by the desire or the frustration.49 This ‘state’, which is subjective, corresponds to a certain kind of place which was actually created by people at lower, more dense levels of existence and constitutes part of the first lower level.50 The same principle holds true for the other levels.

49. To begin with, people enter a place only temporarily, as they experience passing states of envy, desire, frustration; but they can come to inhabit such places for increasingly longer periods of time.

50. All the lower levels were created - and are still being created - by people on the lowest levels of distortion and darkness. The places which they create can be entered by anyone, anywhere on the first four levels of the etheric sphere - by people in physical as well as in etheric bodies - who allows that form of distortion to dominate his mind, which corresponds to the outer place. These places have objective existence. Although distorted beings can create such places, they are not able to interfere with anyone - beyond their dimensions. Their power and influence belong only to their own, “self” created spheres; their power extends on to those people who allow it entrance, by their own distortion or disharmony.

The transformations which occur in the will of the person between the Summerland and the second level of reality and, again, towards the end of the second level are nodal points in the growth pattern of all individuals, where the life is not only capable of growth but also of becoming stuck or distorted. At either point a person can enter into a more or less permanent state of mind which corresponds to the place denoted as the “second lower level”, the level of the distorted and paralysed will. The third level of reality, where the evolving person begins his life of service to others, has a more tenuous connection with the “third lower level”, which may be inhabited by people whose obsessions have to do with imagining they have a special mission of service. The state of religious mania also belongs to this level.

These parallels are useful primarily as additional aids to understanding the nature of the states or places of distortion into which people can allow themselves to fall. But it is important to remember that there is rarely any real link between the natural level of a person's being and the state or level to which his distortion can lead him. A person whose natural level - that is, the level to which he belongs through individual effort and growth of being - is the second level can fall to any state and inhabit any place of distortion or darkness. The same holds true for anyone on any of the first four levels. Even on the fourth level, where people attain to a very high degree of personal responsibility for life in the etheric sphere, a person may fall to any one of the seven lower levels. It is only when he has evolved beyond the fourth level that distortion of being is no longer possible for him.

The fourth level of distortion is characterised by an all-embracing ego-centricity which excludes the experience of anything that does not refer to the imagined “self” of that person. He is completely enclosed by this “self” and the purpose of all relationships becomes the support or enhancement of this self; external etheric ‘reality’ proceeds from and is a reflection of the self and its requirements. A person who is in this state, and inhabits this place, is obsessed with a single image of himself - a certain imaginary conception of himself - which his will has affirmed and encouraged, although not created. The descent into this all-encompassing imaginary self, through which and in terms of which all experience proceeds, is the primary characteristic of the fourth level of distortion. Self-inflicted violence also begins at this level, for the mental structures, which the person takes as real, do violence to the real nature of his etheric and physical bodies. A person may touch this level or place momentarily through his own states and, in this way, have a shock experience and insight which redeem him before he comes to inhabit the place more and more, or eventually, altogether.

Down to and including the third lower level, distortion exists in the mind of the person and the only damage to the body is of a less serious or temporary kind which is immediately reparable when the mind has been freed and returned to its natural state. On the fourth level, however, damage to both the etheric and physical bodies is of a more serious and permanent nature, and is not easily repaired even after the mind is released from its total self absorption and works it way back to its normal state. The nature of the person's body (physical or etheric or both) has been violated for him to inhabit this level at all, often through sexual perversion51 or homosexuality,52 sometimes through a kind of physical as well as mental infantilism, or by athletic exploitation.53

51. All forms of sexual perversion or deviation belong to this level, unless they do violence to others, in which case they belong to the next lower fifth level.

52. All true homosexuality belongs to this level or place of being.

53. “Athletic exploitation” of the physical body through exaggerated or one-sided training and exercise.

