Several years ago, as I started my interest on spirituality, the first subject I felt attempted to learn was astrology. Then I began to read about souls, which raised many questions in me as a person working in the IT industry and almost always putting logic in the first place. Of course, I had to undergo quite many not-so-comfortable experiences in order that I gradually accepted what I read about souls, but still, I didnât accept much of what I have read.
One day, I kept lying in bed and thinking: âIs there some connection between astrology and soul? Could we figure out something about our soul from some tool in astrology? There should be! But how to find it?â So, I took my computer and googled for a while, nothing I found really satisfied me until the term âEvolutionary Astrologyâ caught my eye. Thatâs how I came to know Jeffrey Wolf Green – the founder of the School of Evolutionary Astrology – and his works. Reading his books really opened for me a whole new way of approaching and understanding astrology. But thatâs not the purpose of this article.
Today I want to give you a summary of what Green wrote about the Consciousness of the Soul and its Four Natural Evolutionary States, which I find very interesting and which has triggered in me even more curiosity to study more and more about spirituality.
According to Green, each human form with a Soul in it is an individualized Soul with its own consciousness and intelligence and such consciousness âcan be fully consciousness or it can be minimally consciousâ depending on the degree of its evolution. It is critical from an evolutionary astrology point of view to know this because many Souls have the same or similar birth charts, yet the degree of evolution of one Soul will determine how conscious it is of itself as well as of the Source â where it comes from.
Green referred to the âNatural Triad of Consciousnessâ as the combination of three planets in every birth chart: The Moon as our Ego, Pluto as our Soul, and Neptune as our individualized Consciousness relative to the Collective Consciousness of all humans. The simile of the Moon as our Ego does not sound so reasonable enough for me, maybe it is just because of the way I understand Ego, but I think it will take time until I can either really get this idea, or figure out something else which is for me more appropriate.
Concerning the Soulâs evolution, Green splits it into four ânaturalâ states or conditions, or stages: (1) The âDimly Evolvedâ State with roughly three or four percent of all Souls, (2) The âConsensusâ State with about seventy percent of all Souls, (3) The âIndividuatedâ State with about twenty percent of all Souls, and (4) The âSpiritualâ State comprising roughly four to six percent of all Souls on the planet.
Below I will summarize what has been written by Green about these four states. There are a few things I do not quite resonate with, so I try to omit some of them (but not all, for the sake of the logic behind this text). If you want to read the whole content, you should read the book, which I put at the end of this article.
The Dimly Evolved State
Souls that are in the beginning of human consciousness are characterized by a very limited sense of self-awareness. These Souls are typically very joyous, very innocent, and can bring great love to those who are close to them. However, these Souls are also assumed to be characterized by some terms like cretinism, very low IQâs, mongolism, mental retardation, and the like. Souls that are de-evolved can also have the above conditions due to karmic causes and thus, experience great and humiliating limitations and some of them can even go about creating great disturbances for other people.
The Consensus State
This state correlates astrologically to Saturn, because of the underlying desire to conform to the consensus of any society, culture, tribe, or country. There are three subdivisions within the consensus state, each one reflects the ongoing evolution of a Soul through the entire evolutionary state. The root desire that propels the evolution of the Soul forward within this consensus state from the first subdivision through the third is characterized by the desire to âget ahead of the systemâ, or get ahead of the consensus society that they belong to.
1st Subdivision of the Consensus State
Souls within the first subdivision of the consensus state are characterized by a limited sense of self-awareness, essentially limited to the time and space that they occupy; and yet they are incredibly self-righteous relative to the values, moralities, consensus religion of the existing society of birth, how life is interpreted according to those beliefs, the judgments issued because of those beliefs, etc. There is no ability to separate themselves from any of this.
2nd Subdivision of the Consensus State
The reality for the Souls within the second subdivision of the consensus state is still totally defined by the consensus of society like in the first subdivision; yet by desiring to get ahead, the Soul must expand its personal awareness of the nature of the dynamics of how the society it is a part of is put together. The Soul thus becomes more aware of âothersâ, of its surrounding community, of the country it lives in, as well as some differences between their societies and other societies in terms of values, moralities, religions, etc.
3rd Subdivision of the Consensus State
Within the third subdivision of the consensus state, the Soulâs personal awareness has now expanded to the point of being aware of the totality of the community and society that it belongs to, and of the country that it lives within as well as a progressive awareness of other countries, cultures, and of the relativity of moralities, values, religions, etc. However, within this subdivision, the self-righteousness born out of conformity is still sustained: âwe are right, and they are wrongâ, which makes the consensus state correlate to what is called ânationalismâ.
