The building of the Antahkarana
Questions and answers
 with Benjamin Creme

Q. What is the correct building of the antahkarana? How is it done?

A. This science is not in the hands of humanity at the present moment. Maitreya has made it very simple. He has said: "The Self alone matters; you are that Self, an immortal being. I have come to teach the art of Self-realization." It is to do with awareness.

Putting it as simply as probably only He can, Maitreya says that we identify with the wrong aspect of ourselves. We do not identify with ourselves as the soul, as the Self but with our body; with what He calls the spirit, which is the energy aspect, the astral, etheric, the "shakti", the energy of the earth itself; and with the constructions of our mind, our thinking. All of these we identify with as if they were the Self, yet none of these is the Self. The Self stands back of them and observes through them.

The soul creates, again and again, a body which gradually, over eons of time, allows the Self to manifest totally, purely, unhindered, through its polar opposite, matter. By that point in time, the matter has been spiritualized, its vibrational rate lifted. In religious terminology, it has been "redeemed". That is why the Christ is called the Redeemer, the Holy Redeemer of men. I do not mean only for Christians. The Christ Principle is the redeeming principle. It is that principle which in life, in creation, informs its vehicle with its own consciousness, with the energy of consciousness, and, therefore, the energy of evolution. It is that growth of consciousness, that action of evolution upwards, through a refining of its nature to a higher and higher frequency, higher and higher vibration, that constitutes evolution itself. This leads to a gradual expansion of knowledge of what is and what might be; it is creative. This is the essence of the soul's nature: creativity itself.

Creation by its very nature presupposes that it is unfinished. Creation is movement, but the Self behind creation does not move. It is changeless, without movement, without any kind of reflex, simply observing creation. Before creation, there is the "Supreme Being" of the Self. Creation is the "becoming", as Maitreya puts it, the "becoming" of the Self. That "becoming" is the movement of life, the movement of creation, the discovery of what might be.

It is not a question of finding out in life, like a scientist, looking through a microscope and trying to find out how one cell interacts with another and so on. That is valuable on the physical plane, but it is limited. If you think that what you are seeing is all, the totality, you are missing a great movement and mystery. That is the problem for most scientists today. They are looking only at the physical plane surface of life. It is enormously valuable, do not misunderstand me; it is of tremendous benefit to health, the overcoming of disease, the understanding of the nature of the physical plane. But in terms of consciousness, in terms of the action of life itself in creation, it tells us very little. That is why we are ignorant. Given the nature of our science, we should be enormously endowed. In a way we are, but only in a very limited way. It is the lower concrete mind which is endowed. But without it we would not have the action of the higher mind. The higher mind can not function before the lower mind. Everything in its time.
You need meditation to bring you to contact with the soul and therefore with the consciousness of the soul. Meditation by its very nature starts the process of the building of the antahkarana.

Q. Why do you focus on the technical aspects and concepts of the science of the antahkarana from the Master DK so much when it seems so much easier to understand Maitreya's concepts about Self Realization?

A. Half of you will, I think, go home and say: "It was interesting in a way, but he didn't really tell us all that much about the antahkarana. He didn't tell us how to do it. He didn't go into technical details. That's what we need, techniques. Just give us the techniques and we will do it. Why does he say these abstract, non-technical things, these vague concepts, and so on."

The other half will say: "Why did he focus so much on the technical aspects, all these technical concepts of science and such? My mind doesn't run to science. Maitreya put it much more simply; the path of Self-Realization."

I am sure both these attitudes exist, and if they do, and in that proportion, I must be getting it about right. I try to bridge them, to say that both are valid. There are many different paths. All paths you could call the building of the antahkarana. I try to link them together and show the interchangability of the language. Each of these concepts is expressed by language which we mistake for the thing. That is not the antahkarana.

The antahkarana is the awareness of what is and what might be. That is what life is about. The creation of the antahkarana is a way in which we build the bridge back to becoming what we are, but in full consciousness.

Excerpted from Maitreya's Mission Vol 3,  by Benjamin Creme. For more information see chapter 6, "The Antahkarana"  p. 431 - 484

The Antahkarana, by Benjamin Creme (companion article to these Q&As) 

Benjamin Creme is the British chief editor of Share International, an author, lecturer and esotericist. His contact with a Master of Wisdom allows him to receive up-to-date information on the Christ's emergence and to expand on the Ageless Wisdom Teachings.

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