1The emotional body and its makeup lie behind much of modern psychology’s focus and work.
Robert: Welcome to Inner Sight. Inner Sight is simply seeing that which is always present but not yet fully recognized. You have within you the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way, with new eyes, so stay with us and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with Inner Sight. Our topic for today is the emotional body. We’d like to give some credit to the founder of the Lucis Trust organization, Alice Bailey, and actually, the main inspiration for all the dialogue on this show comes from her work. Alice Bailey wrote twenty-four volumes of literature which included the following thought: “A close study of one’s emotional reactions brings one to the consideration of that basic characteristics which cannot be overemphasized in view of the world’s present condition and that is harmlessness.”–the value of harmlessness which we always touch upon in this show and we want to do so today as well. In our last program we talked about harmlessness and three rules for emotional control. Today we’re going to talk about the emotional body. What exactly is the emotional body?
Sarah: Well, the human being is made-up of a number of different bodies. There’s the physical body which is obvious to everyone. Sub standing that, so to speak, is the energy counterpart of the physical body which is the etheric body, and we’ve talked about the etheric body in past programs. Then there’s the emotional body through which we sense and feel, and there’s the mental body or the mind with which we think. Everybody is said to be an aggregate of forces or a collection of forces. Each of these bodies–the physical, emotional and mental–are a conglomeration of various energies and forces that are pouring through it. The quality and purity of these forces depends upon the evolutionary state of the individual. We’re not all at the same point on the spiritual path. The emotional body works through into conscious experience of its quality in the form of desires, impulses, longings, urges, determinations, wishes, hopes, dreams and projections, all of which cause most of us to experience life in terms of pain or pleasure and which drive us always to seek out that which is pleasurable and to avoid as much as we can that which is painful. So, the emotional body really is the motor behind the way we live our lives because we are so intent on gaining pleasure and avoiding pain. The whole study of the emotional body and its makeup lies behind much of modern psychology’s focus and work. They have reached, I think, a real level of expertise in understanding the emotional body, not necessarily the rest of the human being. We’re more than our emotional body, but that’s where modern psychology can really contribute.
Dale: Yes, I think you might say that most of humanity is focused in this emotional nature that we carry around with us. It’s driving many of the world events because so much of what’s happening in the world is driven by desire of some kind, desire for power or desire for prestige or desire for more material goods, more material possessions, more oil, more jewels, more this and that. So it is all basically driven by desire and it’s a very, very strong force so that it takes tremendous strength to overcome and bring these forces under control.
Sarah: I think one reason that it’s such a powerful force is that somewhere in the writings of Alice Bailey she says that it’s the most highly developed of the various bodies in terms of its integration and its evolution. The emotional—or as it’s called in the Ageless Wisdom the astral realm—is highly developed in most people. It wasn’t always so. Apparently, very early Homo sapiens and maybe Neanderthal men and Cro-Magnon men weren’t so emotionally developed. They were more centered in their physical etheric vehicles, just running away from wild animals who wanted to eat them and worrying about where they were going to get their next meal and life was more on the physical level of survival. So the emotional development of humanity has been a step forward. It’s probably one of the major forces behind the development of the arts when you think about it: music, drama, literature, poetry, dance. It makes me think of the ancient Greek dramas which were done with masks and the masks for tragedy had the face with the mouth turned downward and for comedy the mouth in laughter. My point is that the emotional body has helped to develop the arts and developed our sense of relationship to people. It has its uses.
Dale: Oh very definitely and it’s a feeling nature and it’s a very reactive nature. So, it tends to make us react rather than act in a thinking way. We tend to react to situations, to other people, to what they say, to what they do before we perhaps think. This is why the other aspect of the mind, the human mind, is so important to bring these reactions under control because it takes the power of the mind to do that.
Sarah: The mind, I guess you could say, is the brake on the engine of the emotional body. I like that word reaction. I think it was Ouspensky, that disciple of Gurdjieff, who said, “All reaction is emotional.” I think he was saying that when somebody is angry and you respond by getting angry too, you are reacting and that’s emotional. You’re not in control of the situation; you’re letting them set the tone. If somebody is fearful and you also become anxious and fearful, you’re reacting to a state that wasn’t necessarily something you dreamed up or created but the other person brought it into your atmosphere and you’ve let it take over. We live our lives reacting to others constantly and we don’t even know it. We might set out to have a good day but if the first person we meet in the subway is in a bad mood and we just get right there on that level with them.
