Chapter 3 - Soul, Mind and Body

If there is an individual soul that leaves the body at death, as most of us suppose, then this individual soul must be an organization of cell souls, just as the body is an organization of cells.

The body is referred to as the “shell,” the “husk,” the “house we live in,” the “temple.” In leaving the body, then, only the coarser elements are sloughed off and left as “dead,” while the soul of every cell ascends, still organized in the individual soul; and the body cells disintegrate because the soul no longer holds them together.

This agrees with the statement of Theosophy that there is an “astral body” within the material body, which is like the material body but more beautiful. Many persons claim to have seen this astral body leave its “temple.” Perhaps Paul meant this when he spoke of two bodies.

It seems reasonable to suppose that this spiritual body carries within it all knowledge gained in this state of being, and that in a new generation the older experiences are “forgotten,” just as a thousand things are forgotten every day of our lives -- things which at some future time we may recall. The thing was there, in our subconsciousness, all the time; it simply did not affect us strongly enough to make us think about it.

A child’s interest in this generation keeps in the background of sub-consciousness its memories of past generations. If it wanted to hard enough, and thought about it enough, it could recall incidents in previous generations just as it can recall an incident of yesterday or last year which it has temporarily forgotten.

Many people claim to have recalled past states of existence by desire and concentration, and many claim to have flashes of remembrance without any special desire or intention. And the Society for Psychical Research has on record many strange cases of dual or many-sided personality, etc., which seem to confirm this conception of soul and body.

It seems to me that the soul is the naked life force which is one with spirit; that material experiences are the matrices by which the life force, or soul force, is formed and organized into individuality; and that we shed the “material” parts of the body as fast as we can -- just as in the lower forms of life shells are discarded when backbones appear; the shell protecting and moulding the life-form until it is sufficiently formed and organized to do without the shell.

When the physical body becomes too stiff and un- yielding a form for the growing mind or soul, then it is discarded. And it looks as if the soul, through growth and attraction, steps into a new generation where the material at hand will afford it a better matrix. As long as the body is alive and yielding, responding readily to the developing organization of the individual, the soul keeps changing in its matrix, its body, day by day as needed; but a stiff, too-rigid and old-style matrix or body has to be discarded in whole, for a new one. “From the soul the bodye forme doth take,” and when the body becomes inadequate to express the soul growth it is sloughed off altogether.

The body, astral and material, is the storage of the past experiences and the wisdom organized through those experiences.

The “objective mind,” in the brain, is the surface of this storage, the doorway by which all this wisdom and knowledge entered into individual organization. The brain is the switchboard by which we are able to use this store of wisdom and knowledge at will. The “objective mind” governs and directs not only the switchboard, but all the substores with which it connects.

The “objective mind” also connects with the universal storehouse of wisdom, upon which it draws by what we call “intuition.” It is through this connection with the universal that we are enabled to “rise higher than our source” of sub-conscious wisdom and knowledge gained in previous generations. In order to grow we need the superconscious wisdom which is All.

Just as by desire and concentration we can recall the knowledge and wisdom gained in previous generations, so by desire and concentration directed toward the Universal, the Infinite, we call to us yet greater wisdom and knowledge than any yet realized.

The body which disintegrates after death is a mere collection of cell-cocoons from which the organized cell- souls have flown to new states of being. With its soul the body loses its feeling, the atoms disintegrating, each becoming what it was before, simply a bit of “dead matter” which is not dead at all.

The atoms of matter are just the same after death as before; but the organizing and informing spirit and soul, spirit or soul (for there is no dividing line between them), has departed, leaving each atom to live its little life again without relation to other atoms Without this organizing spirit to draw and hold the atoms together they fall apart -- “ashes to ashes.”

The cell is the unit organization of the body, each cell clothed with many atoms. The soul of the cell leaves it, just as the soul leaves the body as a whole.

That the astral body is an organization of cell souls, just as the physical body is an organization of cells, I have no present doubt.

And it looks reasonable to me to suppose that the soul, or astral body, carries within it all the records of all the individual’s experiences since the beginning of time. That with every generation and experience this astral grows in wisdom and knowledge and beauty of character, I see no reason to doubt.

And by the power of universal attraction it is drawn in each new generation, to the exact parentage and condition it needs to help its growth in grace