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FIFTH PHASE: RECONVERSION - THE JUPITER STATION
In the average man who is only superficially and hesitantly an "individual" and whose behavior, feelings and thoughts are largely controlled by the unconscious compulsions of generic instincts, collective traditions and mass-emotions, personality is an end-product. It is the flowering of a society and a culture, of a particular ancestry and a special environment; and as such, it is dependent for its energy and still more for its motives and goals upon the root-factors within the life of the human collectivity of which it is a differentiated expression. The personality of the man who is an integral part of his society and of his cultural group or class, and who feels - consciously or unconsciously - his rootedness in his collectivity, is fundamentally similar to the work of art of a creative genius; and the creator, here, is the collectivity.
It is true that within this man and at the core of his personality there shines the flickering light of the Star which is his spiritual Identity; but his spiritual factor is far more latent than effective. The ego of the man - his much cherished ego which is only a pseudo- individuality and a temporary scaffolding - is not this Star. It is an opaque structure, casting usually a heavy shadow. In practically all cases, it will decay after death, and it often becomes hopelessly crystallized before death. At best, the ego of a man is like the center of a beautiful and fragrant flower of personality; and all flowers are direct expressions of the plant's roots.
He who treads the Illumined Road must at first experience an almost total sundering of his sharply differentiated personality from all racial and cultural roots. This will not ultimately mean actual isolation from humanity, for the Star-illumined individual living on earth participates always deeply in the struggles of his society; but this participation differs in nature, polarization and driving energy from that of the man whose personality develops along lines set by the images, idols and collective attitudes of his society. The right and power to participate in the work of civilization as a spirit- activated and Star-illumined person (or "personage") comes only to the man who has freed his consciousness from collective patterns and drives, and thus has become, for a time at least, an "isolated" individual. Reorientation, repolarization, revaluation imply this stage of "isolation"; but isolation does not mean, for us moderns, going to meditate, yogi-like, in a forest and "away from it all". It refers to a change of consciousness, which can take place in the very midst of crowds - though solitude may make the process, for a while, much easier.
When this process is at least tentatively completed, the personality of the man who underwent the metamorphosis is basically different from that of the average man. It is "seed" rather than "flower". The seed is still an end-product of the plant, as long as it is developing on it, and the spirit- activated and Star-illumined individual is still a part of his society, as long as he lives in it; nevertheless, the entire polarization of the seed is future-ward. As it grows within the flower, it causes not only this flower but the whole ephemeral plant to die. Similarly the appearance of a certain type of highly individualized and spiritually illumined individuals in a society reveals the fact that this society has reached its apex as an earth-born cultural organism.
The new personality emerging from the crisis of metamorphosis is no longer primarily or exclusively energized by the generic energies inherent in the human race or by the cultural sustainment which any normal man gets from his tradition and community. It is energized by the universal ocean of spirit, by the interplay of Sun and Star. The new personality's work or function is not to perpetuate or bring to flowering the society and culture that conditioned the development of the old personality; but instead to lay the ideological foundations for a new society and culture, which will appear in due time. The old personality - born of "Adam", according to the Biblical symbolism - was meant to bring to fruition the energies of the earth and the values of cultivation and culture. The purpose of the new personality, born through Christ, is to release the transforming and creative power of spirit; to release it as an engine releases power. Thus, while the old personality can be likened to an expression of art and culture (as one usually understands these terms), the new personality should be considered an engine.
It is this change from an esthetical to an engineering product which we characterize here by the term "reconversion", under the symbolism of Jupiter. Reconversion, and not conversion - because at the earliest stage of human social evolution personality can also be defined as an engine. However, personality was a collective factor; the tribe as a whole, rather than any particular human being in it, had a personality of its own. The tribe was the unit of human consciousness and activity; it constituted a complex engine whose purpose (instinctual and compulsive) was the perpetuation and expansion of a particular human group in a special: environment. "Life" was the engineer molding from within the collective lives of all tribesmen, energizing them by the power of deep and unconscious bio-psychic roots.