Dale: And we’re also reacting to events in the world. We’re reacting strongly to the war in the Middle East and the wars in Iraq and elsewhere in the world, and in Africa. There is a tremendously strong emotional force that is exerted by these wars and these conflicts. We pick up on these emotional reactions that are literally circulating around the world and our emotional bodies are one with all other emotional bodies because we’re part of the emotional body of the earth. There is this emotional field, you might say, in which all of these reactions are taking place and most people are very sensitive to these emotional currents.
Sarah: It’s a mistake that most of us make: we think our reality and our world stops at the edge of our skin. But like you say, we live within a much greater whole and we live as a part of humanity. Our emotional force—and amongst some more highly developed people, their spiritual quality—pervades the atmosphere for everybody. And that’s why we suffer as a group, and we suffer, frankly, as one humanity over situations.
Dale: Yes, and I think it extends even beyond that, because I think, as it says in the writings of Alice Bailey, we’re affected by the emanations that come from other planetary bodies even within our own solar system: like the moon where at times of the full moon there is a heightened activity of crime statistics. Studies have been made of this: that there is more of an emotional reaction during those times. So, I think it affects certain people who are subject to and sensitive to those emanations that come from other outside sources.
Sarah: It’s said that the highest level of the astral or emotional life and the only aspect of it that remains when one has really triumphed over the domination of the emotions is the creative imagination, which I think is interesting because we need that quality of the emotional realm. I see it as a mountain climber who puts those little hooks on the face of the mountain and hauls himself upward by the strength of those little grips or picks that he’s placed above him. I see that as the image of the creative imagination. It’s the way by which we grope our way onto higher levels of consciousness because it’s said that there is nothing that exists in the universe that can’t be imagined and if you can imagine something, it exists somewhere. So, as we learn to imagine states of spiritual being much higher than our present reality, we are moving consciously into those states little by little. That’s why the creative imagination is so important. And that’s one of the great contributions of artists—the kinds of artists that really call to that higher aspect of consciousness. There’s plenty of art that appeals to the lower baser instincts.
Dale: And I think that’s one reason why the creative imagination is so important to develop in children because they develop through the use of fantasies and storytelling and imagination. They are developing this emotional, astral nature, but in a creative way. So, it’s very productive in that way, in education of children.
Sarah: There’s a lot of emphasis, I think, in the school systems, isn’t there, on developing the sense of fantasy and myth-making and the ability to visualize. It especially is focused in children, but we can all develop that side of our nature more. I think to literally create a better world, we have to begin by visualizing what it would be, what it would include and not include, what it would entail. And as we build this image, this thought form that is infused with desire—right desire—the desire for an end to suffering, for right human relationships, for peace. We empower and vitalize an image that other people can then catch and begin to share and contribute to. As we said, the emotions are very contagious and some of the more aspirational elements of emotions are also contagious. Goodwill is contagious as we know; so is ill will. So when we start to think about what we would like to inject into human consciousness on the emotional level it would be aspiration and the sense of beauty.
Dale: Absolutely. And those are part of and come in through the creative arts, through the sense of beauty and so forth.
Sarah: One point that I find interesting in the writings of Alice Bailey is the types of emotion which she breaks down into three fundamental categories. One is fear, and I suppose all of us are more than well acquainted with the emotion of fear. It’s a basic human drive, isn’t it? And another is selfish desire, that voice in us that says, me, me, me, I want, I want, I want, I need, need, need. The center of the universe is me. Miss Piggy is a good example of selfish desire; I love her. I think most of us do because we see ourselves in her.
Robert: And she is adorable, too.
Sarah: She is adorable. And in small children, that me, me, me quality is kind of charming. In adults who should know better: less charming. The third type of emotion is sexual desire or attraction, and certainly we can see that force driving so much of modern Western values and entertainment. So how do you overcome all this emotional stuff? One familiar way is through inhibition. But even when it’s effective, it’s not necessarily the wisest course to take.
Dale: No, it can be rather damaging if it’s suppressing emotions through inhibitions.
Sarah: Is that why we’re so urged to let it all hang out and don’t suppress it, let it rip.
Dale: Well, that’s one theory, but I’m all for the school of substitution.
