Seven Paths of the Soul – Die Quelle

Translation of a chapter from “The Soul Family – Meaning and Structure of the Relationships between Souls” (page 258 ff)
Causal High Teacher: Die Quelle (The Source)
German original title “Die Seelenfamilie – Sinn und Struktur seelischer Beziehungen”
von Varda Hasselmann und Frank Schmolke, © 2001 Goldmann Verlag
Translation: Dr. Torsten Sohns
Editorial support: Bill Getman
Translation authorized by Varda Hasselmann, Nov 2019

The Seven Paths of the Soul

The Seven Sequences form the main aspect of the internal structure in each soul family. These are the seven Paths:

1. Path of Touch (1) – Inspiration Axis

2. Path of Knowing (2) – Expression Axis

3. Path of Strength (3) – Action Axis

4. Path of Form (4) – Assimilation Axis

5. Path of Longing (5) –  Expression Axis

6. Path of Silence (6) – Inspiration Axis

7. Path of Search (7) – Action Axis

You ask about the inner structure of each soul family (translator’s note: entity) and about the functions that this structure possesses as a whole and in its sub-aspects. We have already hinted elsewhere and at other times (Archetypes of the Soul, pages 37-41) that within the soul family, the number of 7 energies and its continuous sequences play an important role. Because no soul family contains all seven essences, the structure of the seven paths joins the two, three, or rarely four essences that form a soul family. Thus, it becomes possible for a “warrior” to follow the path of silence by his position within the soul family, or a “priest” the path of knowledge, a “king” the path of touch, a “sage” the path of strength.

But one thing is common in both the path and the role of the soul: the seven paths also correspond in their principles to the characteristics of the seven basic energies.

Thus, each one of you within his soul family is not only characterized by his essential soul role and the associated tasks assigned to him, which he performs in his own way and fills with self-responsibility, but also by the further shaping of his position in the structure of his whole entity, which determines his path.

The paths are valid as such both in the incarnate, materialized state of a soul and in the discarnate, immaterial state. This means that a soul will follow its path and maintain its quality in its energy pattern, even while it sojourns on the astral plane – either between each incarnation or following its final manifestation on Earth.

At the same time, it means that the plus and minus poles of the paths only develop their dynamics in the incarnate state. In the non-physical sphere, they do not exist. The minus pole is always an expression of a fear of not being able to live the plus pole sufficiently or satisfactorily. It represents the attempt to offer a replacement for the desired. Like the other poles within a soul pattern, the field of oscillation between the two poles contributes to a liveliness and thus to individual vitality as well as to the necessary development of the personality of a human being. And, as with all other poles of a soul pattern, it is a mistake to believe that you can avoid touching the minus pole, or that you should want to strive for this avoidance as a goal of development.

A single soul, which is absolutely unique in its existential quality and whose uniqueness remains guaranteed by a number of different factors, follows a path that has already been followed by billions of other souls on the one hand, but never by this soul with its special concerns and individual experience. So the path is walked by many, and yet everyone walks it differently. For every soul has its own unique experiences, as it takes one unfoldment step after another.

A path, as it can be described in the specific definition as one of the seven paths, has a final destination. Each of the seven paths has its own destination, but they are close to each other. The respective path connects two aspects of an experience.

While one aspect is transcendent and transpersonal, the other is immanent and personal. The steps on a path, for example on the sixth path, the Path of Silence, lead an incarnate soul through an immense number of individual silence experiences to a maximum and optimum of inner silence as it can be experienced in the incarnate state. And at the same time this maximum and optimum is as similar as possible to the silence experienced later in the discarnate state.

Achieving such an optimum and maximum is the destination of all paths. It is inexorably sought and cannot be missed. However, it only becomes visible and tangible at the moment of the temporal end of a millennia-long cycle of incarnation. That is why we speak of a final ecstasy. It closes every incarnation path by reaching the destination.

When this endpoint is reached, the soul has arrived. There are no further steps to be taken in the physical state. The journey is not over, however. The earthly destination has been achieved. The transcendental and transpersonal destination is only now visible.

It is as if someone is looking for the way to a certain city and – having arrived there – he learns that there is a new, worthwhile place in it which he could seek and reach and which he can only wish for now, since he knew nothing about it before. So the path is continued even after the very last physical death of a soul, whether in the third territory of the astral world or later in the realm of existence of the causal world of consciousness.

