Soul Impressions

The Inner Teachings, 14^th July 1954 – St Mary Abbot’s Place, London

Invocation:

Let us pray to the Source of life, to God the Almighty Spirit—Thou who art all-enfolding Love, Wisdom and Power, we Thy children seek to draw into Thy light of truth. We pray that our hearts may be cleansed from arrogance and egoism, so that as little children we may learn simplicity and humility. We pray for knowledge and for love, and in Thy holy Name we call to our Brethren of the Great White Lodge, to the Angelic hierarchies, and to all illumined men and women who have passed onward into the heaven world. May the light and the peace of the Presence, Thy Presence, be with us now. We give Thee thanks.

Amen.

We were speaking at our last gathering about the inner worlds. We said that there are great truths for man yet to discover. We stressed this because you are all here in the flesh to learn to increase your consciousness of God and God’s life. Not only must you learn through emotional experiences such as love, sorrow, joy and pain and by undergoing the great initiations of death and rebirth, but you must learn about the hidden secrets of the universe. For you are living in a mental age—some call it an ‘atomic’ age—when these secrets of nature are slowly being discovered. Of recent years man* has ascertained that light and sound travel through the ether. Instruments in your own homes receive and reproduce these sound waves. You can hear a man’s voice distinctly from the other side of the world. Also you are now receiving pictures on a screen from which voices speak. These discoveries are elementary in comparison with what is to come. It is an error for man to think that today he is finding new truth, since no truth is new. The ancients knew many of the secrets of the universe which are now lost to man. These modern discoveries however will give you cause to think and also wonder how much more waits to be discovered behind the veil.

We are going to talk tonight about soul-impressions—the impressions made by you upon the soul-substance of the world in which you live. Possibly you think of yourselves primarily as souls with bodies. If so that is a step forward, for countless people do not even know that they possess a soul. They think that everything can be attributed to man’s brain and that at death the brain ceases to function. They say that when a body is dead that means an end to that particular man. Now ignorance such as this is about to be enlightened during this atomic age, for the power of companies of spirit intelligences, spirit people, coming close to humanity will cause men to pause and listen to the sound waves of truth originating from those who are now considered dead.

Now the world also possesses a soul, much as individual man has a soul. In the same fashion that individual man makes his karma, and has his karma to account for, so also does he share in his nation’s karma and in the world’s karma. Each nation has its national soul and there is also a world soul. Therefore man will someday learn the vital truth that he cannot live to himself alone, because the record of his life is always being impressed upon the soul of his nation and also the soul of his world. Therefore every effort made by anyone towards God, towards good, noble and beautiful thought, is raising the soul life of the whole world. Look at the indescribable and inexplicable beauties of nature. Does not this cause you to think of the immensity of the Intelligence which has created such beauty and perfection? Natural law alone does not account for these. It is natural law which is being directed by Divine Intelligence. In the same way every minute incident of your life matters—your every thought, word and action—and one day you will be amazed when you have penetrated the iron door of materiality to what lies beyond. For there you will see not only these same thoughts, words and actions thrown upon the etheric screen and sounding from an etheric sound track, but you will know the effect all these things made upon the physical universe and upon God’s spiritual universe. This is a staggering thought.

And yet everything you handle is impressed with your etheric emanation. When you enter a room or building you impress the etheric emanation of that room or building with your own soul substance. This is proved to a limited degree by people who have the power to psychometrise an article. Such a person by holding an article you have worn (or even without touching it) will read from that article some surprising facts about yourself. This feat will amaze those who do not understand this law of etheric impressions.

Some of you have doubtless gone into the cathedral in which your Queen was recently crowned. Many went there out of curiosity because they wanted to stand on the same spot as had their Queen at her coronation, perhaps only a few days or a few hours after the ceremony. The impression left behind was very strong. Ignorant as people are concerning these things, many would feel a power, a something impressing them with grandeur and holiness. If this same building still stands in a thousand years’ time, or even only its bare site remains, certain people with psychometric power will see enacted that coronation ceremony exactly as it was seen by spectators on Coronation Day in this present year.

For these etheric impressions are never lost. You may have heard—if not, you will be interested to hear—that many souls in the spirit world are entrusted with the task of keeping these records. You would be surprised to know what is recorded in the akashic libraries.

Proof of what we are saying can be given by certain developed people or initiates. There are also people who have not yet attained initiation who are still able to read simple records in the ether. Your every life, your every past incarnation is imprinted on the akashic record. This is why a clairvoyant will sometimes be able to tell you about these things, or why you yourself in meditation may rise for a moment to that level of consciousness where you can receive an impression of that past of yours. Sometimes such vision comes only vaguely. In the same way many people experience a feeling when they are visiting a strange place or places that they have been there before. A vague shadowy something makes them say, ‘This place is familiar to me.’

Your psychologists explain these matters very readily but not always correctly. The real explanation lies deeper. People who remember in this fashion touch their akashic record for a flash. We have spoken about the record left behind in the Abbey by the coronation of your young Queen as an instance. Man will learn much more than he knows at present about the ancient races and ancient lands, but not from archaeology; for while archaeology can give a certain amount of help it will also mislead; only when man has developed his own power to receive impressions from the ether will he read the true ancient history of buildings and stones. Here we are up against a bogey. You dear people are so honest, and that is right, that you do not wish to delude yourselves. You are proud of your reasoning mind. You do not intend to be misled by yourself or by anyone else. This manner of thinking indicates that the lower is dominating over the higher. Even those who are learning to meditate do not wish to be deluded by what they call ‘imagination,’ by that creative power which is man’s greatest gift. For if man were bereft of his power to create mind images there would be very little left for him. Have you ever thought that man’s whole life is directed, his every action urged through these mind images? Man has to imagine his clothing, his house, his food, his agriculture, his everything before he can bring it into being. His every activity has first to become in man’s imagination. Where there is no vision (or power of imagination) the people perish—they must perish. What is vital is that the aspiration of man must grow God-ward.

