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‘The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.
In our relationships to other men, too, the crucial question is whether an element of boundlessness is expressed in the relationship. The feeling for the infinite, however, can be attained only if we are bounded to the utmost. The greatest limitation for man is the "self"; it is manifested in the experience: “I am only that!” Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such awareness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal, as both the one and the other. In knowing ourselves to be unique in our personal combination – that is, ultimately limited – we possess also the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite. But only then!’
The Soul is both that which is sought and that which is seeking – it is the source of the meaning we so desperately search for and what we most fundamentally are. If we quiet ourselves, we can hear it speak ancient wisdom from the past and whisper about an age to come – an impending kingdom of Soul.
For Plato, the Soul was the doorway to the ideal realm – the gate to eternity. For Descartes, it was the one thing that could not be doubted. For Blavatsky, it was the unifying glue of opposites, vibrating outwards into bodies, flesh and worlds. Indeed, the Soul has been a muse for the philosopher, a wellspring for the poet, a stumbling block to the scientist and, most recently, the trumpet of a new age to come in Seifer and Vieweg’s book, When the Soul Awakens. Recounting the history of the Soul (and the human species), Seifer and Vieweg chart a trajectory into the future – a future where the ethnic, sexual and geographic distinctions of the flesh will be washed away, revealing the unified soul beneath.
It is fitting that our guides to the Soul are, themselves, soulmates. Vieweg worked at the Lucis Trust (custodians of the work of Alice Bailey) and taught esoteric wisdom, while Seifer was a political activist and Peace Core servant with articles published in The New York Times. Somewhere amid their vocational busyness they found each other and settled down in Northern Virginia. Their spiritual journeys soon grew and intertwined like great trees, leading them to co-author When the Soul Awakens in 2009. They have both been involved in the esoteric movement – as teachers and as students – for over 40 years.
God did not die in the 20th century. He simply went into hiding – hiding within the Soul of the individual. As traditional religion began to shrink in the gory aftermath of two world wars, Western society turned inwards, adopting the slogan ‘spiritual but not religious.’ According to Seifer and Vieweg, the individual Soul took over from churches and sacraments in housing the Almighty, as the Western ‘self’ discovered God within. The Soul (rather than the body, ego or personality) is our true self as well as our source of meaning.
Just as bodies can grow and material species can evolve, so too can the Soul progress. Once we accept that we fundamentally are a Soul, we can then begin to refine and purify that soul’s personality and worldly ties. Pain is crucial to this process – suffering is the ‘vale of Soul-making’, revealing that we are not here for pleasure but to evolve through our growth pains into something more. Darkness is ‘the womb of light.’ Those who, through multiple reincarnations, have begun to purify and realise their inner divinity are often called saints, while those who have completed the process are called Masters of Wisdom and continue to offer help to us today.
As we increasingly identify with our Soul, all physical and material distinctions (for example, between ethnicities, genders or religious practices) fade, leading to world peace and revealing that all things are lovingly unified at the soul level. Thus, the movement in was merely a prelude to a movement back out, as Soul weds us to one another and all things. We are but ‘a cell in the body of God’ and must move beyond self-consciousness into cosmic consciousness.
While this cosmic consciousness was once the epiphany of the holy and the few, it will be grasped by the masses in a new age that is dawning, leading to spiritual freedom and the evolution of our species. Humankind shall soon mature into the fifth kingdom of the Soul, brushing up against the divine and indivisible unity beyond the world that cannot be tamed by reason but only aroused by the poets, as encapsulated by Walt Whitman: ‘I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before, or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.’
If Seifer and Vieweg are correct, then the physical spaces between us are but illusions. The distinctions between self and other, enemy and friend, male and female, gay and straight, abuser and abused, black and white, East and West, rich and poor would all fade and fuse in the melting pot of Soul. If true (and believed), this would likely have major implications for our lives, ranging from our personal circumstances and interactions all the way up to government foreign policy: ‘All for one and one for all’, would cry a billion voices in perfect unison.
Of course, the truth or the veracity of these ideas will make itself known soon enough. The authors insist that a fifth age of Soul is drawing near, when the spiritual truths of the ancient Masters will be revealed to novice and saint alike. Such an age will not come like a thief in the night but rather – due to Seifer and Viewegs’ prophesy – like a long-announced house guest expecting our welcome and preparations.
Copyright © 2009 by Nancy Seifer and Martin Vieweg.
