Hylozoics on the Emancipation of Man

1 8 THE EMANCIPATION OF MAN 1

The development or ascension or self-realization of the monad consists in a continuous union with the successively higher and a corresponding emancipation from the lower. 2

By his dispositions man is everything that he will become. Every monad will reach the highest divine stage by discovering, learning, and acquiring everything by itself. The monad will do this by identifying itself with everything that is contained in its consciousness and in this way getting to know reality. 3

The more thoroughly, the more intensively this is done, the more quickly and the better the monad will learn. Therefore it is important to live in the present and to be attentive to the content of consciousness. Concentration is attention. The more impersonally the individual observes, the less dependent on attractive and repulsive feelings he is when doing so, the more objective and thus more correct is his view, so-called common sense, the more he discovers. 4

Generally speaking, the humanist individual is during the first seven years of his life at the stage of barbarism; between seven and fourteen years, at the stage of civilization; between fourteen and twenty-one years, at the stage of culture; to reach the stage of humanity later. 5

At the lowest stage of ignorance (the stage of barbarism), the individual identifies with his organism. At that stage, which in each new incarnation we quickly pass in childhood, it is more important for the individual to receive guidance than information. This stage could be called the stage of catechism. Anyone who is ignorant of life needs rules for action. Only when his power of judgement has developed so far that he is able to judge the basic relations of life right is he capable of managing his affairs without further instructions. Each higher stage of development (or in the case of the undeveloped, each new seven-year period) brings with it higher, nobler concepts of right and wrong. The lower the individual’s stage, the more important it is that he is taught to respect the equal right of all, is brought up to live with others without friction and to establish good habits. Only when the individual has clearly grasped the equal right of all and willingly adapts to this principle is he ripe for self- education. 6

At the second stage of ignorance (the stage of civilization) the individual identifies with his lower emotions, the repulsive ones. A large portion of mankind is still found at this stage.

People are ruled by expressions of hatred of countless kinds – fear, anger, contempt, envy, vindictiveness, malicious joy, etc. – and by the presumption of self-assertion in all its varieties. The universal historical experience of this is the basis of the Christian doctrine of man as an irremediably evil creature. 7

In the life of the individual this stage corresponds to the so-called awkward adolescent age.

Wars and rebellions, all manner of lawlessness, cruelty, atrocities demonstrate that mankind has not yet learnt the rules of social life without friction. 8

At the third stage – the stage of culture – the individual learns how to control the lower emotionality, the repulsive instincts and tendencies, through the higher emotionality – the attractive, altruistic feelings. 9

At the stage of humanity, reason becomes the dominant factor, and here the Platonic tenet, “he who knows what is right, does what is right”, holds good, since he has realized that it is rational and inevitable. 10

The learned, and the theologians in particular, have contested the validity of that Platonic tenet. Those who have really reached the stage of humanity, however, testify in Platon’s favour. But the true cause of this condition has not yet been explained. The explanation for it lies in the fact that a lower kind of consciousness can be controlled only through the next higher kind. 11

Physical life expression is controlled by means of emotionality, emotionality through mentality, mentality through causal consciousness, and so forth.12

Those who have reached the stage of humanity are able to identify with so many ideas and ideals from the causal world that using them they are able to control mentality and so everything belonging to the first self or so-called personality. 13

What is higher dominates what is lower, and the individual becomes better by becoming the higher. This is precisely the process of salvation, misinterpreted by Christianity. The individual has been raised up into a higher world, that which theologians call relationship with god, and has come to share in the pertaining higher forces. The true mystics of all ages have instinctively, without the support of dogmas, found the straight path to essential unity. 14

The difficulty lies in retaining the experience, vision, or whatever you call the contact with that higher state. A magnetic link has been established. The inexperienced easily believe that this subsequently runs by itself. But if those forces, which unknown to the individual are always streaming down through his envelopes, are not put into practice in a life of service, then the contact with these are broken and the individual imperceptibly relapses into his old condition, deceiving himself by falsifying his motives for action. This is the explanation for spiritual hypocrisy, an all too common phenomenon. The understanding of life will increase only by the direct and practical application in life of insight gained and must be continually practised if not to be lost again. Qualities such as single-mindedness, perseverance, and refusal to let oneself be hindered by circumstances and conditions are required of anyone who wants to reach higher. 15

