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Education also should concern itself during the New Age with bridging of this gap between the three aspects of the mind nature: between the soul and the lower mind, thus producing at-one-ment between soul and personality; between the lower mind, the soul, and the higher mind. For this the race is now ready, and for the first time in the career of humanity the bridging work can go forward on a relatively large scale. On this I need not enlarge, for it concerns the technicalities of the Ancient Wisdom, on which I have given you much in my other books. (12 - 5). Education is therefore the Science of the Antahkarana. This science and this term is the esoteric way of expressing the truth of this bridging necessity. The antahkarana is the bridge the man builds - through meditation, understanding, and the magical creative work of the soul - between the three aspects of his mind nature. Therefore, the primary objectives of the coming education will be:
"Before a man can tread the Path he must become that Path himself". The antahkarana is the Path symbolically. This is one of the paradoxes of the esoteric science. Step by step, and stage by stage, we construct that Path just as the spider spins its thread. It is that "way back" which we evolve out of ourselves; it is that Way which we also find and tread. (12 - 7). Students should train themselves to distinguish between the sutratma and the antahkarana, between the life thread and the thread of consciousness. One thread is the basis of immortality, and the other the basis of continuity. Herein lies a fine distinction for the investigator... The sutratma is the direct stream of life, unbroken and immutable, which can be regarded symbolically as a direct stream of living energy flowing from the centre to the periphery, and from the source to the outer expression or the phenomenal appearance. It is the life... The consciousness thread (antahkarana) ... is the thread which is woven as a result of the appearance of life in form upon the physical plane. Speaking again symbolically, it might be said that the sutratma works from above downward and is the precipitation of life into the outer manifestation. The antahkarana is woven, evolved and created as the result of this primary creation, and works from below upwards, from the without to the within, from the world of exoteric phenomena into the world of subjective realities and of meaning. (12 - 26/27). (Man) then discovers an aspect of himself of which he had little dreamt in the early stages of his development. He discovers the soul and then passes through the illusion of duality. This is a necessary but not a permanent stage... He seeks to merge himself with the soul, to identify himself, the conscious personality, with that overshadowing soul. It is at this point, technically speaking, that the true building of the antahkarana must be begun. It is the bridge between the personality and the soul. (12 - 29). The Science of the Antahkarana. This is the new and true science of the mind, which will utilise mental substance for the building of the bridge between personality and the soul, and then between the soul and the spiritual triad. This constitutes active work in substance subtler than the substance of the three worlds of ordinary human evolution. It concerns the substance of the three higher levels of the mental plane. These symbolic bridges, when constructed, will facilitate the stream of flow of consciousness and will produce that continuity of consciousness, or that sense of unimpeded awareness, which will finally end the fear of death, negate all sense of separateness, and make a man responsive in his brain consciousness, to impressions coming to him from the higher spiritual realms or from the Mind of God. Thus he will be more easily initiated into the purposes and plans of the Creator. (12 - 95/6). The building of the second half of the antahkarana (that which bridges the gap in consciousness between the soul and the spiritual triad) is called the science of vision, because just as the first half of the bridge is built through the use of mental substance, so the second half is built through the use of light substance. (12 - 96). The Science of the Antahkarana is connected with the entire problem of energy, but peculiarly with the energy handled by the individual and with the forces by which the individual relates himself to other individuals or groups. (12 - 143). The Science of the Antahkarana is the science of the triple thread which exists from the very beginning of time, and links individual man with his monadic source. The recognition of this thread and its use, consciously, as the Path and the means of ever expanding contacts, comes relatively late in the evolutionary process. The goal of all aspirants and disciples is to become aware of this stream of energy in its various diversifications, and consciously to employ these energies in two ways: interiorly in self-unfoldment and in the service of the plan for humanity. (12 - 146). The Science of the Antahkarana deals, therefore, with the entire incoming system of energy, with the process of usage and transformation and fusion. It deals also with the outgoing energies and their relationship to the environment, and is the basis of the science of the force centres. (12 - 147). The antahkarana, therefore, is the thread of consciousness, of intelligence, and the responsive agent in all sentient reactions. (12 - 148). References
A Treatise on the Seven Rays
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