Quest Magazine

Viewpoint: Light as a Feather

By Betty Bland

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2007 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bland, Betty. "Viewpoint: Light as a Feather." Quest  95.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2007):

 

Theosophical Society - Betty Bland served as President of the Theosophical Society in America and made many important and lasting contributions to the growth and legacy of the TSA.

My morning walks often yield tidbits for further contemplation. I relate to the Native American tradition that nature has many secrets to reveal if she is observed with sensitivity. Sometimes, it is just the inspiration of peace and beauty flowing gently into view. But at other times, an object or event triggers some specific insight, or at least fanciful meanderings that reveal a meaningful message.
 

On one particular morning, a startlingly large feather adorned my otherwise ordinary path of pebbles and weedy grass patches. Almost automatically, it found its way into my hand for further examination and contemplation. The feather was quite unremarkable except for its size—mostly black with indistinct striations of a brownish hue. For a feather to be so large, it must surely be essential for flying—either a large tail or wing feather.

Could the bird have been injured in a fight, perhaps protecting its nest? Or was it merely molting and had already grown a replacement? In either case, to try to catch the bird to return the lost item would be detrimental to all concerned. Once dislodged from its original location, its usefulness to the bird had ceased.

In being committed to helping a fellow human being, we might feel that we know just what they are missing and feel quite justified in attempting to place their seemingly missing feathers (or other qualities) just where we think they should go. Of course this is ridiculous for either a bird's feathers or a person's qualities.

Growth and healing can only be organic, arising from within. If we want to help another, we have to let go of our particular biases and tune into their circumstance and soul's essence. It might be called empathy, or a recognition of our essential unity with the other, but by whatever name, it is an essential quality for being able to benefit others.

Colonel Olcott recognized this when he immersed himself in improving the plight of the native born Buddhists in India, Sri Lanka, and other lands under the rule of European colonialists. He became one with them, working diligently to help them reclaim the religious tradition into which they were born and the dignity of their native culture. He expressed this empathy in the following statement in Volume II of Old Diary Leaves,:

The most difficult lesson for a white man in Asia to learn is, that the customs of his people and those of the dusky races are absolutely different, and that if he dreams of getting on well with the latter he must lay aside all prejudices and hereditary standards of manners, and be one with them, both in spirit and in external form. (382)

He recognized that he had to rid himself of his Western cultural prejudices in order to be in full harmony with the plights and needs of the people, and thus be able to render true assistance. With an understanding heart he was able to become one with them and work to help them from an inside perspective. Much to the amazement of the other colonists, the Colonel was accepted almost instantly into the homes and hearts of the native people.

This first step of fully empathizing is certainly an important one when trying to be of service, but there is another point of consideration that can be overlooked. In order to make a difference in the world, we, ourselves, must be whole—or at least be working in that direction. The feather also points to this important lesson. When helping another, we have to be careful not to pull out our own feathers in the process. If we damage ourselves, our usefulness to others is greatly diminished. A bird which has lost some of its feathers surely cannot fly as fast. In fact, birds are far more vulnerable during the molting season. To assure that we do not lose the feathers of our being, we always have to remember to nurture the core of our being. The basic principle underlying our beneficial effectiveness is an attitude of wholeness which grows out of an inner connection with our higher nature.

This wholeness results from recognizing and cultivating our own spiritual needs, taking into account all aspects of our lives, health, responsibilities, circumstance, and relationships. Each one of us has to discover the meaning of wholeness for ourselves as we explore the unity of all life and our place within that wholeness. We have to find the balance point in which we can be the cup that is never empty, always giving, but always filled again. HPB cautioned us to maintain this balance point in The Voice of the Silence:

Beware, lest in the care of Self thy Soul should lose her foothold on the soil of Deva-knowledge.
Beware, lest in forgetting SELF, thy Soul lose o'er its trembling mind control, and forfeit thus the due fruition of its conquests.

The study and mediation that we Theosophists are exhorted to do is a part of that process of educating ourselves for more balanced and effective action. Action which springs from this center will be more useful and less tiring. In fact, when done well and in harmony with ourselves and our world, it can be energizing. This sounds easy, but it is a process of constant learning and readjustment. Service to others flows out of a concern for their well-being, but we can become so immersed in trying to help that we often forget our own needs. As I can attest, the self is an ingredient never to be forgotten or it will call attention to itself in most inconvenient ways. When one is fatigued, one cannot be as effective, and things can oft go awry.

We can, however, keep the goal before us, and at the very least, have the intention to nurture ourselves as we nurture others. Moreover, besides the usual physical needs, we also have a deep spiritual need for meaning and purpose. So it follows that performing action for the benefit of others completes the circle of a meaningful existence, which restores the soul.

When seen in this way, service can become the joy of living, not the drudgery. It can flow from a balanced heart full of understanding and compassion. There may be and most probably will be some sacrifices required along the way, but these are the sacrifices of lesser pleasures and self-centeredness. To unburden ourselves of these things brings a kind of lightness to life. As we learn to give from an inner abundance, we may discover that work performed in service can feel as light as a feather.

