World and Soul: The Alchemy of Conjoined Loves

Lee Irwin [for ELIXIR] There is Mystery permeating the heart of the world. It is a Mystery so deep, so profound, that only prayer and song can reach its most subtle vibrancy. Words of love can at times hold its vitality, echo the immeasurable depth, but such words cannot contain it or define it. This is particularly true of the notion we refer to as the World Soul. Words are inadequate to convey the full weight of either world or soul as we each experience their mutual interpenetration. How much more difficult it is to articulate the conjunction of world and soul as a unique forthcoming, as a birthing ground of new species harmony whose spiritual consequences are gifts of insight and awareness. And because it is a work of Mystery not simply a consequence of human will or desire, a profound cosmological transformation, no words will ever grasp the full scope of its dawning. I think of this event, this dawning of World Soul, as a spiritual metaphor whose significance connects the temporal horizons of all human cultures. By spiritual metaphor, I mean a dynamic image of human awakening, an abundant cluster of ideas, insights, and revelations whose intersection and conjunctions can produce a flowering of human spiritual potentials. But the metaphor cannot be contained by the image; the image is only a seed whose growth and development requires human commitment and an enduring participation in spiritual values that can produce the fruit that the flower promises. As a spiritual metaphor, the World Soul is more a promise of the future than an image of the past. It is a metaphor whose contemplation calls us to prayer, to an inward turning breath meant to revitalize our outwardly shared spiritual perspectives. The image calls us to prayer because in reverence we can genuinely begin to approach the Mystery that gives life to our collective harmony and world integration. Like all metaphors, it is uncontainable and solicits the human imagination to give it embodied expression, form, and spiritual content. The World Soul is a forthcoming whose most significant manifestations are those that foster love, communication, tolerance, peace, and a lasting commitment to the precious diversity that reflects the full potential of the Mystery. But this forthcoming is neither predetermined nor inevitable. It is relative to our capacity to sustain ways of life that support emergence and give voice to its teachings in all the diverse languages of worldly coexistence. When I sense the currents of this emergence, its diverse flows and its impediments, it seems clear to me that the full dawning of its reality incorporates all life -animal, plant, mineral, water, wind, fire and all the shades of dawn, noon, twilight, and deepest night. It is not a human creation but a spiritual revelation, one that reveals the enduring interconnections between not only human cultures but between all species, with

the vibrancy of every living thing, with the inherent joy of spiritual Presence found in a single stone or in a far removed star. The World-Soul is an incarnational Mystery, a drama of unfolding life potential set against the larger drama of all species life. It is also an opening to logosophic dimensions of visionary perception, to invisible worlds, to the very ground of Sacred Beingness. There are three primary aspects of World Soul I want to consider, each a radiance of the Mystery that sustains our collective life. These three aspects relate to the human body -- the head, the heart, and the will-- I call these aspects the noetic, the psychic, and the physical. The collective and the spiritual, also intrinsic to our global and cosmological identities, sustain these three aspects. Together these aspects, in the collective context, reflect a mesomorphic view of the human situation as currently embodied in the midst of transformation that we are in-between, forming and reforming our mental, emotional, and spiritual perspectives in order to create a more complete relationship within the whole of the cosmos. Science, humanistic studies, literature, poetry, music, mathematics, economics, politics, and religion all participate in the shaping of our in-between condition, this place of change where Mystery remains concealed behind the faade of human striving. The destiny of the World-Soul is not predetermined and our collective intentions will shape what emerges out of this potential of the in-between. This is Mystery in the making. The noetic aspect refers to the inherited mental forms that have transmitted the idea of the World Soul. It references collective thoughts about such a manifestation, the intergenerational ideas that have woven a network of cosmological images in the name of world and soul. As noetic forms, these thoughts have been primarily aligned with the architectonics of male, hierarchical thinking, particularly in the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions. Passing from Pythagoras to Plato, Aristotle, and the Jewish theologos Philo, to Neoplatonists like Numenius, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, and the Alexandrian Asclepius, the ideation of the World Soul has reflected the static, hierarchical nature of the GrecoRoman classical cosmology.1 In the beginning was the One that is All, the undifferentiated unity of the cosmos, from which emanates all other manifestations. Overflowing the abundance of its potential, the One manifested as Nous or Mind (the noetic substrate), in a multiplicity of archetypal forms, images, and primal ideas sustained by the One. From Mind emanated World Soul (Greek, Psyche tou Pantos; Latin, Anima Mundi), the principle of life, vitality, and reflective intelligence that sought to manifest, through the creation of the 1 For an overview of the classical Greco-Roman cosmology, see: M. R. Wright, Cosmology in Antiquity (NY: Routledge Press, 1995).

