A Primer on Karmic Darkening

Posted on December 18, 2020 by George Boyd

Q: What is the mechanism by which people have a spiritual fall? To what levels could they ultimately fall?

A: The Fire of the Divine Spirit purifies the karma behind the ensouling entity to the next nodal point, and this moves the Soul forward to that nodal point. However, if an individual engages in adharmic action, this can negate forward progress; indeed, if there is sufficient karmic accretion, it can move the ensouling entity down to lower nodal points.

Most people have some adharmic activity in which they engage, which accrues new karma. These can arise from reactive behavior of the ego not in alignment with the Self’s integrity and the Soul’s purpose. They can also come from enacting aspects of the issues in the unconscious mind that make up the psychological aspect of Pralabdha or Destiny Karma.

This new karmic accrual layers within the mind to various degrees, which leads to a progressively greater intensity of darkening. These can be described as follows:

Between 1 and 108 forms of karmic darkening – In this scenario, your Soul remains in its current nodal point, but a thin layer of darkening is drawn over the presence of the Soul. This can be readily effaced through extra practice of transformational mantra.
Descending one nodal point – Here, the amount of karmic accretion is sufficient to move your Soul back one step to the next lower nodal point. This can also be overcome through extra practice of transformational mantra.
Descending two to thirteen nodal points – In this type, the karma accrued is sufficient to move your ensouling entity back to the lower edge of the current Subplane on which it dwells. This amount of karmic darkening requires significant extra practice of transformational mantra, together with repentance and voluntary behavior change.
Descending one or more Subplanes – While your ensouling entity remains on the current Plane on which it dwells, moving down one or more Subplanes results in the loss of intuitive knowledge, ability, and virtue. There is noticeable coarsening of expression. You may forget what you have learned. You may revert to previous behavior, habits, and beliefs. This may require weeks of extra transformational mantra to overcome, plus the most poignant repentance and strict discipline is required to redeem the territory lost in your spiritual evolution.
Descending to the next lower Plane – At his level of karmic accretion, the forgetting of knowledge, vitiation of virtue, and loss of abilities is marked. Repeated commission of sinful acts can progressively lead to this outcome. Usually by the time you have generated this much karma, you may turn away from pursuing further progress on the spiritual Path, and embrace the passions that are destroying you. At this stage, you typically see obsession with the object of your passion, and in some case, addiction to it. Lust, greed, intemperate use of alcohol and drugs, rage and hatred, or narcissistic self-glorification takes over your behavior at this point, and this adds more layers of new karmic accretion.
Descending through two or more Planes – This level of karmic darkening can lead you down to the edge of the current Division of the Continuum on which you dwell. This might look like, for example, falling from the Wisdom Plane to the lower portion of the Biophysical Universe. Here forgetting, vitiation of virtue, and loss of abilities are profound. Negative character changes commonly appear at this stage—this can take the form of personality disorders, delusional or paranoid thinking, and increased anxiety and depression. When you fall to this extent, you may blame others for your problems, and project your own failures and weaknesses on others.
Descending to the next lower Division – This immense degree of karmic obscuration causes you to reawaken the ensouling entity of the next lower Division, and become re-identified with it. For example, you might fall from the Planetary Realm into the Subtle Realm through repeated, egregious patterns of adharmic speech and behavior. Usually, this takes the form of a fall into the Lower Astral Plane. Depending on the nature of your adharmic karmic patterns, you could fall into the Lower Astral levels—of the chemical snare (alcohol and drug addiction), the sexual snare (sexual addiction), the criminal snare (engaging in criminal behavior), the power and corruption snare (engaging in the misuse of corporate or government power), or the spiritual enslavement snare (creating a religious cult or terrorist cell and entrapping others)—and become completely immersed in these evil patterns.
Descending into the Lower Realms – For those who carry out the most horrific acts, you could create so much negative karma that you move beyond the first nodal point of the Subtle Realm, and fall into the Lower Realms that lie outside of the evolution of the Soul Spark. Among these hell-like worlds are

The world of living demons
The world of terrible fear
The world of madness
The world of terrible pain

If you were to fall into these profound depths and you were not repentant, and denied the Redeeming Light, upon death, you would lose the human birth and be reborn in the Animal or Plant Kingdom—and you would have to climb back up to the plateau to human incarnation again through the long and weary journey of transmigration.