We were talking about ecstasy. For to reach the destination after such a long lived time, to recognize it, to enjoy it, fills the soul in the moment when it lets go of the last of its human bodies, with an out-of-self ecstasy that is truly indescribable. It brings with it joy, fulfillment and perfection; in the case of the sixth path of silence, for example, a detachment and relaxation that has never before been accessible during an incarnation cycle – not in any of the possible states of being within the physical or astral worlds.

Path 1 – Path of Touch

Minus Pole: Symbiosis – Plus Pole: Intimacy

The first, and then every first soul in the Sequence of Seven of a Release, is dedicated to the Path of Touch. This means that within the soul family it is responsible for the connection, the contact and the communication between the members of its soul family. And such a soul will walk its path by perfecting itself in the multiple aspects of touch. Tenderness and intimacy are extremely important and satisfying for a person on the first soul path. By this we do not only mean the touching of two bodies, the caressing with the hands or on the skin. Such a person can also touch, move and lead others to themselves with looks, thoughts, actions and feelings and even with its charisma.

Path One merges whenever it is given the opportunity. For the touches we speak of go far beyond any physicality. The path of touch is valid in all the worlds of the soul, from its creation to its end. Like all other paths, it outlasts the cycle of incarnations and manifests itself until all boundaries between former individuals, but also between soul families, are abolished on levels that we cannot describe to you here. The path of touch encompasses all contact possibilities that souls know with one another.

A soul with the structure of One unites that which strives apart or which diverges – everything that would not easily come together if the principle of path One did not provide for connection.

All lives and all existences of a soul on the path 1, the principle of Touch, are directed towards strengthening, refining and sometimes also patching up the network that is already knotted.

All souls on the path 1 will make themselves available to bring together those who seek each other. Everything that is separated is to be united. They can accomplish this merely through their existence. But if an active effectiveness is added to the unconscious effect, it is not of harm. A soul that knows its path within its family can do beneficial work if it is aware of its possibilities, its desires and longings and also its tasks.

The experience of an orgasmic emotional turmoil that bursts all imagination concludes the path of touch.

Path 2 – Path of Knowing

Minus Pole: Greed for Knowledge – Plus Pole: Certainty

Souls on the path of knowing with position 2 within the Sequence of Seven have dedicated themselves to the task of finding out everything necessary within the framework of their soul family and its projects. With the information they seek and receive, they create the prerequisites for placing the tasks of their community of souls in an overarching context on the one hand and filling them with an awareness of continuity on the other.

Knowing in this sense does not only mean factual and expert knowledge, which is indeed also important in non-body dimensions, but above all also the awareness of the regularities of cooperation within the individual essences and paths, as well as with the cousins of associated other soul families, who can work together in large project groups.

Thus all souls on the Path of Knowing are the messengers and informants, the contributors of information between the individual members of their own soul family, but also within the larger association of widely related soul structures.

Souls with path energy 2, unlike souls on path 1, the path of touch, are primarily oriented to penetrate the soul membranes and to create connections that promote the awareness of individuality and multiplicity that nevertheless remains assigned to the interests of the AllOne. Energy 1 wants to connect and dissolve differences. Energy 2 knows about the function and the necessity of twoness and also about the lust for difference. Twoness means equal rights, equal exchange, switching between what is equal and what is different. Above all, however, a soul on the Path of Knowing wants to strengthen the forces of the mental. It mediates between the spirit of the AllOne and the absolute individuality of the human soul, be it in the fragmented state of the individual body or in the astral realm – or even later within the greater soul organizations in the causal world.

The certainty that the Spirit of the Cosmic AllOne, with all its integrative power, is constantly available in all spaces, in all times, and beyond space and time, gives souls the courage, through the path of knowing, to engage in duality and thus to repeatedly leave the protective shell of the state of union. And for their companions these souls are also the most convincing mediators of the loving whole, of which they are certain.

With their certainty they strengthen the desperate; they lead the lost back to their homeland; they are the signposts in the landscapes of all uncertainty. They know because they know. Their treasure trove of possibilities to recombine the infinitely different in its diversity is inexhaustible. This capability to create a context of meaning from the information obtained and to transmit it shapes all souls on the Path of Knowing. And they also make their contribution on earth as people who feel called to find out and pass on everything that can promote the interests of their soul families.