The God Debate: Monotheism vs Panentheism in Postmodern Society

By Victoria LePage

Theosophical Society - Victoria LePage, the author of Shambhala (Quest Books), has a lifelong interest in finding the roots of all our religions in an underlying sacred knowledge or primordial gnosis. Her next book will be a study of the origin of Christianity and its relation to Jewish Qabbalah. The author is an Australian living in the rural highlands of New South Wales with her husband.The way a culture looks at the world, how it relates to nature, what its values and ideals are, how it defines societal structure and norms—all are closely bound up with its concept of God. Western civilization has been dominated from its beginning, or at least from the rise of Christianity, by the monotheistic idea of one Creator God whose sovereignty is universal and absolute. Central to the three Semitic-based religions, this supremely governing idea has shaped our Western culture, imposing its strengths—and its limitations—on us more profoundly than we may realize. But even this most entrenched of Christian doctrines is under scrutiny in the present postmodernist climate.

Monotheism is about 2,500 years old. It was a Judaic reform instituted after the return of the Jewish priesthood from the Babylonian Captivity in the sixth century bce, and replaced an older, more complex concept of God that had degenerated into polytheism. From then on, orthodox Judaism cultivated, and bequeathed to Christianity, an image of the omniscient and omnipotent Almighty projected by the Old Testament God Jehovah, Creator and lone Ruler of the universe, who commanded, "Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me" (Exod. 20.3).

For a further fifteen centuries the monotheistic paradigm remained unquestioned. But it has been faring badly ever since the Dutch philosopher and theologian Benedict Spinoza, influenced by the post-Renaissance heretic Giordano Bruno, asserted that since God was a perfect and unchanging necessity implicit in all things, we must reject the possibility of His divine love and freedom of action, attributes that were the very ground of Christian teachings. In the religious sphere, Spinoza marked the beginning of the history of modern skepticism.

Today this skeptical trend is gaining ground. In theological and philosophical circles the monotheistic model of deity that has prevailed for so long in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is being questioned and increasingly discarded as inherently flawed. As a number of eminent authorities have pointed out, the Levitical priests who introduced this great reform did so by stitching together in their revised and heavily edited Yahwist scriptures a composite picture of the Hebrew God, the One God who became known as Yahweh-Elohim (Campbell 96, Schuré 188).

These were names of two divinities with entirely dissimilar and incompatible natures. El or El-Elohim was the ancient High God of the Canaanites and of the northern Israelite tribes of Samaria. Yahweh (Jehovah) was the warrior God or "God of Hosts," that is, of armies, the God of Judah to the south (Hyatt; Miller and Miller 154).

El-Elohim was also known as Elohe Yisrael, the God of Israel, and as El-Elyon, Abraham's God and the God of Israel's fathers. According to some authorities, El's son El-Shaddai, a god of mountains, also claimed the worship of the Hebrew people, and at some later point Yahweh, a tribal God of the Negev desert, gained the homage of the Judaean tribes and gradually took over the Jerusalem cult from El-Elyon (Miller and Miller 154). Although open to a great deal of disputation among today's scholars, the amalgamation of these different deities into one Yahwist formula is generally thought to have been the work of the post-Exilic scribes and elders. Whatever the truth of it, to most educated modern eyes the result has been, metaphysically speaking, an infelicitous and unconvincing confusion.

One problem is that El-Elohim, meaning "God of Gods," belongs to a pluralistic cosmogony, while Yahweh does not. Elohim is the intensive plural of El and designated the High God's first emanation, a trio of demiurgic principles who together executed the divine Will in the universe. The Elohim could be thought of as either singular or plural, in the sense of a group acting as one or as a plurality, and were generally personified and worshipped as a Divine Family. From this first "family" grew the Canaanite pantheon. The replacement of El by Yahweh to form the name Yahweh-Elohim, still used in orthodox Judaism, therefore contained an inherent contradiction, since Yahweh claimed to be the one and only deity in the Hebrew heavens.

Another problem is that, besides appropriating El's name, Yahweh had at some point acquired El's Canaanite consort, the goddess Asherah, whose image shared the Jerusalem sanctuary with Yahweh for many centuries (2 Kings 23.6). She was worshipped there by kings and populace alike until the religious purges of the seventh and sixth centuries bce. So it can be argued that from the beginning an element of doctrinal ambiguity, not to say fiction, entered into the monotheistic reformation.

Amid protests from conservative theologians, some extremely frank voices are now being raised on the issue. Joseph Bracken, S.J., Professor of Theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati, believes that the inadequate monotheistic model of God enshrined in Judaism—that of a transcendent First Principle, infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient, existing outside and apart from the world as its changeless and unconditioned cause and purpose—has actually encouraged atheism and needs to be fundamentally rethought. And Nancy Frankenberry, the feminist Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, states trenchantly that such a static concept of deity is unintelligible and is now "in profound disrepute":

"The incoherence of the classical conception of God has been so amply documented in the modern period that its persistence in an age of science seems as much a matter for psychoanalytic study as for philosophical comment." [31]

Frankenberry points out that classical theism, under the influence of the Christian church fathers, has exalted a divinity fashioned in the image of the imperial rulers of Rome. This is not surprising, of course, since he was originally a tribal god of somewhat poor character. Even today, after many sublimations, he is not a God of love but of power, an absolute potentate who only by various sophistical evasions and artifices could be said to love his creation. Such a God dwells in despotic majesty beyond space and time, absolutely aloof from the world and its creatures, which he has fashioned as a craftsman fashions an artifact, to conserve or destroy at whim. But the inconsistencies are legion. By what possible logic, Frankenberry asks, can such a self-sufficient and immutable divinity enter into the sufferings and joys of his creatures? Or indeed assume a male gender or human motives? How can an infinite God be meaningfully related to the contingencies of a finite cosmos? If he is omnipotent, why does suffering exist? If we are made in his perfect image, why is evolution necessary? It is this picture, she says, of a transcendent God who "requires for his existence no relations to anything beyond himself" that can no longer be sustained.