Working with Adharmic Tendencies of Mind

These tendencies of mind that operate independently of the integrated structures of ego, Self, and soul, Mishra [1] calls vitarkas. Those on the spiritual Path actively attempt to overcome these patterns, and may engage in activities or spiritual practices designed to counter these negative impressions arising from the unconscious mind. Some of these practices include:

Repetition of mantras or prayers
Baptism or rites of ritual cleansing
Formal confession and repentance
Austerity, including fasting, and voluntary suppression of speech, or carnal appetites
Thought substitution, replacing evil thoughts with good thoughts
Invocation of the Divine for succor through prayer
Remaining in an altered state of consciousness to avoid triggering latent karmic impressions

In those who experience a major spiritual fall, their highest state of spiritual attainment remains a distant memory. However, certain of the abilities and knowledge gained at this pinnacle of their development may persist in them, despite their spiritual fall. So a person who has developed persuasion and negotiation skills may retain them, although these abilities may appear in a distorted or corrupted form at the lower level.

Religious moral training is designed to enable people to recognize these negative karmic patterns, and to turn away from them. Religious groups may also offer some ameliorative practices, such as prayer, confession, ritual cleansing and absolution, or austerity.

Those who utilize a transform the ensouling entity at the cutting edge of spirituality have the quintessential method to overcome the darkening effect of adharmic speech and action, but ultimately, they must eradicate these patterns altogether, so they cease performing this sinful speech and behavior.

We teach a transformational mantra in our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We underscore that this transformational mantra is not designed to enable people to actively carry out sin and then try to clean it up afterwards. Rather, once you recognize these patterns arising in you, you will utilize all available means to root them out and to stop engaging in them.

We encourage you to learn this transformational mantra and practice it regularly. We also suggest that you employ the other methods included in these intermediate courses to work to rectify and overcome these wayward patterns of mind.

1. Mishra, Rammurti S. (1959) Fundamentals of Yoga • New York: The Julian Press • pages 147-150

Revisiting the Veil Over the Soul

Posted on August 25, 2017 by

Many people are not aware of their Soul. Their experience only encompasses the world of their senses, their body, their relationships, and their faculty of reason. Others have access to deeper layers of the mind, but their awareness is not raised to the level where they can cognize levels of their Superconscious mind, or their conscious essences—attentional principle, spirit, or Soul. Because they do not penetrate into these deepest levels of spiritual experience, they operate with a veil over their spiritual core.

It appears that successive states of identification come forward as layers of potential awareness progressively become dominant in the mind. These states of identification and potential awareness are shown in the table below.

Veil	Level	Dominant Faculty	Who demonstrates this level of identification
85.7% to 100%	Empirical	Reason	Scientists
71.4% to 85.6%	Egoic	Ego	Politicians, actors, businessmen
57.1% to 71.3%	Attention	Attention (travels through the layers of the mind in the astral body)	Psychics, hypnotists, channelers, New Age practitioners, healers: these enter trance states through their astral body or meditate on the chakras
42.9% to 57.0%	Attentional principle	Attentional principle (collects attention and leads it along the thread of consciousness, directs it via intention)	Mindfulness practitioners, Raja Yoga meditators, those who utilize creation or manifestation meditation
28.6% to 42.8%	Self	Self (faculty of volition directs human life and destiny)	Coaches, teachers, counselors, and therapists
14.3% to 28.5%	The spirit	Individual spirit (spirit awakens and travels in the channels of the Nada)	Mystics, devotees, Nada Yoga meditators
0% to 14.2%	Soul	Ensouling entity (realizes the God essence within)	Enlightened meditators, practitioners of Integral meditation, Psychosynthesis, Jnana Yogis who experience Gnosis

As potential awareness becomes established over time in each successive identity state, the veil begins to gradually lift until the Soul is revealed in its true essence. But this veil does not lift simply because you raise your awareness, it often requires that you work on the issues that hold it in place.

