Ladder to the Way of Divine Life Self: Fourth Way, Thresholds, Life Way, etc

Once there was a meeting with a large number of people who had not been at our meetings before. One of them asked: "From what does the way start?" The person who asked the question had not heard G.'s description of the four ways and he used the word "way" in the usual religious-mystical sense.
"The chief difficulty in understanding the idea of the way," said G., "consists in the fact that people usually think that the WAY" (he emphasized this word) "starts on the same level on which life is going. This is quite wrong. The way begins on another, much higher, level. This is exactly what people usually do not understand. The beginning of the way is thought to be easier or simpler than it is in reality.
...
The moment when the man who is looking for the way meets a man who knows the way is called the first threshold or the first step. From this first threshold the stairway begins. Between 'life' and the 'way' lies the 'stairway.' Only by passing along this 'stairway' can a man enter the 'way.' In addition, the man ascends this stairway with the help of the man who is his guide; he cannot go up the stairway by himself. The way begins only where the stairway ends, that is, after the last threshold on the stairway, on a level much higher than the ordinary level of life.
"Therefore it is impossible to answer the question, from what does the way start? The way starts with something that is not in life at all, and therefore it is impossible to say from what. Sometimes it is said: in ascending the stairway a man is not sure of anything, he may doubt everything, his own powers, whether what he is doing is right, the guide, his knowledge and his powers. At the same time, what he attains is very unstable; even if he has ascended fairly high on the stairway, he may fall down at any moment and have to begin again from the beginning. But when he has passed the last threshold and enters the way, all this changes. First of all, all doubts he may have about his guide disappear and at the same time the guide becomes far less necessary to him than before. In many respects he may even be independent and know where he is going. Secondly, he can no longer lose so easily the results of his work and he cannot find himself again in ordinary life. Even if he leaves the way, he will be unable to return where he started from.
(Gurdjieff in Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous)

Soul-Group and Stages of Transcendence

 

The following are excerpts from Road To Immortality, an extraordinary work attributed to Frederick Myers. He supposedly dictated it through the Irish medium Geraldine Cummins. Frederick was a top XIXth century pioneer in consciousness research who seemed to prove this his ideas of existence beyond his physical death. His views are completely legitimate and in tune with the experiences some of us already have. So, it´s not a question of believing or not in channelling. Who cares? Geraldine might have been simply part of Frederick´s Soul-group, making this easier. In any case, the content is worth studying. Here you have some passages:

I
WHY?
THE RIDDLE OF ETERNITY

The spirit, or deeper mind, which nourishes a number
of journeying souls with its light is a thought of God. This it life.
Now, the mystic speaks of the god within him. This is
an entirely erroneous statement. The term God means
the Supreme Mind, the Idea behind all life, the Whole in
terms of pure thought, a Whole within which is cradled
the Alpha and Omega of existence as a mental concept.
Every act, every thought, every fact in the history of the
Universes, every part of them, is contained within that
Whole. Therein is the original concept of all. So it is preposterous
presumption on the part of the mystic to call his
own spirit God.
These myriad thoughts, or spirits, begotten by the
Mighty Idea, differ from one another; many of them,
nearly all, before they control and manifest themselves in
matter, are crude, innocent and incomplete embryos. They
must gather to themselves numberless experiences, manifest
and express themselves in uncountable forms before
they attain to completion, before they may know perfect
wisdom, true reality. Once these are acquired, they may
take on divine attributes and pass out Yonder, entering
within the Supreme Idea and becoming part of the
Whole.
The reason, therefore, for the universe and for all
appearances, for even the little mundane joys and sorrows
of human beings, is to be found in the term "evolution of
spirit," the need for complete fulfilment which can be
obtained through limitation, through the expression of the
spirit in form. For only through that expression can spirit
grow, developing from the embryo, only through manifestation
in appearance can spirit obtain fulfilment. For
this purpose were we born, for this purpose we enter and
31
pass through myriad worlds or states, and always the
material universe is growing, expanding, giving fuller and
fuller expression to mind. The purpose of existence may
be summed up in a phrase-the evolution of mind in matter
that varies in degree and kind-so that mind develops
through manifestation, and in an ever-expanding universe
ever increases in power and gains thereby the true conception
of reality. The myriad thoughts of God, those
spirits which inform with life all material forms, are the
lowest manifestation of God, and must thus learn to become
God-like-to become an effective part of the Whole.
p.31-32

VI
THE GROUP-SOUL

I think I have explained to
you before, that as there are certain centres in the brain,
so in psychic life there are a number of souls all bound
together by one spirit, depending for their nourishment
on that spirit.