physical world, the noetic, archetypal forms reflected in Nous as originated in the Divine Unity. Thus, in the classic noetic sense, World Soul is that invisible realm that mediates between the lower human world and the higher divine unity, and time is the measured activity of the World Souls attempt to embody in matter the noetic forms born of divinity. Matter, the physical world in this classic view, is passive and remote from divinity; the physical life, the bodies of human beings, animals, plants, mountains and oceans are all encumbrances, subject to decay, impermanence, and loss of the eternal. Human beings seeking gnosis or knowledge of the One, must live in detachment, practice ascetic disciplines, and through contemplation, seek to reunite with the divine. For the Neoplatonists and later Platonic cosmologists, the World Soul acquires a significant degree of autonomy, empowered by the One, as the sustaining principle of human life, often identified with the fateful influence of the planets. The model is geocentric, material earth surrounded by an enclosed cosmos of planetary spheres, terminating in the purity of the Eighth sphere of the immobile stars -- rational evidence of a static, hierarchic cosmos in which spirituality was articulated as a return to the highest, unmoving sphere. The noetic structure was an intellective model that synthesized a reasonable view of the cosmos with a certain degree of trepidation concerning the struggle and challenges of human life. The World Soul was the animate principle of a graded series of spiritual levels leading to ecstatic reunion of the soul with the One. Adopted by Christianity through Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius and into Islam through the Syrian translation schools in Baghdad (c. 832), the Neoplatonic concept of the World Soul was reinterpreted and integrated into Christian and Islamic cosmologies. Various mystical teachers in Christianity, like Erigena and Meister Eckhart clearly adopted aspects of this view, as did the Muslim theologians such as Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, and Ibn Sina. Esotericists in Sufism, Kabbalah, Theosophy, and many of the esoteric orders also adopted the hierarchical view of the World Soul as an intermediary realm of vital activity directed to sustaining a unified cosmos balanced between transcendent otherworldly unity and the existential sorrows of the human situation. The noetic substratum, the intellective history, illustrates a privation, a view of humanity mired in worldly life and deprived of spirituality, accessible only through a profound renunciation of family, pleasure, and sensual joys as epitomized by monastic life aimed at world-transcending gnosis. Contemplation was not directed toward the World Soul, but to the divine unity beyond World Soul, thus reducing the World Soul to an abstraction of energies and causal principles, symbolized by the arbitrary influences of planetary bodies and various astrological systems. The present noetic revolution, the awakening of soul to shared consciousness,

