Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG http://www.esonet.ORG 1

Constitution of Man -
The Physical and Psychic Bodies - 4
Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG
http://www.esonet.ORG
With the assistance of what I presently shall call the concretizing mind, psychism
"precipitates" as a psychic structure. The latter is a field of forces rather than a "body," yet
it operates somewhat as a body. It can be called a body of desires.
The term desire should be understood in its basic sense. All desires are desires for
relationship with other entities, be they persons, objects or the kind of power that makes
possible the possession of persons or objects (for example, money, fame, authority, and so
on). In Sanskrit, desire is kama, a word with many meanings; but the English word desire
also has many meanings, some positive, some negative. It can refer to love or hatred,
possessiveness or repudiation. Desire also can apply to devotion and faith. In its most
sublime aspect, desire is the Compassion emanating from the Godhead state; and religious
cosmologies speak of the motive for the creation of the universe as God's "desire" for
manifestation. The psychism experienced by the members of a tribe (and even by members
of a more complex, less homogenous culture-whole) results from a powerful desire for
interpersonal relatedness. This yearning is kama at work — just as the mating urge that
compels male and female to embrace is life at work. Mating unites biological structures;
psychic love unites the psychic "bodies" of persons.
The psychic or desire body also has been called the "astral body" — a rather confusing
term. Its original meaning may be understood by thinking of the sky as ancient Chinese
philosophers did. The basic aim of Chinese culture was to make society ("the State") a
reflection of the majestic order- revealed by the sky. Chinese familial, social, and cultural
life was highly ritualized; every relationship was part of a ritual that was meant to reflect
the celestial order of the stars and planets as they moved across the sky. The sky was thus
the "astral body" of the Chinese state, and the emperor and his astrologers tried to make
sure that the complex interplay of family and social relationships would reflect celestial
order. They used "music, rites, and chastisements" to accomplish this end. Similar means
traditionally have been used in the West: the deliberate arousal of religious faith,
observances of various kinds, and moral or sociocultural sanctions, including
excommunication and (under the Inquisition) torture — all of which were intended for the
sake of the soul.
What was meant by "soul" in this case was none other than the astral body or psychic
self — the body of desires. Culture and religion were meant to transmute the desires of the
person — the sociocultural unit — from selfish and biologically impelled desires to the
desire for salvation through faith, altruism, and neighborly love. The purpose of devotion
to Christ or to the Church, in India to a guru, was the transformation of the many desires
for possessive and satisfying relationships into one single stream with a spiritual object. At
the lower level of psychic desire, the soul was called the "animal soul" or less pejoratively,
the "living soul"; its highest level was termed the "divine soul." In most human beings the
soul was torn by a crucial conflict between the animal and the divine; the results of such a
conflict during a person's life span determined, after a symbolic "Judgment," what the
103