MORE EXCERPTS FROM 3/9/84.  SOUL, DOUBLE KNOWER  YELLOW IS ALSO ABOVE.

3a

AD: We are already aware of the fact that the soul, the way it has been defined, has a paradoxical nature, that is, it is dual. On the one hand, it transcends all relations, and on the other hand it can be included within the world circuit and experience the World Idea. Another way of putting this would be to say, you could think of the Overself, the way it’s been defined for us as a Unit of Mind or Soul. We could think of it in two ways and again this will make a complexity.

3b

On the one hand, we could think of the Overself as a point within a circle, the Overself within the World Mind. And on the other hand, we could think of the World Mind within the Overself. And we have to keep those alternatives both available all the time as we proceed, so that all the alternatives, the different ways of looking at it and trying to understand it will be available.

3d

So we can say that the World Mind is within the Overself and we could also say that the Overself is within the World Mind.

3e

One part of the soul which we refer to as transcending relationships and that it rests and abides in this state of tranquillity

4

So if the soul came to a self-recogniton of that image of the Intelligible World that’s within it, it would come to a self-knowledge of itself. That is, it would know itself or have some knowledge of itself the way the Nous knows it, that being the only way it could know itself, because it is the Nous which has the true knowledge of the soul as soul.

5a

AD: Then what you’re saying sounds very paradoxical. On the one hand you’re saying that the Nous gives birth to the soul, you know, it’s an eternal generation and is the generator of the soul. On the other hand, the Nous is IN the soul. There is an Intellectual Cosmos in the soul. And that insofar that the Nous is in the soul, in order for the soul to get true self-knowledge, it has to get to know the Nous which is within it. Now, keep in mind, within and without, these are METAPHORS.

5b

You follow that? On the one hand, the World Mind gives birth to the soul and is the selfhood of the soul. And on the other hand, the World Mind is within that soul. And if it’s within the soul, if the World Mind or the Intellectual-Principle is within the soul as the Intellectual Cosmos, then in the Intellectual part of the soul is contained the knowledge of its own selfhood.

9a

AD: we spoke about the soul–there was one phase of the soul we spoke about as transcendent, abiding in a serene tranquiltity. And it is an undifferentiated consciousness. Then we speak about that this consciousness can project from within itself the power–it has this power to project itself anywhere, anywhither– And it does so in the sense that it projects a portion or a STREAM of life. And this stream of life or this germ of life, we mentioned that it should be understood as a STREAM OF LIFE, it projects this stream of life. If you think of it as a lump: here, it projects that lump and there it is, and now you go on your own way. But if you think of it as a continuous stream of life from the Overself to this part of itself which is going to traverse all the kingdoms of nature, then you can see what they’re referring to as a karmic continuity. This life is continuous and consequently you can speak about a karmic continuity. Now these two together, on the one hand, the soul as transcendent, on the other hand the emanant from that transcendent soul  Plotinus refers to as the `We.’ Keep that in mind, that’s important. Those two together are the `We.’

9b

EM: Please repeat the explanation of the `We’?

AD: The `We’? On the one hand we think about the transcendent, the soul as transcendent, I speak about it sometimes as the `I AM’ principle, and that it was an undifferentiated consciousness. We speak about this soul as projecting from itself a unit of life or a stream of life which we will call the unit of life. Now this is what reaches all the way down to the earth and starts out as an amoeba and goes through all the various kingdoms of nature, rising up to the level of man. It is this stream of life, when it reaches the level of man, that means it’s entered the reasoning phase. These two together, the transcendent Overself and that emanant from the Overself, which we’re now calling that individual ego, these two together is the `We.’

AS: That stream of life is what got associated with all these vehicles which are part of the World Idea or with the developing World Idea. And that it was evolving with that.

9d
AD: That point is very important because if we think of the Overself as absolutely transcendent, nothing to do with the World Idea, abiding and resting in repose in itself. But then we also kept in mind or we said that the World Mind is within the soul, just like the soul is within World Mind. Now, theoretically, we could abstract these things and we could say if the World Mind with the World Idea is present in the soul, then the World Mind or the Intellectual-Principle which is present in the soul, in order for this transcendent being that our soul is, to have experience of that world, it emanates a part of itself into that world, which we call the ego. And it goes through all the kingdoms of nature. But in doing so, it is discovering and finding out something about the World Idea.

9e

So this transcendent being which is our `I AM’, in order to know something about the Nous, the World Idea, has to send this offspring into the World Idea and it must evolve through that World Idea. Now the richness, the variety, the incomprehensibility of the World Idea is something we don’t have to discuss. Right? If you take a primitive, he’ll give you his version of the world;, if you take a scientist, he’ll give you his version of the world; if you take a sage, he’ll give you his version of the world. And you could see there’s a deepening, an inwardization, a widening, a comprehension of the World Idea as we deal with people of various levels. So you see that the World Idea is going to satisfy all of us in one way or another.

11a

BS: That would account for the unfoldment of individual consciousness.
11b

 AD: Yes, that traversing through the realms of Nature is what’s going to develop that and unfold that consciousness, bring it out more and more. In other words, the very experience of the world forces the consciousness of an individual to evolve, so the faculties get developed.

12
LDm: . . . When we talk about the `We’ as experiencing this, how do we say that the transcendent part of the soul is in some way experiencing this and still yet on the same hand transcendent and self-abiding? I don’t understand the relationship that exists. If it’s transcendent and self-abiding how does it experience the lower phase?
AS: It’s omnipresent. You’re making it sound like it would have to go somewhere or do something in order to be present where the lower phase is.
AD: Well, I thought the answer he gave you, Louis, was quite adequate. Omnipresence.

