Quest Magazine

Printed in the Winter 2019  issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smith, Kendra, "Consciousness after Death" Quest 107:1, pg 14-17

By Kendra Smith

Years ago, when I was around forty, I was startled to see and converse with persons who had died. Other experiences followed. This sort of thing was taboo in my academic milieu and in a family studded with scientists (four physicists, one a Nobel Prize winner). Only lately, after a friend urged me to come out with these stories, which many people regard as deluded and weird, have I begun talking freely about these experiences.

Remembering some brief contacts with Theosophy, I called an acquaintance, Nelda Samarel, at the Krotona Institute of Theosophy in Ojai, California. I wondered what the position of Theosophy was on consciousness after death; did Theosophy accept it? She said yes, and she was interested in the content of my communications from the other side.

I had six such experiences. The first three were with strangers, the next three with family members who had passed on. With two of the three strangers, I was able to learn that the persons had actually existed, and I learned something of their life stories.

In this piece, I will relate one of the exchanges with a stranger and a brief conversation with my skeptical philosopher father after his death; then I will discuss some of the questions raised in my mind: What is mind and what are its limits? What is real, what is true? Why do some of us have these experiences while others don’t? One question I will answer immediately: do these experiences have spiritual import? They do not mean that I personally am a better person or more integrated than most, but I believe that they may suggest something about spirit or consciousness.

One experience in particular really shook me up. It happened at a five-day meditation retreat led by Larry LeShan, a clinical psychologist. His daily work was as a psychotherapist, often with cancer patients facing mortality. On the side, he experimented with psychic healing, the cultivation of a state of consciousness that facilitates the healing of others. I’d heard Larry talk about his research at a transpersonal psychology conference in Iceland, and I asked to join his experimental group.

There were ten or twelve of us, all Larry’s friends from New York, except for me, from Boston. Everyone looked to be around my age, forty, except for one man with white hair, Max. Larry’s assistant, who introduced us, told me Max was a lawyer from Manhattan. From the time of our introduction before Friday dinner to our goodbye the next Tuesday, Max and I never talked. We did, however, end up sitting next to each other as we meditated. Hour after hour after hour.

It was intensive one-pointed meditation. From Friday evening through Saturday until around 9 p.m., we tried hard to keep our minds steadily on a single object. Then bed. As I lay in bed, I visualized all the persons in our group, saying their names to myself. It’s something I do to help me remember names. It was a very cold February night, and wind blew in my window curtains. I knew I would have to get up and close the window before I settled down to sleep. I began saying the names to myself: Larry, Mickey, Joyce, John, Maria, and so on, until I got to Max. And then I saw a woman between Max and me that I had not seen in the group.

Silently, in my head, I said, “I don’t remember you. You must have been very quiet.”

“I’m Max’s wife,” she said.

She didn’t look exactly solid—she was sort of transparent, but distinct. She and I had a nice little get-acquainted chat, with her doing most of the talking. This was all in my head, silent. She told me that this part of Connecticut was a great place for birders, and she began naming all the different kinds of birds. I’m not a birder, but I was entertained by the names she reeled off. One stuck in my mind—tufted titmouse. We then said goodnight. I closed my window and slept soundly.

Next morning I saw Max as we waited for the breakfast bell, and I thought of telling him that I had dreamed about his wife. But it wasn’t a dream, and I didn’t know if he had a wife. Larry’s assistant told me that Max had had a wife. She had died three months earlier, and Max had been in deep grief, refusing to leave his apartment until he had been persuaded to come to this retreat. This unsettled me, and yet the conversation with Max’s wife had seemed so ordinary and real. I wondered if I was losing my marbles. Larry was a psychotherapist. I asked to speak with him alone. He asked me what Max’s wife looked like.

“A short, dumpy, old woman,” I said, “with short, iron-gray hair.” I couldn’t think of any distinguishing moles or features. Larry laughed. How many women in Manhattan would fit this description? He also laughed at the fact that I’d said to her, “You must have been very quiet.” In life, he said, she was not at all quiet. Larry also mentioned that Max was a member of the Ethical Culture Society. This meant to me that he was a humanist. I have read the Humanist Manifesto, which says there is no consciousness after death. I figured that if Max’s wife had appeared to him, he would have thought he was hallucinating.