The vision of the new is a symbolic way of experiencing that enables thought to identify with the state strived after. As that which has been experienced mentally is drawn into emotionality, longing engenders that force which realizes the vision in physical existence. If the vision is not retained until it has been translated into life, its magnetic attractive force is soon lost. 16

The higher vision entails a new way of looking at existence, presupposes work at a fresh conception. The individual must make a new religion for his emotional needs and a new philosophy to satisfy the demands of his mentality for clarity and understanding. 17

In published esoteric writings and also in the works of the great mystics there are so many indications as to the view on existence held by the second self that nobody need be ignorant of the essentials of that view. The claim made by theologians, that man has innate metaphysical needs, is by no means unwarranted. As a rule the monad remembers nothing of its experiences in previous incarnations until it has reached higher stages of development, but there are symptoms indicating a living past, dim recollections of a happier existence (in the mental world), fear of sufferings, idiosyncrasies, antipathies, sympathies. Anyone possessed of causal objective consciousness can always demonstrate how such phenomena are connected with forgotten experiences. Man’s unconscious may extend however far back into the past of the monad. What has become latent manifests itself with increasing strength as instinct, pre- disposition, understanding of the essentials of life. Only when he can contact his super- consciousness, however, does he begin to assimilate its forces, which are constantly pouring down and which are at his disposal to an unlimited extent. This is true of the monad at all higher stages and in all higher worlds. When man has learnt individually how to apply law- fully the physical, emotional, and mental forces, he has learnt what he can learn in the human kingdom. Then he is ready for the methodical and systematic process of identification. 18

Identification is both an objective and a subjective process. All consciousness expressions are simultaneously consciousness, energy, and matter according to the ancient esoterisms, “thoughts are things”, “thoughts are forces”, “energy follows thought”. Consciousness, energy, and matter can never exist separately. Energy and matter are that which is objective to consciousness in all processes. 19

Identification means being that of which you are conscious, not separating self and non- self but being both self and non-self. In philosophy there is a discussion of dualism and3 monism. There is one in esoterics as well. In philosophy the controversy is centred on the question whether consciousness and matter should be regarded as two different principles, which is inescapable, or as an indivisible unity, which is equally inevitable. In esoterics, monism is the same as identification. The monad must be able to identify with all to become the all. The monad incorporates consciousness and in material respect everything necessary to remove the opposition of outer and inner. Identification is momentary and spontaneous to begin with. The first contact, be it an intuition, a vision, or a live idea, appears like a revelation. By retaining the experience of this glimpse into a new world – so radically different from anything known till then with new kinds of relations and other laws – the monad attracts its second self. It will still be a long time, however, before the monad has emancipated itself from everything that it was till then and can become one with that which again and again appears to be the not-self. 20

The deputy second self of the individual, that mighty deva (Augoeides) who supervises the second triad until the monad can itself take possession of it, reveals himself when the monad has some prospect of beginning to deputize for him, becoming his own second self himself, his christos; remaining in his 46-consciousness. Until then the deva has followed the monad on its odyssey through the incarnations with sympathy mixed with amusement not always flattering to the monad. The deva has continually anew been forced to ascertain that the monad has still much to learn before it stands a chance of understanding the meaning and goal of life, has developed the requisite qualities and abilities. 21

The countless attempts by the deva at influencing and inspiring the monad have almost always made no impression at all. The deva does not in the least help the individual with his everyday problems, his trifles in lower worlds. It is by learning to solve those problems by itself that the monad shall develop its capacity. Neither can the deva prevent the monad’s reaping what it has sown. The consequences of mistakes are necessary lessons. 22