[…] You may think my statement frivolous, but the fact that we do appear on earth to be paying for the sins of another life is, in a certain sense, true. It was our life, and yet not our life. In other words, a soul belonging to the group of which I am a part lived that previous life which built up for me the framework of my earthly life, lived it before I had passed through the gates of birth.

[...] Many Soul-men do not seek another earth life, but their spirit manifests itself many times on earth when I talk of my spiritual forbears I do not speak of my physical ancestors, I speak of those soul-ancestors who are bound to me by one spirit.
There may be contained within that spirit twenty souls,
a hundred souls, a thousand souls.


[...] I shall not live again on earth, but a
new soul, one who will join our group, will shortly enter
into the pattern or karma I have woven for him on earth.
No doubt "karma" is a word I use incorrectly here. For
it is something more and something less than karma that he inherits. I am, therefore, a kingdom, and yet I am but a unit in that kingdom. You may say to me that, for the Soul-man, one earth life is not enough. But, as we evolve here, we enter into those memories and experiences of other lives that are to be found in the existence of the souls that preceded us, and are of our group.

You will perceive in my analysis of the group-soul that we are individuals and members of one whole. And when you come to the Fourth, and more particularly to the Fifth stage, you will realise how fine and beautiful is this brotherhood within the one being; how it deepens and intensifies existence; how it destroys the cold selfishness so necessary to an earth life, where one living creature must continually destroanother's manifestation in matter in order to maintain its
physical life.
In the Fourth stage the soul becomes sensible of the
group-soul, and through the awareness there arises a
great change. He begins gropingly to realise the character of experience, the possibilities of mind; and in this Fourth stage if he is a Soul-man he is peculiarly liable to error

 […] For instance, a fanatical Buddhist or a very devout Christian may be held within the groove of his earthly beliefs. For those other souls in his community are, perhaps, also held in the chains of those particular ideas […]  He is held fast in the tentacles of an octopus. This octopus is the earthly Christian or Buddhist idea of an After-life, their view of the universe as created when on earth. Now, you will recognise that such conditions tend to inhibit progress. For it means-to use another metaphor-dwelling in an intellectual chrysalis, living in the past earthly conceptions. p.65

Spirit-Man
Spirit-man is not caught in this eidolon or living ghost,
in this wraith of earthly beliefs. The great masters are not thus ensnared. Christ, the Son of God, entered into Hades, but He did not abide in any of the other planes of being. Christ, being inspired directly by God, was connected with no group-soul. He passed from Hades out Yonder; for His physical body was, during His lifetime on earth, the direct expression in the clay of that Essence, the Imagination of God. Truly, Christ was a limited expression of the Whole, was in earthly life linked to the Whole. But every Christian born upon the earth is inspired by some individualised spirit. When I write "individualised" I desire to indicate that it is a thought of God; it is not, therefore, the Whole, it is not the Fount of all life.

[…] Now, if the soul is to pass from the Fourth to the Fifth
stage he must first shake off, cast from him any dogma,
any special earthly outlook which has shaped his mentality,
which confines it. p-62-66

VII
THE PLANE OF FLAME
THE FIFTH PLANE
Birth into the Fifth Stage

THERE comes a time when the soul who dwells on the
Fourth plane of life prepares for the incident of death.
This death does not resemble the death of man. At this
particular point in evolution the soul has perfect and
absolute control of form, of his appearance, of his eidolon or living ghost. This is the last veil between him and a conception of existence without form. He must free himself before he can go. up another rung of the ladder, and freedom can only come through the deliberate process called "The Breaking of the Image." It is the farewell to appearance, to form as a necessity, to colour, to feeling as a certainty, as a condition of life.
 