Larry added casually that I had just had a mediumistic experience and needn’t worry about it. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The next “mediumistic” experience was with my father, Henry Nelson Wieman, a philosopher who taught his “empirical naturalism” at the University of Chicago. He dismissed anything that could not be tested by scientific method. Any religious philosophy must, in his view, accommodate science.

While my father was still very much alive, I told him about my communication with Max’s wife. He listened to my account with bright-eyed interest and no sign of the contempt I feared. Then he walked away, saying, “Wishful thinking. Wishful thinking.”

I called after him, “Well, you’re eighty-five and I’m forty-five. Chances are you will know before I do. You rap seven times or something.” He laughed.

Six years later my father died, and this conversation came to mind. Nothing happened. Another three months went by. I woke one September morning, just lying in bed in a deliciously relaxed state, not thinking about anything at all, when my father appeared, looking like a shimmery version of the football player he had once been.

Excitedly, in my head, I asked, “What’s it like? What’s it like?”

He groped for words. This was uncharacteristic of a Harvard Ph.D. who had written many books and lectured his whole life. Slowly and carefully he then replied, “I cannot will. I can only assess.”

Many hours later I saw my husband, the scholar of religions Huston Smith, and told him about this. Thoughtfully, he said, “That’s what St. Augustine said. After death you cannot effect any material changes. But you can evaluate.”

I am still a bit disturbed when I think about this—as if there is nothing to hold on to. I can’t explain it in terms of anything I know. But neither can I explain or understand the reports I get from physicists about action at a distance, or string theory, or how subatomic stuff is altered by the act of the physicist measuring it. I asked one of my nephews, who is a nuclear physicist, to explain to me the experiment he has been conducting for years.

“If you don’t know mathematics,” he said, “you can’t understand physics.”

I don’t know mathematics, so that lets me off the hook so far as physics goes. I can abandon trying to understand it. But these experiences of mine? I can’t abandon an attempt to understand them. I don’t know of any key to understanding them the way mathematics is the key to physics.

The teasing, teasing questions! I began to think about studies: how our collective view of what is true and real has been changed by culture; how it is influenced by language, by studies of intelligence and intuition.

Studies of the human brain began in a small way around the time I was born, with the work of neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield. Now studies of consciousness are burgeoning. There are a few undergraduate courses on the subject, and there are professional journals.

We used to assume that our human brains, while not omniscient, were an accurate mirror of objective reality. Now it is believed that our brains are not so much like mirrors as like a waffle iron. A waffle looks the way it does because of the way a waffle iron is shaped. What we see as reality depends on the shape of our waffle-iron minds. Our waffle-iron brains, yours and mine, are similar enough for us to have enough shared meaning for us to have discussions. And they differ enough for us to have differing views.

Studies of animal intelligence brought home to us how our perceptual organs frame and limit what we see and sense. We don’t see what an eagle sees; we don’t know the rich world of smells lived by a dog. But our human perceptual organs, yours and mine—eyes, ears, and so forth— are quite similar. We can agree on what is blue and on what is softer or harder. In that way, our waffle-iron brains are alike.

Culture shapes our waffle-iron brains. Different cultures shape them differently, influencing what we are open to believing and thinking. In cultures where people believe in consciousness after death—in Finland and among the Australian aborigines, for example—reports of experiences like mine are far more common than in the U.S.

Our understanding of intelligence has changed greatly in my lifetime. In the early 1920s, a scientist named Terman selected a bunch of kids with very high IQs. It was then thought that having a high IQ was like being endowed with a fortune in gold. Terman’s kids were followed throughout their lifetimes. On average Terman’s high-IQ people did quite well in life, but none in the group turned out to be Mozarts or Einsteins or history makers.