We said that the paths not only complement the components of a soul family by expanding the energy spectrum, but above all bring an additional dimension into the structure. Through the Path, the holographic model becomes complete and viewable from all sides. You know that the soul role of the “artisan” in general, like a child, picks up and forgets information, plays with it and discards it in order to keep itself accessible for something new. However, this newness also comes from the disorderly, almost chaotic succession of ideas and realities that already exist. The path of knowing with its “artisanal” mental energy adds to this spectrum a dimension of perseverance and persistence, a calmness and firmness that Energy 2 would lack if it were only described by the soul role of the “artisan” with its different aspects and vivacious temperament. A cognition of immense luminosity crowns the end of this path.

Path 3 – Path of Strength

Minus Pole: Swaggering – Plus pole: Potency

The Path of Strength that souls follow with its warrior energy 3 is characterized by a powerful dynamic and by a great lust for movement. The principle of movement is to be understood both actively and passively. Souls with position 3 have the task to give impulses within their soul family and to set resting energies in motion. They are the ones who use their power to dynamize the siblings of their soul family. They have the strongest basic tension and can charge other souls on their own paths.

When such a charge becomes necessary, the souls with the energy 3, who walk the Path of Strength, are there to radiate themselves, to divert their excess energy and thus help others to a movement that alone can make real the realization of a potential, an idea, a project. Thus the souls on the Path of Strength are the active helpers who always make sure that nobody gets tired, that no undesirable stagnation occurs and that none of their soul siblings loses the courage to advance on their own Path just because, for example, they lack physical strength in their bodies. And if there is no body, the souls with energy 3 are always ready to increase the vibration of their companions and to regulate the frequencies in such a way that the total energy of the family can increase.

The Path of Strength is a path of exchanging power-giving energy for the souls who have chosen it. Therefore, they must be aware that they have great reserves in the body and without the body, which should always be diverted to renew themselves. They are the strong, the powerful, the active, and they must therefore always shake and jiggle their energy bodies vigorously so that new energy can flow to them from the cosmos.

Among them are many who on earth can transmit energy with their hands and thus heal, but also musicians who elicit sounds – and thus vibrations – from an instrument with their hearts and hands, who strengthen the souls of their families and move people to dance. However, a soul on the Path of Strength does not have a very playful temperament. It takes its task particularly seriously and concentrates very strongly on being at the disposal of something that is supposed to convey power to a larger whole. But how this happens is up to it – whether with words, deeds, thoughts or contact. Strength can be donated anywhere and at any time. It should only bring joy. The energy of the Third Path is always uplifting and strengthening. At the end of this path of the soul there is an ecstatic release.

Path 4 – Path of Form

Minus pole: Pedantry – Plus pole: Appropriateness

The path of form is the path of a soul that pours its own existence into a form. It designs this form itself with great awareness and willingness to renounce the superfluous, so that the essential emerges. It also knows how to fill the world, the reality, with new forms. In doing so, it is not only concerned with creating something new, but also with discovering the shapeability of reality as such.

The Path of Form, Energy 4, always encompasses formlessness, as well. These two aspects of the path complement each other. They bring with them the fact that a person who devotes themself to this Path with all their soul must also engage in a confrontation with the gain and loss of form, with the dissolution and new formation of form, with its shaping and destruction. Those who follow the path of form will not be able to hold on to what they once formed and shaped. The memory remains, the knowledge is there, but the transformation of what already exists will always stimulate the shaper to move from a rest position to a new vibration and to derive a new rest from the newly developed vibration and tension.

The Path of Form, the Fourth Path, as if in a shaped and yet formlessly large vessel, collects all the aspects of reality that can be brought into a concrete, mental, spiritual or physical form. And this includes nine tenths of all phenomena of the All Whole.

A human being who takes the Fourth Path is therefore concerned with grasping inner-worldly realities, which it is preparing to bring into a new form and thus to a new understanding. Since it has already developed skills in all its incarnations and gained experience in doing so, it will not be difficult for it to find again and again a pulsation or vibration appropriate to the moment and then a suitable new resting point in its current life.

