Michael Teachings - Comments on Soul Age

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Comments On Soul Age

BY PHILLIP WITTMEYER

From a number of statements made by Michael it is possible to estimate the approximate percentages of the population in each soul Age. They stated that the number of Infant and Child souls together is equal to the number of Old souls. They said that the vast majority of souls are Young and Mature, well over one and a half billion each. They said the youngest souls are Third Level Infant, and that the average Age is Fifth Level Young. They said that the Ages are distributed in a bell curve. From these clues, a chart has been drawn which meets all these conditions. This is Chart #10 at the back of the book. It shows:

AGE PERCENTAGE POPULATION

INFANT 10% 500 million

CHILD 23% 1.1 billion

YOUNG 32% 1.7 billion

MATURE 24% 1.2 billion

OLD 11% 550 Million

In my own Charting of individuals, I have found this distribution to be accurate. Chart #10 also shows the percentages of the population older and younger for each of the thirty five Levels. For instance, Seventh Level Mature is shown to have 14% of the population older and 86% of the population younger. It also shows percentages at 10 percent intervals of completion of the entire cycle. For instance, a Fourth Level Mature soul is shown to be 70% of the way through the Maturation scale.

With practice, a person can learn to discern someone's soul Age readily. Sometimes this can be done from physical appearance and behavior alone, but it is more easily done by verbal cues which give away the person's perceptions about life. The eyes are another important clue — the depth of the personality is often displayed here if one knows what to look for. However, there are some potentially misleading factors such as intelligence, education, or socioeconomic status. A wide deviation from average — higher or lower — in these factors might cause one to misjudge their soul Age. For instance, many final Level Old souls are vagabonds and bums, because their attachment to the physical plane is so tenuous. It is also wise not to be mislead about soul Age by a person's degree of "metaphysical enlightenment". Old souls are more open to mystical and occult knowledge, but this is not always the case by any means. Reincarnation seems to be a key metaphysical understanding that comes naturally to older souls. I personally have seen a few — very few — Young souls who were aware of reincarnation, and these were late Level. There is also an Infant and Child soul known to me who are practicing metaphysicians who believe in reincarnation, and they are both at the Seventh Level. Usually it is late Level Mature and Old souls who believe in reincarnation. Since there is probably no strict scientific proof of reincarnation, they come to believe in it because it seems intuitively obvious to them.

In the scientific controversy between nature and nurture, the Process Aspect System helps to define not how much nature versus nurture, but what . My observation is that the younger the Age the more the nurture the person is subject to, and the older the Age, the more the nature the person is subject to. That is, the younger the Age the less nature there is in the subconscious for the personality to draw from, and the older the Age the more nature there is in the subconscious to draw from and override the impressions and programming of the conscious experience of the individual.

There are difficulties for those who are at one extreme or the other of the Maturation spectrum. Since America (and the entire planet) is dominated by the Young souls, the most prevalent Age, its culture is largely determined by Young souls. This makes it especially tough on Infant and Old souls who do not share Young soul perceptions. They seem to be out of phase with the rest of society. They do not fit in. Child and Mature souls are not exactly in the mainstream either, but they are still well represented by a higher proportion of the population in this culture than the Infant and Old souls, and are not so far removed from the Establishment.

It is well to note again that there is no superiority implied in the advance of Maturation. Being an Old soul is just as limiting in perception as being a Infant soul, only in different ways. All Ages are necessary in the scheme of things, just as it is necessary to start out as a baby and advance through old age. All Ages have their particular kinds of problems and difficulties in adjusting in life.

This system of soul Age classification is good for application to the general population and most of the people you will meet, but there are exceptions and anomalies. For instance, some books of metaphysical revelation say that not all fragments begin and end their cycles of incarnation entirely on this planet earth. These souls do not fit well within the soul Age classification. Highly evolved souls from other planes or dimensions, or other planets within the physical plane, sometimes incarnate in human form for the value of the experience or for a special mission. This type of soul has been called a "wanderer". These types do not experience the full range of normal human-soul transformation. Such a one might be an Old soul in terms of psychic maturity, but just a Young soul in terms of earth-plane understanding. Needless to say, such a discrepancy can cause some psychological conflict within the person.

The phenomenon of psychological maturity has not gone entirely unrecognized by Western psychologists, although they may not believe the theory from Eastern thought which explains it. A prominent psychologist of recent decades named Abraham Maslow, through studying highly creative and psychologically healthy people, has come up with a profile of personality characteristics which he believes represent what he calls the fully "self-actualized" person (not to be confused with Self-actualization on the Chart). These compare favorably with Michael's description of the Old soul: "They have more efficient perceptions of reality and are more comfortable with it. They accept themselves and their own natures almost without thinking about it. Their behavior is marked by simplicity and naturalness and by lack of artificiality or straining for effect. They focus on problems outside themselves; they are concerned with basic issues and eternal questions. They like privacy and tend to be detached. They have relative independence of their physical and social environments; they rely on their own development and continued growth. They do not take blessings for granted, but appreciate again and again the basic pleasures of life. They experience limitless horizons and the intensification of any unselfconscious experience often of a mystical type. They have deep feelings of kinship with others. They develop deep ties with a few other self-actualizing individuals. They are democratic in a deep sense: although not indiscriminate, they are not really aware of differences. They are strongly ethical, with definite moral standards, though their attitudes are conventional; they relate to ends rather than means. Their humor is real and related to philosophy, not hostility; they are spontaneous less often than others, and tend to be more serious and thoughtful. They are original and inventive, less constricted and fresher than others. While they tend toward the conventional and exist well within the culture, they live by the laws of their own characters rather than those of society. They experience imperfections and have ordinary feelings, like others." (Condensed from "Self-actualizing People: a Study of Psychological Health", in "Motivation and Personality", second edition, 1954, Harper and Row.) This is a decent description of the aims and worthy ambitions of each lifetime, and of all lifetimes, whatever the soul Age.

CULTURAL MATURATION

Michael stated ("Messages From Michael", page 80) that the general soul maturity of planet earth is progressing as the centuries and millennia pass. In fact, the soul Ages themselves remind me of stages of cultural evolution in world societies pointed out by anthropologists. All of these cultural types are still present in various parts of the world, but the world as a whole has undergone some advancement in perceptions in historic times. This might be considered evidence for reincarnation, in that the soul Age of the planet is maturing.

The Infant soul Age of mankind was when society consisted of family units, subsisting as what anthropologists call "hunter-gatherers". The Child soul Age of mankind is expressed as what is called "tribalism" by anthropologists, and it is still present in some primitive parts of the world. The Young soul Age of mankind is expressed as what is called "nationalism" and "imperialism" by anthropologists. The planet is still in the stage. The Mature soul Age of mankind is expresses as socialism. This is the next phase, and may be some time away, since, according to Michael, the average soul Age is fifth Level Young. At any rate, as the planetary consciousness advances toward the Mature soul Age, nations are becoming more economically and politically linked with each other. Mankind is coming to realize that we are all one people, and that we must work together and share resources. So far as I know, the Old soul Age does not have a cultural counterpart. Typically, Old souls form networks of loosely federated individuals who have common interests. They form amorphous subcultures within the major cultural milieu.

Michael also had something to say about cultural evolution. He said that as civilization advances with the progression of soul Age on this planet, solutions to human problems will become obvious. When the Mature and Old soul Ages are the most prominent, civilization will become primarily philosophical. Right now, Young souls are in the majority, so materialistic and technological values are most prominent.

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Phil Wittmeyer is a longtime Michael student and scholar of the teachings. He can be reached at: wittmeyer@hotmail.com