The conclusion was that creativity and intuition needed to be better understood. So far as I know, they are still mysterious. People who have bursts of creativity report that it feels quite unlike ordinary thinking. It seems to come out of the blue, or it is as if something is flowing into and through one. Einstein is said to have had an intuitive flash—things falling into place in a new way—that led to relativity theory. To quote him: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is its servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

There seem to be inborn differences—different types of waffle-iron brains. C.G. Jung described the differences in terms of four types: thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. They are not differences in intelligence, but in what we notice and how we process input. I am an N, or intuition type. Does intuition have anything to do with my conversation with Max’s wife? I don’t know.

Language, too, influences how one understands the world. Language shapes the waffle-iron brain. Not every subtle insight can be translated from one language to another. Let me give one example that has some relevance to the topic. On my wall, I have some Japanese calligraphy painted by a Zen monk. My husband and I listened in as two scholars, one Japanese and one German, discussed how to translate the characters into English. Both of them were fluent in English, German, and Japanese. The first three characters were easy: “Heaven and earth”—meaning everything—have . . . Everything has . . .” Here they paused, stumped. The last character, they agreed, could not be expressed in English but might be translated, although imperfectly, into German. The best approximation in English was “Everything has sentience,” but, they insisted, sentience is misleading. For us English speakers, dead and alive are opposites. The Japanese word the scholars were working to translate also implies something like relationships and affection. (The two scholars agreed that the German word Gefühl, feeling, was a close approximation.) The Zen Buddhist insight is a universe that is not impersonal, not devoid of feeling or caring or intelligence, nor yet is it some deity outside of creation. Imagine, if you can, how it would be if that permeated your worldview. Basic trust!

Individual influences affect our waffle-iron brains, accounting for the way we individuals see things differently. Children in the same family don’t even have the same experience of their parents. In my family, my older siblings remember a mother who was strict but lots of fun. I never knew a mother who was healthy and free of pain. Strict she was, but not at all fun. I was afraid of her. Siblings influence too. All siblings say or do hurtful things. I am so nervous speaking to groups because, I think, the most scathing thing hissed by my siblings was, “You’re showing off! You are just trying to get attention!”

For most of my life, any interest or belief in consciousness after death was regarded as disgraceful, just a cut above child pornography in respectability. Researchers in these subjects were shunned by their colleagues. Although it was more accepted in the U.K., in the U.S. it used to be the consensual conviction that anyone who was rational and understood science would scoff at the idea of the survival of any consciousness after the heartbeat quits. William James, in the early twentieth century, was an exception: he was interested in mediums and reports of communication with the dead. But when his collected works were published after his death, this part of his research was omitted. It was an embarrassment to what was then the scientific community.

Here is a quote from James: “Our normal consciousness, our rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special kind of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”

Creeping into our culture is an increasing openness. In this century, a group of scientists and philosophers met annually for a few years at California’s Esalen Institute to discuss consciousness after death. Henry Stapp, one of our most respected theoretical physicists, was in the group. I don’t know what went on, but I’m guessing that they concluded there is no way to prove either the truth or the falsity of consciousness after death, or any way to explain it. The group disbanded.

What about the waffle-iron brains of those of us who see and hear people who have died? I think of four possible predisposing factors. One, a growing acceptance in our culture. Two, being an intuitive type. Three, meditation practice. Most of my experiences occurred during or soon after a meditation retreat. Four, the early death of one’s mother. It has been found that both ESP (extrasensory perception) and mediumistic experiences—I lump the two together—seem to happen more often to persons whose mothers died when they were young. I was seven when I lost mine.

I may have had a visitation from my mother when I was eleven and deeply unhappy, but I didn’t believe in such things then. I knew my father’s conviction that bodily death is the end. I attended some of his lectures and debates, and I also proofread his manuscripts, so I knew his thought pretty well. I didn’t begin to doubt his authority until I was in my teens.

Some scientists studying consciousness say we seem to be no closer to understanding it than ever, that it is a receding horizon. The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of what is unknown.

Now the really big questions. I think of what Zen Buddhists call Big Mind. It’s a mistake to think that each of us possesses a piece of Big Mind; we exist in Big Mind as a fish lives in water.

