Enneagram Studies and the Science of the Antahkarana

“Why is it that the floodgates of what is to the modern world new esoteric information, are open?  Why were they first opened by H.P.B. [Helena P. Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society in 1875], and why has the flood of teaching of occult information continued up to the present time?  It is the esoteric rule [to keep silence on these matters]; and so rigidly was this rule held that in ancient times infringement or breaking of this rule was punished either by severe discipline, or even in degenerate times by death.  Originally the death was occult death: deprivation of teaching, and deprivation of association with the teacher.  That law finally became construed among the ancients closest to our time as calling for death of the body… At any rate, it showed how strongly and earnestly the ancients of all time held to the rule of occult silence.  With the downfall of the Roman Empire in the West, a new cosmic cycle began, affecting the Earth also.  The restriction of civilization to separate parts of the Earth came to an end.  There followed the Dark Ages as the preparation, the embryonic time, for a new birth.  The discovery of the new worlds, the immense increase in scientific knowledge,  the gradual and increasing collapse of exoteric religious feeling, the wanderings of philosophers in searching for truth: all were symptoms or phenomena of the opening of a new age… This called for very strenuous action on the part of the Guardians of the ancient wisdom to give new light to mankind, to guide it through the opening of the new age until the new psychology became established and was able to take care of itself… A new or rather an old teaching was to be presented anew, in new cloaks, new garments, fitted to the understanding of the minds of mankind, of men entering this new age… A new installment of the same knowledge in new guises, new cloaks, new presentations, understandable by the psychology of the modern mind was required.  It began and has continued.  One of these days the gates will close.  The installment then will have been given.  And for the time being the keynotes for the new age will be sufficient to ring down the succeeding cycles, until in the course of human history a new installment for a then new age will again be called for” (see online The Dialogues of G. de Purucker, “Supplement to KTMG Papers: Two“).

One of these old teachings that has recently been presented in new guises or garments in the last century and a half by teachers such as H.P. Blavatsky and Alice A. Bailey is that of the antahkarana, or Rainbow Bridge.  Although one can find references to this phenomenon in numerous texts, the two from which I primarily reference are in the Alice A. Bailey corpus and can be found easily at most metaphysical bookstores and online through the Lucis Trust: Education in the New Age (pp. 143-149) and The Rays and the Initiation  (pp. 441-530).  To begin, the antahkarana can be translated from the Sanskrit as “internal organ of perception.”  It is the bridge of awareness and energy that connects the Spiritual Triad (Atma-Buddhi-Manas, or the Three Higher Centers of the Enneagram) to the Lower Three-fold Personality (Physical-Astral-Causal, or the Three Centers of Intelligence).  Building this bridge is part of the journey of initiation, and according to most occult sources must be built consciously, from the ground up so to speak, out of what is known in Sanskrit as chitta, or mental substance.  In occult teachings such as the ones mentioned above, it is said that this bridge must be in place before one takes or transits the major spiritual initiations.

In point of fact, the antahkarana is the Path, symbolically speaking.  That is why there is an ancient, and rather paradoxical, occult saying: “Before a man can tread the Path, he must become that Path himself.”  The antahkarana creates continuity of consciousness between the Monad or Divine Spark at the center of our Being, through the Soul or Causal Body, down through the three lower bodies or planes of consciousness, all the way to the physical level of reality.  It helps to awaken the intuitive faculties and relieves the practitioner of the sense of separateness and the fear of death.  In consequence, one becomes more sensitive and responsive to impressions from higher planes and more telepathic.

In occult studies a distinction is made between the sutratma, or “thread-soul,” and the antahkarana.  The former is that line of energy projected down into the lower worlds by the Monad or Divine Spark, and that anchors the evolving being in a body clothed in dense substance.  The latter is built by the soul-infused personality for the purpose of re-anchoring itself in the Upper Worlds.  Having said all of this, it is important to remember that this bridge or channel is made of subtle material and cannot usually be seen, heard or felt by normal sense-faculties.  It is more a living and luminous thought-form, a subjective thread of consciousness that is called the Rainbow Bridge because ultimately it is composed of the colors of all Seven Rays.  Now, what does all of this have to do with the Enneagram and the Holy Ideas?

