By G. de PURUCKER1
There is a difference between soulless men and a lost soul. Lost souls are those human entities who, through a series of lives of almost uninterrupted evil living and because of lack of aspiration towards their spiritual God within, have become so heavily involved in the Lower Quaternary (that is, their four lower vehicles), with its intense and unceasing attractions to the whole matter, that the spiritual link or antahkarana2 connecting the personal man with the Spiritual Man has been snapped, thus freeing the Spiritual Monad, which Monad is a consciousness center, and leaving the lower or personal man an enslaved person to or more or less completely involved in, the energies and substances (and their consequent attractions) of matter. Thus 'lost souls' are human beings divorced from their spiritual natures; i.e., the link between the Spiritual Man and the lower or personal man has been snapped.
'Soulless beings' or 'soulless men' are, on the contrary, still complete septenary individuals, human beings in whom the higher 'soul' or Spiritual Nature is but feebly or only occasionally active. Hence, as is obvious, because the Spiritual Soul is almost inactive or non-functioning within them, they are properly called 'soulless' because they are not ensouled by the spiritual life flowing forth from the Spiritual Soul. It is obvious, therefore, that 'soulless men' are exceedingly common amongst us; for whenever we see a man or a woman who passes his or her life almost completely shrouded in or involved by the attributes and functions and feelings or emotions and thoughts of the mere personality and its whims and wants and its petty ambitions and longings. Its restricted outlooks and selfish egoisms, with only rare or fleeting moments when the Spiritual Nature ensouls them, we are bound in strict accuracy and truth to call them 'soulless'-- which does not mean that they have no soul because, as said, they are full septenary entities; but merely that the Spiritual Soul is not functioning within them accurately and continuously, due to their lack of yearning towards and appeal to the Spiritual Nature within them.
It should be clear enough that several lifetimes, or reincarnations, of such a human being, i.e., of a 'soulless man,' in whom the attractions or pulls of matter and the gratifications and longings of the personality are followed almost to the exclusion of the sublimely beautiful life of the Spiritual Soul-- it should be clear, I say, that such continued series of reincarnations may and very probably will result -- because of the selfish habits and consequently unspiritual life thus followed--in the dread destiny of the loss of the soul as before described; i.e., that the Spiritual Soul finding no fit habitat in its series of personalities, and the personalities having no attractions spirit wards, but contrariwise heavily pulled by the magnetic attractions of matter, there will result from a breaking of the Antahkarana, thus producing in such cases 'lost souls.' Warning: I cannot weigh too heavily, therefore, on the utmost and most urgent need to cultivate the Spiritual Nature by aspiring towards it and by yearning towards it, by living the life following the mandates received from within, and by letting no single day pass without some inner spiritual exercise of the personal man yearning upwards to 'fix,' as it were, the attention of the Spiritual Nature upon and in the personal man or personality. This is most sublimely beautiful, comforting, and strengthening exercise: the daily aspiration, the daily yearning, to live from day today an ever better and increasingly higher life; for the result of such genuine Yoga will finally result, and perhaps far more quickly than the student will realize, in making such a man more or less fully ensouled, thus completely saving him from all possible danger of 'soul-loss.'
It may be said, finally, when that a man is completely and fully ensouled, he is then an incarnate god, a human god, a god-man, or man-god, and enjoys to the full the vast powers, attributes, functions, insight, love, vision, and wisdom, of the God within him.
Reverting for a moment to that class of human beings who have become 'lost souls,' I may point out that the destiny of these, as I have elsewhere stated it, is dreadful almost beyond human description; for quite outside of the awful inner agony that they suffer, their mental torture and the psychical horror which overcome veritable quasi-human demons, human devils in short, not only wreaking evil of all kinds upon their fellow-men, and because of their despair joying in it, but they themselves meanwhile are rushing downwards with the increasing velocity with each new embodiment, and finally are attracted to the 'Pit' and, dropping therein, pass out of the Earth's sphere of attraction and are heard and seen no more. In the Pit, their destiny is, because they are 'failures,' to be broken up as human remnants and to be ground over and over in this one of Nature's laboratories.
Yet, even for the lost souls, although the Antahkarana has been broken, there is a chance for a reunion with the God within, at least in the beginning and before the distance between the God within and the personality has become too great; so that even a single desperate spiritual thought or yearning will be enough to draw together again the dissevered portions of the human constitution and thus, happily, to enable the thus reunited Upper Triad with the Lower Quaternary to rebecome the full septenary entity. Should such reunion take place, it may become permanent, provided that thenceforwards, by intense upward striving, the personal man, having learned his fearsome lesson, knits ever more closely the higher personal aspects into the sublime webbing, so to speak, of his spiritual being. Should, however, the lower Nature finally proves the stronger, then the rupture again takes place and with even less possibility of a reunion than before.
It should now be clear how different 'lost souls' are from merely 'soulless men'; yet, as already stated, a continued series of reincarnations of 'soulless men,' who feel uninterruptedly attracted rather to matter than to spirit, can and probably will result in ultimate 'soul-loss.'
Marguerite dar Boggia formerly served as Membership Secretary for ISAR, the International Society for Astrological Research. She is past Secretary and Director of ISAR and Publisher of Kosmos, the ISAR journal. She is a co-founder of UAC and its past Secretary and Director. Her goal is to serve humanity and the spiritual Hierarchy of our planet. She offers free, online, three pages weekly of the Esoteric Teachings as was known by Pythagoras. Some of these teachings were read by Albert Einstein. To receive these studies, she can be contacted at her website, which she created at the age of 90: www.FreePythagorasTeachings.com
References:
1G. de Purucker, in the 1940s, held the position of the Head of the Theosophical Society. The above article is from his book, "Correlations of Cosmic and Human Constitutions" Number IX. pp. 49-53.
2Antahkarana is a bridge between the Higher Mind and the Lower Mind of a human being.
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