Projections of the intelligent, sentient energy of the human Soul into the mental, astral and physical realms form the blueprint or pattern for the Persona. This projected Soul energy in the mental, sentient and physical bodies is what endows them with the capacities for intelligent, conscious activities of many kinds. The mind can construct thought-forms, the sentient body can project and perceive feelings, and the physical body can act with intelligence because the “I AM” or Self dwells in and moves the Soul energy within them.
The Persona or Personality is the form used by the human Intelligent Essence or Spirit in the three realms of human experience. These realms are known as the physical, astral, and concrete mental planes or dimensions. For each of them, the human being has an instrument for contacting it, for perceiving the phenomena and events there taking place, and for actively experimenting with the energies that constitute it.
The three instruments that constitute the Persona are:
- The Mental Body — Also known as “the Mental Energy Field”, this “body” is made of matter from the concrete levels of the mental plane.
- The Desire-Feeling Body — Also known as “the Astral Body”, this “body” or energy field is made of matter from the astral plane.
- The Physical Body — Also known as “the Etheric-Physical Body”, this “body” is made of two types of matter: etheric and dense physical.
The mastering of these three instruments of the Persona, the use of the energies that they can contact and manipulate, and the integration of all three into a coordinated and coherent energy-unit and psychological whole, sum up the entire history of psychological and spiritual development for the individual in the human kingdom.
Before proceeding, it is necessary to clarify that the term “Persona” or “Personality” is used in the Wisdom Teachings with a dual meaning:
- The first meaning refers to the whole formed by the material aspects of the human constitution: the mental, sentient and physical bodies.
- The second meaning describes the coherent whole of psychological and energy characteristics exhibited by the human being when the mental life and reasoning capacities are beginning to have noticeable expression in the everyday living, and when intelligence begins to rule upon the desire-feeling nature and the physical habits.
In the following three pages of this section, the three instruments of “the Persona” are described.