I believe that the Enneagram is, among other things, an occult map and tool to guide souls through the process of attaining those graded series of expansions of consciousness known as initiations in the ancient Mystery Schools, and that each Holy Idea is the key to building for the corresponding Enneatype what I have just briefly described above--the Rainbow Bridge of awareness and energy that serves to bridge the Personality, Soul and Monad.  From an occult perspective, one of the problems inherent in the human constitution is the natural gap existing in all of us between the lower and higher mind.  Without bridging this gap there is no easy access to intuition and the perception of the higher worlds--one remains stuck at the level of sense perception and lower cognition, the latter being, as we know from Enneagram studies, merely a reflection in the mental center of intelligence of the Divine Mind or Higher Intelligence.  What then is a Holy Idea, from the point of view of Enneagram studies?  Some of the finest definitions and descriptions of the phenomenology of a Holy Idea come from the writings of A.H. Almaas and Sandra Maitri.  In Chapter 2 of the book Facets of Unity, Almaas says that “each Holy Idea is a particular direct perception of reality as a specific characteristic or facet of the unobscured perception of what is.  The nine Ideas, then, provide us with a comprehensive view of objective reality” (p. 6).  In The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram, Maitri says the Holy Ideas “form the cornerstone of our understanding of the spiritual dimension of the Enneagram.  The nine Holy Ideas are nine different direct perceptions of reality, when it is perceived without the filter of the personality, so they are nine different enlightened perspectives.  The use of the word idea may be misleading here, since we usually think of an idea as a mental concept.  In the language of the enneagram, however, idea refers to a particular perception of reality, a vantage point from which it is seen, experienced, and understood.  It is important to clearly grasp that the Holy Ideas are not particular spiritual experiences or states of consciousness, but rather are views of reality freed from the prejudices of personality” (p. 10).  

Almaas goes on to note that Oscar Ichazo not only views the work with the Holy Ideas as necessary for freedom from the fixations or chief features, but also that they can be seen as “psycho-catalyzers” needed for the work of “psycho-alchemy” (p. 7).  Each Holy Idea is a configuration of energy perfectly suited to the Enneatype in question, and is the antidote to what Claudio Naranjo calls the “cognitive error” at the core of the fixation.  My thesis is that, from the occult point of view, they can also be construed as “psycho-bridges” that provide the “keys to the Kingdom,” so to speak.   The important point to remember in all of this is that the cognitive error or bias that we call the fixation is like a knot in the lower mind that not only occludes the light of the higher mind from awareness and embodiment but, even worse, prevents the bridge to be constructed that would permanently link the upper and lower worlds and create that continuity of consciousness necessary for the taking or transiting of the higher initiations (Third through Seventh).  Here it should be noted that the phenomenology of the first three initiations, as given in various Theosophical writings correlates quite well with the graded order of work on self commonly reported by Enneagram teachers and students.  The First Initiation (1.0) has to do with dis-identification from and mastery over the physical plane and body, and correlates to the level of the instinctual subtypes.  As Helen Palmer so often says in her workshops ad professional trainings, without damming up the flood of compulsive, instinctual subtype behaviors, we have no energy left over for spiritual transformation.  The Second Initiation (2.0) has to do with dis-identification from and mastery over the astral (or emotional) plane and body, and correlates to the level of the passions and virtues.  Sandra Maitri’s latest book, The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues, brilliantly articulates this realm of personal, interpersonal and transpersonal experience.  The Third Initiation (3.0) has to do with the dis-identification from and mastery over the causal (or mental) plane and body, and correlates to the level of the fixations and Holy Ideas.  In Theosophical terms, one becomes an Aspirant or Probationary Disciple at the First Initiation, an Accepted Disciple at the Second, and an Initiate at the Third.  I won’t discuss the higher initiations at this point, except to say that at the Fourth one becomes an Adept, at the  Fifth a Master, at the Sixth a Chohan, and at the Seventh a Mahachohan.  Again, the first two are considered preliminary, or “initiations of the threshold,” and only with the Third are we in the realm of major or solar initiatory experience.  Using this evolutionary and descriptive framework, it is my understanding that the vast majority of Enneagram practitioners are working somewhere between the First and Third Initiations, because from an occult perspective virtually every person who is consciously on his or her spiritual path has taken the First Initiation in this, or more likely a previous, lifetime, and the information symbolically encoded in the Enneagram is not likely to be useful to a very advanced being such as a fully realized Adept (4.0), or perfected Master of the Wisdom (5.0).

It is important to understand that according to the Ageless Wisdom, initiations are experienced not by the personality or character structure, but by the soul.  As the Tibetan master D.K. says, “Initiation is an achievement and an attained success of the soul which has at last succeeded in dominating the personality, and in manifesting its true nature…”  Furthermore, an initiatory grade once attained expands consciousness in a permanent way usually for several if not many lifetimes.   An initiation occurs when there has been a quantum and permanent jump in awareness or “soul perceptivity.” To use Don Richard Riso and Hudson’s “Levels of Development” model, an initiation might occur when the person has made conscious, purified and aligned the lower three-fold personality with its dominant Enneatype structure, and can now live out of the top three levels of his or her own developmental scheme.  Then with a combination of conscious work, right timing and Grace, the Soul emerges into the light of new and vaster awareness, with expanded powers of perception and action.