[…] Again the soul enters into unconsciousness; and when he is hom into the Fifth stage he has cast from him certain attributes that were his when he still inhabited the Image; for his soul was, in part, that Shape of Light he has now discarded.
[…] He knows then that he must
choose either to go forward or backwards. The spirit
actually forces the choice.
[…] When at the gate of the many-coloured world, the Soul-man sometimes chooses to drop back into the first division of this region

The Symbol of the Fifth Stage

The term "flame" expresses the
Fifth stage. For now the soul becomes emotionally whole, aware not alone of himself, but of all those other souls who are of his group. He remains himself, yet is all those other selves as well. He no longer dwells in form. -as it is conceived by man-but he dwells still in what might be described as an "outline." All the past emotions, passions, intellectual modes of expression belonging to his companion souls shape this outline, an outline of emotional thought; a great fire which stirs and moves this mighty being now. While he abides in this Fifth plane experience is manifold, is a multiplication, loses, in a sense, its apparent oneness. He lives indeed a life that seems to bum like a
flame. flame. It is a time of severe discipline, of vastly increased intellectual feeling, of great limitations, of boundless freedoms,  of the glimpsing of infinite horizons.p.68

[…] He is thus all the
time becoming more and more merged with the Unifying
Spirit.
A rare intensity of feeling, of joy, ecstasy, sorrow,
of dark despair nourish him, feed his life. Yet, all the
while, he is, in a sense, apart, aloof. He is not caught in
the storm of this emotional whirlpool. p.69

[…] The soul, on this Fifth level of consciousness, is continuously conscious. There are now no gaps, no periods of non-existence. He revels in the emotional and intellectual life of all those comrade souls who are on the various rungs of the ladders which reach up to the One Spirit and are lighted by it. But this soul, at the climax of his existence on the plane of flame, is as an artist who lives in his masterpiece, derives from it, in all its features, in the freshness of its evolving, changing creation, that strange exultation which may, perhaps, at one rare moment, be known to a creative genius-though very faintly-while he still lives upon the earth. p.69


The Soul-man, however, may not leave it for the Sixth. plane until the group-soul is complete, until those other
souls, necessary to this design woven in the tapestry of
eternity, have also attained to this level of consciousness.
Some may still be far behind. But while in this state of
being, the Soul-man becomes aware of the emotional life of all the more primitive souls who inhabit denser and denser matter and, yet, belong to his group. He becomes aware, in short, of all the parts of the great body which his spirit, or the Unifying Principle, feeds with its Light. He realises the subconscious life of the flower, the insect, the bird, the beast, all those forms which are connected with the governor of his being, that Light from Above.

 The Construction of the Group-soul

The actual construction of the group-soul must be
clearly visualised. Its spirit feeds, with life and mental
light, certain plants, trees, flowers, birds, insects, fish,
beasts, men and women; representatives of living
creatures in varying states of evolution. It inspires souls
who are on various planes, various levels of consciousness in the Mter-death. It feeds, also, creatures on other planets. For the spirit must gather a harvest of experience in every form. Gradually these intelligences evolve and merge. The experience necessary to the spirit is completed when all the souls necessary to the design have reached this Fifth plane.Once they become sensible of their oneness and their individuality they may go forward to the Sixth plane. There is, then, a breaking of the threads, a casting away of the dross of emotional experience, a sifting and changing on the part of all these souls. p.70

VIII

THE PLANE OF WHITE LIGHT
THE SIXTH PLANE
Pure Reason

White light represents the perfect equanimity of
pure thought. Such equanimity becomes the possession of the souls who enter this last rich kingdom of experience.
They bear with them the wisdom of form, the incalculable secret wisdom, gathered only through limitation, harvested from numberless years, garnered from lives passed is myriad forms. Knowledge of good and evil and of what lies beyond good and evil now belongs to them. They are lords of life, for they have conquered. They are capable of living now without form, of existing as white light, as the pure thought of their Creator. They have joined the Immortals.
The purpose of the Sixth plane of being might be
described as "the assimilation of the many-in-one," the
unifying of all those mind-units I have called souls, within the spirit. p.71

IX
OUT YONDER, TIMELESSNESS
THE SEVENTH PLANE
Part of the Divine Principle

The Seventh state might be described as the "passage
from form to formlessness.” But pray do not misunderstand the term formlessness"...The soul who enters that Seventh state passes into the Beyond and becomes one with God. 