Most of us, however, are so accustomed to the monotheistic paradigm as a fundamental pillar of our Western society that, however unsatisfactory, its dismantling is unimaginable—a moral catastrophe of incalculable consequence. Would we not be returning to polytheism or to animistic pantheism—to the primitive language of superstition? Not so, says Charles Hartshorne, an early leader in this radical debate. The abandonment of the classical theistic position paves the way not to a retreat into animism and superstition but to what he calls a "natural theology," a theology in which God is the Whole and the world is in God: God is embodied by but not limited to the natural world. Therefore the world too is divine, and so is humanity. This is the panentheistic model.

Hartshorne's most strongly argued work, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, builds on a seminal foundation provided by Alfred North Whitehead and Henri Bergson, arguably the two most groundbreaking religious philosophers of the twentieth century. In his major work, Hartshorne ascribes to God a "dipolar" as opposed to a "monopolar" transcendence. He conceives of God as a modulation between two poles or fundamental aspects: an eternal pole of potentiality and a temporal pole of actuality or manifestation. These two poles are the primordial divine nature and the consequent divine nature. The latter actualizes in the world the divine possibilities of the former.

Thus God is not like a craftsman, supremely independent of his artifacts, but rather like the psyche of an organism such as the human body, intimately related to and caring of its own cellular organization in all its hierarchical complexity. The creation is God's body: its material evolution necessarily implies a divine evolution and limits the divine potential for infinitude, omniscience, and omnipotence.

Panentheism should not be confused with pantheism. In pantheism the distinction between God and nature is collapsed: God is a divine creative force immanent in all phenomena whatsoever. This is a "monopolar" vision of divinity just as monotheism is, but one that renders all the changes and contingencies of nature illusory. For where everything is divine, nothing is genuinely other. Panentheism, on the other hand, is the concept of deity as both immanent in nature and existing beyond nature, both creative demiurge and all-surpassing Godhead—a "dipolar" unity.

Opponents of process theology, as Hartshorne's system has been called, have demurred at his imagery, which they say suggests that God's containment of the world is on the same physical model as a box containing marbles. But this is a misunderstanding of the main thrust of his theory. The panentheistic view is that everything existent is alive, there is no such thing as dead matter; the world lives in God and influences God in the same organic way that the cells of our body influence us. It is a true two-way relationship and should be viewed, says the philosopher Daniel Dombrowski in his critique of Hartshorne's concept of God,

"on the analogy of our own ability to be influenced by our cells, even though we can also exert an influence over our bodily parts, in that we are "omnipresent" in each part of our bodies. . . . The divine soul [God] is not in the body of the world the way a bean is in a box any more than the human psyche is in the body in such a fashion. Rather, it is in psyche that a bodily cell lives and moves and has its being."

The heart of the panentheistic exposition lies in the twin concepts of divine holism and divine love, which imply a voluntary self-limiting on God's part, a voluntary self-transformation. So does a mother interact with the child in her womb in such a way that both are undergoing a growth and an evolution together, in mutual love, while remaining distinct entities. On this interpretation, the best of the biblical tradition is the God of love—but this nurturing God is not to be found in the Lord Jehovah.

For proponents of panentheism, God is a meaningless abstraction unless he is the Whole, the one universal Life acting in all particularities yet transcending them, the One who is also Many, the Being who is also Becoming. Such a God is nameless, genderless, formless, a universal and all-merciful divinity beyond race or creed: not the Lord Jehovah, but the unknown and incomprehensible God of the Gnostics, the Ain Soph of the Kabbalists, the Brahma of the Vedantists.

Only the Semitic-based religions have adopted the monotheistic formula: all the other high religions have posited a supreme unknowable Godhead out of whose womb emanates a hierarchy of deific principles that form a bridge with the cosmos. In no other way can God as pure Spirit interact with the creation, except through the activity of a series of lower creative forces imbued with executive power, lower gods or governors who are nearer in nature to the material universe.

Have we then abandoned this great bridging concept of a multileveled cosmogony to our cost? In the ongoing postmodern debate about the decline of Western culture and Western society in general, "the death of God" is one of the most frequent phrases to be heard. But has God died, or has two thousand years of bridgeless monotheistic theology finally robbed us of all meaningful awareness of our Supreme Source—and thereby robbed us of cultural creativity? In short, in refusing contact with our mediating gods, may it not be our own death we are witnessing?

References

  • Bracken, Joseph. "The Issue of Panentheism in the Dialogue with the Unbeliever." Studies in Religion 21 (1992): 207-18.

  • Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God. Vol. 3. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.

  • Dombrowski, Daniel. "Alston and Hartshorne on the Concept of God." International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 36 (1994): 129-46.

  • Frankenberry, Nancy. "Classical Theism, Panentheism, and Pantheism." Zygon 28.1 (March 1993): 29-45.

  • Hartshorne, Charles. "An Outline and Defense of the Argument for the Unity of Being in the Absolute or Divine Good." Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1923.

