“It is good to understand what the Soul is. Truly I must tell you that the Soul is a group of laws, principles, virtues, powers, etc. People possess the Essence, the psychic material to produce the Soul, but they do not possess the Soul yet.”
-Samael Aun Weor
“With patience shall you possess your souls.”
-Luke 21:19
The soul is that intimate part of ourselves, our inner world, that which connects us to divinity.
Psychology means “the study of the soul”, it is the science of knowing ourselves, and is much more than the science related to mental and emotional pathologies.
Psyche is Greek for soul, and also for the word butterfly, universally a symbol of rebirth and freedom from the material body.
Gnostic psychology is an investigation into that internal, eternal part of ourselves, the seed of the soul called the Essence.
Matter is symbolized as the cross: the sufferings and potential within the material world.
Soul is the intermediary between matter and spirit.
Spirit is symbolized as the circle of unity and wholeness: God, the Being, like the Sun shining.
The soul is the crescent, like the Moon which reflects light but does not generate its own light, which fluctuates and grows darker at times, lighter at times.
Our psychology is our internal world, which is invisible to the outside but is constituted by all our thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams, and concepts, and therefore shapes our entire life.
The Gnostic teaching of psychology is that our soul is like a sliver of a crescent, but has the
potential to be a full and open reflection of pure Spirit. As we are currently, our Essence is trapped and conditioned within the multitude of egos, which are darkness, selfishness, and materialism.
The process of awakening begins with knowing ourselves, using self-observation and meditation to discover our own psychological sleep, and entering into mystical death to free the light of the Essence, little by little. And then to develop the soul into the group of laws, principles, virtues, powers.
The parts of the soul and its potential are explained more specifically in Kabbalah. The liberation of the Essence is necessary, but so is the creation of the solar bodies, which is the result of an internal transformation made possible only with sexual Alchemy.
When the soul is fully developed from the spark of Essence into the cathedral of the soul, then the spirit of God can enter. The fully developed soul in the Kabbalistic tradition is called the Mercabah, Hebrew for chariot, a vehicle.
The solarizing of the psychology with upright sexuality, mystical death, and sacrifice for love of humanity, makes possible the union of Spirit and soul.
The path is to study ourselves in-depth, to take care of our Essence so that it can grow and be a vehicle for Spirit, which eventually can enter into and transform matter, transform our lives, and transform the world.