The Higher Life

The Higher Life

On the earth the broken arcs, 

In the heaven a perfect round.

Before we try to describe the spirit body and its functions, it will be well to speak of the new sphere in which the Spirit-soul is now manifesting.

This sphere is not one and single as the intermediate is, but is seven spheres closely connected together.

Perhaps a diagram will make this clearer.

The three central are the Unity Spheres; the side ones are the Duality Spheres.

The Diagram

I. The first Unity Sphere. Introductory, for strengthening and improving the character and the new powers.

III. The second Unity Sphere. For action and exercise of powers.

V. Third Unity Sphere. Peace; rest; the equipoise of the perfectly manifested being.

2. The first Duality Spheres. Discipline—the growth, guidance and strengthening of such parts of the being as were still weak and imperfect.

4. Second Duality Spheres. Discipline on a higher plane—the completion of the work. The man now passes into the last Unity Sphere, the sphere of perfection, and beyond that who shall say! 

The Duality Spheres are so-called, chiefly because the old double consciousness (which is almost dormant in the Unity Spheres) is again in force. In force, that is, in the sense of conflict of one part of our nature with another; not merely in the ability to think of ourselves as if we were two beings. This double consciousness is revived in the dual spheres because it is then easier for the ego to see its own weaknesses; to condemn and struggle against them.

Thus these spheres are dual as being in pairs; dual in the divided experience, and above all dual as to the double consciousness.

The unity are so-called, not only or chiefly because they are the one sphere for all, but because there this unity of consciousness is existent.

The unity of the whole seven in one is shown in the oneness of the man’s manifestation through all he dwells in his spirit-body; through all, he is a man of seven dimensions until he comes to the perfection of his being, as far as we can judge of perfection.

No spirit, we believe, ever passes through more than one of each of the two spheres marked 2 and 4—that is, he goes to the right, or to the left, but not to both. (The words right and left, of course, are used only in reference to the diagram).

What, then, causes him to enter one of these spheres rather than the other? 

It is the bent of his deep soul-character. There is no uniformity in mankind, rather there is infinite diversity. Yet it divides, broadly speaking, into two classes, call them by what name you please, say—

The religious and the scientific—

The imaginative and the practical—

The introspective and the outlooking.

Now, the soul that has the one bent passes into the opposite sphere, that his nature may be so cultivated and disciplined that he shall be a perfect and not a one-sided being.

When we speak of perfect and imperfect I think you understand our meaning. Sin—as you know it—is a wilful failure to do the thing that is known to be right, or the equally wilful doing of the wrong, sin, I say, is left behind finally in the psychic. By perfect I mean the essential being fully manifested and by imperfect we mean not fully manifested. 

Man, then, is not perfect until he reaches the seventh sphere; the Unity in Peace.

Man thus passes through only five of the seven spheres, but the seven are so closely connected by a constant stream of life circling through all, that he may be said to inhabit them all.

Finally, the three unity spheres are specialised thus—

I.—Is that state where all the qualities developed in the physical life reach their highest stage.

III.—The same, only psychical.

V.—The perfection of the pneumatic.

And now with what words can we describe the spirit-body? 

It is not like unto the physical or the psychical. It is not an etherealised earthly body, yet it resembles it at one point, it manifests the real man in various ways. You manifest yourself by speech and look, and perceive others by the touch and the ear. So the spirit has its spirit-vision, hearing, speech, etc.

Communicated by automatic writing; “I AWOKE!” Conditions of Life on the other Side, 1895, David Stott, London, Part II, The Pneuma, The Higher Life, 118-123