The spiritual anatomy of a human being is that of spirit, soul and body (personality) or, Divine Self, Higher Self and lower self. A misconception exists in that the terms spirit and soul have typically been used, by many people, as synonymous, leading to much misunderstanding. I too have used these terms repeatedly, as seemingly interchangeable, though not; under the presumption the reader is defining them in a manner consistent with the definitions I am applying. To some this may be true, but, as already suggested; language is subject to so many ambiguities that this presumption may be a disservice to others.
I find, in the use of the term spirit, conflicting, ambiguous and sometimes inappropriate applications which, interestingly, also occur when employed in relation to the term God. It begins with Paul’s admonition; “God is Spirit and must be worshipped in Spirit”. OK. Maybe so. Thus we may speak of God/Spirit, transcendent, as in, “God above in heaven”. Or, conversely, there is the God/Spirit that is immanent as in God “who is above all, and through all and in you all” (Eph.4:6). Ergo, God is in everything (pantheism) or, also, we hear of God/Spirit is everything. Adding to the confusion are the New Age affirmations, “I am God” or “We are all God” etc., which would have been seen as blasphemous not too long ago. Of course, this fact was affirmed ages ago as in Jesus’ rebuke of His antagonists, “Is it not written in your Law, I said, Ye are Gods?” (John 10:34).
That which we speak of as spirit in man, the real spiritual “Self” of a human being, was given the appellation, “Monad,” by Leibniz. He saw the Monad as an un-compounded, elementary, indestructible Essence, endowed with the Power of giving and receiving with respect to the forms of the world, thereby vivifying the system and producing the varying degrees of differentiation as the system unfolds and further, receiving from the phenomenal world the impressions essential for the awakening of consciousness. The Monad is the innermost source of all being, a spark struck off from the fiery mystery of the Godhead, the Supreme Fire of Life, the Fount of existence, as the Divine, Unknowable Essence is the Fount of Its Being.
The soul, in contrast to spirit, is the storehouse for the experience, power and wisdom gained from the Monad’s activities in the world and evolves over time based upon this exposure. The Monad’s purity is inherent, not acquired by merit, whereas the soul must pass through the labyrinth of form life to attain to full Self-consciousness in the spiritual sense of the term, and does so under the guidance of Karmic Law. Thus, the soul registers the beginnings of the sense of a separate “self” (Ego). In the most general sense, the soul is the center of experience which, as a microcosm, has acquired or is acquiring a character of its own. The soul is, therefore, the principle of awareness which ripens upon the slow tree of cause and effect. Let’s call it psychic DNA, the coding that translates into the power of responsiveness that we speak of as consciousness. It is this fact that has often caused the term “mind” to be employed, as a synonym for soul as in, Spirit, mind and body. The arrangement; mind, body and soul, must also be recognized as containing a redundancy. The problem, as will become apparent shortly, is that mind is an aspect of the consciousness we designate “soul” and hence, we are only addressing an attribute of the soul, an aspect of consciousness, when we speak of mind, and yet use the term as if identical with the soul per se. The spiritual life force (Monad) develops consciousness (soul) through its interaction with the world, an aspect of which is mind.
The great Initiate Plato held that: “Confined in the body as in a prison . . . the soul seeks its pristine sphere of pure rationality by pursuing the philosophic life, by thinking the universal, by loving and living according to reason. The bodily life is but an episode in the eternal career of the soul, which precedes birth and proceeds after death. Life in the flesh is a trial and a probation; death, the release and the return to the soul’s destiny; to another term of probation, or to the realm of pure reason.”
The personality, or personal self, man’s persona or mask, is composed of the conditioned energies that produce the concrete, rational mind; the emotions, feelings or sentient nature (astral body); and the physical body, with its etheric energy underpinning. It is a space suit, as it were, worn by the soul during its journey on space ship Earth. While the Monad is the top of the ladder of Being, the personality is Its shadow and constitutes the lower rung, grounded in matter. The ever brightening light of the soul initially provides the source of the shadows, until the intensity, purity and universality of the soul’s light is such that all shadow is dispelled and the light is then turned upward to illuminate the Path of spiritual ascendancy that lies before it.
The soul, the principle of consciousness, is the mediator or mediating principle, the bridge between the higher and the lower, between spirit (the Monad) and the mental, astral (emotional) and physical matter that composes the personality. The personality is the instrumentality or organ of the soul – it is the vehicle or instrument for growth and expression, as the soul is the instrument of the Monad. The personality is the means by which the soul perpetuates its “journey of awakening” and evokes its growth needs, cycle upon ever recurring cycle.
It is self evident that the personality has a consciousness or soul of its own, those thought processes and feelings that are indigenous to the bodily parts and that we typically associate as our own such as muscle memory, instincts etc. To establish the distinction between the “Higher” consciousness that is the human soul or spiritual individuality (Ego) and that of the bodily nature, we term this personality consciousness the “animal soul” or ego. It is man’s lower or “second nature” as opposed to the Higher Self that is the human soul. It is also referred to as a Group-Soul i.e. the collective, inherent mind or consciousness of each atom, molecule and cell that composes the personality, in contrast to the individualized soul we speak of as human. It could also be referred to as a group-personality inasmuch as it is the collective group life and consciousness of those living entities that compose the personality equipment. The human soul is also a group soul, but on an infinity higher level of activity.
