“Within man is the soul of the whole”
Aquarius is a sign of supreme importance to our solar system at this time, for its energies are felt not only in this month’s lunar cycle but in the solar cycle which will rule the coming age for some 2,000 years. All kingdoms, not only the human, are therefore experiencing the effects of its energies. Because the energies of Aquarius are intangible and all-pervasive, these effects are extremely subtle and, at the same time, of far greater potency and more extensive than more concrete and spectacular happenings, Alice Bailey wrote.
Aquarius is a sign of constant movement, as its symbol 
suggests. We see the physical body’s expression of this in Aquarius’s rulership of the blood system and its circulation, which must be fluid and free-flowing to insure the health of the organism. Similarly, and just as urgently, spiritual energies need to flow freely and abundantly for the health of humanity. The turmoil that the world is experiencing in this transitional era, leading into the Aquarian age, is a reaction to the arresting or misdirection of energies. We see this perhaps most clearly in the unequal distribution of material abundance which is generating an ever-deepening cleavage between the “mega rich” and the vast numbers of people who live in abject poverty. We see it also in the unequal distribution of power, whether through authoritarian systems of governance or in ethnic and religious hatreds between groups and whole nations.
Two thousand years ago Christ enacted a communion feast with his disciples which was intended to impress upon them the need for sharing on all levels of living—a feast for which humanity is still preparing. Christ told his disciples to look, in Aquarius, for a “man, bearing a pitcher of water” which would be symbolic of the unity to be achieved in the Aquarian age. That age is now upon us. It will require not only the sharing of material abundance, but of the beauty of group life and of the individual’s responsibility towards the group. Fundamentally, it will demand that we recognize our common humanity and the bonds we share with the other kingdoms of Earth. For this, a more expansive sense of relationship is needed, an awareness that comes only from the soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed something of the Aquarian sense of relationship, as he wrote in his essay on “The Over-Soul”: “The Over-Soul is that great nature in which we rest…that Unity within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other.” “We live in succession”, he wrote, “in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole.” A splendid image of this is “Indra’s Net”, in which a single glittering jewel is hung at the net’s every node; and each of these nodes, which are infinite number, reflects the glittering essence of this one jewel. When any jewel in the net is touched, all other jewels in the node are affected. The ever-shrinking world we live in verifiesh this in ways both ominous and full of hope.
Esoteric teaching expresses this all-pervasive communion or sharing as livingness—the “life more abundantly” which Christ will bring in the Aquarian Age. This is the powerful energy of universality, “a free-flowing current which is sweeping away all obstructions and establishing an unimpeded circulation of truth and life itself—of love”, in Alice Bailey’s words. “The dissolution of old forms and ways of thinking, old worn-out ideas and ideals, must disappear, she wrote, in order to make way for a new and better world. The energy of Aquarius is carrying a previously unknown aspect of deity which is beyond our present comprehension and will only be understood as it truly is at the close of the Aquarian Age. This might seem a far distant goal, but the spiritual seeker who sees life in terms of eternity knows that the quality of each and every moment in the Eternal Now is contributing to a better world for all.