What Constructs the Veil?

The following factors play a role in construction this veil over the Soul:

Unprocessed life experiences – This occurs when you never sort out your experiences through reflection or in the dream state, which keeps you stuck in a particular layer
Karmic accretions – These are emotionalized, desire-laden impressions in the unconscious mind that form a barrier that blocks you moving to a deeper layer. You may have an unwillingness to confront these issues, which may bring up feelings of fear, guilt, or shame.
Automatized awareness – This occurs when you maintain your awareness at one of these levels through routine or habit, or when you must function in that level through the demands of career or family.
Lack of meditation practice – In this scenario, you don’t pierce the veil because you never lift your awareness through meditation to penetrate to your core.
Limiting beliefs – You learn beliefs and values that dissuade or frighten you from entering deeper states of awareness. You may have learned that entering certain other states of awareness are states of insanity, or states where you lose control.
Inner gates – You may come across inner gates that prevent your attention from moving deeper into the layers of the mind. Two common gates are the one that blocks entrance to the Subconscious mind, and the one that limits access to the Superconscious mind.

There are a variety of meditation methods to begin to deconstruct this veil. These methods include:

Process meditation – This enables you to help you work through and complete specific issues, so they no longer influence you from the unconscious mind.
Active reflection and decision-making – This allows you to analyze the nature of the inner block or barrier. Once you know what it is, you can make new decisions to release its hold on you.
Breakthrough – Through moving through the entire unconscious mind and the issues stored in it, you can break through into union with your attentional principle, spirit, or Soul. This can sublimate the desire-laden impressions and give you greater control over their expression in your life.
Mindfulness – Through creating the inner mental habits of self-observation and mindfulness, you can begin to break out of the hypnotic spell of habit and routine.
Conscious ascension to deeper layers of awareness and identity – Through learning how to direct your attention along the thread of consciousness to unite with the attentional principle, Self, spirit, and Soul.
Inventory and introspection – Through structured inventory and introspection, you can discover the beliefs and values that keep you locked in an identity state. You learn to cultivate courage, faith, and curiosity to drive attention to explore deeper layers of the mind.
Breaking up mindsets – You can use affirmation and autohypnosis to counter limiting beliefs. You can utilize evocative coaching questions to shift your mindsets to entertain other possibilities.
The truth shall set you free – Be willing to tell the truth about your experience and about your failings; be willing to face the truth about yourself that you have been evading, and to face the uncomfortable feelings that uncovering surfaces. Psychotherapy can facilitate this.
Find another pathway – If you encounter inner gates, try adopting a different form of meditation to help you get around these barriers.
Transmutation – Burn away the barrier through drawing down the Light of the Spirit through implementing a transformational meditation technique.

For Ralph Waldo Emerson, “the unexamined life was not worth living.” He insisted upon opening his awareness to the transcendental vistas of the Soul, and looking at life from this expanded perspective. Perhaps people do not achieve their full potential because they do not expand their awareness to the level where their true promise can be known and actualized.

For those who wish to take on the project of deconstructing their veil and fully actualizing their potential, we teach many of these methods in our intermediate Integral meditation programs, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and on-line Accelerated Meditation Program. These courses provide the meditator with a variety of tools to counter these inner barriers that construct the veil over the Soul, and dismantle them. Those who wish to learn more about our system of Integral meditation that promotes person growth, enlightenment, and unlimited spiritual growth can do so at our website, https://www.mudrashram.com.