The Individuated State
The individuated state correlates astrologically to Uranus, because the Soul now desires to liberate or rebel against the consensus state from which it is now evolving away from. Souls in this evolutionary state inwardly feel âdifferentâ from the majority of the society and country of birth. The Souls now begin to question the assumptions that most people hold dear to their heart that correlate to what ârealityâ is and is not.
Through independent thinking and investigating all kinds of different ways of understanding life, including ideas, beliefs, and philosophies from other lands and cultures, the Soulsâ consciousness and personal awareness will be increasingly expanded.
1st Subdivision of the Individuated State
In this subdivision, the Soul will typically try to âcompensateâ for its inner feeling of being different from the consensus by trying to appear ânormalâ. This compensation manifests because, after all, the consensus is where the Soul has just been and thus, constitutes a sense of security, as opposed to the inner feeling of being detached and different.
The Soul will nonetheless be questioning everything deep within themselves and progressively distance itself from the consensus and begin to form relationships with other alienated Souls just like itself.
2nd Subdivision of the Individuated State
The second subdivision of the individuated state is where the underlying archetype of Uranus as it correlates to rebellion is at its highest. The rebellion is so extreme that the Soul has now âthrown offâ almost any idea or philosophy that has come before, at any level of reality.
The Souls tend to exhibit a deep fear of integrating into society in any way and therefore, usually hang out in the edge of the society so as to reinforce their sense of personal righteousness which is defined by their alienation from the consensus. This will continue until some point of time when they realize that their fear of integrating into reality or society is nothing more than a fear and hence, begin to make the effort to integrate back into society, but with their individuality intact.
3rd Subdivision of the Individuated State
In this third subdivision, the Soul begins to manifest within society or reality as a truly unique and gifted person, from the viewpoint of the consensus. The Souls at this point learn to integrate their unique gift or capacity within the consensus to help the consensus evolve as well â they are now aware of the entire world and the relativity of beliefs, values, moralities, etc.
The Spiritual State
The spiritual state correlates astrologically to Neptune because now the root desire becomes to consciously know, not just believe in, but âto know and unite with the Source of All Thingsâ. Progressively in this state, the very centre of gravity within the Soulâs consciousness shifts from the subjective ego to the Soul itself.
1st Subdivision of the Spiritual State
The Soul progressively becomes aware of just how small it is as compared with the increasing universal dimensions that are occurring within its consciousness, which is exactly the naturally humbling archetype that allows the centre of gravity to gradually shift within the Soulâs consciousness from the subjective ego to the Soul itself.
The Soul begins gradually to commit itself to the desire to reunite with the Source through different spiritual practices or various forms of work that all correlate to being of service to the larger whole in some way.
In the first subdivision, the Soul becomes progressively aware of all that it needs to improve upon within itself: it is now aware of all its imperfections and therefore can become highly self-critical and feel that they are not good enough or not yet ready to do the task that it is being inwardly directed to do.
2nd Subdivision of the Spiritual State
In this subdivision, the shift in the centre of gravity within consciousness tends to manifest like a rubber band, wherein the gravity point keeps going back and forth from the subjective ego to the Soul.
The problem that may generate within this subdivision is that the subjective ego can be fuelled in such a way that the Soul feels more evolved that it actually is, which will lead to various degrees of âspiritual delusions of grandeurâ from an egocentric and Soul point of view. This is one among different kinds of egocentric impurity remaining within the Soul that must be purged. As the Soul evolves through this subdivision, it finally realizes the nature of this root impurity, experienced as a guilt, and will create its own downfall to atone for that guilt.
3rd Subdivision of the Spiritual State
In the final subdivision of the spiritual state, the Soul is finally and firmly identified with that which has created it: The Source of All Things. The elimination of any remaining separating desires within the Soul will be the main focus in this final subdivision.
Now the Soul inwardly feels and knows that it is here to do some kind of work on behalf of the Source; the consciousness of the Soul is entirely structured to give to others, and to give purely without any ulterior agenda or motive involved. Such Souls are naturally humble and have no desire whatsoever for any kind of acclaim to their ego.
The above way of classification of Soulâs evolution stages is of course only one among different methods that I know (or not know). But the thing is, whatever the method one uses, one cannot determine which evolutionary condition exists for any Soul by simply looking at the astrological birth chart alone. Usually, observation and interaction with the interested person would be necessary for such determination to be made.
Sources:
- Jeffrey Wolf Green, âNeptune: Whispers From Eternityâ, School of Evolutionary Astrology, 2014.
The Sacred Journey 