The soul travels down to incarnate through the higher realms that are beyond duality. It travels first from the Monad or Soul Group, which is the collection all the droplets of spirit in that soul family.
At that point a number of droplets agree to form a spiritual body which is the individualised soul for that particular incarnation. These droplets become the Soul Aspects which some may call past lives, but which are actually concurrent lifetimes or incarnations.
Before incarnating the higher spiritual self goes to the Akashic records and negotiates the soul contracts/karmic contracts for that particular incarnation. The older the soul, the more cunning it is at haggling!
This is aspect then enters the universes of the light and dark travel closer to the Earth incarnation. This individualised soul aspect (Jivan), then split itself into dual aspects – higher and lower, male and female, light and dark.
In these aspects passed through the mental and emotional bodies towards the Etheric realm and physicality. As this happens, the aspects come refined into the various components of the self in the lower sense.
As the components of the mental and emotional make up travel downwards there and they are combined into the lower aspect creating the lower soul and ego. These then combine into the ID which is the lowest aspect of the self which is a combination of all the light and dark, emotional and mental elements combined.
It is from this point that the journey of Ascension or initiation can begin. In Hinduism this journey is referred to as the process of achieving the liberation or Mukti.
The first stage of liberation requires the aspirant to travel upwards through the soul and ego aspects and to realise the higher aspect of the Will in the first stage of initiation. This first stage is the realisation of the self – Videha Mukti.
These stages the realisation and initiation were covered by Alice Bailey in many of her books and also Meher Baba in his book God Speaks which deals many esoteric subjects including the many stages of liberation.
Now is the aspirant travels up to the next level, they have to face the challenge of transforming the Shadow Self and the Higher Self. These are been referred to also as the Angel of Presence and the Dweller at the Threshold. For our purposes we will refer to them as the angel of light and the angel of dark.
These two aspects are the two aspects of God light and dark, which are also the two aspects of your higher and lower self.
In order to tune achieve liberation from the cycle of incarnation on earth. The Angel of Light and the Angel of Dark to do battle If you like!
The problem for the spiritual aspirant is that the Higher and Lower Self lie within the subconscious mind and awareness and therefore have to be uncovered. For most battle is struggling with the subconscious shadow self which they deny exists, or even hate!
We have to become aware first of the shadow self in its entirety and we have to bring love to it to transform it from its lower expression into the higher expression.
When we put the light self and the dark self together transformed. We create Power which is the point of liberation/initiation where we can escape the cycle of birth – Videh Mukti.
From this point of realisation we have the three point aspects of higher self – in Power (which is in fact love and power together) Will (which is mind and heart together) and the ID (which is the lower’s soul and ego combined.)
When we reached the third state of liberation, which is Jeevan Mukti – the full liberation we go beyond incarnation completely and merge with our soul or Higher Spiritual Self.
This is achieved by combining the three aspects of the self – Power, Will and ID.
Finally, the highest state of liberation, which is the fourth stage is Param Mukti. This is the realisation of the supreme higher self, which resides at the level of the monad and Paramatma, or supreme soul.
Here the aspirant has achieved full God Realisation!
May the Fathers Will be Done.
Nicholas Russell