These are the more modern forms through which physical and etheric distortions tend to occur. Far more devastating results have come about in the past through the various “schools” of fakirs, eremites, “yogis”, mystics, fanatics who taught their adherents to do violence to their minds and physical bodies in order to achieve certain spiritual or mental ends, or to acquire psychic powers. They tortured their bodies with nails or fasting and their minds with mental postures until they became disfigured or distorted. All organised religions have taught, in part and at times, that their god(s) requires some form of self-immolation on the part of the follower; to achieve the more sophisticated aim of a “higher state of consciousness” a more subtle form of self-multilation, of an emotional or mental nature, is required. All teachings which exact from their followers a denial of one or more aspects of their whole being through certain exercises or psychological practices cause physiological as well as mental damage of a lasting54 nature. such damage affects and causes distortion to the etheric body of the person, but this only becomes apparent when he has passed out of his physical life on Earth. The road to “immortality” which these sects teach is a road to an immortality of distortion and perversion which will require long and arduous work on other planes of existence - including many forms of help from other people - before it is broken down and dispersed and the person becomes capable of a return to his natural state.* This is the road to a state of crystallised distortion, an “immortal thing-ness”, and every path that begins with “self” denial, “self” sacrifice, or “self” violation of any kind leads in this direction.55

54. “Lasting”, that is, throughout the physical life into the etheric form of existence.

* A Culbone Visitor's note: Cfr Meditations on the Tarot pp. 340-5, etc.

55. All that is said here, with regard to the fourth lower level, applies equally to the fifth level of distortion.

The mental or etheric ‘reality’ on the fifth lower level is very different in one essential respect from the preceding levels, for it is characterised by violence towards others. This violence may be of a physical or sexual nature; it may be expressed, as it is in pornography, in written or pictorial forms that violate the minds and imagination; or it may be expressed in forms that glorify acts of physical violence. People exist on the fifth, sixth, and seventh levels of distortion because they have desired power above all else. They have used their own wills to create mental forms and structures for the manipulation of others and to feed themselves with a sense of power. They have created their own mental and etheric realities. The world in which they live is their own creation: an objective reality which they seek to impose on others who have the kind of weakness of will which permits it. Through this ‘reality’ they manipulate and control other people. In fact, and in the end, they are at the mercy of their own creation, for it controls them. The fifth, sixth, and seventh levels of the lower sphere are structured, furnished, and ‘peopled’ by the creations of those who dwell on them. demons, evil spirits, and devils are created and willed into existence by the people on these levels for whom they are as ‘real’ as any naturally created etheric form. (Demons only exist for those who have created them or who, through weakness, acquiesce in their existence.) Before a person can move from this level he has to use this same power of creation to dematerialise every form of demon or evil spirit to which he has given life.

The differences which exist between the etheric or mental ‘reality’ on the fifth lower level and the kinds of distortion that obtain on the preceding four levels cannot be exaggerated. When the will becomes active on the third and fourth lower levels, it is in relation to a particular point of identification which it seeks to support and justify; or it is in relation to a certain imaginary conception of the self. It is primarily involved in self justifying. The imagination of the person is self absorbed. From the fifth level of distortion on, however, the desire for power becomes the motive force and the Creative Imagination of the mind is now used by the will to create forms and vehicles for exercising power over others. At this point the violence which is inherent in the distorted will of a person56 becomes directed not only towards himself but outwards towards others as well. From this level downwards the person does violence not only to himself but to the physical and etheric beings of other people.

56. Violence is a distortion of the natural power inherent in will.

Anyone who engages in any form of witchcraft may be drawn to this fifth lower level. Certain Tibetan forms of Tantric Buddhism, connected with an older religion and with demonology, belong to this level. Some “fringe” religions, teachings, and philosophical schools of an “esoteric”, occult, or “yogic” nature attract people from the fifth or even lower levels to become teachers and leaders. Extremist social or political groupings, outside the main structures of society, also attract some people from the lower etheric levels who are obsessed with a desire to experience power through violence to others, in the name of whatever “cause” happens to be current at the time. All human societies in the latter half of the twentieth century have become increasingly dominated by people who are on the fifth and even lower etheric levels.

The sixth level of distortion is inhabited by people who systematically torture others, physically or mentally, for whatever reason. These are people in whom the all-encompassing desire for power has become a lust to use that power to inflict pain, to distort minds, and to crush the spiritual beings of other people into submission. This is not merely the will to destroy life (which also exists on the fifth level and is expressed in various ways.57 The will to torture others to the point of abject submission or complete humiliation is of a different nature altogether and one which represents a much lower state of being, enveloped in much greater spiritual darkness. It is, in essence, the will to destroy the spiritual life, the Divine spark, in another person: to force that life - its light - to submit to darkness. All over the world, especially where one group of people is trying to maintain itself in power by the rule of force, this level of darkness manifests itself through human activity.

