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SECOND PHASE: REPOLARIZATION - THE MERCURY STATION
In the evolutionary process by which the unitarian and undifferentiated solar energy gradually becomes differentiated on its way toward the Saturnian boundaries of the system the first and most basic type of differentiation refers to that stage of energy which we call electricity. It is symbolized by Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun. However, the word, electricity, is quite confusing because electrical phenomena can be most varied in character, intensity and appearance. The spectacular lightning reveals electricity in its most awe-inspiring form; but if we study biology and man's nervous system we become acquainted with electrical phenomena of a very subtle nature, the operation of which we certainly do not fully understand. The amount of electrical energy in a cell and in the activities of the billions of cells interrelated within a man's brain is very small indeed; but how far-reaching the effect of these nerve-currents!
In any case, however, the essential characteristic of electrical phenomena is their bi-polarity. Electricity in operation is either positive or negative. The realm of electrical action is the realm of duality. Under the symbolism of Mercury we see the unitarian force of the Sun becoming a polarized energy: The One becomes the Two. As dualism enters the world of activity every mode of action is confronted with, but also complemented by an opposite mode. This is the great Law of Polarity, of which modern physics discovers always more complex and fascinating manifestations; for instance, atomic particles and anti-particles, matter and anti-matter, etc. There are also particles which carry no electrical charge (neutrons, neutrinos), or perhaps in which electricity exists in a condition beyond polarity; yet this neutral condition may also be polarized in another way in relation to some other form which may elude our power of observation - perhaps in the sense in which fullness is the polar opposite of emptiness?
These last words may well contain a very valuable and significant key to the understanding of the process symbolized here as the Illumined Road. Might not this process occur when that which has become "full" in terms of solar system values and power is able to make himself "empty" in relation to galactic values and powers?
After the evolutionary Sun-ward tide has passed through the Mercury level of the conceptual mind - the mind filled with a transferable harvest of values gathered through significant personal experiences - the individual Soul approaches the Sun. Will it dare step through the fiery threshold of the flaming photosphere and seek the Heart of the Sun, the Holy of Holies? The Sun is a "devouring Presence", occultists of the past have said. At its center, man finds the Void - Sunya in Buddhism; "God's Poverty" in Christian mysticism. He becomes totally denuded and empty. He becomes the Void.
It is in this quasi-timeless moment of utter denudation and deprivation that the individual Soul may sense the immensely peaceful and steady beats of the Heart of the Sun. It experiences the Sun as a star, as a vibrant unit in the "Companionship of the Stars" - as a component part of the vast Galaxy. In this experience the individual Soul both loses itself and rediscovers itself; it rediscovers itself as a Pilgrim ready, willing and able to tread the Illumined Road, carried on by a "solar Ray" - an effulgent "horse" in Vedic symbology; Pegasus, the winged stallion of Greek mythology.
The Soul enters upon the Path of Return; and its first realization is that it is now facing all facts of existence in terms of a new polarity of consciousness - that is, in relation to that which as yet it can but dimly envision as the galactic level of consciousness. The Soul is again like a "little child" seeking to learn by polarizing himself toward the parental example - and this is what the phrases so often misunderstood, "The Imitation of Christ" and "The Practice of the Presence of God" mean. The Galaxy is now a felt presence; a deep power of attraction. The solar Ray is moved by this power of galactic gravitation, and the individual Soul - fascinated, yet still uncertain and insecure - tries to steady itself and not to lose the direction revealed by a beacon light which attracts mysteriously and almost poignantly. Yet, all around this light of the galactic core, a multitude of radiant shapes present confusing and often seductive images, following which the Soul would lose its way in interstellar spaces; and occultists speak of the dangerous possibility of being spiritually seduced by some great "Star Archangels" seeking a base of operation among men.