This merging with the Idea, with the Great Source of spirit does not imply annihilation. You still exist as an
individual. You are as a wave in the sea; and you have at last entered into Reality and cast from you all the illusions of appearances. But some intangible essence has been added to your spirit through its long habitation of matter,

[…]Actually, the passage from the Sixth to the Seventh
state means the flight from the material universe, from
that space which is a part of it. You dwell not only outside of time but outside of the universe on this last plane of being. Yet you can be and are, in one sense, within the universe.

[…] When you dwell¡ out Yonder, you, as a part of the Divine Principle in its essence, are wholly aware of the imagination of God.  So you are aware of every second in time, you are aware of the whole history of the earth from Alpha to Omega.p.73
the whole history of the earth from Alpha to Omega.p.73

Making A New Soul vs Old Carnal, Psychic and Spiritual Souls

 

What distinguishes an old soul from a new soul? What is the origin of the soul and spirit? What distinguishes them? What is it that reincarnates? Why did the spirit become trapped in the fallen Adam? How many types of spirit and soul are there?

Before answering these questions that come to me from Ecuador, let's say broadly that the new Soul is literally the one that is formed by means of the Spirit of Truth and Life, integrating experiences that express the New Adam, the new type of Humanity seeded by the Nazarene Master 2000 years ago:

I'm the way, the truth and the life.

And that Path is traveled in a conscious relationship with the Spirit of Truth that comes from the inner Messenger/Angel, who acts as a connecting Master since our childhood:

See that you do not despise one of these little ones, because I tell you that their angels/messengers in heaven always contemplate the face of my Father who is in heaven...the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in me. name, He will teach you all things, and will remind you of all that I have said to you. (Matthew 18:10)

And I will pray to the Father, and He will give you another Steward Helper/Counselor so that he may be with you forever; that is, the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive [...] But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things, and will remind you of all that I have told you (John 14).

When the Helper comes, whom I will send from the Father, that is, the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about me, and you will also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning (John 15:26)

It is interesting to see that in the Greek text the Helper is mentioned as Parakleto, as in the Aramaic Peshitta version: פרקלטא

But the important thing is to understand that the new souls they are only formed in relation to that New Helper, in those who are connected to Yeshua, not to other teachers, regardless of how full of holiness they may be.

The old souls are rather derived from the Adam ha Rishon or Soul of the First Humanity of Light that fell in Gan Eden. Some are fragments of vital or intellectual souls that come from gilgulim or returns in different existences, for at least 6000 years.

And the truth is that almost all humans have fragments of the spirit and soul of that first fallen Adamic humanity. We are Children of Adam, but with the possibility of becoming Children of the Blessed again when we receive the new spirit that was prophesied:

I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit (ruach) within you; And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26-28).

Now, this new spirit should not be confused with the one that is formed with the old neshemah or divine breath of the First Adam.

I mention this because sages like Rabbi Isaac Luria and his disciple Jayim Vital taught that there are neshemot or Adamic souls that, although they belonged to the general body of Adam, did not fall, and come for the first time to help rectify.

However, they are still part of the old Adam, no matter how holy they are. Even masters like Moses or Buddha were manifesting that First Adam with his Nishmat Hayim, the pure Breath of Lives. Moses is said to have attained the Jayah degree of Soul, the Keter of Beriah.

But at that time the new adamic prototype or Last Adam had not been established.

The New Man on the other hand enjoys immunity because he is not a living soul (nefesh jayah / psyche zooion) like the first Adam, but a life-giving spirit (ruach jayah), as Paul expressed in 1 Corinthians 15, where he also calls him the Last Adam. This is the new Spirit and Soul sown and gestated by the Master. And by receiving it, he makes us have a face-to-face relationship with the Divine:

Whoever sees me sees the Father (John 14).