On the Illumined Road, however, the Star fashions the engine of the metamorphosed personality. The spirit-energized personality is an engine of light-rays. Personality is no longer the semi-consciousness product of a collective culture or race tradition. It is the individualized and conscious agency through which spirit creates a new civilization by releasing great ideas and archetypal symbols (i.e. "forms of power") which will inspire, move and guide the future generations.
At the earth-conditioned level, Jupiter represents all that tends to bring a society to a stage of cultural blossoming and fruition - the merchant or man of wealth as well as the priest or the arouser of group-realizations and collective enthusiasms. But at the level of the Illumined Road Jupiter symbolizes that power which leads the spirit-energized individual to realize that he can only reach his goal, the Star, by cooperating in faith and in ever more lucid consciousness with other agencies of the spirit animated by a similar purpose.
A religion and a certain type of social economy constitute the twofold basis upon which a culture develops. Both represent the collective response of a group of men to the basic challenges of their earth-environment; and this response reveals the mode of operation of the Jupiter function, within the community and in all the men and women participating in an essentially collective activity. But, when man becomes a relatively isolated and uprooted individual intent upon expressing his ego and its differentiated viewpoint (or "uniqueness") he turns his back upon the Jupiterian drives in his personality - the more so, the more isolated and unique he feels.
Then, the generic energies of human nature and the cultural powers of his society become converted to his egocentric purpose. They feed his self-expression; or else his revolt against them gives him an emotional stimulus spent in repudiating them. The iconoclast or social revolutionist uses the Jupiter function in a negative way. In him Jupiterian factors turn "alcoholic"; that is, his social sense and his religious faith ferment and disintegrate. The energy which sustained his normal life as a man of the collectivity are now converted to war-production - the war which he, as an ego, wages against a society, a religion and a culture which have become his enemies. When this war ceases to occupy the consciousness of the man who has passed through a crisis of ego-metamorphosis (or "catharsis") a process of reconversion need be undergone.
This reconversion can never be a mere return to the prewar status quo, if the crisis has been met successfully. The man who has stepped upon the Illumined Road cannot reawaken his old allegiance to social, religious and cultural beliefs, any more than a seed can go back to stem or root. The only thing possible to a seed is to germinate into a new plant with root and stem - when spring comes! To do this, for the seed, means to become an agent for the life of the species as a whole. The acorn's allegiance can only be to the oak species; not to the particular life of a particular oak on which it grew, however wonderful an oak this particular tree might be.
At the level of the human spirit, each individual who has become free from unconscious and compulsive bondage to his race and society is like a seed; but a seed that is fully conscious, individualized and unique in its immortal Identity. Yet all these "unique" individuals are participants in a spiritual community, whether they are clearly aware of it or not; just as stars are radiant units within the Galaxy, or, in astrological symbolism, within a Constellation — and (in occultism) a seed-group or "Lodge".
The "reconversion" of which we speak is thus a process by which the Star-conscious individual learns that he, as a Star, belongs to a Constellation. He comes to acknowledge - but at first only in terms of intellectual concepts and unsteady feelings - the proximity, the companionship and the spiritual sustainment of his co-participants in the life and activity of this constellation. As this occurs, he once more experiences being a small part of a multitudinous whole. He is no longer able to pride himself in, or to bemoan his tragic loneliness, his isolation as an ego. He acquires very gradually and unsteadily a new sense of participation in a community; and both this sense and this community now have the characteristic of the spirit. They are no longer earth-conditioned and rooted in dark, instinctual nature.