Is consciousness fundamental? Is consciousness primary and matter secondary? Is it the same as spirit, or the spiritual?

These questions have personal meaning for me. My feeling about death is different now. I think of my friendly death. Not only will I be released from a body that gives me more pain and less pleasure, but I will not be wholly cut off from those I love most. I will be aware and somewhat connected. And—maybe—curiosity and learning will continue. That would be nice.

Because Max’s wife appeared to me, a stranger, Max could accept it as real when Larry told him of her appearance to me. Did his wife know of his grief and figure out how to convince him that her death was not annihilation or the end of their relationship? I think she did know, and she reached out to comfort him in the only way she knew. The import for me is that the cosmology expressed in the Zen calligraphy is right. The universe is not devoid of feeling or caring.

What I feel most powerfully is the vastness of the mystery in which we are born, live, and die.

Kendra Smith, age ninety-five, is a retired psychotherapist living in Berkeley, California. At age fifteen, she was drawn to Buddhism and remains committed to its practice. Her first intensive meditation experiences, along with her husband, Huston Smith, were in Burma and Japan in 1957.

Printed in the  Winter 2019 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation:  Boyd, Tim, "The Mission of the Theosophical Society" Quest 107:1, pg 3-5

Tim Boyd
International President

At our most recent General Council meeting, a mission statement for the Theosophical Society (TS) was finalized. In the 143-year history of the TS, although many statements have been made related to the mission and purpose of the TS, there has never been a formal mission statement.

In The Key to Theosophy, in a short section titled “The Abstract and the Concrete,” HPB addresses the subject of the relationship between Theosophy and the Theosophical Society. One of the things she says is that “Theosophy is divine nature, visible and invisible, and its Society human nature trying to ascend to its divine parent.”

In that same section, she also says that “Theosophy is the shoreless ocean of universal truth, love, and wisdom, reflecting its radiance on the earth, while the Theosophical Society is only a visible bubble on that reflection.” She tries to help us understand the relationship between Theosophy, which is divine, and our work within this organization, which has a form. She closes by saying that the TS “was formed to assist in showing to men that such a thing as Theosophy exists, and to help them to ascend towards it by studying and assimilating its eternal verities.”

In a sense, the idea of a Society whose purpose is to show the existence of an ever-undefined Theosophy is a statement of mission. However, for someone not yet fully grounded in a studied awareness of Theosophy, it is an unsatisfying statement.

For a little more than a year, the General Council of the TS, with input from other members, has been engaged in the process of trying to refine a concise and comprehensible statement of the mission of the TS. Much like a sutra in the scriptures of the world, the attempt has been made to make the expression of mission so brief, compact, and easy to remember that it can be quickly communicated, but so conceptually rich that dwelling on it reveals ever-deepening layers of meaning.

The Mission Statement which has been adopted for the Theosophical Society is a total of twenty-four words: “To serve humanity by cultivating an ever-deepening understanding and realization of the Ageless Wisdom, spiritual self-transformation, and the unity of all life.” In the remainder of this article, we will try to unpack this one sentence. Much like a sutra, every one of those twenty-four words adds something meaningful.

Service

To serve is the primary function of the TS. Service is often interpreted in different ways, but for our purposes it involves a conscious participation, a conscious, compassionate activity that connects us with others in ways which relieve suffering. Of course, our service is often unconscious. For example, the simple act of breathing gives plants the carbon dioxide they require to live. Plants breathe out the oxygen that humans and other life forms require. So it could be said that just breathing is service. However, part of the role of the Theosophical work is to become fully conscious, fully aware, so that our service is not just random activity, but charged with awareness and compassion.

Humanity

In what direction is that service focused? The mission is “to serve humanity.” The normal conception of humanity is as the seven billion individual human beings which populate the Earth. The collectivity of all these human beings is what we tend to call “humanity.” From the perspective of the Ageless Wisdom, there is the idea of the divine human. What we think of as humanity is not merely an amalgamation of seven billion different people; it is a single entity in much the same way that we as individuals are composed of many tiny lives, but think of ourselves as a unit. When we think of our bodies or “I” myself as a human being, if we are a little more precise about it, what we call “I” is a combination of the activity of trillions of human cells, more trillions of bacteria living on and within the body, and the unseen participation of every range of consciousness from the lowest mineral to the highest spiritual beings. The cooperative activity of all of these units and streams results in what we call “I.”

