The Soul is Perpetual
Riffing on Eternity #10
The soul is perpetual - not measured in a single physical life. Moving from a consciousness overwhelmed by the material world to a point of view of contemplation of the whole of time. What kind of consciousness is that? It is one that is passing out of the illusion of manifestation.
What exactly is the situation in which we are operating, in which the mystery of time has a hold on us and our consciousness? This mystery of time can be used as a leverage point to lift us up and above its domain.
Time and the material world bind us into the limitation of manifestation, and if the Platonic life can do anything, it is to loosen those bonds and to enable the soul to rise past its time’s grip.
As we rise, many wonders are shown to us, and many intensities of concepts and ideas pass by along the way. At the same time, the forces that hold us in place, that fetter the soul, are pulling downward, which is why the hands of the gods are so helpful in the process of the soul’s awakening and further journey upward into truth. The gods help and secure the newly-restored soul until she is ready to see her true condition. It is not a fabricated condition based on illusion and opinion, but the actual state of the soul here today.
The soul journeys to the safe harbour of the father, and does not stop until she arrives. What arrives is the purified soul, not the soul that has accumulated matter and material formations that encrust her and block her light.
Yet that light is always ever-present for it is by her own light that she sets forth. This light is amplified by the spotlights of the gods, and particularly by the kindred and guiding stars in the darkness and initiatory rites.
Lying in darkness, the soul is buried alive in layers of matter, and this matter has little or no life force within it. However, in the interstices of this matter, there are spaces that replicate the stars of the sky and the forces and beings of all the gods, forms, and ideas that have been in existence through all the cycles of creation. These interstices light the path for the soul to begin to find a way.
The material covers on the soul have been painfully implanted and secured, so they must be gradually and delicately removed, as if the soul were a patient in a sacred hospital, or within a shamanic healing hut. There, with the help of many unseen forces and the rhythms of the working of those who assist, standing like the gods of Egypt by the sarcophagus, the covers are carefully and skillfully loosened.
With the removal of each layer, more light reaches the soul, and more is revealed of the true environment in which the soul has been held captive. It is horrifying at first, and stupefying, and the soul may shriek, turn away, and go back. This, too, is a natural response.
Then the soul peeks again at the light, this time with a more steady gaze than before, until again, she is exhausted, overwhelmed, and turns back to the familiar. This process repeats over and over again until stage by stage, the soul discovers that she has been uncovered almost spontaneously.
The call of the sound of the flute brings her out each time to try to see, then to move upward somehow. But without the vehicle of the body, she may not be able to stir without help. The gods’ hands lift her from the bed, like parents lifting a baby from the crib. She is held up to the sky and stars before being brought into the warm embrace, held tight and filled with love, then returned to the bed and the swaddling clothes once more. In time, the covers loosen and are so much more easily removed and lightly returned than before.
She learns to sit, to stand, to crawl, to walk, and eventually to fly. This can happen in eons and long cycles of the soul, in one lifetime, or at an instant of ready realization.
More of my notes on Plato study here, at Riffing on Eternity.