Soul to Spirit: The New Spiritual Psychology

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To understand the Bailey model of spiritual evolution it helps to  start by looking at it in its simplest form. In general Alice Bailey describes three main stages of spiritual development. First, we become more fully human through a process of individuation that helps us to integrate our personalities. Second, we evolve ourselves into becoming a soul infused personality by starting a process Bailey refers to as initiation. Third, we learn to become more universal through a process of identification that helps us to know who we are as spirit. Let’s look a little more in depth at these three stages now.  

THREE MAIN STAGES

Becoming Human — Integrated Personality — Individualization. To become human, or an Integrated Personality to use a term from Bailey, is a long and hard evolutionary process. We move from a sense of being overwhelmed by our physical environment, to one of feeling we are finally masters over it. We shift from feeling helpless in regards to fulfilling our desires for money/security, pleasure/sex, and power into becoming masters at getting our desires met. We are able to do this because we have achieved enough mastery and control over our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that we are finally able to get others and also our environment to increasingly do our bidding. Bailey describes it this way saying essentially that we begin “with the strictly human consciousness as it begins with the process of individualization and consummates in the dominant personality” (Esoteric Psychology, Vol. II, p. 7). Bailey also says then that “Man, the average human being, is a sum total of separative tendencies, of uncontrolled forces and of disunited energies, which slowly and gradually become coordinated, fused, and blended in the separative personality” (Esoteric Psychology, Vol. II, p. 7). (Note: Bailey started writing her books in the 1910’s before women even had the right to vote. It was common, therefore, to always use only the male pronoun when referring to both men and women).

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Becoming Soul — EGO — Initiation. The next stage is one of giving birth to the Soul and then gradually infusing the Integrated Personality with Soul qualities until one becomes the “Soul-infused Personality” or Ego. To let you know the word “Ego” had a very different meaning in Bailey’s time. It was essentially equivalent with the word “Soul.” Now, however, one hundred years later the ego has essentially been equated with the selfish and separative personality, and being called “egotistical” is a bad thing. Some people have dealt with this by capitalizing the word Ego so that you know it is equivalent to Soul, which I have done here. When you read Bailey’s books and quotes in this book you will not see the word ego or egoic capitalized, but it means Soul, nevertheless. Regarding this stage Bailey states that this stage begins “with the egoic consciousness, which is that of the solar angel as it begins with the preparation for initiation on the Path of Discipleship and consummates in the perfected Master. Esoteric Psychology, Vol. II, p. 7.  She also states that “Man, the Solar Angel, is the sum total of those energies and forces which are unified, blended and controlled by that ‘tendency to harmony’ which is the effect of love and the outstanding quality of divinity” Esoteric Psychology, Vol. II, p. 7.

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Becoming Spirit — Monad — Identification. Moving to the final stage, that of Becoming Spirit, we discover something interesting in the Bailey model. For starters, one of the major contributions of the Bailey model is how she views the experience of enlightenment, or unity consciousness, as an important, but relatively minor event in our spiritual evolution. Beyond this personal experience of enlightenment, there are many more enlightenments, initiations, or expansions of consciousness to come. In fact, Bailey names seven enlightenment experiences, initiations, or expansions of consciousness, that human beings go through before in her model they are human no more. After her First Initiation, where you birth the Soul, we now must learn to live as the Soul. Bailey calls this becoming the “soul-infused personality.” We retain a certain level of individuality in our human form, but increasingly we live out of a factual awareness of spiritual realms. To live in this way we  need to navigate the spiritual realms correctly by dispelling the many distortions, or “glamours” as Bailey calls them. These distortions exist due to the mixed motives that come from our selfish and unselfish inclinations. The process of dispelling glamours and becoming more spiritually mature as a Soul make up what Bailey refers to as the Second Initiation, or second expansion of consciousness, or enlightenment experience.

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