spiritual substances

Spiritual Substances, Spiritual Beings

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“All spiritual substances, that is to say, of angels, and human souls, and devils, were made by the Creator innocent and perfectly simple. The fact that some of them turned to evil was an after-effect of their free will. It was by their own choice that they departed from the right way of thinking. If we say that they were so made by the Creator, we say that God is un unjust judge for sending Satan to the fire.

“There are certain heretics who say that matter is without beginning, and that matter is the root, and that the root is power, and an evenly matched power. To this you may fairly reply, ‘Which then is the conquering power? Certainly that of God. Then the vanquished is no longer a match, either in duration or in power.’ Those who say that evil is a substantive thing, know nothing. To God there is no substantive evil, according to His divine freedom from passion; but in us it works with full force and makes itself felt, suggesting all foul concupiscences. It is not mixed up with us, however, as some say, like the mixture of wine with water; it is as corn by itself and tares by themselves, though both are in the same field, as in a house, the thief in one part, and the master in another.” ~St. Macarius the Egyptian

Spiritual Substances

To me it seems contradictory to say “spiritual substances” since we generally think of substances as being material rather than spiritual. But it is also part of the definition of substance that it can mean the essence of a thing, or its fundamental characteristics. So I guess that if we use that definition, it is appropriate to call spiritual things, spiritual substances. Still, spiritual beings might be more appropriate. But for this post, we will stick with the terminology of St. Macarius.

Categories of Spiritual Substances

St. Macarius puts the spiritual substances into three categories: angels, souls, and devils. But like most other things, every member of a category is not equal or identical to all others. We know that in the case of angels, all religions have indicated that there is a hierarchy of these spiritual beings. The same is true of devils. For starters, there are the devils that used to be angels and dwelt in Heaven. Then there are the offspring of those devils who have never been to Heaven and are, therefore, lesser devils, but often more evil because they don’t remember what a life in Heaven was like. In addition to that, we can assume there is a complex hierarchy of devils and demons just as with the angels.

The third category is human souls. Here things are not so obvious. Is their a hierarchy of souls? Is one soul more important, or of a higher rank than another? I have heard of no evidence that there is. An awakened soul is better than a dormant one, but that isn’t a hierarchy. And we often here of “old souls” in spiritual groups found on social media. But since souls are spirits and spirits exist outside the limitations of time and space, no soul can claim to be any older than any other. Being spirits, souls were not born and they don’t die, they just are. Continue reading “Spiritual Substances, Spiritual Beings” →

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sun beings

Sun Beings and Solar Influence

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“The higher beings who were previously in the Earth-planet itself, now influence it from the sun. On this account all effects produced on the earth are changed. The human being chained to earth would no longer be able to feel the influence of the sun beings within him, if his soul were increasingly turned toward the earth, from which his physical body is taken. A change now appears in the condition of human consciousness. At certain times the sun beings rest the soul of man from his physical body, so that man is now alternately purely psychic, in the bosom of the sun-beings, and, when united with the body, heat currents stream up to him; a sea of air is sounding around him and the water pours into and out of him. When man is out of his body the images of the higher beings in whose care he is, float through his soul.

“The earth passes through two periods at this stage of its evolution. During one of these it allows its substances to circulate around the human souls and clothes them with bodies.” ~Rudolf Steiner

Higher Beings

Most humans seem to fall into two categories when it comes to belief in higher beings. Some think that many planets have physical life forms and many of them are far more intelligent than we are. The other group cannot accept that any being can possibly be any greater than they are. They are both partially wrong and partially right.

As for the second group, it is true that in many decades of looking we have found no hard evidence of higher beings on other planets, or anywhere else. But that may be because the scientists don’t understand that these higher beings are so different that they are not recognized as life at all.

While the first group is correct in believing that higher life forms exist, neither they nor anyone else has any evidence of such beings having material bodies and living on other material planets. They believe it only based on a simple statistic, namely that with so many planets if one has intelligent life, others must also. But maybe humanity is a rarity and physical life on other planets is limited to plants and primitive animals.

There are higher life forms, but they exist at higher frequencies, in higher dimensions. In other words, the higher beings are spiritual, not physical. Some such beings live in the sun. These sun beings are not burned up by the heat or radiation because they have no physical bodies. These sun beings sometimes interact with us earthbound humans. They may be called muses or spirit guides. The title doesn’t matter. They are beings of a higher state of consciousness and spiritual realization so it is their honor and duty to help us achieve the same.