So there is this humanity that we serve in our limited ways. Conscious service begins with a recognition of our unity with this greater Whole, and with a deepening understanding of the ways we participate within it. Humanity in another sense is an as-yet-unrealized ideal. In our behaviors and present level of development, we are not yet fully human. On numerous occasions HPB compared so-called “human” behavior with that of animals. To the degree that the focus of our consciousness lies in the realm of desire, selfishness, separation, humans become “the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals” (HPB).

Genuine, or realized humanity, is what we strive toward. The realized human, it is said in the Stanzas of Dzyan, has within themselves the “mind to embrace the universe,” a holistic, all-embracing mind. This is still a distant goal for us. When we speak of service to humanity, it is twofold. We give service to the collective whole by serving the individuals and groups which form its body; and we are servants of the divine ideal planted within us in our efforts to root ourselves in its all-embracing consciousness.

Cultivating

How do we serve humanity? There are many organizations in the world that focus on service to humanity: the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and so on. What is particular to the service that the TS envisions? In the Mission Statement it says, “to serve humanity by cultivating an ever-deepening understanding and realization.” Let us examine what might be meant by “cultivating.” It is a very particular term that normally relates to gardeners, or people who focus on growing or caring for plants. It is directly linked to the natural world and to the processes of life and consciousness.

Just planting a seed in the ground does not make someone a gardener. A person who takes on the role of caring for plants must engage in an intensive study of the cycles of Nature and the potentials of the seeds. They have to be aware of the needs and requirements for the growth of these living things, and be prepared to provide for these needs at the proper moments. All of this is involved in the process of cultivation.

The TS exists to bring about a flowering of a deeply hidden human potential—a Divine Seed. What is the seed that is planted within humanity that the TS exists to nurture? The next portion of the Mission Statement gives an indication.

Ever-Deepening

We are here “to serve humanity by cultivating an ever-deepening understanding and realization.” “Ever-deepening” speaks to not only the direction but the nature of this process.

The fact that this cultivation we engage in is without limits means that it is continually deepening. Often in spiritual dialogues we talk about “depths” and “heights.” In a way, “depth” and “height” are synonymous terms for a certain expansion of consciousness. As a word, “ever-deepening” is perhaps more appropriate, because the idea of depth tends to draw our awareness inward, whereas height seems to move awareness up and out. The intention of the language is to turn our vision inward.

Understanding

We make a mistake in our appreciation of the meaning of “understanding” if we confuse it with “knowledge.” The two are different in nature and quality. Knowledge can exist in the complete absence of genuine understanding. It is very common for people of profound knowledge to have no sense of its relationship with all other things, which is the basis of understanding. This condition of mind is so evident that we should not require any additional proof beyond our daily observation. All we need to do is to look at recent history, at any major scientific invention or discovery that has come into the world—whether it is electricity, atomic energy, or biological substances. To the understanding mind each revelation of Nature’s powers deepens one’s recognition of relationship with the world around us, with others, and with invisible realms.

A sense of connection is a necessary component of the understanding mind. But, to take the example of electricity, driven by the mind that is focused only on knowledge, one of its early uses was in capital punishment—electrocution of prisoners. Rather than to behead, hang, or shoot someone, the knowledge-bound human genius, which made creative use of electricity possible, used it to kill other human beings. The discovery of atomic energy had the same result, but worse. Instead of killing single individuals, its very first use was in war and the massive annihilation of human life. Knowledge can be used in ways that deny connection and relationship with all life. Understanding, on the other hand, is the perception of relationship; it is an expression of the intuition, of buddhi. It is a recognition of unity.

Realization

We are here to “serve humanity by cultivating an ever-deepening understanding and realization.” Realization means a full awareness, whether it is of an aspect of the Divine Wisdom or, in the case of a realized person, the total awareness of an undivided state of being. In a sense, realization is the necessary outcome of a deepening understanding.

