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The Soul is both that which is sought and that which is seeking – it is the source of the meaning we so desperately search for and what we most fundamentally are. If we quiet ourselves, we can hear it speak ancient wisdom from the past and whisper about an age to come – an impending kingdom of Soul.
For Plato, the Soul was the doorway to the ideal realm – the gate to eternity. For Descartes, it was the one thing that could not be doubted. For Blavatsky, it was the unifying glue of opposites, vibrating outwards into bodies, flesh and worlds. Indeed, the Soul has been a muse for the philosopher, a wellspring for the poet, a stumbling block to the scientist and, most recently, the trumpet of a new age to come in Seifer and Vieweg’s book, When the Soul Awakens. Recounting the history of the Soul (and the human species), Seifer and Vieweg chart a trajectory into the future – a future where the ethnic, sexual and geographic distinctions of the flesh will be washed away, revealing the unified soul beneath.
It is fitting that our guides to the Soul are, themselves, soulmates. Vieweg worked at the Lucis Trust (custodians of the work of Alice Bailey) and taught esoteric wisdom, while Seifer was a political activist and Peace Core servant with articles published in The New York Times. Somewhere amid their vocational busyness they found each other and settled down in Northern Virginia. Their spiritual journeys soon grew and intertwined like great trees, leading them to co-author When the Soul Awakens in 2009. They have both been involved in the esoteric movement – as teachers and as students – for over 40 years.
God did not die in the 20th century. He simply went into hiding – hiding within the Soul of the individual. As traditional religion began to shrink in the gory aftermath of two world wars, Western society turned inwards, adopting the slogan ‘spiritual but not religious.’ According to Seifer and Vieweg, the individual Soul took over from churches and sacraments in housing the Almighty, as the Western ‘self’ discovered God within. The Soul (rather than the body, ego or personality) is our true self as well as our source of meaning.
Just as bodies can grow and material species can evolve, so too can the Soul progress. Once we accept that we fundamentally are a Soul, we can then begin to refine and purify that soul’s personality and worldly ties. Pain is crucial to this process – suffering is the ‘vale of Soul-making’, revealing that we are not here for pleasure but to evolve through our growth pains into something more. Darkness is ‘the womb of light.’ Those who, through multiple reincarnations, have begun to purify and realise their inner divinity are often called saints, while those who have completed the process are called Masters of Wisdom and continue to offer help to us today.
As we increasingly identify with our Soul, all physical and material distinctions (for example, between ethnicities, genders or religious practices) fade, leading to world peace and revealing that all things are lovingly unified at the soul level. Thus, the movement in was merely a prelude to a movement back out, as Soul weds us to one another and all things. We are but ‘a cell in the body of God’ and must move beyond self-consciousness into cosmic consciousness.
While this cosmic consciousness was once the epiphany of the holy and the few, it will be grasped by the masses in a new age that is dawning, leading to spiritual freedom and the evolution of our species. Humankind shall soon mature into the fifth kingdom of the Soul, brushing up against the divine and indivisible unity beyond the world that cannot be tamed by reason but only aroused by the poets, as encapsulated by Walt Whitman: ‘I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before, or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.’
If Seifer and Vieweg are correct, then the physical spaces between us are but illusions. The distinctions between self and other, enemy and friend, male and female, gay and straight, abuser and abused, black and white, East and West, rich and poor would all fade and fuse in the melting pot of Soul. If true (and believed), this would likely have major implications for our lives, ranging from our personal circumstances and interactions all the way up to government foreign policy: ‘All for one and one for all’, would cry a billion voices in perfect unison.
Of course, the truth or the veracity of these ideas will make itself known soon enough. The authors insist that a fifth age of Soul is drawing near, when the spiritual truths of the ancient Masters will be revealed to novice and saint alike. Such an age will not come like a thief in the night but rather – due to Seifer and Viewegs’ prophesy – like a long-announced house guest expecting our welcome and preparations.
