The Master within: As per a Rosicrucian

The Nature of the Master Within

A frater from England writes: "What is this Inner Self/Master Within I keep reading and hearing about? The Master Within seems to be a greater being in all respects than I am. This does not appeal to the reason, because why would a greater being be locked away inside by a lesser being?"

This frater's questions are very important, and show he has given the concept of the Master Within a great deal of contemplation. In order to answer his questions, let us first define Master Within. The Rosicrucian Man­ual states that the Master Within is the Inner Self, and the conscience is the Master's voice. The soul force brings into our being a Divine Intelligence, and the aggregate of this intelli­gence is our psychic body. In defining the Inner Self, the manual goes on to tell us that the Inner Self is the spiritual consciousness within the physical body. It has its own immaterial faculties and functions, and con­stitutes a separate form from the physical body in which it temporarily resides.

This consciousness constitutes our real being and is part of the Soul or the divine element of our existence. The spiritual con­sciousness is different in essence from the material body. The two are related, for they are both part of the same cosmic whole. However, matter and divine consciousness in humankind constitute two different realities working in harmonious parallel. The outer self with its material, physical consciousness is limited in the nature and quality of contact it can make. The inner self, the spiritual con­sciousness, is unlimited and in no way re­stricted by time or space, or by the nature and quality of material things.

The frater's second question concerns why a greater being is locked away inside by a lesser being. It must be stressed that the Mas­ter Within is not a "being" separate from us. In reality, it is one half of the expression of human form. It cannot be greater than we are, as it is what we are.

We are dual in nature. We are the physical body which is associated with conscious mind ... the outer self, which is limited. The second aspect of this duality is the psychic body, which is associated with Divine Mind, the Master Within. The psychic body is the Inner Self, and is unlimited. In the Seventh Degree we are told that . . . "the Master Within is there like a personal representative of God, as a part entity of the Cosmic Mind resident within man to direct him and man is then free to choose between what the Direc­tor says and what he himself wishes to do. We find, however, that as man has been falsely educated in material ways, he has been closing up the channels that bring him the direction from the Master Within and that he has been listening to the voices from with­out. So, when he comes to choose he bases his choice in nearly all things upon what he has learned from without."

In the Eighth Degree we learn that a baby is born with the ability to use the psychic and physical faculties equally well. Early on it stops using this ability and "loses" it. As a child is taught to overuse the material facul­ties and ignore the psychic ones, an unbal­anced development results. After that, we move steadily away from conscious com­munication with the Master Within. Fortu­nately, the Master Within continues to run our body, and communicate with us, occa­sionally, by what we term our "conscience." Since it is unlimited and not restricted by time and space, we can assume the Master Within continues "communicating" with that which is higher than itself.

It only seems that we keep the Master Within "locked away inside ourselves like a prisoner," as the frater puts it. Quite the contrary, the Master Within is free and unlimited. If anything is locked away it is our conscious selves, as we have separated our­selves from our Source. The first monograph of the Seventh Degree tells us that, "Material limitations can only confine matter; they cannot limit the cosmic manifestations and cannot hold the divine and infinite within their narrow boundaries."

When we separated ourselves from our Source we moved from pure, spiritual being to mundane being. Though it seems a con­tradiction, the purpose of the soul personal­ity incarnating in a physical body is to return to the source from which it separated itself. To understand this, perhaps it would help to think of the human being as a continuum, going from pure, spiritual being (the immate­rial) to mundane being (the material body), and then on again to pure, spiritual being. The material world is a phase through which the soul personality must move in its evolu­tion. As we move away from pure being, we add layer upon layer of material manifesta­tion, becoming more and more dense until a physical body is made manifest. The con­scious mind is associated with that most dense, outer layer-the physical body.

In order for conscious mind to be aware of Universal Mind, it must first become aware of the Master Within, which is the closest thing to pure being we can realize on our way to awareness of the Soul Essence. We do this by plowing through layer after layer of our own creation. By its very nature, density ob­scures. It is not easy for the conscious mind to see through these layers of density, so along the way we develop a false belief that it may be impossible to do.

We mentioned earlier that as children we were well aware of the Master Within. But, when we spoke of it, our parents called it imagination, and told us what we were expe­riencing did not really exist. We began adding layers of obscurity until, after awhile, we believed what we were told, and, indeed, the Master Within no longer existed in our reality. Now, as adults, we have to persevere through the shadows created by layer after layer of reality, to find that link with Soul ... that Master Within that we used to know so well. But, eventually, we do just that: we remove the veils of material manifestation, until we again experience the psychic self.

The Master Within assists us in removing the veils. It constantly presents us with opportunities to develop those positive aspects of itself that will draw us closer and closer to our perfection. As we move through physical self, to psychic self, to Soul, we get progressively closer to our Source. The phys­ical and psychic bodies may not be perfect, but the Soul is the perfect essence in human­kind. Therefore, in its evolution, the soul personality seeks to conform absolutely to the nature of the Soul. Each time the soul personality incarnates it conforms more with the Soul. More layers are removed, until that time a perfect balance is achieved within the psychic body and between the psychic and physical bodies, and we no longer need to incarnate in a material body. This is the goal of the soul personality. Once we are fully aware of our divinity, we will truly know the nature of the Master Within.