  • Hyatt, Philip J. "Compiling Israel's Story." In The Interpreter's Commentary on the Bible, ed. C. M. Laymon. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1984.

  • Miller, M. S., and J. Lane Miller, eds. Black's Bible Dictionary. 8th ed. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1973.

  • Schuré, Edouard. The Great Initiates. New York: Harper & Row, 1961.

Victoria LePage, the author of Shambhala (Quest Books), has a lifelong interest in finding the roots of all our religions in an underlying sacred knowledge or primordial gnosis. Her next book will be a study of the origin of Christianity and its relation to Jewish Qabbalah. The author is an Australian living in the rural highlands of New South Wales with her husband.

September - October 1999

Contents

"Star Wars: Episode One—The Phantom Menace" as Personal Mythology
By Jonathan Young

The latest film in the Star Wars series, like the earlier ones, is a symbol of our own experience. Allegorical accounts have often served that purpose in the past, but the Star Wars myth has an exceptional appeal for our time.

A New Look at the Three Objects: Part 2, The Second and Third Objects
By Robert Ellwood

The second two Objects of the Theosophical Society are "To encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy, and science" and "To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in humanity." They relate to the first Object, "To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color," in important and practical ways.

Your Seven Souls: A Sufi View
By Robert Frager

The Sufis analyze the human constitution as consisting of seven souls: mineral, vegetable, animal, personal, human, secret, and secret of secrets. That analysis is similar to Theosophical teachings about the seven human principles

The Hidden Gospel of the Aramaic Jesus
By Neil Douglas-Klotz

The Gospels written in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, differ in tone and implication from the Greek version we know in English translations. For example, "A good tree brings forth good fruit, an evil tree brings forth evil fruit" in our version is "A ripe tree brings forth ripe fruit, an unripe tree brings forth unripe fruit" in Aramaic.

Viewpoint: Termites, Towers, and Nuclei
By John Algeo

Termites, working alone, accomplish very little, but working together, even though the work seems chaotic, they build towers that are marvels of engineering.

Thinking Aloud: Nothingness
By Radha Burnier

We are obsessed with becoming a success, and paradoxically that may block real achievement in our lives. Lao Tzu says that the sage "produces without claiming, acts without dwelling on the action, achieves his ends without resting in them. In doing so, he loses nothing."

Your Seven Souls: A Sufi View

By Robert Frager

I died from the mineral kingdom and became a plant;

I died to vegetable nature and became an animal;

I died to animality and became a human being.

Next time I will die to human nature and lift up my head among the angels.

Once again I will leave angelic nature and become that which you cannot imagine.

—Rumi

According to Sufi tradition, we have seven souls, or seven facets of the complete soul. Each represents a different stage of evolution. There are the mineral, vegetable, animal, personal, human, and secret souls, and the secret of secrets.

The Sufi model of the souls is one of balance. According to this model, spiritual growth is not a matter of developing the higher souls and ignoring or even weakening the lower ones. Each soul has valuable gifts, and in Sufism, real spiritual growth means balanced development of the whole individual, including body, mind, and spirit.

There are many systems and disciplines that focus on the body—sports, martial arts, healing techniques, and a variety of other physical disciplines. Modern education focuses almost completely on the mind. Many spiritual disciplines stress spiritual principles and practices, yet they ignore mind and body. In Sufism, all of life is part of spiritual practice. Family, work, and relationships provide as much opportunity for spiritual development as prayer or contemplation.

The Arabic term for soul, ruh, also means "spirit" and "breath." The Koran (15.29) reads, "I have fashioned him (Adam) and breathed into him of My spirit (ruh)." The highest level of the soul, the secret of secrets, is a spark of God's spirit.

Each facet of the soul has its own dynamics, its own needs and strengths. At different times, different souls may be dominant. Knowing which soul is most active is important information for a Sufi teacher. For example, a dream that comes from one soul will be interpreted very differently than a dream from another soul.

When the naturally healthy dynamics of the soul shift to one extreme or another, what is healthy can become toxic. For example, curare is a wonderful heart medicine, but it can also be used as a deadly poison.

If we are concerned about some of our souls and ignore others, we are inevitably thrown out of balance. For example, if we ignore our vegetable and animal souls, we lose touch with the fundamental needs of our bodies and put our health at risk. (A classic example are stereotypical computer programmers who are so involved with their demanding intellectual tasks that they eat junk food and suffer from chronic lack of sleep and exercise.) If we neglect our secret soul and the secret of secrets and disregard our spiritual needs, our spiritual health suffers. Many people lead lives that are rich in material success and worldly activity, yet they are spiritually malnourished. Ideally, balance of all seven souls brings about balanced health and growth and a rich, full life.

The Mineral Soul

The mineral soul, the ruh madeni, is located in the skeletal system. In the diagram of the seven aspects of the soul, the mineral soul is adjacent to the secret of secrets, which is the place of the pure divine spark within each of us. The mineral world is close to God; it never revolts against divine will. Wherever a rock is placed, there it will stay eternally unless some outside force moves it.

Just as our physical skeleton remains hidden inside the body, there is a hidden, inner structure in our bodies—the mineral soul. If someone asked for a description of your mineral soul, you probably would not know how to begin. Yet what is difficult to know, what we frequently take for granted, often is of great value.