57. Some teachers in various cults or “esoteric” groups seek to destroy the naturally spontaneous creative essence of life in those whom they try to subvert to their particular doctrine; and sometimes those who organize extremist groups, “dedicated” to one cause or another, belong to the fifth level of distortion.

Another aspect of the lust for power which characterises this level is expressed through people who do violence to young children. This is not merely a form of sexual perversion, as it is thought to be, but a will to violate or crush into submission what is young and full of spiritual life and light.

On the fifth and even sixth levels people do not live wholly in their distortions, some parts of their minds are furnished with other images and forms and they can experience kinds of etheric reality which are not distorted by these forms of power-seeking or cruelty. For example, a person's home-life can exist detached from the place of torture which he may inhabit for many of his waking hours; he can walk out of his degraded mentality into another kind of mentality altogether, as he would into another room, where he is capable of expressing kindness and affection to his wife and children and acting in accordance with normal moral standards. This is the hallmark of schizophrenie, and it is on the sixth level of distortion that the true schizophrenic mentality exists.

Schizophrenie is a formation of mind which people have created with their own wills before they entered upon a physical existence, while they were still on other, etheric planes.58 It is constructed systematically, over a period of time, by someone with a very strong will who uses all the powers at its disposal to expel from the sphere of activity in which his will is expressing its lust for power every trace of conscience and every idea of Good or concern for others which could in any way limit its fullest expression or operation. With his own will the person constructs59 a water-tight compartment in his mind, within which every possible amoral expression of his power-lust can be indulged with impunity. When this ‘construction’ is completed, nothing can intrude upon, restrain, or influence what the will expresses and creates within that compartment. Yet outside this sphere, in the remaining portion of the same person's mind, conscience and a higher reason may still be operative forces.

58. That is, true schizophrenia. But people are often labelled schizophrenic who are not so in the true meaning of the word, or only partially so, but may have certain of its characteristics, such as rigid compartmentalization of mind, or certain forms of violence, of which they are unaware.

59. This construction always takes place on etheric planes. The formation of the schizophrenic mind is always completed on these planes, and never on the physical plane; so the person with a truly schizoid mind, brings it with him into physical life.

People who can in fact be called schizophrenic bring this structure of mind already formed into their physical lives. The appearance they present is exactly as described. They may be considerate, moral, honest in their relationships with friends or family - or even with strangers, while at the same time, in all activities related to their ‘sealed compartment’, there is no act of violence or cruelty or lust in which they may not indulge. These are two completely separate and very different beings60 within the same man; and each part of the schizophrenic being is valid for the person in its own place.61

60. This is a schizophrenic being, not merely a “personality”, for it represents an essential division within the person which reflects the nature of that person. It also has the quality of permanence in him, until he reaches the point where he is willing, and prepared, to be healed.

61. The schizophrenic can be helped, and made whole, during his physical life - but never by anyone in the “normal” compartment of his life. Family and friends, if they are in his normal compartment, can never help him successfully - nor can the usual forms of professional assistance. He can only be helped by someone from within his own form of perversion: one of his own victims, or a fellow prisoner - should he be committed to prison - or another schizophrenic in whom the compartmentalization is breaking down, and who is on the way to being healed. This is a law of healing: Only someone who has suffered the same illness can be used to help another. Another law is that at a certain stage in the healing process of a person, he must give help to another sufferer before healing can proceed in himself.

The seventh and lowest level of ‘darkness’ is one in which the entire being of the person has become encompassed by the sealed compartment of the schizophrenic; no part of his mind is open any longer to the influence of his own conscience. His will has completely sealed his mind against receiving any guidance or inspiration from within; although his Inner Being continues to function, he cannot receive its messages. All the impressions he receives from without, whatever their nature, that refer to the world about him or to the people with whom he has a relationship fall on a mind that is totally devoid of direction from within and lacks the least contact with its spiritual meaning.

A person on this level of being might give the appearance of any - or every - form of normality, of having normal relationships, of reflecting ethical values in his behaviour, or even of being religious in outlook. The person is capable of reflecting any idea or value from outside while he is at the same time incapable of receiving any inner direction form within his own being, or from his spiritual companion or Guardian Angel; so that the ethic from without can receive no response from within and remains a mask, external to the nature of the person and unable to exert an influence on his will.