Experiencing the vision, longing for identification and the transformation related to it are signs that the abilities exist latently, that the time for departure is approaching for both the monad and the deva. 23

Identification with the higher requires emancipation from the lower. Both activities are impossible for the immature; they are not easy in all respects even for those who have the qualifications. 24

The emancipation has sometimes been called “sacrifice”. This term, like most old terms, is inadequate and misleading. The child makes no sacrifice when giving away the toys he has outgrown. No renunciation is involved when you exchange something less valuable for some- thing more valuable. Anyone who does not leave what is lower with a sense of relief and gratitude has not beheld what is higher. Life is not a constant sacrifice. It is a constant gain.

Anyone who has experienced the intuition or the bliss and power of the vision does every- thing in his might to be able to dwell in that state. 25

Those who think they are forced to leave what is lower; those who with pain and longing give up what seems desirable and valuable to them, make mistakes. It is in the compensation of identification, in the experience of unity, that the individual receives life and power and is automatically emancipated in the one right way. If emancipation is a manifestation of self- assertion, an effect of its indomitable thirst for freedom, then the individual’s egocentricity and sense of his own importance are easily strengthened. 26

When the individual enters unity, he ceases to be an individual and becomes a group. The individual self merges with its own collective self. The thought of the lower self disappears according as the individual begins living for others. One condition of not experiencing unity only sporadically but remaining in it is that the individual has formed his group and raised the group by living for it. This leads to voluntary incarnation. 27

Incarnation was represented symbolically with “crucifixion on the wheel of rebirth”.4 28

Symbolism was intended to make truths incomprehensible to the immature. The ancients had experiences of the dangers involved in casting pearls. The paradox was partially used for the same purpose. He who wants to see must first become blind. He who wants to hear must first become deaf. They were enjoined to set themselves free from love of any kind to be able to love more intensively. The paradox disappears when they learn to distinguish between what is lower and what is higher. 29

The individual is already part of a group. He has been so ever since the mineral kingdom.

He will later meet these friends in the causal world, for they are all there. Sometimes he meets them in the physical world and then recognizes them at once, although he does not know what this is due to. 30

The individual builds in addition a group himself, while still being ignorant of who will join it. Nobody enters unity alone. Only that individual can enter unity who brings his own group and has become group himself. It is still in the same manner that the monad rises in the ever larger collectives of ever higher worlds. The individual becomes the cosmos by in- corporating those worlds with himself, by objective identification with ever more compre- hensive kinds of material reality and by subjective identification with the consciousness aspect of that same reality. 31

The individual builds his group by starting to live collectively. In that process, those who belong to the group are drawn into it. The individual himself grows into the creations of his consciousness of unity. The law of reaping sees to it that dream castles built out of essential realities take shape. And the individual, seized by his dharma, the sense of his responsibility in life, being free through these realizations, completes his work by giving up his life. 32

The initiate, the essentialist, the christos, incarnates to serve his group, help his own to merge in group work the more easily. The crucified one gives up his life for the sake of the sheep. This symbol has been distorted so as to mean that a certain person is thought to incarnate to abolish the law of sowing and reaping and the laws of development and self- realization, to allow individuals to lead however loveless lives, inflict however much suffer- ing on other people. 33

The gnostic parable of the exhortation to the master-builder to consider the costs before beginning to build, is a warning not to begin the emancipation without the compensation of identification. Because the emancipation upsets the balance of all the relations of the individual, and so the law of reaping automatically goes into action. Destiny has put the individual into such relations as normally are dissolved only through changes wrought by life itself. These attachments drop of themselves, even if the individual does everything to hinder it. It is the result of essential change. Forces have been put into action that unintentionally must effect change. The individual suddenly finds that he is a rock of offense, a presumptuous iconoclast, a dangerous madman. 34

The path of development is staked out with the mile-posts of ideals. If you look more closely at such a post, you will always find a crucified one hanging on it. 35

Traditional Christianity has painted the path to christos, to unity, as a path of suffering.

