“You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.”

-Alan Watts.

At a certain point in one’s development journey, one must fully understand one’s place and potential within the Universe and Creation. Just as we live within the universe, the universe lives within us. And yet, it must be understood that the requirements upon oneself change as one reaches certain development stages. And this is to do with the ecology one finds oneself in. Just as one needs a physical body to match the planet's ecology in which we live, certain higher embodiments are necessary to deal with Creation's more rarified realms. By way of example, consider what would become of your physical body if it suddenly found itself in a plasma condition as one finds on the sun. It simply was not designed to withstand the power levels of a solar ecology. However, that does not mean that it is outside of human possibility to do so.

Each embodiment possible for the human to engender is more rarified than the one below. One way to understand this is through the analogy of a sponge. A sponge consists of individual cells loosely grouped to form a porous physical body. When submerged, the water interpenetrates the sponge's physical body because it is of a more rarified nature. Within the water occupying the sponge's space, there are to be found various gas molecules suspended within that interpenetrate the water because they are yet finer than the water. In the sponge, filled with water permeated by gasses, are electromagnetic forces of varying wavelengths that are finer still.

Similarly, man is given a physical body that is host to many interpenetrating substances of a rarified, higher-than-planetary nature. These substances have been given various names throughout the ages, such as ‘soul,’ ‘spirit,’ ‘ether,’ ‘prana,’ and the like. However, what is not commonly understood in our time, is that while each man or woman has a certain quantity of these substances, they are generally not crystallized to form an embodiment.

What is an Embodiment, and How is it Acquired?

There is a science experiment that you likely encountered at some point in your schooling that helps explain what is meant by the term ‘embodiment.’ It is to do with something called a supersaturated solution. If you continue to add tablespoons of salt to a cup of water, you will reach a point when the water cannot hold any more salt in suspension and begins to precipitate to the bottom of the glass. The water is said to have reached its saturation point; it can hold no more.

If, however, you heat the water to a degree below its boiling point, you can add much more salt to the water than you could at room temperature before precipitation occurs. If you gradually cool the solution, the excess salt will remain suspended in the water instead of precipitating. This is a supersaturated solution.

What happens next in our experiment is genuinely astounding. If one adds a single grain of salt to the supersaturated solution, a large crystal will suddenly form! In the context of our discussion, this is precisely how embodiments are formed.

All humans are infused to some degree with substances of an astral, ethereal, animated, and spiritual nature. These substances come from various levels in the Ray of Creation and are a part of what makes us human. However, the undeveloped person simply precipitates what they cannot hold, never finding themselves in a condition to crystallize these fine substances.

Just like the example of a supersaturated solution, the acquisition of crystallized embodiments of an astral, ethereal, animated, or spiritual nature requires five special conditions: A solute (i.e., salt), a solvent (i.e., water), heat, slow cooling, and a seed crystal.

...The Solute...

Of course, if one wants to create a salt crystal, adding sugar to the water is no use. Similarly, to crystallize an Astral Embodiment, one must gather the suitable material into oneself, which applies to all possible embodiments, each consisting of a different substance. Not only that, but one must also acquire enough of the substance to produce the desired result.

Therefore, it is not enough to wish to create a higher embodiment; one must know where to collect the materials and understand the alchemical process involved.

The Solvent

Well, it is, of course, you! And it is interesting to note here that in our everyday speech, we use the term ‘solve’ in the context of a problem. But what is not readily seen is that when we solve something, it becomes a part of us; we become permeated with it. Thus, the adage ‘…you become what you think about.'

Heat

Now we enter the realms of the unusual. Not from the standpoint of the bizarre or abnormal but from the perspective of scarcity. It was stated earlier that everyone contains some astral, ethereal, animated, and spiritual matter, but it precipitates out based on how much containment they can offer.

In every religion, there are to be found certain practices that produce a type of ‘friction.’ In ancient times, these practices were understood well, but as is the case with most things, the meaning has all but been lost, and what remains is the ritual without the purpose.

Examples of this can be seen in the religious ascetic practices that induce suffering through various means, such as starvation, self-flagellation, celibacy, and the like. These practices came about to acquire an Astral Embodiment that can survive the physical body's death.