Consciousness should be, at any level, the manifestation of the wholeness of an organic whole; but an organism has a number of organs and billions of cells, each of which has a degree of independence and functions in its own field also as a whole. There are thus various types of consciousness. Mercury, when considered as the last stage of the evolutionary process of development of consciousness before the life-wave returns to its solar source, is a power of ingathering - of classification - generalization and synthesis. It produces symbols (words, images, series of actions) which help us to understand the "holistic" meaning and purpose of our experiences. It creates philosophical, ethical and logical systems. It builds the great theories of science from which emerge what men see as the "laws of Nature" - laws which may nevertheless apply only to our universe or perhaps only to the stage of the cosmic process in which we now live.
At this ideo-syncretic state Mercury also makes use of the principle of polarity, understood as that of logical exclusion — the "either-or" and "true-or-false" principle of Aristotelian logic and of many of our modern psychological "tests". At the level of intellectual systems, this principle is a transformation of the Saturnian antagonism between the ins and the outs, between the people who belong to the tribe or the little group and the foreigners, the aliens. When "form" is seen as that which separates the outside from an inside, we have the principle of duality at work. Yet it can mean also that which links the outside to the inside, constituting therefore the threshold of mutual communication.
The whole process of life-evolution, which symbolically is the return tide of energies from the Saturn-defined boundaries to the Sun, is conditioned by the power of Saturn. Where there is no organic living there must be form according to this Saturnian principle of exclusion; the inside must remain essentially separated from the outside. There must be a defining and thus limiting and structuring "frame of reference", the ego; and this ego functions in terms of at least relative isolation. Only a limited number and variety of data should reach the brain through the senses if the brain's power of associating such data of experiences is to operate effectively, and if chaos or confusion is to be avoided. For this reason safety devices are built-in by the culture and religion of one's group or people, as well as by the individual's own fears and insecurity, so that only that which would be acceptable and not shock-producing to the consciousness is allowed to pass by the "censor". This censor (popularized by Freud) is always busy rejecting, casting out and pushing into the subconscious what might cause a destructive shock or evoke images dangerous to the normal rhythm of the person's feelings.
When the fiery furnace of the Sun has been reached and passed through, the situation changes radically, but at first not completely, because most human beings, when they reach the proximity of the Sun, recoil in awe; they keep repeating the to them familiar, though pain-filled centrifugal- centripetal cycle of samsara, the wheel of life-and-death. Only a very few dare go through the ordeal of fire; and perhaps but a few of these reach the Heart of the Sun, the Void and its awe-inspiring Silence.
Then the daring ones start on the Illumined Road; and the first realization that inevitably comes to them - with a more or less acute and upsetting intensity, depending on their past experiences - is that their mental attitude toward practically everything they encounter in their surroundings has basically changed. Even their memories of the past have taken a different coloring. Something in them, though certainly not the whole of their personality still greatly affected by old habits, is re-interpreting their experiences in terms of a new sense of inclusion.
Though now inclusion is no longer conditioned by a rigid form or logical principle, it does not bring a feeling of chaos. Every fact of experience or memory-knowledge somehow seems to be consistently related to every other fact. The sharp differences between in and out are not only attenuated, they are seen harmonized into an ever vaster and more inclusive complex of activities. Nothing now seems to be absolutely true; nothing absolutely false. Everything belongs; there are no longer any real outsiders, no fact that is "damned", no idea that seems totally unacceptable. No behavior is rigidly un-understandable or absolutely abhorrent, because any action is seen inevitably bound to its opposite, and every light shines brightly in significant contrast to its shadow.
Yet he who travels on the Illumined Road knows, in an undefinable manner and without doubt, the reality of the path he follows - of the solar Ray that carries him onward - the reality of the fact that somewhere in the vastness of the galaxy there is a star which is his galactic Self, his "place" and function in that immense organism of radiant consciousness and power. He knows that he will increasingly become aware of his own stellar Truth - his essential dharma; that his capacity to understand the processes at work throughout the galactic organization of stars will gradually develop - a new and wider kind of understanding that leaves nothing out as irrelevant and without significance.
As the traveler moves along the path outlined by the solar Ray, he comes to identify himself totally with this Ray. In some incomprehensible manner he becomes that Path itself; unless - the possibility is always there - he panics or becomes fascinated by some powerful Star-being whose intense gravitational pull may throw him off his "solar horse" and draw him irresistibly to an excentric embrace in which he may lose forever his stellar Identity.