Influence from the Sun

We are indeed receiving a great deal of influence from the sun, and in several different ways. The physical sun obviously affects us in many ways. The pull of its gravity controls the orbit of Earth. Its radiation gives us heat and light. But there are other effects, more subtle and on different levels.

One major way the sun affects us on earth is to act as a kind of mirror of our thoughts and emotions. The thoughts and feelings of all of humanity bombard the sun continuously. They are amplified by the sun and reflected back to us. So if our thoughts and full of violence and anger, the reflection from the sun will cause storms, earthquakes, droughts, and floods. If the thoughts are kind and friendly, the reflection from the sun will bring us good years and excellent crops.

But Mr. Steiner is referring to another way the sun can influence us, and that is by the influence of the sun beings. These beings that dwell in the sun can influence us for good or evil, depending on which group is doing the influencing. One group is on the side of darkness, materialism. They encourage us to accumulate material things and they accept physical reality as the only reality. The other group is more spiritual and they encourage us to let go of materialism and greed and develop our spiritual faculties. We can’t help but be influenced by both groups, but we can control to some degree who we listen to the most. It’s like people who say they would like to go to a gym and workout, but they don’t have the time. Actually, we have the time to do whatever we want to do bad enough. We simply push other things aside to make time. In a similar manner, if we listen to an follow the evil sun beings often, their influence on us will grow until it becomes unstoppable. But if we ignore them most of the time and listen instead to the good sun beings, we will find ourselves attuning to them more and blocking out the others.

Then there is the influence of the spiritual sun, which is an actual being on its own. You can think of it as the big brother of Earth’s spirit. When we treat the earth poorly, on a physical or spiritual level, we anger her big brother. You don’t want the sun to be angry with you. But if we start improving our relationship with mother Earth, her big brother and the sun beings within it will smile down on us.

Sun Beings in our Soul

Steiner says the sun beings float through our souls when we are out of our bodies. This does not mean that we must have out-of-body adventures in order to be in contact with sun beings. They can influence our souls even while we are still in our physical bodies. But we have to attune ourselves mentally to the higher frequencies in which such beings dwell. Higher frequencies, not lower.

Can sun beings literally float through our souls? Yes, they can. They are spirits and our souls are spirits. They exist outside the limits and restrictions of time and space. But just because they can, doesn’t mean the will. It doesn’t seem to me like there would be any point to a sun being literally floating through our souls. I think Steiner means this figuratively rather than literally. He means that these sun beings send light and energy into our souls. Light and energy are full of information. Not random information like the internet, but meaningful information. They fill us with the light of truth. They caress us with the wisdom of the ages. We can choose to accept it or block it. But they don’t waste much time on those who won’t listen. If you keep blocking them, they will eventually stop floating through your soul.

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invisible beings

Invisible Beings of Spirit and Truth

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“It is worthy of notice that, while rejecting as a superstition of Occultism, and religion too, the theory of substantial and invisible beings called Angels, Elementals, etc. – without, or course, having ever looked into the philosophy of these incorporeal entities, owing to observation and discovery, should have unconsciously been forced to adopt and recognize the same ratio of progression and order in the evolution of chemical atoms as occultism does. … Let it be remembered that Fire, Water, and Air, or the ‘elements of primary Creation’ so-called, are not the compound elements they are on Earth, but noumenal homogeneous Elements – the Spirits thereof. Then follow the septenary groups or hosts. Placed on parallel lines in a diagram with atoms, the natures of those beings would be seen to correspond in their downward scale of progression to composite elements in a mathematically identical manner, as to analogy. This refers only to diagrams made by the Occultists; for were the scale of Angelic Beings to be placed on a parallel line with the scale of the chemical atoms of Science – from the hypothetical helium down to uranium – they would of course be found to differ. …

“In esoteric philosophy, every physical particle corresponds to and depends on its higher neumenon – the Being to whose essence it belongs; and above as below, the Spiritual evolves from the Divine, the psycho-mental from the spiritual.” ~H. P. Blavatsky

Invisible Beings

There are even today many who still can’t accept that there could be invisible beings. Yet it is not so strange as it sounds. Even if we look just on the physical level, we find some exotic fish, squid, and other sea creatures that are almost completely transparent. They may not be totally invisible, but they are difficult to see if you are not looking for them.

That last sentence may be key to it more than anything else. There are so many things around us to see, even just on the level of matter, that it is impossible to “see” all of them. That is because seeing a thing involves the mind as much as the eyes. Your eyes may see something, but if your mind doesn’t care, or doesn’t believe in it, it doesn’t register on your conscious mind.