Imbalance in the mineral soul can manifest as either extreme flexibility or extreme rigidity. We say that people "have no backbone" or are "spineless" if they are too easily swayed by influences around them. They find it hard to stick with anything or to hold a position—physically, mentally, or emotionally. One example of a lack of solid structure is the jellyfish. The boneless jellyfish is a highly successful life form that has survived and flourished for countless millennia. However, it is completely at the mercy of the tides. We would be violating our basic physical structure, which gives us the capacity for independent movement, if we behaved like the jellyfish.

The other extreme is someone who is "fossilized," calcified or unbending, rigid and unyielding, incapable of responding flexibly and appropriately to changes in the environment. Some people are "stiff-necked," too proud to bow their heads, while others are "thick-skulled," or unable to take in new information.

One definition of neurosis is to continue doing the same thing even though it does not work. Some people are so rigid that they cannot change to save their own lives. Some people know they are going to die of smoking but they can't stop.

The Vegetable Soul

The vegetable soul, the ruh nabati, is located in the liver and is related to the digestive system. It regulates growth and the assimilation of nutrients, functions we share with plants. This is a new function, evolutionarily speaking, as the mineral world has no need of nourishment. In other words, there is a soul in us that is like the soul that God also gave to plants.

When we were in the womb, we functioned mainly from the vegetable soul. We were rooted to our mother's uterus by the umbilical cord through which we took in nourishment. We developed and grew larger, and that was just about all that we did. Our functioning was essentially the same as that of plants.

There is tremendous intelligence within the vegetable soul. We generally overlook this intelligence because we place so much value on the abstract learning of the head. But no matter how many college degrees we might earn, we still don't know how to digest a peach or a piece of bread. We don't know how to make hair grow on our heads. These kinds of basic physical functions are all carried out through the age-old wisdom of the vegetable soul.

The Animal Soul

The animal soul, the ruh haywani, is located in the heart and is connected to the circulatory system. Animals have developed a four-chambered heart and a complex circulatory system that distributes blood throughout the organism. (In reptiles, the circulatory system is not yet fully developed, and the reptile heart has only three chambers. As a result, their capacity for movement is inhibited, and reptiles require warm weather to be fully active. The more developed mammalian circulatory system holds heat better, and this allows mammals to be more active in all climates.)

The animal soul includes our fears, angers, and passions. All organisms tend to move toward whatever is rewarding (passions) and to move away from (fears) or push away (angers) whatever is punishing, toxic, or painful. For years, behavioral psychology has concentrated on these fundamental responses to the world in studying the effects of reward and punishment.

As psychology has gotten more complex, we tend to forget the power and universality of the two basic instincts of attraction and repulsion. Even an amoeba will move away from a drop of acid placed on a microscope slide or move toward a drop of nutrient solution. If a single-celled organism has these responses, every cell in our bodies must have the same capacity.

These instincts are basic to self-preservation and species preservation, which first appear with the animal soul. In plants, the instincts to reproduce and survive are severely limited. They are built into the structure of the plants and are relatively rigid and unchanging.

The behavior of animals is far more flexible and responsive to the environment. The instinct for self-preservation moves us to avoid what is painful or dangerous. Plants may put forth seeds and orient to the sun, but there is no passion in the plant kingdom. Within the animal soul, passion is rooted in the reproductive instincts. In addition to sexual desire, it is the matrix of love and nurturing.

The Judeo-Christian tradition has devalued the body and the functions of the animal soul. Traditionally, it is considered unfortunate (if not outright sinful) to have a body, and it is even worse that this body of ours contains so many drives and instincts, fears, and passions. The drives of the body are considered antithetical to the development of the soul.

In the Sufi model of the seven souls, all souls have to be healthy for the individual to develop as a whole human being. We all have passions, fears, and appetites, and these are useful, functional parts of us. However, they should not dominate our lives. The animal soul needs to be in balance with the other souls, not in charge. When that balance is attained, a well-developed animal soul is an invaluable asset to our health and well-being.

The Personal Soul

The next facet of the total soul is the ruh nafsani. The personal soul is located in the brain and is related to the nervous system. Just as the development of the heart and circulatory system distinguishes the animal from the plant kingdom, the development of a complex nervous system distinguishes humans from animals. This highly developed nervous system brings the capacity for greater memory and for complex thinking and planning. The intelligence of the personal soul allows us to understand our environment far more deeply than the capacities of the mineral, vegetable, and animal souls.

It also allows us to respond more effectively to the world around us. We can plan ahead and create mental models of the possible effects of our actions. For example, in one classic psychology experiment, dogs were shown a bowl of food on the opposite side of a chain-link fence. If the fence was short, the dogs quickly and easily went around it to get to the food. As the fence got longer, the dogs had to go farther and farther away from their goal to get around the fence. When the fence section became quite long, the dogs remained rooted to the spot directly opposite the food and tried to dig under the fence.

That problem poses no difficulty for humans, including relatively young children. Because of their inability to form complex mental models, animals tend to seek immediate gratification and to be dominated by short-term motivations. The development of human intelligence has allowed us to plan far ahead and to function much more effectively in the world. As a result, humanity has become more and more powerful, dominating all other species.

The personal soul is also the location of the ego. We have both a positive and a negative ego. The positive ego organizes our intelligence and provides our sense of self. It can be a force for self-respect, responsibility, and integrity. On the other hand, the negative ego is a force for egotism, arrogance, and a sense of separation from others and God. The positive ego is a great ally on the spiritual path. It can provide a sense of inner stability during the ups and downs that inevitably occur on the spiritual path. The negative ego is an enemy. It distorts our perceptions and colors our relations to the world.