This has strongly influenced Western thought. Also in the Orient, exoteric Buddhism has con- tributed to the spread of a pessimistic outlook on existence. This pessimism is radically false.

It is true that the known part of the history of our globe has been a history of suffering. But then it was the worst possible reaping out of the uniquely bad sowing of the Atlanteans. Ten thousand years afford no perspective on the great civilizations and cultures of the races.

Millions of years are required for that. That short epoch during which the lower emotionality, ignorance, and inability have been allowed to hold sway, is now fast approaching its end.

Even the mentally undeveloped begin to see that the systems that have hitherto been employed are absurd. 36

The emergency of mankind calls for extraordinary measures. One of these consist in5 having clans at the stages of humanity and ideality, who have not been able to incarnate hitherto, to take over the management of the public life of our globe in all nations. They will be in conscious contact with the planetary government in Shamballa. We need not know more to realize that the glory days of the fifth root-race are approaching, creating conditions which for a long epoch will be characterized as paradisiacal. Once again mankind will jubilantly announce that even physical and emotional life is happiness. We surely know that the life of higher worlds cannot be otherwise. Life is happiness. Suffering is bad reaping out of bad sowing. It is a great comfort to know that the collective bad reaping of mankind is exhausted for thousands of years to come. 37

Of course life can be hard on the individual, trying him to the point of bursting. But in most cases this is because human beings take suffering in the wrong way, strengthen it instead of lessening the effect of it, do not use their wondrous resources of compensation. An esoteric master points out with force that the tendency to overemphasize suffering is a characteristic trait of human beings. The same master also says that happiness is based on confidence in the second self and forgetfulness of the first self: “Suffering comes as the lower self rebels.

Control that lower self, eliminate desire, and all is joy.” 38

We know that we produce suffering and then strengthen it by fearing it. Also, many people behave as perversely as possible. They concentrate their attention on really feeling how painful it is. They are ignorant of the fact that imagination is able to reinforce trifles past bearing, just as it can be used to reduce the most acute pain to a minimum. We should not blame life for the excesses of our imagination. 39

There are those whom life has taught how to disregard how it feels. The Spartans were trained to show utter contempt for any pain and the Stoics, to be calmly indifferent to any- thing conceivable. The fakirs are unassailable by physical pain as well as emotional suffering.

That training will be part of the educational systems of the future. 40

Only heroes populated the Valhalla of the Scandinavians. Albeit it was brutal, yet that idea expressed something essential. Only a hero can enter into possession of his second self.

Every individual must perform the twelve labours of Hercules (insight, understanding, the sovereignty of the self in all its envelopes, courage, freedom from desires, self-forgetfulness, invulnerability, aspiration to unity, gratitude, trust in self, trust in law, affection, honesty, uprightness, tolerance, tact, loyalty, patience, single-mindedness, endurance, and impersonal personality – we may just guess that such qualities are involved), before he is admitted to the kingdom of the supermen. 41

By performing these labours the individual liberates himself from the fictions and illusions of his first self. Then he need not be urged to forget his lower self, which already lives for the higher one. 42

Identification with what is higher abolishes dualism of lower and higher, when the lower has become a mere tool. 43

No one is good except in unity. No one has ever seen god or the cosmic total conscious- ness. Those who have entered unity bear witness that real life begins there: the life of bliss for others and with others. 44

The individual conquers world upon world by identifying himself with the consciousness of those higher worlds. In so doing he acquires the ability to utilize the energies of the different worlds and to control their matters. 45

Identification with higher worlds is called “planetary initiations” by the esotericians. 46

In this process, the emphasis is not on the positive conquest of what is higher but on the condition of the ascension: emancipation from what is lower. 47

The positive assimilation is not always within the range of possibility. But what is required above all, the negative liberation, always does, if the individual has attained such a higher level that he can descry the ideal. It is in this respect that the individual’s seriousness6 and purposiveness are put to the test. 48