If you are interested in art, but not in flowers, and you walk through a garden that is full of artworks, you might be able to answer many questions about what artworks you saw, but couldn’t answer a single one about the flowers. So to you, the flowers are invisible.

But beyond that type of invisible beings are those that are invisible because they are not material. Spiritual beings cannot be seen by the physical eyes unless they wish to make themselves visible. Even then, you are probably not seeing them, but actually “seeing” an image they have sent into your mind, they may not be their true form.

It is possible to see these being, and in their true form, but not with the eyes of the physical body. Instead we must use the spiritual sight of the soul. The soul must, of course, be awakened first. A sleeping soul sees little. Continue reading “Invisible Beings of Spirit and Truth” →

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spiritual beings

Spiritual Beings Before Matter Existed

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“When all was as yet Chaos three spiritual beings appeared on the stage of future creation: (1) Ame no ani naki nushi no Kami, ‘Divine Monarch of the Central Heaven’; (2) Taka mi onosubi no Kami, ‘Exalted, Imperial Divine offspring of Heaven and the Earth’; and (3) Kamu mi musibi no kami, ‘Offspring of the Gods,’ simply.

“These were without form or substance (our arupa triad), as neither the celestial nor the terrestrial substance had yet differentiated, ‘nor had the essence of anything been formed.’

“In the Zohar, which, as now arranged and reedited by Moses de Leon, with the help of Syrian and Chaldean Christian Gnostics in the XII century, and corrected ad revised still later by many Christian hands, is only a little less exoteric than the Bible itself. …

“Ain-Soph, the ABSOLUTE ENDLESS NO-THING, uses also the form of the ONE, the manifested ‘Heavenly Man’ (the First Cause) as its chariot or vehicle to descend into, and manifest through, in the phenomenal world. But the Kabalists neither make it plain how the ABSOLUTE can use anything, or exercise any attribute whatever, since, as the absolute, it is devoid of attributes; nor do they explain that in reality it is the First Cause (Plato’s Logos) the original and eternal IDEA, that manifests through Adam Kadmon, the second Logos, so to speak.” ~H. P. Blavatsky

When All Was Chaos?

According to Merriam-Webster, Chaos is a state of utter confusion. Business Dictionary says it is random and unpredictable. I don’t think such a state was ever found in the All. Before there were forms, before there were beings, there was organization. It wasn’t random. It was intelligent, pure consciousness. It would be more accurate to say it was unformed or undifferentiated rather than calling it chaos.

Three Spiritual Beings

The Total Consciousness that most of us call God is so complex that we attempt to understand it better by looking at parts or aspects of Him, rather than the whole. Most of us know the Christian trilogy of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the quote, Blavatsky is giving an example of an older, yet similar, triad. Others have more than three gods that are actually just aspects of the one God, or false gods. We can easily equate the three spiritual beings given in the Secret Doctrine to the Christian Trilogy. Divine Monarch is clearly the Father. Imperial Divine Offspring is the son (or child). But how does “Offspring of the Gods” relate to the Holy Spirit?

It may be that “offspring of the Gods” is not accurate. It is more accurate to say this “being” is the power that creates the offspring of the Gods. The Holy Spirit is the power of creation.

Spiritual Beings Without Form

Blavatsky says these three spiritual beings were without form or substance. This sounds impossible to most of us, but it is true nonetheless. God originally existed without a form. It makes sense, therefore, that the three spiritual beings that are aspects of God also were without form or substance. They were like nodes of consciousness, concentrated areas of thought energy. Over time, they condensed into actual forms and substances. Spiritual form and substance, not matter. Spirits do have a form, though it is much more flexible than a physical one. It is something like a liquid that takes the shape of the container it is in. A spirit can take the shape and size of the entire universe or any part of it. But at the same time, spirits do not take up any space or time.

Absolute No-Thing

While the three spiritual beings eventually took form, the original Absolute with no form or substance remains at the highest level of reality. Blavatsky finds it confusing that this absolute could “use anything”. I can’t see why that is a problem. Perhaps she hadn’t yet realized that the absolute is Consciousness, all consciousness. The Absolute merely had to think of something and the appropriate spiritual being would do it. It isn’t like the absolute had to pass its desires on to them. The absolute consciousness and the nearly absolute consciousness of the triad are completely linked. When you decide to pick up an object, your arm doesn’t have to be talked into moving, it just does. The same idea applies here.

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