The soul: explanation
O my soul, it is enough that we have positively appeared.
Walt Whitman
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The Soul
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The soul is presumed in most religions to exist and to survive death.
According to The Fourth Way, the soul is potential in man. It exists as a possibility which can be developed only with proper knowledge, training, and practice—which is the purpose and aim of conscious schools. This is also the principle behind the title of Mr. Ouspensky’s book, The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution, which comprises lectures that Mr. Ouspensky gave to all newcomers to the work. He was clearly stating that it is necessary to recognize the absence of a soul in oneself in order to be able to develop it, and that doing so demands the utmost work a person is capable of.
The soul may be seen as a seed of awareness which, if it germinates and flowers, does so consciously, not only after death, but in preparation for death. This preparation has always been the meaning behind all religions and all paths of spiritual development, but it has always been misinterpreted as having to do with deeds, thoughts, and feelings—with the functioning of the four lower centers. Its relationship to consciousness, and to what consciousness actually is, passes unnoticed century adter century.
The soul in Fourth Way terminology refers to higher centers. Reaching higher centers and developing higher centers is the aim of all work on the Fourth Way, and it has to do with consciousness, not functions. What the system describes as the two ‘conscious shocks’ are precisely about (1) intentionally preparing a foundation for the soul through self-remembering and (2) the soul consciously coming into being through the transformation of negative emotions and suffering. Said another way, consciously bridging the intervals of imagination and identification in oneself yields higher centers. This is how the soul is ‘born’. And only then is it capable of knowingly surviving the death of the four lower centers.
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