One of the major distinctions between the negative and positive egos is that the positive ego is our servant and the negative ego constantly tries to be our master. Like a donkey, the ego is meant to work for us, but all too often we seem to be carrying the ego on our backs and serving it.

The Human Soul

The ruh insani is located in the galb, the spiritual heart. The human soul is more refined than the personal soul. It is the place of compassion, faith, creativity. In one sense, the human soul includes the secret soul and the secret of secrets. It is the place of our spiritual values and experiences.

Creativity and compassion first occur at this soul level. The brain, which develops in the personal soul, is like a computer, involved mainly with storage and manipulation of data, but not with the creation of new information. Creativity happens in the heart. It is unfortunate that our educational system has become so focused on the development of intellect that little attention is given to the development of the heart, which is nourished by the arts and by worship, love, and service to others.

The heart intelligence of the human soul and the abstract intelligence of the personal soul complement each other. Thinking is concerned with impersonal, logical analysis. The heart adds compassion and faith. Combining the two leads to better judgment. The head knows what is most effective, while the heart knows what is right.

Intuitive intelligence functions without the conscious use of reason. This form of intelligence is nourished by faith in God or in the existence of a larger reality; awareness of the external world and inner awareness developed through self-observation, contemplation or meditation; and compassion and a resulting sense of attunement with nature, animals, and other people.

The Secret Soul

The ruh sirr is the part of us that remembers God. The secret soul, or inner consciousness, is located in the inner heart. This soul is the one that knows where it came from and where it is going. One Sufi teacher writes, "The inner consciousness is that which God keeps hidden, keeping watch over it Himself." Another comments, "The body is completely dark, and its lamp is the inner consciousness. If one has no inner consciousness, one is forever in darkness."

Before our souls incarnated, God said to them, "Am I your Lord?" and the souls said, "Indeed, truly." The soul that responded was the secret soul. The secret soul knew who it was then, and it still knows. For millennia, the secret souls lived in close proximity to God, bathed in the light of God's presence. Only on incarnation into this material universe did we lose this sense of connection.

The Secret of Secrets

The sirr-ul-asrar includes that which is absolutely transcendent, beyond time and space. This is the original soul (ruh) that God breathed into Adam, that is, into humankind. It is at our core, the soul of the soul. It is the pure divine spark within us. For this reason, our image of what it is to be human needs to expand. We are not merely thinking animals, nor are we only our personalities. We are the divine encased in and intermeshed with the body and the personality. Our capacity for spiritual growth and understanding are virtually limitless.

The Sufi master Abdul-Qadir al-Jilani explains the relationship between the human soul, the secret soul, and the secret of secrets:

God Most High created the holy spirit as the most perfect creation in the first-created realm of the absolute going of His Essence, then He willed to send it to lower realms . . . to teach the holy spirit to seek . . . its previous closeness and intimacy with God. . . . On its way God sent it first to the realm of the Causal Mind. . . . As it passed through this realm it was given the clothing of divine light and was named the sultan-soul (secret of secrets). As it passed through the realm of angels . . . it received the name "moving soul" (secret soul). When it finally descended to this world of matter it was dressed in the clothing of . . . coarse matter in order to save this world, because the material world, if it had direct contact with the holy spirit, would burn to ashes. In relation to this world, it came to be known as life, the human soul.

Sheikh Muzaffer used to say, "Within you is that which completely transcends the entire universe." Each of us has within our hearts that spark of God that cannot be confined within us or contained within this world or the thousands of universes that make up the whole of physical creation. That is also us. We all need to remember who we really are.

Theosophical Society - Robert Frager is a professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California. He holds the PhD from Harvard University and has studied modern Japanese spirituality, Zen Buddhism, Yoga, Sufism, and mystical Christianity as a colleague of the Dominican theologian Matthew Fox. This article is extracted from his most recent book, Heart, Self, & Soul: A Sufi Approach to Growth, Balance, and Harmony (Quest Books, 1999).Robert Frager is a professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California. He holds the PhD from Harvard University and has studied modern Japanese spirituality, Zen Buddhism, Yoga, Sufism, and mystical Christianity as a colleague of the Dominican theologian Matthew Fox. This article is extracted from his most recent book, Heart, Self, & Soul: A Sufi Approach to Growth, Balance, and Harmony (Quest Books, 1999).

"Star Wars: Episode One—The Phantom Menace" as Personal Mythology

 

By Jonathan Young

Once again, an installment of the Star Wars series has become a movie event of galactic proportions. As everyone must know, Episode One—The Phantom Menace is a flashback to thirty years before the original Star Wars. The spiritual underpinnings and mythic dimensions of the series have been widely recognized as a part of its appeal. Now that the commotion attending the opening of Episode One has settled down, it is a good time to reflect on the implications of the tale for those interested in the life of the soul.

Early in the film, a spacecraft speeds through the darkness between planets. Two Jedi Knights are on their way to help in a crisis. The call to adventure is similar in all the Star Wars movies because it matches experiences that are known to the audience. The events that cause us to develop strengths often begin as bad news. Something calls us to solve a problem or survive an ordeal, and through this difficult process we find that we are capable of more than we thought.