However, without obtaining enough Astral substance, what survives is only a faint reflection of what is possible in these realms. We return to our earlier analogy of a supersaturated solution to understand why this is the case. See that one can prevent precipitation by heating the solvent. Still, unless one has enough of the substance to dissolve, causing a super-saturation, the resulting crystal will be tiny compared to what is possible.

Understand that we are not advocating suffering in this work; there are many more intelligent ways to create the desired heat we discussed elsewhere.

Slow Cooling

See that an ongoing alternation occurs between the function of confirmation and aggregation in every natural growth process. When the impregnated ovum splits into two identical cells, it is an act of confirmation (proof), for it is only by replicating itself that it can confirm itself. After confirmation, aggregation occurs because “things go with things.” Bone cells aggregate with other bone cells. Blood cells aggregate with other blood cells, and so on—confirmation, aggregation, confirmation, aggregation.

Whereas natural growth is a slow heating process, what we require is its opposite. Therefore, the process works in reverse and consists of alternations between aggregation as primary and confirmation as secondary – aggregation, confirmation, aggregation, confirmation.

What is meant by aggregation in the context of slow cooling? It is the process of learning and acquiring multiple cross-referenced stocks in oneself.

Note: The learning we speak of here has nothing to do with cultural education, such as one would find in a university, but a learning based on fundamental laws and groundwork.

After aggregation comes confirmation that occurs by encoding one’s aggregation into another, it is the Tarot deck's Hierophant card. It is becoming a teacher so that one can be taught. Teaching another what you know has a profound way of showing you where your ‘genetic’ flaws are (in the example of cells reproducing) and allows you the opportunity to correct them in the next aggregation phase.

Aggregation, confirmation, aggregation, confirmation…

A Seed Crystal

Those associated with an authentic esoteric school know that 99% of what you encounter in your training comes from the outside, and rightly so because if you could guide yourself, you would not need to learn. For those familiar with the enneagram, the initial pattern - 1,4,2, answers why all actual esoteric knowledge comes first from the outside.

If your teacher is wise, he or she will not always give you the answers but instead allow you to solve questions for yourself so that the answers you arrive at may become a part of the solution of your endeavor.

Once you’ve acquired a source of the rarified substances you wish to coat your second (or third, fourth, or fifth) self and have been “heated,” added to, and slowly “cooled,” you are now in a position to crystallize an embodiment. But from where does the seed crystal come? It comes from within.

Some esoteric schools refer to this seed crystal as one’s essence. It is that fundamental part of oneself that is endemic to the entity of self. Although it can be buried or covered over by layers of personality, it can never be destroyed. It is the ‘you’ of ‘you.’ However, just as you cannot use a dirty or contaminated salt crystal as a seed in our science experiment, work must be done to clean and prepare one’s essence, one’s seed crystal, before it can be used to build our higher bodies.

There comes the point in one’s development journey where one must destroy all the false notions, ideas, impressions, lies, and half-truths, that have been imposed upon them through their parents, peers, education, and so on. Many religions refer to this as the process of death and resurrection, for when you die, you only take with you what is truly yours; your essence. The result of this purification process is a seed crystal that is ready to catalyze a higher body.

What is a Body?

At this point, you may be asking yourself, “what’s the point?” “Even if possible, why would one wish to acquire new embodiments?” Well, think for a moment about what a physical body is. At its core, is it not just a machine that allows us to operate in our environment? One might say it is the machine that transports the brain to where it wishes to go and houses various apparatuses to receive sensory impressions that the brain expects to experience. From this standpoint, a body is a tool; without one, you would not be able to go anywhere or experience anything. The physical body is specially adapted to operate here and, in the end, belongs to the planet, for does she not reclaim it when you die?

The Astral Embodiment

Consider what is called the “Astral Body.” Your physical body is not equipped to travel to other planets in our solar system without significant layers of protection surrounding it. Even then, astronauts suffer many physical problems from being in space too long. The Astral Body, however, is designed to be the perfect vehicle for such excursions. It does not breathe; it does not sweat or excrete material; it is not subject to gravity or the effects of faster-than-light-speed travel. The substance from which it is composed is immune to such things and can instantly carry your consciousness to any place in our solar system. That is, of course, if one has acquired an Astral Embodiment.

