The Soul and Its Mechanism

by Alice A. Bailey

- It is an established and accepted occult fact that the soul works through the mechanism of the three-fold personality in stimulating the three worlds of human evolution - the mental, the emotional and etheric/physical planes of consciousness. In this book the method by which the soul and the personality vehicles interact and function together is clearly presented. The author also reveals the relationship between what the occultist accepts in the constitution of man as the vital body, the etheric network with its energy vortices, or centres, and the physiological effects on the body through glandular secretions directly into the bloodstream. This is the endocrine system of glands, which correspond in the physical body to the energy centres in the etheric body and which, therefore, react to the type and potency of force the etheric body circulates at any one time. Human behaviour, and the disposition of the physical body, are conditioned by the extent to which the personality vehicles either receive or reject the impulses of the soul; and this is conditioned by the emphasis or focus of consciousness at any one time. The physical vehicle is not a principle; it responds to any dominant force expressing itself through the etheric system of energy centres. A highly emotional condition, for example, in which the solar plexus energy centre in the vital body is overstimulated, powerfully affecting its physical counterpart, the pancreas gland, produces an oversecretion of the gland and a consequent general imbalance within the personality. It is obvious that in a highly evolved man, the personality vehicles are aligned, the etheric body vital and balanced, and the energy centres controlling the physical body receptive to the influence of the soul through the mechanism of the integrated personality. But until this condition is created in consciousness, the mechanism of response is more or less isolated in its personality glamours. It is said that the aspirant to discipleship really needs to know only two things: the constitution of man and the next step ahead. In this book the way the human constitution actually functions in its component parts is made abundantly clear. It is an accepted goal for the aspirant that he learns to make of his personality equipment an instrument for the soul to use. Knowledge of the relation between the subtle and the dense bodies, the etheric centres and the physical glands, energy and force, the soul and its personality mechanism, can lift the process out of the vague haze which normally surrounds it, giving to it the clarity and precision of a scientific formula. Not only, however, is this a matter of form and energy, the whole man is involved in the process and in the effects - psychologically, philosophically and spiritually; for energy flows as the result of thought, and the quality, nature and potency of thought is a matter of consciousness, which includes the whole way of living. Where the normal focus of consciousness is in daily life, there will be found the energy centre controlling the mechanism of response. The books of Alice A. Bailey, written in cooperation with a Tibetan teacher between 1919-1949, constitute a continuation of the Ageless Wisdom--a body of esoteric teaching handed down from ancient times in a form which is always suitable to each period. Intended to precede and condition the coming era, the Alice A. Bailey writings offer an unparalleled spiritual approach to such subjects as the teaching on Shamballa and the Path of spiritual evolution; the spiritual Hierarchy; the new discipleship and training in meditation as a form of service; the teaching on the seven rays and the new psychology of the soul; the teaching on esoteric astrology; and the new world religion, which emphasizes the common thread of truth linking all the major world faiths.

Genres: Spirituality, Theosophy

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1930

About the author

Pease note: this is a different author from Alice Bailey.

Alice A. Bailey (1880-1949) was an English esoteric practitioner and writer.
At the age of 35, she entered the Theosophical Society center in Los Angeles (USA), at the Pacific Grove Theosophical Lodge. In 1919, Bailey (39 years old) severed her ties to the Theosophical Society and began to write texts that he claimed were dictated telepathically by a certain "Tibetan," or "D. K. ». She published those texts under the title Human and Solar Initiation. There she made known the existence of the spiritual hierarchy, which Madame Blavatsky had already spread, although not in an orderly way.
She later revealed that the Tibetan D.K. was the master Djwal Khul. She wrote using the teacher's name for 30 years, from 1919 until her death in 1949.

Reviews

[themariestmarie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well. That is an intermittently intriguing book ha-ha.

Preamble: Bailey and Jung were contemporaries, but there’s a hundred-miles-wide difference between their attempts to blend spirituality with Eastern material.
Also it was genuinely fun for me as a scientist and MD to run into proto-endocrinology in this book — and yes, we should judge it with one eye on what medicine and science looked like at the time (even if, from today’s vantage point, it’s a bit “bless”).



Now to the point.

Bailey says something like “the soul has its chemistry,” and my brain goes: plausible, let’s see where this goes. That’s her strongest rhetorical footing: she’s pointing at real mechanisms in the human animal — glands, nerves, the body’s regulatory systems — and implying that mind and spirit aren’t floating abstractions but interface with physiology. So far, so good.

Then the rules of the game change without warning. The book slides from early physiology into a stitched collage of religion, occult theory, and metaphysical claims, with quotations doing a lot of the load-bearing work — scaffolding that creates the impression of being anchored.



This manoeuvre is typical of early 1900s esoteric writing:
1. start with something legible (new-ish science: glands, hormones, nerves, reflexes, psychopathology)
2. use it to earn credibility and the sense of “we’re being modern and careful here”
3. quietly swap registers into a metaphysical stack (etheric body, astral plane, mental plane etc..…)
4. treat that metaphysical stack as if it’s the next chapter of biology, rather than a different kind of claim entirely



In that sense, Bailey’s worldview reads as a particular kind of esoteric modernism: a spiritual system that wants to sound organised like science, borrows scientific and psychological vocabulary, and still keeps revelation (received inner knowledge) as the final authority. Her epistemology isn’t scientific, and it isn’t standard philosophical either, it doesn’t clearly define terms, constrain claims, or show how errors get corrected.

What’s also striking is what’s missing. There’s very little detailed modelling of personality development: attachment, temperament, defence mechanisms, identity formation, social learning, trauma, and the messy step-by-step mechanics of how a person becomes who they are. And it’s not as if psychology and physics were blank slates at the time — even then, there were structured frameworks available. Freud, Jung, other contemporaries, — no, she didn’t research that, but instead created her own “woo-woo” cosmology.

[Anjalica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting

[Mike McDermott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her books will challenge your perspective on what we know as reality. I’d definitely recommend.