‘For centuries, for millennia, humans have been studying the psychic world, trying to discover more about their inner self and what motivates their actions. A human being is a perfect unity but that the unity is polarized, that is, there are two manifestations, two different aspects. Humans have two different natures, the lower nature and the higher Nature, both endowed with faculties enabling them to think, feel and act, but in opposite directions. I have called these two natures the personality and the individuality. 

What we must understand first of all is that even if the lower nature is indeed different from the higher Nature, it nevertheless has its origins above, in the Spirit. Spirit is the beginning, the origin of everything. We come from God, we begin in God, everything, including our lower nature, begins with God.

But, how did God create something so dense, so dark and heavy? The answer is simple. For God it was exactly the same as for the spider when it spins its web. Yes, the spider demonstrates the way in which God created the world!

Look at it spinning its web! It creates its own universe, geometrically, mathematically perfect. How? Well, the spider secretes a liquid which hardens and forms a fine, supple elastic thread: that is what the web is made of.

Snails are equally instructive. A snail has a soft body, whereas its shell is quite hard; at first there seems to be no connection between the snail and its shell, and yet it was the snail that secreted the shell. Little by little, by penetrating the microscopic openings in its etheric body, it spreads the particles apart and stretches the shell. The snail remains separate from its shell, but secretes the substance the shell is made of and keeps adding to it to make it bigger.

This illustration should help you to understand the way in which God created the world: he emanated a subtle matter that solidified. In appearance, the snail and its shell are two different things, but actually they are made of the same substance. Would it surprise you to hear that it is the same thing for the individuality and the personality?

The personality is thick and heavy, hard as a shell, and the individuality is soft and light, alive, plastic. They are not the same, but they both emanate from the same thing. The higher self, the ego or individuality, forms a body, a vehicle for itself (the personality) in exactly the same way as the snail forms its shell. It is our house, our home, we live inside. The only regrettable thing is that man has identified with his shell, his house or vehicle, instead of with the powerful factor that formed him originally, the Spirit, the individuality.’
To be continued…

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov
Izvor Book 213, Man’s Two Natures, Human and Divine
Chapter 2, The lower self is a reflection