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3) Mind.
Matter-body include varying degrees of thought, from least complex to most complex, from more instinctual to more reasoning. Different species of matter-body do not have different minds, only varying capacities of mind between and among species. Mind, in varied species, is linked with a brain. Do other species think or have only an instinctual response system? This last question is broadened when including that mind is a capacity for thinking, but may be more than what is included in the capacity. Psychology addresses this aspect of Spirit, with emotions linked to mind. Here, thought finds grounding in matter-body; also, happenings at the level of the body influence the psyche. That is, each aspect of evolution is linked with the prior ones and influenced by it, as it is taken up into the higher emergence. Much religion, unfortunately, is located in body-mind, being a mental mythology, a materialistic ritualism, including the emotional comforts of being in a like social support group. So, one goes to a meeting and receives teaching and enacts rites, and he or she has fulfilled his or her duty with like-minded ones, his or her sense of commitment, and the pleasure of sentimental feelings directed to the object of worship. One can well-assume much, likely most worship, is self-worship, as well as the body-mind attempt to turn Spirit into the servant-disposal to be manipulated by the personal will of the worshiper, rather than the worshiper surrendering his or her sense of self and personal rights to Grace. Yet, this personalized, communal experience is a logical developmental phase to move to a higher emergence of Grace, that found in soul, provided the worshiper allows the surrendering up of this rather egocentric form of devotion.
4) Soul.
Theology rarely addresses beyond the mind, being rational, or mental, in nature. Soul is, rightly, the domain of all forms of spiritual religion, though most religion stops prior, not even guiding persons in living in the awareness of soul, living as soul. Mystics manifest here, and all soulful religiousness is mystical at core, even though integrating prior emergences. One, say, may partake of the Eucharist, but it will transcend group ritual and the form of the ritual. We have here what Buddhists call "Buddha mind," which is not the lower process of thinking rationally, what most mean by mind, and some persons speak of "Christ consciousness." There is a knowing that is not knowing about ~ the mind capacity can only know about, so have information about ~, and this knowing is of the soul. Christians call this "soul" True Self, Hindus Self or Atman or Atma, Buddhists Buddha Nature or Buddha.
There was knowing the young boy in Virgina, but not knowing about him. The arising of "Friend" at the sea was not a knowing about the sea. One can study the sea for a hundra years, and he or she may never know the sea. Here, oneness recognizes itself and celebrates itself in a nonsentimental, nonmental Love. In knowing that young boy, I knew him as myself, loved him as myself; there was, and is, no polarity in knowing itself, in Love. In knowing the Atlantic, I knew Brian. This knowing comes unmediated from Spirit; then, we automatically begin to process it mentally. We may be emotionally captivated, too, but the knowing comes first and direct. Indeed, knowing unmediated can evoke powerful feelings, as well as ardent seeking to conceptualize the revelation itself. If not careful, one can confuse this matter-body-mind overlay with the immediacy of Insight itself. So, at this aspect of emergence of Spirit, Grace manifests as the oneness that shares in communion; that is, we are one soul communing with itself. This is, first, not a personal sharing, for that is located in the body-mind. Those who are located in a sense of individuality cannot live in communion; if such a person experiences soul, that one will misinterpret it and pull it down, so to speak, into personality, so annulling the potential for the continuity of communion.
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