requires new visions of World Soul to accomplish its emergence. The world as a place of suffering and sorrow is a model that does not embrace the beauty, joy, and wonder of the creation as a work of profound creativity and sacredness. The noetic collapse of the World Soul, in the classic view, is a consequence of the arising of alternative spiritualties. This emergent view of the world and its soul as a gift of creation is a Hermetic Mystery that requires a full affirmation of the incarnational circumstance in which we seek to embody through the highest virtues, adornments of spirit best epitomized as graceful, conscious, loving relations and a caring attitude toward the precious gift of embodiment in all living creatures. The noetic reformulation of World Soul is one born from the seed of a new gnosis, a knowledge that seeks world affirmation through visionary awakening to the Incarnational Spirit that is truly present in all species, all life-forms, in a grain of sand or a mote of dust. The arising of World Soul from this mote, this grain, is no different than the granular, radiant soul spark in the human heart that makes us able to love beyond our own needs and take interest in the well-being of others. The psychic or soulful aspect of the World Soul is found in its feminine conjunction with the heart. This aspect is based in a unique perspective of empathy, compassion, kindness, a feeling approach to all creatures, best described as soulful, loving, and inclusive. This is not an intellective aspect but it is expressed in architectonic forms of personal responsibility, social concern, and existential willingness to create a better way of life for the generations of the future. Just as the noetic view was shattered by the emergence of new, open, unlimited cosmologies of science, where chaos theory provides a counterpoint to the older static views of the unmoving stars, the emergent soulful view requires a shattering of spirituality as an escape from material life. The psychic revolution is no less significant than the cosmological revolution. The soulful exploration of human development has uncovered a vaster universe of heart-centered, psychic potential. Mind is no longer the primary seat of consciousness, defined by rational thought. The psyche has emerged as layered by virtual memory, by subconscious, archetypal and instinctual complexity. It is imaged in the multilayered activities of the heart and the branching microverse of multiple psychophysical centers and neural networks of the body electric. Consciousness permeates the brain, the heart, and the whole body, located in multiple psychotropic centers, each charged with soul awareness, each calling forth new developmental perceptions, new heart-centered Neurotheology.2 In Sufism, the Mystery of the Heart is well known, it is a key to the miraculous 2 For more on Neurotheology, see R. Joseph, editor, NeuroTheology: Brain, Science, Spirituality, and Religious Experience (CA: University Press, 2003).

transformation of human capacities heated in the crucible of divine love. And in the Sufi context, the World Soul is invoked as the Angel of Earth, a protective feminine spirit that seeks to embody our humanity with inner capacities that truly enliven the processes of world awakening.3 The task of manifesting the World Soul lies in our abilities to recover a strong, enduring connection with living nature -- not rejecting nature in favor of transcendence, but cultivating nurturing attitudes of responsibility toward all planetary life. The tears of the Angel of Earth fall into the hearts of all those who love the world and its many creatures. Those tears soften the hearts hardness, make it responsive to the loss of species, to human over population crowding out the miracle of multi-species life. This does not mean there is no transcendence; it only means that transcendence is not a refuge, not a resting place, but a source of inspiration for world-work, for a dedication of self as birth mother to the coming forth of World Soul. This requires us to open our hearts, to cultivate empathy and a nurturing awareness of the subtle, the invisible, the hidden and intangible. The soul cannot grow if it does not accept the challenge of new perception -- to see into the subtle horizon where World Soul emerges. Not just in the everyday, not just in common sense and pragmatism, but also in visionary dreams, in the intuitive glimpse, in the sudden opening of the heart to the Mundus Imaginalis, the sacred world of visionary perception. When you image the world (or cosmos) as a living reality, you must be alive to your own soulfulness. Soul is the medium of our connection to the souls of others and to the Soul of the World; the heart is the organ of perception by which that soul connection is known and cultivated.4 As a participant in the opening horizon of souls forthcoming, the soul of each person becomes a medium for the embodiment of the Earth Angel in a shared, collective process. Soulfulness is not simply a matter of caring or loving others, though such caring is the ground of soulful development. But also, soulfulness is an opening to the full visionary capacities of the heart, to the ultradimensionality of soul-life more subtle than sensory perception. We are called to open to the ground of soul identity, in dreams, in afterworlds, in visionary intersections, where soul capacity is challenged to receive the gift of the Earth Angel. Not only the tears, but also the joys and intuitive illuminations instilled by Mystery for the purpose of world awakening and transformation. This process is alchemical, a synthesis of feminine-masculine perception, a profound acknowledgement of deep empathy and wisdom united with life sustaining values and principles of diversity that seek to nurture the survival of life in all forms. The Sophianic 3 Tom Cheetam, Green Man, Earth Angel: The Prophetic Tradition and the Battle for the Soul of the World (NY: State University of New York Press, 2003). 4 For a Sufi view of the heart, see Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Lover and the Serpent: Dreamwork in Sufi Tradition (Great Britain: Element Books, 1990).