This level of mind and etheric being is in no sense a development out of the sixth level; it is not merely a step downwards from the schizophrenic mentality into greater ‘darkness’. Within the entire sphere of distortion and darkness there is never movement of any kind from level to level, in either direction. In fact, to think in terms of ‘sphere’ at all is to create a certain misunderstanding, because levels of distortion are better conceived of as referring primarily to mind or mentality rather than to place.62 For most people ‘place’ - that is, where a person's body is in an external sense - is very different from ‘mind’ which is how he thinks and occasionally where he is internally. In reality, a person's mind is his internal place and, as such, must necessarily affect his external place. In time to come it will be understood more widely that the place in which a person lives ‘externally’ is in fact the same place that he inhabits ‘internally’.*

62. At least, so far as current thinking is concerned. In fact, however, mind and place are the same thing in real terms, for every person truly inhabits the mind he has created for himself.

* A Culbone Visitor's note: J. D. Solomon explains this very well in The Mind's Ear (Hounslow: Bibliagora 1979).

This mental sphere of distortion and darkness is therefore not a single place in the ordinary sense of the word, nor a ladder of different places. It consists of seven separate and unconnected63 kinds of mental place which constitute reality in both an inner and an outer sense for the people who inhabit them. The idea of levels within this whole sphere of distorted mind conveys the fact of varying distance from the person's natural level and of lesser or greater degrees of spiritual darkness, but it is not intended to convey an impression of movement from one to another as if they were rungs on a ladder. In fact, all the separate levels of distortion open out from the Summerland or from any of the first four upper levels. From any one of these four levels, the person can either will his own growth, and so continue his evolution upwards in his own time, or will those forms of destructiveness which lead him in the opposite direction - into entropy or some kind of lifeless or distorted existence on one of the seven levels of ‘darkness’. When the person has recognised his situation, wherever he may find himself in this world of shadow, and desires to change his place of mind, working his way back to his own natural level through the aid of his own will and the help of the ones assigned to him, he can still descend into another - and yet another - level of distortion and darkness. At any point on the way of ascent, through the first four levels of evolution, a person may descend again and again through weakness or the inclination of his own will into different places of distortion. He can never descend into precisely the same place twice, but he can be drawn back into inhabiting a different form of the same level of ‘darkness’ in which he had previously existed. This can recur many times until he has worked out every aspect of a particular weakness and is wholly able to will the growth and evolution of his own life. Most people can only learn in this way, through many experiences of descent into places created by weak will, self absorption, or violence of one form or another. A few people are able to learn, overcome their own weaknesses, and grow without such experiences.

63. The first and second levels of distortion are the only ones which have a certain connection with one another.

Someone who has experienced ‘crystallisation’ (on the fifth or sixth level of distortion), through some form of power-seeking - maybe as a fakir or a monk, and through his own understanding achieves release, can still be drawn back by a different form of the same craving for power and become crystallised again. Some people may have to experience the entire country of a particular level of distortion, living through a variety of its possible forms, before becoming able to release themselves from its experience altogether by understanding the principle upon which their attraction to this kind of etheric darkness is based.

The seventh level of distortion and real etheric darkness, which is furthest away from any natural level of life and spiritual guidance and growth, is usually brought with a person into his physical life from previous existences. If he has not brought this state of ‘darkness’ with him in its entirety, he has come with the predisposition towards it - and more than that, for the descent into any state of distortion is never instantaneous but a slow retrogression which often takes several periods of life to accomplish and many more to get out of again. In such a case, the physical life provides a crucial opportunity which can enable the person either to see the dangerous state of his own mind and life or to seal his condition for many ‘lifetimes’ to come.

The above holds true for the three lowest levels of mentality. In only very few cases do people construct these levels of mind entirely during their physical lives on Earth. For the most part they are built up through a number of experiences on etheric planes and only gradually become what may best be called ‘crystallised’ into a certain state of mind. During this long process, and before they reach that ultimate state, enlightenment and change are always possible. It depends solely on the will of the person. Once the state of crystallisation has been reached it becomes more difficult and takes much longer - but it is never impossible. Enlightenment will come ultimately to everyone - not in a flash, but gradually, even to those people who have become like formations of rock in the darkness of the Earth's core. No one is ever entirely beyond the reach of help from the spiritual beings engaged in the rescue of the ones who live in darkness. And if Light itself cannot penetrate to the most distant levels of distortion, the vibration of peace can do so, and it can bring a warmth and radiance akin to sunlight to the ones “who sit in darkness” - when they are ready to receive it. Until that time comes they do not even know they are in darkness.