It is now familiar movie lore that George Lucas draws heavily on the writings of mythologist Joseph Campbell in developing his series. As a result, the intergalactic sagas include mythic quests for initiation, so it is not difficult to read the episodes as wisdom tales. Key insights into the meaning of human experience are clearly present. If we look at the films through a symbolic lens, the life lessons are abundant.

The key characters in this film include nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker, a slave on an insignificant planet. Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn is the commanding presence of the film. His youthful apprentice is Obi-Won Kenobi, not yet a full-fledged Jedi Knight. Queen Amidala is the resourceful teenaged ruler of the planet Naboo, which is under siege.

As before, the Force is a central element in the adventure and is what makes the Star Wars films more than well-done science fiction. This mysterious energy is the key to the transcendent magic of the stories. The Jedi describe the Force as an energy field that sustains all living things.

An individual may sense the Force as intuition or something spiritual, beyond individual skill or wisdom. Whether I say I trust my inner voice or use more traditional language, like trusting the Holy Spirit, I am listening for something beyond my own calculations. I am trying to tune in to a larger field of energy and knowledge. When a Jedi advises the hero to trust the Force, he is saying that we must not put all our trust in what we can know clearly. There are mysteries and powers that are larger than our knowing and seeing.

The Jedi are the high priests of the Force as well as the noble knights of their time. The Jedi began earlier as a theological and philosophical study group. Only after long consideration of the Force did they take up the idea of fighting for high principles and causes.

When we become attuned to values and energies beyond our immediate practical concerns, the effect on our lives may be enormous. Listening to the voice from deep within can change everything. Quiet pursuits like poetry and meditation can lead to daring action, once you find a calling or become aware of the needs of others. Allowing ourselves to be led by our deepest values can take us in surprising directions.

In Episode One—The Phantom Menace, the threat of war has grown out of economic issues, an eternal motive for conflict. Throughout history, trade issues with enormous financial implications have grown into deadly conflict. The story thus begins with a believable situation, since trade disputes and rumblings of war are frequently in our news. Starting in familiar circumstances lets the audience know that extraordinary things can happen in ordinary lives. Episode One opens with a blockade of Queen Amidala's planet and a threat of invasion.

The heroic man or woman in an initiatory adventure is an ordinary person. The event that launches a fictional quest is similar to what might happen to us, something that engages us with larger challenges. In our lives, it might be the death of a parent, a divorce, a devastating illness, or a financial disaster. Tragedy often sets a larger story into motion; it is a summons, a call to the quest.

When something devastating happens, we can either collapse and give up on life or we can rise to the challenge.

In the mythic moment, the individual's issues become enmeshed with larger problems. The Jedi get involved as Ambassadors to settle the trade dispute. Along the way, Jedi Master Qui-Gon discovers a gifted boy, Anakin Skywalker, on Tatooine, a dry planet far from the centers of power. The boy and his mother are slaves, owned by the Watto, a hard-edged junk dealer who trades in parts for spacecraft. Anakin pilots a "pod racer," a souped-up flying jalopy in a kind of demolition derby race. Though a little child, he is the only human ever to master the complex art of flying the swift machines.

When Anakin meets Queen Amidala, he learns that he is not the only one with challenges, a whole society is in danger—there are problems larger than his own. His personal circumstances and the larger cause become intertwined as he goes to the threshold of adventure. His connection with the Jedi teachers Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi represents contact with the higher self or inner master. The hero meets these key allies at the threshold moment, the jumping-off point beyond which there is no return.

Heroes come to their adventures with many motivations, so Anakin Skywalker is moving toward several goals simultaneously. He and his mother are slaves, a status that represents universal issues of personal freedom and dignity. The hero may be seeking a transcendent experience—looking for some undiscovered aspect of himself or herself. There may be a wound that requires healing. At some point, allies appear, and a guide with skills, secret lore, and wisdom necessary for the success of the journey.

There is a strong team effort in Episode One—The Phantom Menace. A solitary warrior does not accomplish the mission; the initiatory quest is never a solo journey. The adventure is always a collective effort, contrary to some immature fantasies of personal glory. Part of its lesson is to remember that we are not alone and that our skill or strength by itself will not solve problems. Guides, allies, and animals provide help at every turn; even the pratfall comic character Jar Jar Binks makes a crucial contribution. The seeker discovers that no single person can do the quest alone but that others provide assistance all the way there and back. These stories humble our arrogance.

The hero's mentors take many forms: an old teacher, a wise enchantress, a mysterious old magician, such as the strange creature Yoda. In Episode One we meet the council of the Jedi Masters, a high lodge of keepers of the wisdom, which is an ancient mythological motif. They oversee initiation into the mysteries.

Gaining that initiation is a challenging process for which the initiate must demonstrate good character. The rashness of youth must be tempered. The parallel in ordinary life may be as mundane as gaining the approval of a driving examiner to get a driver's license or as arduous as completing training to become a Marine. It might be as extensive as completing education to be ordained as a priest, certified as a teacher, or licensed as a professional. It may be election to high office.

Queen Amidala and the Jedi Knights are the central aristocratic figures. The central role nobility plays in all the Star Wars movies is worth reflection. It hints at the romance with aristocracy that has long been a part of American popular culture and is particularly a staple in science fiction and fantasy. The fascination with aristocracy goes beyond images of privilege or luxury. Aristocracy is etymologically and symbolically "the rule of the best," the best within us.