wisdom is essential to the awakening of World Soul and Sophia (in Sufism, Fatima) is another name for the Earth Angel.5 Its metaphorical meaning is found in the preservation of life, in the nurturing of differences, in respect and appreciation for mutually coherent influences. The heart is an altar where life is not simply a gift or a blessing but a sacrament, one worthy of our deepest reverence, a testimony to the overflowing abundance of the divine unity that does indeed underlie our differences. It is an abundance so great, so rich in possibility, that all life forms cannot exhaust its capacities for innovation or newness. The Fatima-Sophia, holy wisdom, flows forth from the heart of divinity as the creative virtue of life preservation, an acknowledgement that only this universe in all its utter vastness, in all its visible and invisible dimensions, can possibly provide the means for the full expression of the divine potential. As human beings, we are called to the altar of this sacrament to make a heartfelt offering -- our lives as dedicated to the preservation and reverence of all life, to live as soulful beings, to be handmaidens and attendants to the Earth Angel, to breathe with Her, the breath of life for the healing of the world.6 In the aspect of the physical life, the embodied soul as incarnate being, we are challenged to live, not as ascetics, but as lovers of the world. Life in the world is not easy and often painful, traumatic, violent, and dangerous. Yet this is the place of our embodiment, our incarnational field, our tangibility as living beings in an finite-infinite universe. It is the place where the Heart can embody soul in such a way as to make the world holy. The physical life is not secondary to soul life, but a primal ground for soul development, the place of transformation in the Hermetic sense. Like all alchemy, there are stages to the work of transformation and to the emergence of World Soul. Those stages are the stages of world history as they aid or hinder conscious human evolution. Those stages are determined by human choices, by actions undertaken in the name of religious, political, economic, or charitable ideals or goals. It is our embodied choices and actions that will determine the quality of our spiritual communion with each other. We may dream of paradise, but the coming into being of World Soul will reflect the real-life choices we make for the actualization of the dream. If the dream remains disconnected, idealized, abstract, removed from suffering, deprivation, or the horrors of war, poverty, economic greed and ecological or animal exploitation, then we can expect an impoverished version of the dream. Only when we fully embody our spiritual values in an actual way of life, one that

5 For more on the Sophia and the Earth Angel in Sufism, see Henri Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989: 4-5, 55ff.). 6 For a related Christian perspective, see Thomas Schipflinger, Sophia-Maria: A Holistic Vision of Creation (Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1998).

