THE PROGRESSIVE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSAL SOUL

The soul is safe as long as it remains in the lowest of the cosmic shells, corresponding to the shore of this world or the shell of earth. As soon as it enters the shell of water, however, the created form of the universe is drowned and the soul becomes caught in the cosmic currents that will lead inevitably to its destruction.

At this point, there is no turning back. Having entered the cosmic sea, the soul is dragged inevitably far from shore by the cosmic undertow, and there, inescapably, it will come to die a cosmic death in silent darkness.

When the soul is drawn subsequently into the shell of fire, it witnesses its own cosmic body, in the form of the created universe, being burned and consumed by the fires of universal destruction—and is helpless to stop it. The shell of fire is the last shell where the form of the universe is seen. Once the universe has been consumed by the fires of total destruction, it is reduced to ashes (point values) and thus assumes a formless condition.

The soul then ascends to the shell of air to which the ashes of the created universe are blown by the cosmic winds, never again to be seen. All that is experienced in that shell is an “indistinct flow” (apraketam salilam), which resembles the invisible movement of air in a vast and formless cosmic space. When the soul ascends subsequently to the shell of space, all perceived forms of motion disappear, and all that remains is a dark cosmic void devoid of all light, sound, and motion. This is the cosmic coffin that the soul must enter willingly while still alive—an understanding that is encoded symbolically in the Egyptian myth of Osiris.

In the Egyptian myth we learn that when Osiris returned in triumph from a long journey, he was invited to a welcoming celebration by his brother Set and seventy-two conspirators who had devised a plan to depose the great king.

This myth has a deeper interpretation: The shell of air lying immediately below the shell of space represents the thirty-sixth layer of the metaphysical Logos, counting from the half measure. Because there are thirty-six layers above and below, this shell may be said to have 36 + 36 = 72 aspects, which correspond to the seventy-two conspirators of Set, who himself represents the material nature of the universe.

The ultimate purpose of these seventy-two layers, taken as a whole, is to conspire against the ascending soul: They are designed to lead the soul from the scale of the half measure to the shell of space (the thirty-seventh layer), where it will become locked inside its own cosmic coffin—the coffin of cosmic space. There, it will come to die in total darkness and isolation at the hands of the unborn Destroyer. Once the soul enters into the shell of space, it becomes constrained by its own cosmic coffin and is unable to move. Like a victim bound and prepared for a cosmic sacrifice, the only thing it can do is to wait for its inevitable death at the hands of the cosmic Sacrificer.

The actual sacrifice takes place in the shell of cosmic ego (the thirty-eighth layer), where the universal ego of the soul is slain and the soul loses its universal identity. At that point, the soul experiences a form of cosmic death in the darkness and isolation of its own cosmic tomb. It loses all memory of its individual and universal evolution, which took place over the course of billions of years.

After the soul has died in this way, it becomes totally helpless. Being devoid of all forms of ego, whether individual, galactic, universal, or cosmic, it no longer has the potential to do anything. The last stage of the journey is conducted by the benevolent aspect of the unborn Destroyer in the form of the goddess Tara, who carries the dead soul across the sea of cosmic intelligence, represented by the outermost shell of the cosmic egg (the thirty-ninth layer). In the process of being carried across this layer, the dead soul is offered figuratively to the mouth of the unborn Destroyer so that not even the slightest trace of its former existence survives. This marks the end of the evolutionary course of the soul. In the end, the enlightened soul is reduced to the same state from which it began: a state of pure ignorance, which is cosmic rather than individual in scope.

Then, however, a miracle occurs. When the dead soul finally washes upon the shore of the other world (represented by the fortieth layer), it becomes endowed with a new type of existence: It is resurrected from spiritual death as a truly immortal soul, which experiences itself as the same as the supreme self. Because all traces of universal ego have been removed, the soul no longer identifies itself with the cosmic egg or its seven shells. Instead, it becomes identified with the unlimited reality of the Supreme Being, which contains within itself an infinite number of cosmic eggs.

In the Vedic tradition, this infinite reality of the Supreme Being was called the Akshara Brahman, the imperishable reality. Once the soul becomes established in that reality—on the scale of the fortieth layer—it will never again have to endure the process of universal dissolution and spiritual death. It is granted freedom from all forms of death, and it becomes free to ascend and descend through the evolutionary spectrum of thirty-nine layers, while maintaining its imperishable vision on the scale of the fortieth layer.

The ascent to the fortieth layer marks a whole new chapter in the advent of divine wisdom: the advent of the immortal wisdom, which has to do with the immortal and imperishable realms that lie beyond the outermost shell of the cosmic egg.