When the personality begins to be renewed by such a feeling of communion with other beings who are of the spirit, and accordingly work for the spirit, it can really concentrate upon an effectual work of reconversion. The clearer this feeling of communion and the more unmistakable and concrete the indications of a cooperation with great Beings upon whom the light of their individual Stars (and the joint power of the Constellation) radiate, the more rapid and thorough is the work of personality- reconversion. The main difficulty at .the beginning stage of this work is that the individual must plan anew toward a goal, the precise character of which he cannot as yet understand clearly; while the power of habits and the tendency to automatism or routine performance along lines which have proven to be, if not safe, at least familiar in all respects, are still very strong.
The problem is not unlike that of reconverting the production of a factory toward satisfying the needs of a new market, when neither the market nor its expectable requirements can be clearly known, but social instinct and tradition cannot help the traveler on the Illumined Road, for he has to free himself from their pressure within his subconscious. Vision, understanding, the rarely clear record of the experiences of a few individuals who have faced the same problems, and above all faith, are the engineers who alone can rebuild the tools of personality, adapting them to what is felt to be new needs. The new energy, represented by a transcendent Mars function, is available; yet there seems to be endless obstacles to its effective - and perhaps safe - use. The main stumbling block is unfamiliarity and lack of precedents. There must be improvisation of a sort at every step - and the almost unavoidable consequence is tenseness and strain through worry over results, over- focalization of attention, and the inability to let things happen on their own momentum.
Obviously, this problem of reconversion of personality is paralleled today by its collective world-wide equivalent, the task of reconverting the economy, and as well the religious and moral thinking, of modern society. New sources of power have been revealed. Soon, mankind will no longer depend upon dark substances like coal or oil for the running of factories; and because of automation the unenlightened toil of classes kept socially depressed by religious and color prejudices can be dispensed with. The global solidarity of all men and groups should be an incontrovertible evidence. We should be at the threshold of a global society, of the "One World" of Man - though this does not necessarily mean a world dominated by one type of social and religious ideology or way of life (i.e. by one dominant mode of Jupiterian activity).
Yet what do we still see all around us, even long after the crucial tragedies of our last World War? Nationalism, collective pride, and class-greed for power, profit and position dominate everywhere the same old game of politics, or national production and international trade. Men without faith in the future still hope for a "return to normalcy" and worship with legalistic and insecure minds the status quo. This, in one form or another, means the rule of social privileges and accumulated profits - the social equivalents of egocentricity in the individual person. Each party to a constantly activated world-conflict of interests extols its way of life, its approach to reality and religion, its culture and tradition - and often its social excellence and exclusive claim to be the agent of history or evolution. Will our global crises be always in vain? Will atrocious suffering and death serve no purpose?
These questions (at the level of personality) no doubt arise in the troubled mind of everyone who follows the Illumined Road and is faced with the rebuilding of his personality after the ordeal which should have ended with the purification and reorientation of the consciousness, the will and the feelings. Underneath all superficial problems, and indeed their basic cause, is the fact that the very meaning and purpose of personality must be utterly renewed. Personality is - I repeat - no longer to be the flowering of a collective tradition or culture rooted in instinct and unconscious attitudes; neither can personality significantly endure on the basis of an egocentric rebelling and proud self-expression.
What is then to be done? Only one thing: to reconvert personality as a tool for the operation of the spirit. Human evolution is always a series of steps forward. Spirit is that which urges forward, which proposes new solutions to new needs or unresolved old needs. Spirit is a release of new logos, of new creative "Words" that are God incarnate; for God's incarnations are solutions to the new needs of humanity. Reconversion on the Illumined Road makes it possible for these new solutions to become concrete and effective through personal example.
This is the true meaning of the Incarnation. Each man whose personality becomes an instrumentality through which the new word of creative spirit can be formulated effectively and convincingly is a divine incarnation, an "avatar". Jesus told us that he was "on his Father's business", and he bid us to do likewise. The Father-Star in each man who is freed from bondage to human and cultural roots has a "business" for him to attend; and this business is that of the great Company to which the Father-Star belongs. Our task is to fulfill this work, as "sons" of our Father-Star; and this we can do only as we reconvert our personalities to new uses and new purposes - and as we do it thoroughly.