A human being on the Path of Form has a tendency to hold on to forms and yet is constantly practicing to remain flexible in its choice of forms. The changing contents, even if the changes are minimal, call for a new form. The design concerns the world of thoughts and the world of relationships, the shaping of life, the form of dwelling, even the physical appearance, i.e. weight, gestures, facial expressions and clothing. Most people are hardly aware of these new forms and tend to be sluggish and careless. A soul on the path of form, however, always has – even in younger soul-age – a conscious feeling and an urgent need to find the suitable form in all things and for all things.

Energy 4 is a framing force that gives the moment an apparent duration. It resembles the desire to decorate a tasty dish on a plate in the awareness that the arrangement of food should only serve to destroy the just created work of art through consumption. But if the food were not prepared in this particular form, it would have a different effect on the organism as a whole, even if many people do not want to acknowledge it.

Path 4 is not a mental, but a pragmatic, functional, instinctive Path, which is not characterized by thinking about things, but by immediate action and its emergence and decay. Here the abstract combines with the practical. What matters is the application and implementation of an idea – with an awareness of the insight that this implementation also carries the dissolution within itself. By this we do not mean an immediate or total dissolution, but often only a minimal, but nevertheless conscious transformation of the existing. Everyone who takes this Fourth Path experiences an awakening in the end.

Path 5 – Path of Longing

Minus Pole: Worry – Plus Pole: Security

This path is characterized by a never-ending longing, coupled with a confidence that the longing will be satisfied. It is not the search that drives the soul with this energy, but the longing. It does not want to find, but to be nourished and to feel secure. It offers food and satisfies the hunger of others. That saturates it. It tries to find out which food is needed by whom and when it is to be administered.

A person on the path of longing strives for loving attention, devotional mindfulness. A soul with the Energy 5 will always bring up this approachable mindfulness in order to let the right thing flow at the right moment. The soul that walks this path constantly listens for the messages of longing and need that emanate from itself and from its soul siblings. It registers hunger and thirst in all their manifold manifestations and strives for opportunities to alleviate need.

We are not talking about a path of concern, because concern and worry lead to grief and a reduction in the energy frequency. The effort is directed towards satisfying longing. It makes an effort without effort becoming a burden.

A soul with Energy 5 within its family is responsible for ensuring that those who for some reason are separated from the eternally bubbling Source will receive food and drink – if necessary through a tenderly offered infant bottle if they are too frightened, too weak, too sick or too shy to approach the Source in its overwhelming fullness. Thus a soul on the path of longing is able to give security to its soul siblings, but also to other people whom it comes close to in the course of its many incarnations.

This security, however, will not be achievable without communication. In this way it differs from the Touch in Path 1. In order to experience loving care, it is necessary not to simply guess the needs of the needy, precisely because projections occur all too often in the incarnate state.

The questioning and examination must contain two things: On the one hand, the inner experience of one’s own neediness and state of mind is the yardstick for the necessity of commitment to one’s fellow man. In a variation of a proverb it could be said: “Do to the other what you want to be done to you”. On the other hand, true security will only occur when the other person feels perceived and is not ignored in the possibility of expressing his need. So everyone who progresses on the Path of Longing must learn not to equate his own longing with the longing of his fellow human beings.

The one who offers wise opportunities for people to talk about their need, their distress and their longings, or to communicate them in other ways, is the one who most sustainably satisfies the longing and establishes a contact that leads to deep satisfaction. We call the final ecstasy of this path fulfillment.

Path 6 – Path of Silence

Minus Pole: Speechlessness – Plus Pole: Tranquility

Those who follow the Path of Touch are responsible for all forms of contact between the siblings of a soul family. Souls on the Path of Silence also follow a path that leads them into the realm of mutuality. But they connect in a different way. They come into touch without contact. They unite without having to overcome twosomeness. It is silence that serves as a bridge between the self and other souls, between the self and nature, between the self and life, between the self and the AllOne.

While all other soul paths are active and busy paths, the Path of Silence can be described as a form of progress that gets its dynamics from statics. By this we mean a strong vibration on the spot. This creates an energy field that manifests itself differently and has other effects than an energy field that arises through change and movement, through work, effort, research, shaping, search or fusion. Silence fills the interstices. It fills all gaps. Silence flows, without making itself noticeable, into everything that cannot be shaped by action.