Sarah: I thought you were going to say suppression. (laughing)
Dale: (laughing) Well, I went through that. It doesn’t work. It makes you sick. Substitution is something higher and more refined, I think, as a better course of action. This is the practice that is encouraged in the writings of the Ageless Wisdom that substitute a higher, more refined quality—basically a quality of the soul—to replace those coarser values of the lower expression of the emotional nature. I’m of that school. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it takes a lot of awareness and mindfulness that first of all: one has a problem and how to change it and to change it from something old into something better.
Sarah: I think so many people that live in an emotional fog and don’t know it are well-intentioned, but they don’t really recognize the state they’re dwelling in. It seems so habitual and so familiar because if you believe in reincarnation or rebirth, this present state of consciousness is one we’ve been creating for ourselves for lifetimes. So no wonder it seems so habitual and so familiar. We’ve brought it over with us from past experience. We bring over fear. We bring over longings: inchoate, unfulfilled longings and desires that drive us to do whatever we do, but we’re not helpless in the face of all this and that’s why awareness is so important.
Dale: I think one of the key things about this emotional nature in the “astral plane” as they call it—it’s this great field of energy which we are all kind of swimming through—but what the reaction of this plane does: it tends to reverse ideas and thoughts that come through from higher sources. So we don’t get the purity of the idea, we tend to get a distorted reversal of impressions. And that’s why so many people who are clairvoyant or clairaudient, hearing voices and getting impressions and messages from these so-called masters are not really getting impressions from the source. They’re getting a distorted reflection. This is another thing that psychology should eventually—and perhaps they’re beginning to—recognize that where this kind of astral phenomenon is coming from and why it’s coming and that it’s a distortion of reality really.
Sarah: Another interesting thing about that effect of reversal and distortion is that so many people look at the cause of whatever they feel as lying outside of themselves. My parents did such and such to me, that’s why I’m unhappy now, or my boss is mean to me, that’s why I’m not doing well in life, or my spouse is a disappointment. The fault seems to lie away from oneself. It’s projected onto others. One of the values of the Ageless Wisdom teaching is that you realize you make your own reality, you make your own world, and all of us are responsible for whatever state we are dwelling in. There’s no escaping it. And when you face that fundamental recognition about life, I think that’s when you can begin to make changes. It’s humbling, but it’s also liberating because you realize whatever you feel or experience or think has been a decision of yours and you can begin to take charge and as you say, substitute. Detachment is another great tool for redeeming the emotions. Just learning to say: whatever I am feeling now, I am not my emotions. I am not my fear. I’m not my grief. I’m not my anger. I am the soul and there’s a part of me that has let in that wrong force into my consciousness but it doesn’t speak for the whole of me; I’m much more than that.
Dale: Yes, I think that’s a good point to remember that these emotions that we have or that we express are not really part of us. There is this soul, the self, that is an identity quite apart from it, and these reactions are simply just that: they are reactions that are taking place, but they are not actually from the soul itself. They are the reactions of the outer personality. I don’t know if I’m making that clear or not, but as you said, these reactions, these emotional reactions are not me. They are simply reactions and one can detach and stand apart from them.
Sarah: And another great tool in addition to detachment in terms of redeeming the emotional nature is harmlessness, which we talked about last week. Learning to be harmless in your thought and your words and your actions is a tremendous agent for redeeming and purifying what you feel inwardly. So the two really go together, harmlessness, detachment, purifying the emotions. Finally, the goal is to achieve a state of perfect poise in the emotional body so that nothing can rile or ruffle or upset the serenity which is the true state of the soul. It doesn’t mean you won’t experience or sense suffering because to be alive is occasionally to suffer but it doesn’t hit you at your fundamental base core if you have achieved that poise.
Dale: And that poise comes I think through purification, through an emphasis on purification like purifying and clarifying this foggy mess that you’re surrounded by. It’s like clarifying the waters and purifying the waters and making your astral nature more translucent and less full of all of this stuff that we carry around with us so that it reflects light and not distorted energies.
Sarah: If you can do that you’re not only liberating yourself but you’re contributing to the betterment of consciousness for everyone because we are all swimming in and imbibing this sea of emotional substance that makes up our planet and each person who can purify and uplift and redeem the quality of his emotional contribution to the world’s astral body is really an agent of service to humanity.
Dale: And we don’t have to accept where we are. We can move on and that’s definitely what we’re supposed to be doing.
Robert: You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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