This means that whoever knows the Personality of the Divine Son knows that of the Blessed One, because they are one. This contrasts with the back to back relationship, the condition of humanity since Gan Eden and the giving of the Torah:

You will not be able to see my face; for no man shall see me, and he shall live (Exodus 33:20).

This made humans face death more than Life:

Because just as in Adam all die, also in the Anointed of Light all will be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22)

What is the origin of the spirit and the soul? 

The spirit of humanity carries memories that go back to the origins of the Universe and the fall of falls. This explains strange memories that some of us have, such as seeing ourselves suspended in spaces of Light, contemplating strange galactic episodes, etc. The prophet Job himself was told the following:

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have intelligence. […] Where is the way to the abode of light? And the darkness, where is her place, for you to lead her to her territory, and to discern the paths of her home? You know it, because then you were already born, and great is the number of your days! (Job 38:4-21).

 From what soul then do the memories come? 

 We must investigate this by clarifying the terms. First of all, the words soul and spirit are confusing because they sometimes refer to the same thing, depending on the context. 

 In Hebrew there are two words that can be translated as spirit, but they are different nuances: neshemah (breath) and ruach (wind). 

 In Greek pneuma (spirit) is breath or breath while psyche (soul) is the psychic energy that animates a body and is considered the wife of the spirit, which is the activator and pilot of the soul, as the Greek sages said. 

Now, in the Hebrew language the notion of soul is expanded. Man or Adam is said to be of full stature with five degrees of Soul including vital soul (nefesh), spirit or emotional wind (ruach), intellective consciousness (neshemah), will and yearning for divine Life (jayah) and the full union with the All (Yejida). And the three primary ones, Nefesh, Ruach and Neshemah (NaRaN for short), are the ones that must unite to take us to the subsequent ones, giving the NaRaNJaY or state of Absolute Consciousness. 

However, this implies increasing understanding, through the breath of understanding.

 The Neshemah or Breath is the Lamp (NeR) of YHVH and probes the thoughts of the heart (Proverbs 20: 27). 

 NeR is the kabbalistic acronym for Neshemah, Nefesh or vital soul and Ruach or emotional wind, because the union of Neshemah with the vital soul is what generates the Ruach, a personality with memories of it. This is compared to blowing on incandescent glass, or astral matter in formation, as in Gan Eden. The blowing is the neshemah, the wind or interior activity is the ruach and the nefesh is the vital energy generated. This is how spirit and soul become the same process.

And Adam was a vital soul with animal impulses or nefesh behemit, formed from the dust of Adamah, or Edom, and received the breath called nishmat chayim, a primary understanding of lives that came from the astral radiations or Mother Nature, especially from the Moon, not from the Solar Father. 

That is why it was said: But there is a spirit or ruach in man, and neshemah de Shaday gives him understanding (Job 32).

Shaday is the Providence or breasts (shedim) of Nature, associated with the sphere of Yesod, the lunar sphere of fertility. In other words, what caused certain Adamic beings to flourish was solar radiation filtered by the magnetic field of the moon. 

 Now, that Neshemah was itself a Nefesh Elokit, since Adam had to develop it to the level of Ruach and Neshemah, Jayah and Yechida, reaching the Tifereth of Atzilut with the full stature of Beriah. But he hardly passed the nefesh degree of Neshemah because the passions of the Nefesh behemit carried him away.

This explains why the Adamic soul became trapped in matter, and why it now needs to receive a greater influx. Adam's breath of angelic intelligence came from the stars, but now it comes from the Primordial Source, the Absolute Sun, because what we must receive is the Mind of the Messiah Yeshua, his Comprehension. This is what brings divine masculinity into our lives. 