embraces the challenges of imbalance in striving to create new balance through an inner beauty of soul, can we hope for more than we dream. When I dream of what the world might be, I see the shadows -- the fear, anguish, poverty and dread that has given rise to the desire for escape and world renunciation. But I see more strongly the beauty, wonder, and magical qualities that can confer dignity, maturity, and soulfulness to every living creature. This is a matter of choice, not karma or fate or obligation, but a free-will offering, a willingness to be living examples of the spiritual virtues that truly express our highest ideals. Embodied life requires alignment and resonance with virtues whose radiance and influence swell up from a deep and profound source, through mind, soul and body to flow into the world as an invocation of grace. We call upon the World Soul as a collective manifestation of human maturity that embraces all spiritual traditions, all paths that do not teach violence, all teachings that promote spiritual community, tolerance, diversity, and cooperation in caring for the worlds wellbeing. This is the dream we seek to embody, this is the alchemy of our conjoined loves, this is the inspiration that calls upon each soul to fully and completely embody the ideals of each path taken toward world peace, harmony, and lasting mutual respect for our differences. In the context of physical life, I try to respect the body as an instrument of virtue, as a miraculous creation whose health and vitality requires good habits, care, and love. The transformative energies of the body are many, and each requires cultivation through the appropriate disciplines. Healthy food, without addictions or slothful habits, sufficient rest and exercise, sexual vitality, restful sleep, nurturing patterns that harmonize biorhythms with natural cycles, a regular connection with nature in work and play, a willingness to bend, change patterns, shift, adapt, flow -- all these are works of embodiment, works of spirit becoming soulful and grounded. In sleep and dreams, we can explore the transphysical domains of soul awareness, journey into the mythic and the magical, explore horizons of conscious life across a vast spectrum of living beings, disincarnate souls, spirits, angels, devas, rakshas, and fairy folk. But when we wake, we can ground the vision, make it a doorway into alternate perceptions, because the body has awakened its deep soul potential and can hold the doorway open. The body is an instrument, a finely tuned, highly complex synthesis of multiple perceptual capacities, all capable of expressing insights through the physical -- in words as poetry, in song, in dance, in art, sculpture, painting, mathematical formulas, in scientific insights instrumentalized. In the context of embodiment, technology is not negative; it is simply a powerful instrumentalization of soul, an idea embodied, an imaginative vision made tangible. Our responsibility for soul development requires this embodiment; the techgnosis of scientific

discovery is nothing less than the soulful realization of possibility made material. If the material dominates, swallows the soul, buries the very source of the inspiration, then imbalance and spiritual emptiness results. But the translation of soulful life into material energies and electronuclear processes only imitates the causal activities of the cosmos at large. This is the challenge of embodiment. Discovery is only one part of the challenge. The soulful use of technology, its material ramifications, requires moral conscience, a maturity of soul that can use the powerful energies unleashed in ways consonant with a wise, loving concern of all life, all creatures, for the preservations of the fragile ecologies impacted by an otherwise rapacious, unconscious, soulless self-concern. The alchemy of embodiment is to transform the physical into vital forms that reflect spiritual beauty, harmony with nature, and a balanced attitude toward discovery and application. Embodiment in World Soul is embodiment through a shared ethos of spiritual virtues whose purpose is the preservation of life, not its destruction, abuse, or exploitation. As individuals we have the task of living responsibly in terms of the spiritual values we each seek to embody. In doing so, we form communities with like-minded others and promote our ideals or beliefs, hopefully through existential embodiment, not merely through words or ideas. There is a vast array of spiritual traditions, communities, esoteric orders, new religious movements, and emergent spiritualties. The emergence of World Soul in the collective global context, as I see it, is not a synthesis or convergence of ideals or beliefs as much as it is an increasing awareness of relatedness and intersection, of mutually interpenetrating concerns that requires dialogue, respect, and appreciation of differences. No one spiritual or secular worldview can dominate in this emergence; the more one view seeks such domination, the more likely that distortion and ambivalence will lead to a collapse in cooperative effort. This includes all forms of scientific domination. Science does not yet speak the language of soul, nor is it the most articulate medium for soul development. As a handmaiden to soul emergence, science can offer a multitude of brilliant intersections that can illumine the very depths of soul life. But collectively, the language of the World Soul is a multilingual speaking, a facility to speak in tongues of many shades and colors, to create a diverse verbal palette, an artistry of expression that includes all domains of human knowledge. The gift of tongues in the context of World Soul emergence is an ability to speak across domains of knowledge, to find the articulate expression that embodies a truth worth knowing while simultaneously hearing the truths of others. The speech of the World Soul knowing is also a hearing, an opening of the heart, which also contains the word ear and hear -- in order to share that knowledge. And yet, the World Soul emerging is something more than all spiritual traditions,