Psychologically we long for our own inner nobility. The qualities of character and purpose associated with archetypal aristocracy are often lacking in an overly egalitarian and endlessly practical age. The sense of duty and high character shown by aristocratic figures can inspire us to reach for our own inner nobility.

The story depicts how important it is to forge alliances with others. The characters in the story can also be seen as symbolizing various energies within ourselves. We each have many personalities, and these various aspects of ourselves have to learn to get along if we are to accomplish anything. Their competing interests tug and pull us in different directions—to be brave, or afraid, or loving are all features of a single individual's psychology. The story shows how to accomplish a working integration of an inner life. The tasks of learning to relate well with others and developing a well-balanced inner world are two sides of the same coin.

Initiatory adventures often include a confrontation between good and evil. The task we face is larger than we are, but in accomplishing it, we discover that we can survive ordeals we did not think we could endure. In the process, we discover how to work with our allies and to master the many conflicting elements within ourselves. Most important, we learn to trust the Force. We find how to stay in the flow of a wisdom that is larger than ourselves.

At some point, the individual's actions must become synchronized with universal forces, a synchronization that eases life's basic loneliness. You are enmeshed in a larger purpose. You are meant to be in a certain place and fill a particular role. You are being yourself, truly and entirely for the first time. You have energies that you never knew about before. Joseph Campbell described what happens if you follow your bliss, accept your calling. Doors will open where you did not know doors existed, help comes when you did not even know you needed help, and things that would have been impossible in the past become possible.

Because the Star Wars stories are set in the future on fictional planets, we are able to get beyond the naturalism of most movies. Joseph Campbell thought naturalism was the death of art. If the stories and characters are too realistic, it is more difficult to see the metaphors that carry the deeper messages of the story. But when a story takes place in outer space, the audience knows they are watching a work of the imagination. That is a key reason that the Star Wars series conveys wisdom to a degree that is unusual for a Hollywood movie.

Campbell believed that Lucas understood his books and rendered the key metaphors in contemporary terms. The central modern issue is whether we are going to let the machine control us, and Campbell's notion of the machine includes the corporate state. To be sure, one can gain a measure of power by becoming machine-like. Doing so is a temptation that is hard to resist, but to be fully human, we must not expend all of our energies as part of a larger machine. The alternative is to listen to the still small voice within.

Our core choices and values have to come from inside—then we have to realize them in the world. A mythic story shows that we must find our own footing as individuals, and also how we can return from separation to make a contribution. If the story showed only how to rebel against conventionality, it would leave us as hermits or lost souls. The greater challenge is to rejoin the community, but on new terms.

Knowing the other Star Wars films, we are aware that the boy, Anakin Skywalker, will someday become the evil Darth Vader. His future exemplifies another universal theme. The seeker has to face the dark side within. Every hero is also part villain, a fact that shows the limits of dualistic thinking by which one character is good and another evil. Resolution requires that warring factions within the individual pull together, with the light side of the Force dominant.

The mythic imagination is essentially a template that can be endlessly reworked. The Star Wars episodes are similar to each other, yet George Lucas is not making the same movie over and over again. He is aware that one must go through many initiatory cycles to master many lessons. In each cycle, the initiate is able to accomplish something new. Each effort is successful because it is in the service of a calling, and when we are motivated by higher causes, we can do amazing things. After each cycle, the seeker returns with significant new psychological integration. We must gain access to the attributes of both genders, find a way to be aligned with the forces of nature, develop connections with the best of allies, and share with others.

At the end of each initiatory adventure, there is a great celebration. The many characters present at these celebrations symbolize different stages of life and the various aspects of an individual who is growing more fully aware of the many energies within. The traveler comes back home with something to show for all the effort. This prize is a boon, elixir, or blessing. It can be new wisdom, a skill, or an insight of great value to the historical moment. The challenge then is to pass it around. The boon does not belong to the adventurer alone. It is for everyone.

The seeker returns to an honored place in the community. Ultimately, being true to oneself includes being useful to others. The sense of fulfillment, of identity and role, is extraordinary at that point. Such a life moves with amazing energy. The Force is then truly with us.

George Lucas on Star Wars

With Star Wars I consciously set about to re-create myths and the classic mythological motifs. I wanted to use those motifs to deal with issues that exist today....

 

The film is ultimately about the dark side and the light side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed....

 

If people were really to sit down and honestly look at themselves and the consequences of their actions, they would try to live their lives a lot differently. One of the main themes in The Phantom Menace is of organisms having to realize they must live for their mutual advantage....

 

I'm telling an old myth in a new way. Each society takes that myth and retells it in a different way....The motif is the same. It's just that it gets localized....

 

I am dealing with core issues that were valid 3,000 years ago and are still valid today, even though they're not in fashion.

 

—from an interview with Bill Moyers in Time magazine,
April 26, 1999

 

Psychologist Jonathan Young, PhD, assisted Joseph Campbell and was founding curator of the Joseph Campbell Archives and Library. His recent book is SAGA: Best New Writings on Mythology. He now trains counselors internationally in the uses of mythic stories through the Center for Story and Symbol in Santa Barbara. Email: young@folkstory.com; Web site: folkstory.com

 

 

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  1. Thinking Aloud: Nothingness
  2. A New Look at the Three Objects: Part 2, The Second and Third Objects
  3. Viewpoint: Temites, Towers, and Nuclei
  4. Synchronicity: The Gateway to Opportunity

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