13a

AD: So then we have this higher phase of the soul and the most advanced aspects of the ego involved in trying to catapult itself into Divine Mind–or the Nous within it. Now this is important. It’s trying to identify with the Intellectual Cosmos that is WITHIN it.

13b

Plotinus: “Or may we not appropriate that principle . . . and thus attain to awareness, at once, of it and ourselves?” (V.3.4)

AS: The original premise seems to have been that the soul wants to come to a self-knowledge of itself. Now the only thing that has self-knowledge is the Nous, therefore the soul has to become aware of the Nous the way the Nous is aware of it, or the way the Nous is aware of the cosmos.

13c

AD: You follow the point? The soul cannot know itself objectively, no way, because it is soul. What knows soul is the Intellectual-Principle. Intellectual-Principle generated soul so it would know soul. So in order for soul to know itself objectively, it has to know its own selfhood. What is its selfhood? The Intellectual-Principle within it. If it identifies with the Intellectual-Principle within itself, then it has an objective knowledge of soul.

15a

AD:. If we say that the Intellectual, or the Nous in the soul realizes itself in the `We.’ You follow that? In other words, the Intellectual-Principle, the Nous in the soul, realizes itself through the medium of the `We.’ On the other hand, you could say it this way, you could say that the `We’ realizes the divinity within itself or the Nous. They are two ways of saying the same thing. From the point of view of the Intellectual in the soul, it realizes ITSELF through the medium of the `We.’ That’s one way of stating it. Another way of stating it is that the `We’ realizes the Intellectual-Principle within itself.

17C 

AD: Isn’t it paradoxical and almost like uroboric when we conceive of this because we’re saying, on the one hand, the Nous is within the soul and we’re speaking about the soul as this transcendent being. On the other hand, we’re saying that this transcendent being has to emanate a part of itself, get involved in the World Idea, penetrate into the DEPTHS of the World Idea, so that it could reach what we might call Prajna consciousness, the World Mind itself, the Void, penetrate into that–so that it comes to a self-recognition within itself.

19
AD: We’re saying that the Nous is present in the soul, that the soul through the faculty of the emanant, combined the two of them, evolved to a point where they reached the level of the Nous, they penetrated into the Nous, they identify with the Nous, which is the same as saying they’ve come into self-identity. The soul is now itself. That’s its selfhood. The selfhood of the soul is the Nous. When it reaches identity with the Nous, now it has objective knowledge of soul as well as objective knowledge through objective knowledge.

21a

AS: We spoke about attaining the self-knowledge as the first level of insight, where that ego’s directed attempt has catapulted the soul into this self-knowledge. Now the Nous knows the soul and now the soul knows itself the way the Nous knows it. But that’s only the first level of insight. . . . That’s equivalent to knowing the unity of the soul, or knowing the unity of the I AM, knowing the soul the way the Nous knows it. But now, can he actually attain the knowledge of the Nous in itself? So he speaks about a second a deepening of that insight, to attain a union with the Nous itself, and then even a penetration beyond that–all within the soul, though–to a knowledge of the One. We spoke about that as tracing back that Principle of Life to its very source, tracing back even that emanant, even the I AM back to Absolute Soul, and then from that Absolute Soul or Absolute Life in the Nous, back to the Principle of Life itself within the One. And so in some way we can speak about a deepening of that insight and those would be like those three levels that PB speaks about, of the deepening insight. But the first level to attain would be a knowledge of that soul, a self-cognition of the soul, the way that the Nous has it.

21b

AD: …this is very very subtle. I just want to repeat once more. Let’s try again. Remember we spoke about the soul as the Unit of Life or the Unit of Mind. So that ultimately we know from sheer speculation that when we speak about Universal Being or the Absolute or the Mind or the One itself, we spoke about it having aspects that were really indistinguishable one from another. It’s only from our point of view that we think of the Infinite One having this aspect, the Nous, the Intellectual aspect. It has an aspect of Life, it has an aspect of Being. You remember we spoke about that? So that the Transcendent in some way or other, when we try to conceive of it, had these various distinctionless distinctions within itself, and one of them was Life. This is the origin of soul itself, so that ultimately if we wanted to trace, if we wanted to speak that Plotinus was referring to union with the One, the Absolute, and not with the soul, that’s a distinction. Because he does speak about union with the soul. But he also speaks about Union or the Supreme Identity with the One itself. So then the only way that we can conceive of it happening is that when the soul has come to an objective knowledge of itself, that is if it has identified with the Nous and now soul knows itself as this unit of life, without it going anywhere, without it leaving or moving or anything, it recognizes within itself Absolute Soul. That’s the second penetration. The third is that the very source and origin of the Life comes from the One itself, and in that there’s the possibility of the Supreme Identity with the One, with the Absolute. Again, I didn’t say it any better than Avery. We have to try to see our way through this.

29
RG: But that knowledge that the sage attains to is not inherent in the Overself itself regardless of the attainment of the sage’s insight, you’re saying.

AD: Yes. And to me the wonder of all of this is that the cosmic circuit, or the purpose of manifestation, becomes much more overwhelming in importance. In other words, when they say that the purpose of manifestation is to guide and instruct the soul–and only the World Mind could do that, nothing less than that could do it–then this manifestation is for that purpose, and manifestation becomes meaningful. And then I’m reminded of that other thing that Eckhart said, “If God COULD create anything greater than soul, he would have done so.

EXTRA:

11c AD: Well, we’re trying to understand the soul as we said before, the World Mind IN the soul, the soul IN the World Mind. The World Mind in the soul, the soul in the World Mind.

AD: The World Mind in the soul, that is what we’re referring to as the transcendent aspect. You say it’s IN the soul so that means it’s transcendent to its content. Then when you speak about the transcendent soul or the soul as part of the Intellectual-Principle, then you’re reversing it.