God is beauty; God creates beauty; God has created man and through man, God’s creation, beauty must become manifest.

This vital subject of man’s imaginative powers must be deeply studied and far better understood, because imagination is truly the doorway to all his creative powers. It is primarily a spiritual thing and opens up a higher world. As we have said, all your imagining must be pure, beautiful and godlike. When you are developing these inner powers of your soul you develop and expand an etheric body, part of which is attached to your outer body, and which interpenetrates your nervous system and your physical makeup. The other portion of your etheric body can contact the higher worlds and is akin to your soul. This lower etheric is the bridge between the spirit world and your earth, and dies with your physical body, but not immediately. The body is finished when spirit and soul is withdrawn, but the physical-etheric part lingers on for a while and is often seen and described as wraithlike. This also eventually disintegrates. The real and intelligent part of you, the higher etheric, is absorbed into the soul body. This higher body then passes onward and eventually goes into the light of God. Communications which come through from the spirit world come across an etheric bridge which is built up by people on earth and by people in the spirit world by their etheric emanations. This is a very delicate structure and easily broken. The message we are giving tonight is also a very delicate operation and [it] can be an enormous strain upon the nervous system of the instrument when there are inharmonious thoughts or disturbing noises. It is well for people to understand this.

In ancient days these instruments of the spirit—sometimes called oracles in Greece—were secluded in a temple and so were protected from the battering of the outer world. The ancients took very great care of their oracles. It is a desecration of God’s laws not to observe this same precaution. There is still far too much worldly ignorance about the beautiful communications which have bridged the gulf between the world of spirit and the earth. God has never left man without a witness, and has always had his messengers through whom He has poured divine truth. Man is no different today from what he was long ago. So much ignorance, so much non-understanding hides these mysteries of God, these spiritual secrets. God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. Ever think of God as all-wise and all-powerful, for you are all held, always, within the divine Intelligence. You may have a certain limited amount of freewill choice. Your measure of freewill is expressed by your aspiration, your desire to advance, your desire to be more godlike, or else by your indifference to God and your indulgence in self. So if man chooses to go towards God he is creating good karma, better conditions for himself and the world. When man is indifferent to God and decides to indulge his lower nature, he will presently suffer much pain until he takes a pull upon himself and eventually gains freedom through his absorption into the God-light. Every man today is the result of his own past; his weakness is the result of that lower self of his which has pulled him down. Please do not misunderstand this statement. We are not judging any man or any woman. We cannot. No man can judge his brother. We do not know him. We only state the law. It is our work to love our brother and to assist him along the path, to help him to climb upward and never to push him downward. That is all that concerns you and us.

Before we leave you we want to tell you about your own mystic isle of Britain, which is a jewel set in the silver sea. There are some exceedingly beautiful centres of spiritual light in Britain. There are other centres in Europe, in the Middle East, in Egypt, in the Far East, in America, in the Pacific—all over the world. This magic isle was once attached to the ancient lost continent of Atlantis or Poseidon. The ancients travelled across the seas from Atlantis and came to this land—which was not an island then, but was part of a great island continent of Poseidon. This is how ancient priesthood came to this land, and there are certain places which today still retain the etheric impression left by these priests of the great Sun Temples of Atlantis.

There is still much conjecture about the temple at Avebury on the chalk downs, about the temple at Stonehenge on the great plain and about the dolmens and stone circles in Cornwall, and about other centres and places of power and magic on the west coast in Wales and Scotland—and indeed, all over this island. You will remember what we told you about the etheric impression of the coronation left behind in the Abbey. Similar great ceremonies have been enacted in places which now lie in ruins. Those ceremonies still live in the ether and can be seen by people with developed clairvoyance. Not only are the ceremonies to be seen but the actual people, the priests, often return to places where once they lived. It is one of the laws that man may return to places in which he has done special and great work. Those of you who are developing this inner vision—but it must be pure and must be directed by the truth and the wisdom of God—if you visit these places you will see these things for yourselves; see their ceremonies, see their mode of life. You will discover by this one true method what is undiscoverable merely by excavation or by mind or brain study. The brain will carry you only so far, my children, and there it stops. It cannot penetrate further. You have to go beyond the brain into the etheric world. You have to train your own etheric mind to penetrate that world. Then you will see the mysteries of that world’s past revealed in much the same way as by television or sound radio. Man will someday develop himself as an instrument of this nature. Even there he will not stop, for still greater heights remain to be climbed and grander visions to be seen. Do not be daunted for as you reach the top of one mountain surely you will see a whole new range before you. As you press forward, your way will become lighter and more joyous and life will only reveal more grandeur, more beauty and a deeper satisfaction, deeper happiness, deeper love for the Creator of all worlds and all systems and for the Creator of the beauty and ecstasy, the glory of one simple spirit—your own—who are but as a grain of sand upon a vast shore. God has nevertheless given you individuality and divine intelligence; has given you the power to comprehend the glory of the whole universe. O God bless you, God bless you, dear earthly brethren! O, we would be so happy could we help you just one step onward on your journey.

Benediction:

We pray to our Creator: Great White Spirit, we Thy children look upward to Thee and behold Thy beauty, Thy tenderness and love, and we are bowed in thankfulness for Thy blessings which are unfailing. O Lord God, may we be worthy of this life which Thou has given us.

May we never lose the vision of Thy love.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

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