On the other hand, the Adam soul was the woman or feminine part that received the breath of the Mother, solar-lunar and planetary radiations that acted as masculine-feminine spirit. Thus Adam acquired a spiritual reproductive capacity, the receptive soul with feminine soul chromosomes or XX and spiritual masculine chromosomes or XY. But by not eating from the Tree of Life (the potential Comprehension of the Messiah), that union of the internal twins did not occur and the spiritual breath or neshemah remained isolated, kidnapped by the passions of the vital soul, generating a crooked ruach or emotional wind. that opened the portal to the Serpent, which was a very ancient crooked Ruach. In Adam it was expressed as Lilith, the strange woman, and the mind of Samael, the Angel of Death who rules the world of physical bodies. 

After some modifications to various organisms, the Architects managed to get Adam to generate another less rebellious emotional wind, but he was equally susceptible to the fall. 

 

This was a great botched job, since it only led to reproducing the heavenly angelic rebellion, in that of Gan Eden and then in the earthly one, with the humanities. Yet we can still get much of it with the help of Y´shua´s understanding.

From there came the division of Adam into Man and Woman, where the male part saw the woman as flesh of my flesh and bones of my bones. Because the woman is the emotional-rational body that expresses Adam's discourse. In fact, in Psalm 19: 2 it is literally said: from night to night shows (javah) knowledge (da'at).

Javah also represents the left brain hemisphere, which could hear the whispers of Najash, the serpent that incited them to eat from the Etz ha Da'at or Tree of Knowledge of good and deficient.

And by mixing with the Serpent or Najash energy she became Java, mother of living creatures or Chay.

It is not by chance that the Aramaic word Javya (חויא) is Serpent and it plays on words with Javah(חוה), in Hebrew, and in Aramaic חוא.

This was the mixture of two seeds, the intellectual breath or seed of the woman, plus the crooked spirit that comes from the kidnapping of that intelligence and carries the reptilian seed, which is not satisfied and tends to evil.

Thus, a carnal humanity called Cain was born, which murdered its breath of Conscience, Habel.

How many types of soul and spirit are there?

There is a third Adamic line, the result of uniting Adam with Javah, and that was Seth, who was a hybrid, but with more Light strength. Enosh, the present humanity, but also Enokh and Noach, descend from him, and despite there is still mixture, this third line offers the possibility of being rectified and elevated. 

 

In addition, three types of soul derived from here that we can call Carnal or Cainite, Psychic-spiritual or Abelian and Intellectual-spiritual, which corresponds to Seth. Now then, in the line of Seth there was a second subdivision when reaching the ninth patriarch from Adam, who was Noach (Gift of the divine spirit, Chen, backwards).

And it is said that Noach had three sons: Kham, who represents the Nefesh of that Neshemah; Jafet, which would be the Ruach or emotional wind, and Shem, the name that symbolizes the Neshemah degree itself. And the Torah itself says that when he got off the Ark, Noah planted a vineyard and got drunk. This contains a code, since wine (yayin) is worth 70, like Sod, Secret. The Neshemah soul got drunk with knowledge. Although his sons Shem and Jefet provided the cover, covering for his father in his tent. The development of the soul covers our transgressions and nakedness.

Then the spirit or breath gave rise to variants, which are reflected in all the subsequent development of the Torah: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; Aron, Moshe, Yahoshua; Shaul, David, Shalomon; Gehazi, the servant of, Elisha and Elijah; Pedro, Jacobo and Juan, who are the receptive merkava that must be united to the superior. And finally the full birth of the New Adam, which is represented in the Transfiguration, with Moshe/Moses, Eliyahu/Elias and Yeshua, who already cover the five degrees of the Divine Soul: 

 

And what is it that returns when the birth of the divine Baby is not completed?

Both the old Neshemah and the memories of the Ruach and the Nefesh are susceptible to return. But the Neshemah and its memories return through Ibur (gestation), entering other souls to complete their experiences, rectify or guide. Instead the nefeshot or vital souls return by gilgulim, recycled as part of another existence. And they start from scratch. Only when the Ruach develops can elements of the most evolved mental soul descend. In any case, this procedure is very expensive and risky since achievements and stripes can be lost, as happened to the fallen angels. That is why the safest thing is to live linked to the Spirit of Truth that shows us the way back without the risk of being trapped again.