The lowest level of etheric ‘reality’, and the mind a person inhabits on this level, is indeed dense and hard like opaque rock - and yet the person himself presents a very different external appearance to the person on the sixth level who acts under the influence of his fanaticism. The differences are due to several factors. In the first place, all motivation derives from outside the person on the seventh level; there is no internal drive at all towards specific aims or goals. On every other level of distortion, a person's will is focussed on a particular aim, expressed towards a certain internal goal. Power, “self” - even the most imaginary picture of the self, or a strong negative emotion are all points of focus which develop within the person. But on this level, where the will is at its strongest - as strong and firm and determined as rock - there is no inner point of focus or aim at all. There is no contact with anything internal whatsoever, no direction of any kind from within. Impetus, aim, direction of the ‘life’ or existence on this level derive solely from without. They are (still using the ‘rock’ image) reflected from the surface of the person's being. The strong will of the person at this level has, therefore, none of the consistency of aim or direction which comes alone from inner purpose, whatever the nature or quality of that purpose. Aims fluctuate from moment to moment, from period to period in the person's ‘life’ without consistency; but with each aim there is the strength of a ‘rock’, the will of iron to see it through. So a person on this level may present a picture of being “all things to all men”; equally convincing in all his guises, he can deceive many people who will believe everything he says because it has the ring of authority in it. Each one will see reflected on the surface of that person his own expectations of him. The highest ideals can be reflected from that surface, but they cannot be carried out truly by the person because they find no resonance within him: they are not his ideals. Equally, his mind can reflect the greatest evils, and his will actualize them; for there is no point of contact with his own Inner Being64 to prevent this happening.

64. His Inner Being contains all he has experienced and learned in the past, and acquired by way of understanding, which could restrain him from evil.

The ‘rock’, into which the being of a person at this lowest level of existence has ‘crystallised’, has to be broken up and dissolved before he is able to return to his own natural level of life. The influence of his Inner Being can only begin to be felt by him again after the complete destruction of that rock-like being he has willed and built up as himself.

This teaching, about the seven levels of distortion to which any man may descend through ignorance and his own will, was first given to students of Yoga about two thousand five hundred years ago. It was given for two reasons. First of all, it was essential for people to acquire a clear picture of where failure to understand and become responsible for the direction of their own minds could lead. It was necessary for them to learn about the nature of will and to see, with unmistakable clarity, that to will any form of self fantasy would lead inevitably to its domination over the person; to indulge continuously in negative thinking or emotion would lead to some form of imprisonment in that emotion; and to will the craving for power, in whatever form, would cause distortions of mind and body inconceivable to anyone who had not witnessed them. The aim of imparting such knowledge was to increase the desire in individual men and women to become conscious and responsible for all aspects of their minds now.

The second reason for giving this teaching was that, through it, the student acquired a clearer understanding of the relationship between forms of mind and forms of etheric ‘reality’. He learned to see how the states of mind which a person inhabits inside himself constitute in fact the world which he thinks of as existing outside himself. Through this knowledge the student learned to distinguish types and levels of mind in the people around him and to realise that every type or level of mind experiences a different kind of ‘reality’.

This understanding becomes the starting-point for a new and non-subjective way of seeing the world of human relationships and its history. It also provides a basis for a gradual realisation of the fact that although everyone appears to inhabit the same physical world, they really inhabit only their own form and states of mind.65 When a person's eyes are opened to the true nature and structure of the world people inhabit, then everyone can be seen in relation to where they are internally and there is no longer any ground for the assumption that people ought to think or see or behave alike

65. Marked dissimilarities between people are due to real differences in their minds and etheric levels of being. Antagonisms in human life arise, in large part, from an assumption of similarity and equality that is based on ignorance of the nature of etheric reality, and the different levels of mind and being.

- Shalom & Welcome! -

© The Neith Network Library 2002
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Updated 20:34 4/11/2002.