something more than the conjunction of wisdoms from all domains of research and learning. That which emerges, which appears as World Soul, a birthing from Mystery, is a manifestation of collective awakening whose potency and capacity for incorporation surpasses human knowledge while also supporting and animating that knowledge. This is more than synergy, more than the synchronistic harmonies of convergent human insights; it is a cosmological awakening to undefined horizons of human potential. There is an openness, a vastness, an immensity of awareness that enfolds the human into the species life of the planet, into the continuum of life beyond this world, into the very heart of the galaxy and the universe at large. This is why embodiment is crucial -- to provide a stable basis for a true World Soul awakening. On the collective scale, our capacity to see beyond the human horizon will require deep roots into the very soil, the earthiness, of human life in order to sustain the magnitude of the depths and heights of transcollective awareness. And this includes the awareness of other species, other mentalities, the etheric and subtle energies of plants, and the vibrancy of the stone. Beyond the conditional life of everyday, there is a vast spectrum of conscious life forms, including the invisible domains, the afterworlds of souls, the co-created, multidimensionalitys of life worlds yet unseen by divided humanity. The groundwork for this emergence is a loving, cooperative way of life, one based in tolerance and genuine interest in the values and beliefs of others, one open to dialogue, debate, discussion, and intelligent communications. The World Soul awakening is a spiritual medium for communion with the very Ground of Being, not remote and removed from earthly life, but right here, right now. The incarnational Mystery, the spiritual reality, is rooted in the axis of transformation that plunges deep into the earth, reverently receiving the gift of life, and nurturing that gift in the birth of all species. We sink down into the fertile dark, into the loam and soil of our embodiment, into dark waters, to be adorned by the coming forth of World Soul as a nurturing spiritual presence, a feminized Angel raising our vision beyond ordinary mind into the vast horizons of soul possibility. Uncounted worlds seek to communicate the wisdom of their own transformations made accessible through the collective awakening of world after world. Our collective is not simply one world, one earth, but a multitude of worlds, of heavenly domains and earthly incarnations in a vast network of cosmic proportion still hidden from isolated human vision, but soon to be known, in World Soul awakening.7 The spiritual calling is to embrace not simply this world or planet, not simply our local heliocosm, our planets, sun, moons, astral bodies, but to awaken to a living cosmos, to a vast reality of multidimensional being, to the sacredness of life in all 7 Lee Irwin, Awakening to Spirit: On Life, Illumination and Being (NY: State University of New York Press, 1999).

forms and in all worlds, stars, galaxies. Clearly, as participants in this cosmological transformation, this awakening to World Soul, we must work to integrate the noetic, psychic, and physical with the collective and spiritual aspects of individual life. If we pull back, contract, remained locked in war, predation, species inequality, greed and exploitation, then we will only impede the process, fracture its symmetry, only give birth to momentary ecstasies. The terror of disintegration can descend on us because we choose not to live according to our ideals, preferring instead our comfort, illusions, and self-centered disregard for others. The challenge is to become a vessel for World Soul manifestation through humility, patience, good humor, and a renunciation of pride of place and position. To join with all species in the preservation of life for its uplifting, to stand with others, not above any, is to epitomize the very best in human capability. This requires intelligence, study, discipline, courage, determination and most of all, love -- a love of others, of all living beings, of the world, of the cosmos and all creation, a love surrendered to Mystery. To be an instrument of change, one must have an edge, a tautness and clarity that cuts through illusion to see the world reborn anew through that love. This is a creative, responsive, passionate love, an Eros of soul that seeks the Beloved in all creation, all matter, all cosmic conjunction. It is a love that is rare but precious, attainable through a lifetime of inner work and guidance that is the very substance of World Soul manifestation. Every person has this capacity, every life its precious love, and by living it, we manifest to Mystery our readiness for World Soul awakening. Lee Irwin Christmas, 2005 Johns Island SC