Those who follow the path of silence will train themselves in the course of their different forms of existence to listen to the sound of the non-existent. Each soul that has chosen this path possesses an extremely fine sensorium for the unsayable and the unrealizable – for that which is and yet is not. Silence permeates all membranes that separate the fragment from the totality of the soul family. And silence is also a sliding fluid that allows the many hundreds of individual souls of a family, like ball bearings, to play harmoniously with each other with the least possible friction.

Silence soothes. It smoothes and heals cracks that can occur between individual soul fragments in conflict with each other. And whenever a soul on the path of silence joins people who are in torment or quarrel, it exerts a pleasantly relaxing, clarifying and connecting effect, without entering itself into the conflict-laden structure.

As human beings, the souls who take the Sixth Path are engaged in seeking, finding and defining their own center and personal silence. What is to be understood by this can vary from level to level and also for each soul role. Depending on the soul pattern, silence can be achieved as stopping a movement, as pausing in the flow of thoughts or as filled ‘acoustic silence’. In this sense, those who listen to the splash of water have access to silence. Listening to one’s own breath, to the sound of trees or to the heartbeat of a loved one opens the gates to the realm of silence as does listening to music. Those who sit quietly at a lake and involuntarily experience a quality of contemplation that is unknown to them in everyday life, dive down into other regions of silence that are within themselves and which allow them to merge with their soul family.

The Sixth Path is a priestly path, and many walk it by choosing their soul patterns to engage with active, action-ready and restless elements. Even souls who, for a special reason, consider it necessary or beneficial to manifest themselves in an active, busy and communicative way during their incarnation know this inner silence. The Sixth Path always keeps open a connection to dimensions that are by no means incessantly present or easily accessible within the earthly and physical. It is the dimensions of nothingness, absence and emptiness that assert their claim to perception under the law of polarity – on earth as well as in the All Whole. At the end of this path there is the ecstasy of redemption.

Path 7 – Path of Search

Minus Pole: Unrest – Plus Pole: Drive

The path of search is a path of confusion and unraveling.

He who seeks will always seek. And if he stiffens himself to the desire to find, his search will stagnate or freeze. The path of the search is a restless path, which keeps the seekers always in motion. Restlessness and dissatisfaction constantly alternate with calmness and satisfaction. But as soon as the seeker tries to devote himself to rest and enjoy contentment, a new search begins and he must leave behind what he has just won. There is no staying. Nothing remains as it was. What seemed to be found is lost again, and what was certain becomes uncertain, clarity becomes confusion, certainty becomes uncertainty, reason changes into unreason and vice versa.

Within its family the soul is responsible for a dynamizing creative drive on the Path of Search – the Path 7 with its royal, impatient energy quality. Souls who are constantly searching also invite others not to be content. They encourage all their soul siblings not to rest until the individual goal and mission or task of the soul family have been achieved. They drive development and growth and ensure that no one sinks into a swamp of complacent, fake satisfaction.

The seeker must and wants to go on and on. But he often feels driven and wants to have arrived already – like a child who at the beginning of a long journey cannot bring the spatial idea into the concept of being on the move and says shortly after departure: “I want to be there now”. The seeker is only there when he has arrived. And he doesn’t always know what he is looking for, even though he is often convinced of it. But all seekers encounter the painful experience that causes them to have to say afterwards: “I have searched and found, and only then did I find out that what I found was not what I was looking for”.

All this restlessness, the being driven, the confusion and insecurity, the constant striving for a goal that is hardly recognizable and yet has to be striven for, is lovingly balanced at the end of the day for the person whose soul treads the Path of Search. The eternal seeker is truly delighted when he finds that at the end of his search, the result is so comprehensive, so overwhelming, so dazzlingly bright, so disentangled, that he could never have set himself this end as a goal with all of his spiritual effort.

This is not simply what you imagine enlightenment to be, but a revelation of the aspired goal of grasping the AllOne in its regularities bestowed upon the seeker. This can happen even before the last life, if he is both willing to behold and able to bear the ultimate discovery towards the end of his incarnations. For when he beholds and unveils what he has found, and at the same time has been found himself, it is like a blazing flash of lightning that strikes down one while it flashes through the other, irrevocably changing him and still keeping him alive, although his existence will never be the same again. At the end of the seventh path the soul experiences a tremendous radiance.

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