NOTE: What most people refer to as “Astral Travel” is not traveling in a true Astral Embodiment. It is the result of temporarily manipulating the precipitation of astral matter that one can not contain. The difference is that when one has acquired an actual Astral Embodiment, one begins to operate consciously in two spheres: physical and astral, simultaneously, with full awareness in each. This state of being is difficult to explain, although it is somewhat similar to the feeling one gets when one is aware that they’re dreaming but still participating in the dream, although with much more conscious cohesion.

The Astral Embodiment is composed of the substance of the realm called “All Planets,” otherwise known as Hydrogen-24 (H24). Presently, it is only essential to understand that this substance is quite rarified and is outside of the spectrum that the physical senses can perceive under normal circumstances.

The Ethereal Embodiment

Despite what so-called ‘modern’ science says, our sun is not a “nuclear fusion reactor” that converts hydrogen to helium; it neither lights nor heats, but like all stars in our galaxy, it is a highly conscious, plasma-based lifeform.

The visible perimeter we perceive as the sun is only a speck at the center of a body, extending some 300 billion kilometers (2 x 10^11 miles) in all directions from its core. However, more important than its physical geometry is the level of consciousness that our sun and all solar bodies possess.

We will not tarry long to explore the nature of consciousness that is each celestial entity but, for the sake of clarity, consider the orders of magnitude, in both scale and consciousness, between a single cell in your body, compared to the entirety of organic life on earth. From a microcosmic perspective, our initial diagram could have been drawn as such:

See, from this, the intelligence of all internal organs' interoperation (Astral) far outweighs the intelligence of a single cell. Similarly, the entire human complex (Ethereal), which includes the brain and the mind, moving center, emotional center, instinctive center, and sexual center, far outweighs the internal organs' consciousness. Likewise, as a whole (Galaxy), all humans' consciousness far outweighs the conscious intelligence of an individual. And finally, all organic life on earth (Universe), including its various interactions, outstrips one species' consciousness.

Man is a microcosm of the universe, and in our case, what is being alluded to can be likened to the single cell becoming conscious of (and thus joining) all internal organs, the entity of which it is a part, the role it plays in all humanity and ultimately its place in all organic life on the planet. Can such a thing occur? Can such a thought be entertained?

The Animated

The fourth embodiment that man can attain is the Animated, whose conscious nature is galactic; specifically, our Milky Way Galaxy, with its 400 billion stars and attending planets.

Before proceeding, we must now address the concept of relative immortality. To do so, let us return to the analogy of the cell: There are approximately 20 types of cells in the body. Some live only 10 hours (Granulocytes), whereas others can live for over 70 years. For example, the cells that compose the lining of the stomach live for approximately two days, yet we continue to have a stomach for the entirety of our life. Therefore, to the cell that lives but two days, the stomach itself is practically immortal.

Similarly, a human's lifespan is approximately 70-80 years, yet humanity, as we know it, has been around for roughly 40,000 years. The earth is over 4 billion years old, and the age of the Milky Way Galaxy is nearly three times that. Indeed, to a man, these staggering ages also seem to be an eternity.

Now comes the staggering aspect of this: If you acquire an Astral, Ethereal, Animated, or Spiritual embodiment, you become aware of the history of that realm. So, imagine what it’s like to have ‘childhood’ memories from 4 billion years ago or more. It sounds fantastic, I know, but I say to you that it is not only possible for you but that others have done it and continue to exist long after the death of their physical body consciously. This is because higher embodiments are relatively immortal within the confines of the sphere in which they operate.

The Spirit

The fifth and final embodiment one can acquire is the Spiritual Embodiment. Here, man finds within the divinity of self, which is truly eternal and universal. Beyond this, there is only that which can only be called ‘Absolute.’ In reality, the term ‘embodiment’ does not precisely apply because the form it adopts is one without form. In other words, its structure is formless. It is the Bodhi domain, the Christ domain, not the man but the thing itself, the origin itself.

Perhaps, only a handful of people in all of human history and prehistory have had contact with this domain. Therefore, nothing more can be or should be said at this time. And yet, it is in you!

Conclusion

This paper, of course, is only a starter and is not intended to approach a complete explanation. The knowledge of this is one thing; the experience is quite another. Perhaps, by knowing what is possible, some may take up the work we call “a personal development journey.”

Many respects,

Pierce!