The Ageless Wisdom

The Mission Statement specifies an understanding and realization of three things. First, the Ageless Wisdom, sometimes referred to as Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal Wisdom. Within Theosophical circles we sometimes find “Ageless Wisdom” and “Ancient Wisdom” being used synonymously. Although the two terms are closely related, they express different ideas.

“Ancient Wisdom” refers to a specific expression of the Ageless Wisdom tradition, something that has already come into existence, that has a history. The Greek and Egyptian Mystery schools, with their specific deities and ritual, and Vedic practice in India are some examples of Ancient Wisdom—specific expressions of the Ageless Wisdom, appropriate for a certain time, place, and people. “Ageless,” by definition, applies to the past, present, and whatever traditions develop in the future. It is the “rootless root” from which all else springs. At the commencement of our current cycle of growing global interconnection, the most recent expression of the Ageless Wisdom was introduced with the founding of the TS in 1875. At some point in a distant future, Theosophy, as we have come to know it, will also fall into the category of an Ancient Wisdom: completely true, eternal in its nature, but very specific and time-bound in terms of its form of expression. This is the ever-renewing nature of Theosophy—the Ageless Wisdom.

Spiritual Self-Transformation

The Theosophical work we do as individuals we describe as “spiritual self-transformation.” It is rooted in the idea that the self, the norm of separative, personality-based living, can be transformed, acted upon by the indwelling spirit in ways that make it transparent to what Annie Besant described as the “Hidden Light shining in every creature.”

What is involved in transformation? Probably the process is simpler than the way we generally approach it. It is not a matter of adding more ideas or knowledge. The purpose of the knowledge that we accumulate is to assist in stripping away the many obstacles that we have created within ourselves to the natural and ever-present flow of spirit.

The Unity of All Life

The final words of the Mission Statement of the TS are “the unity of all life”: “an ever-deepening understanding and realization of the Ageless Wisdom, spiritual self-transformation, and the unity of all life.” The Mission Statement ends where the work of the Theosophical Society begins. The First Object of the TS is brotherhood, which could also be expressed as unity. There is no spirituality in the absence of the realization of unity or oneness. Unity is the basis of all understanding, spirituality, and even physical well-being. Even at the level of our personality, there is no strength where unity is absent. When we look at a small child in its first efforts to walk, the child fails time after time. The reason for the failure is that the newborn body has yet to become united with its various parts. The muscles of the arms and legs are not fully under the control of the person. In human relations the absence of unity expresses itself as fragmentation, weakness, and illness.

The basis of everything that we call Theosophical comes back to the unity of all life. Life is omnipresent and is necessarily intelligent, intelligence expressed in movement. All is in motion—not randomly, but in a patterned manner. Life’s underlying intelligence impresses itself on matter. Whether it is gravity, electromagnetism, or karma and reincarnation, we can speak about the Laws of Nature or the Laws of the Universe, because there is an intelligent patterning to life that we can perceive.

This brief article has been an attempt to highlight a few of the thoughts and insights that arise in dwelling on the Mission Statement. In order for it to come to life for us, we must each make our own exploration, in thought and in quiet reflection, allowing its depths to unfold for us. Like anything that is truly Theosophical in nature, the depths that are possible for us to uncover are without limit.
So, once again, the Mission of the Theosophical Society is:

To serve humanity by cultivating an ever-deepening understanding and realization of the Ageless Wisdom, spiritual self-transformation, and the unity of all life.