The emancipation implies both inner and outer struggle. 49

It is perhaps easy to renounce glory, wealth, and power. It is worse to renounce all those things that seem necessary to a “life fit for human beings”, all the niceties of life that appear not only legitimate but even necessary. Everything that tends to bind the individual to, keep him in, what is lower: all the rooted habits of comfort, the multitude of acquired complexes, all the countless considerations of convention, all friends who with all their might want to hold him back, are offended, consider him ungrateful and disloyal. We all want to rest in the oasis of the desert once we have reached it. It seems loveless, reckless to leave all those behind who want to remain in what is lower. 50

But lower duties yield to higher ones. Higher ideals always have lower ones at their command. What is higher is always right when the right of no one else is given up or encroached upon. 51

The struggle for emancipation may last during many incarnations. The individual may experience in life upon life that all that which he does not willingly renounce is taken away from him. A life in disgrace will teach him to see the vanity of glory. Perhaps he must more than once be brought down from a position of power he has gained before the illusoriness of power is clear to him. Financial ruin in life upon life also teaches him the impermanence of everything. His experiences are increasingly painful until the individual decides to say goodbye to all that. 52

The individual’s deputizing second self, who has been following him through tens of thousands of incarnations, sees to it that he is put into such circumstances of life and may have such experiences that he finally decides for the definitive emancipation. The insights and energies requisite to the ascension are then put at his disposal. 53

The following tabulation shows the emancipations from, and the identifications with, the different worlds brought about at the planetary initiations. 54

Initiation   emancipation from   identification with 

1st 49 48 

2nd 48 47:4-7 

3rd 47:4-7 47:1-3 

4th 47:1-3 46 

5th 46 45 

6th 45 44 

7th 44 43 55

At the lower emotional state – the stage of hatred – with a repulsive basic tendency – man is an intelligent animal but the more dangerous because of his intelligence. He then easily falls a victim to, becomes a tool of, the satanists. 56

Divine love presupposes the divine stage. 57

Essential (46) love presupposes essential consciousness, the ability of identification with all creatures. Subsequently there can only be compassion. Criticism then becomes impossible.

Criticism is repudiation. Anyone who can identify himself with everything sees the divine in everything. There are 46-atoms in the physical atom. But they have not yet awakened to life. 58

The monad, which is a primordial atom, is involved in some 50 different envelopes. (48 of these are atoms of ever coarser kinds.) 59

Evolution consists in the emancipation from those envelopes. 60

The monad does not get to know itself until it has reached the highest divine stage and left manifestation. By then it has left off all its envelopes. 61

The lower, the coarser the envelope, the greater the ignorance of reality and life, the moreserious the inability of emancipation from the envelopes, the more intensive the identification with the surrounding world and its consciousness. 62

The purpose of the cosmos is to arouse the potential consciousness of the monad into active consciousness, to enable the monad to get to know reality and through experience to gain insight, understanding, and ability. We are here to get to know life and its laws and to apply those laws infallibly. 63

When the self (monad) identifies itself with physical life, it is hypnotized by the ways of looking at things employed by the human collective. 64

When it identifies itself with emotionality, it is a victim of illusions; with the lower emotionality, it is a victim of repulsive illusions; with the higher emotionality, it is held captive by attractive illusions. 65

When it identifies itself with mentality, it is a victim of fictions. 66

When it identifies itself with causal consciousness, it has acquired the right perception of material reality in the five worlds of man (47–49). 67

When it identifies itself with essentiality, it has acquired love, wisdom, the right attitude to life.

The above text constitutes the essay The Emancipation of Man by Henry T. Laurency.

The essay is part of the book Knowledge of Life Five by Henry T. Laurency, published in

Swedish in 1995. Translation by Lars Adelskogh.

Copyright © 2015 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.

Endnotes by the Translator

To 8.33 A “rock of offense”. The Bible, Romans 9:33, 1 Peter 2:8. This expression means: a source of annoyance.

To 8.37 “Suffering comes as the lower self rebels. Control that lower self, eliminate desire, and all is joy.” Initiation Human and Solar by Alice A. Bailey, p. 76.