VOLUME 107, NUMBER 1

CONTENTS

The Mission of the Theosophical Society
Tim Boyd

Consciousness after Death
Kendra Smith

The Human Principles in Early Theosophical Literature
Doss McDavid

Preparing for Death and After
Nelda Samarel

Suicide and the Ageless Wisdom
Amber LeFevour

Spirit Life in Cemeteries
Charles Shahar

From the Editor's Desk

Viewpoint: Questions for a Lifetime
Barbara Hebert

Members' Forum: An Energetic Journey of the Soul
Desiree Holmes Scherni

Printed in the  Fall 2018  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation:  Mayer, Gwynne, "Alchemy of Gender" Quest 106:4, pg 10-11

By Gwynne Mayer 

The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, no knowing
How blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.
                    —Poem inspired by Rumi

Although the soul, or Self, has no gender, our earthly personas are definitely wrapped around our gender roles. We have genetic memories of being in union with the One, and we long to go back to that state, but in our horizontal, three-dimensional plane, we seek to fulfill this mission of union through relationship. To understand gender and the sexual roles we play in our earthly bodies, we must look at the psychological archetypes representing our origins.

The psychologist C.G. Jung found that gender roles were socially differentiated. They represented the ego, or lower self, as opposed to the qualities of the higher Self, which are the alchemical combination of the inner feminine and masculine archetypes known as the anima and animus.

Anima is derived from a Latin word meaning current of air, wind, breath, the vital principle, life, soul. Jung’s use of this word differs from its Latin meaning. For him, anima refers to the unconscious feminine dimension of a male, which can often be forgotten or repressed in daily life. It is often manifested in traits such as vanity, moodiness, bitchiness, and touchiness. The man often lives out his anima by projection. He looks for his feminine counterpart to complete him, but in reality he is seeking the feminine within. As a result, he sees women only through his own projections.

These alchemical images from the early modern era reflect the duality of masculine and feminine in the psyche. In the first image, the androgyne surmounts a base around which the caduceus is wrapped, symbolizing the integration of the subtle masculine and feminine energies that travel up and down the spine. Above the figure’s head is the astrological symbol for Mercury, which often represents the androgyne. In the second, a two-headed figure, again surmounted by the Mercury symbol, represents the integrated masculine and feminine energies. The figure is stepping on a dragon, indicating mastery of the prana or life force.

Animus in Latin means rational soul, life, mental powers, intelligence. Jung again uses it in a different way from its Latin meaning. For him, the animus is the unconscious masculine dimension in the female psyche. This masculine element can often be inhibited and suppressed. Again, it is often lived out in projections: a woman looks externally for the other to complete herself while in reality she is seeking the inner masculine. Sometimes she lives out the animus in such forms as mood disorders and overachieving.

We are constantly working with our own dual active and receptive qualities, even though we tend to project them outside ourselves. Nevertheless, in order to psychologically progress and reach greater internal balance and harmony, both men and women need to recognize and embrace the opposite gender in their own characters. By recognizing the inner image of the opposite sex within us, we can free ourselves from the trap of projections. We can finally learn to accept others of both genders as they are, and we can stop expecting them to fulfill our unconscious needs. We can integrate our own uniqueness and live out our own individual purpose without having to be augmented by the opposite sex. That does not mean avoiding partnership, but rather partnering from an individuated state of being rather than one of longing and need.

In our society, we often see females discovering the masculine qualities in their psyches, as well as males discovering their feminine qualities. We no longer have to be trapped by traditional gender roles, but can develop further understanding and balance if we bring those masculine-feminine qualities to the forefront and move toward androgyny. Androgyny, in Jungian terms, refers not to bisexuality but to the harmonious integration of male and female qualities in ourselves.

How do we see our projections, and realize that these are inner realities we are externalizing? How do we individuate, becoming more aware of our personal processes? How do we balance and connect the roles in our outer world with the masculine and feminine within? How is all of this connected to our esoteric and Theosophical studies?

Working with projections and images in dreams and fantasies, as well as meditation and contemplation, enables us to become more actualized and more responsible. By keeping a dream journal, we can see how we play out these roles and conditions in our dreams. As we evolve and become more aware, we start to see how we are living out these scenarios; we are also more able to cope with what they are showing us.

Evolving into our inner worlds may take repeated lifetimes of experiences in male or female roles, but eventually we move into a state of Oneness. As we do so, we further the evolution of both the horizontal, “earth” world and the “vertical,” cosmic world from which we originated.

Gwynne Mayer, M.A., is a retired psychotherapist and educator with forty-five years of experience in depth studies of world religions, ancient mysteries, esotericism, and divination.