At this first stage of the pilgrimage upon the Illumined Road the individual Soul is still a novice in spiritual things. He has to learn how to learn in a new way, how to repolarize thoroughly and permanently his mental processes - how to approach and meet new and old responsibilities with a new attitude. At this stage new modes of perceptions may arise. "Astral" colors, symbols, eerie sounds may be experienced; but these often are more confusing than helpful to the process of understanding, more illusory than real in terms of reaching the essential goal, the galactic core, God. At best they are but special manifestations of the process of repolarization of the mind and modes of "holistic" perception. If they occur prematurely they tend to produce a glamour which makes the traveler forget that any such power increases his spiritual responsibility. The all-important task for him is to develop the capacity to see through all the facts of his existence, to understand their meaning in terms of his now much enlarged sense of being part of a cosmic whole in which all parts are interrelated and interdependent, yet in which also each unit has its own place and function, its own identity.
The little word, through, acquires here an unusual importance and significance. The Illumined Road does not stretch into some new and mysterious dimension of space; it does not cross fields of space totally unfamiliar to the traveler. What is unfamiliar is his own reaction to what he encounters, his response to the meetings; the landscape is often exactly the one he has known before, the people he meets are those he met before along the evolutionary road from Saturn to the Sun; he may well travel the very same road - yet everything is different, because he is different now.
I have spoken of the pilgrimage of the Soul on the Illumined Road as "transvolution", because it is the way through all that had happened before - not in the sense that it is a "recapitulation" of past experiences, but a "trans-cending" of these experiences. Transcending means literally: to step through. The adverb "through" has here a very potent meaning which implies also that of "beyond" and that of transformation - a piercing through - and, in the process of piercing through, a repolarization of awareness.
The French author and motion-picture director, Jean Cocteau, used at various times the symbolism of jumping through a mirror. The mirror reflects one's image; to the normal senses, it seems solid glass. If the beholder dares to jump with all his power through the mirror - and thus through his own image - he discovers himself moving through a fluidic world in which everything encountered reveals new meanings.
This is a significant symbol, stimulating to the imagination, because our ego-consciousness may be considered a reflection of the way we act and appear in the everyday world. We have to dare to pierce through this consciousness - not necessarily in one spectacular effort that challenges rationality and common sense (i.e. crashing through solid glass), but according to a process of "transvolution" based on a radical repolarization of consciousness.
On the Illumined Road Mercury represents this phase of repolarization. In Greek mythology Mercury was the servant of Zeus-Jupiter, ruler of the visible sky and maintainer of the traditional order; he was constantly running errands for his master - and indeed the evolutionary Mercury-mind is normally the servant of the established order of the society and culture to which one belongs by birthright. In terms of the movement of the Soul-consciousness speeding toward the galactic center along the solar Ray. Mercury is the mind having become identified with this solar Ray. Mercury is then the transvoluntary drive toward an ever more inclusive, cosmically consistent and significant realization of all the aspects of existence, regardless of appearances and tradition-ruled concepts or feeling-responses. It is the Star-oriented mind, the mind resonant to the integral and harmonious vibrations of the galaxy. It is the mind of understanding; and understanding implies responsibility.
He who truly understands "stands-under" the manifestations of existence with which his path of destiny relates him. Even if only in a subtle and transcendent manner, he bears the weight of such manifestations. Mere knowledge may leave the knower separate from, because external to the things known. True understanding is only possible through a process of relationship which, even though it may not mean (strictly speaking) "identification", nevertheless implies responsibility of a spiritual order. It means an acceptation of the interconnection between all forms of existence, and an at least relative subservience of the part to the whole.
The mind which insists on separating itself from the things it knows, and which refuses responsibility, has led the thinker already past the threshold that marks the entrance to the "path of the Shadow", which is the dark counterpart of the Illumined Road. There must be such a counterpart, for in this realm of Mercury polarity conditions all possibilities of existence. Mercury represents discrimination; and on the Illumined Road discrimination can take on a very subtle and elusive aspect. This is the phase of the spiritual process which has been popularized in quasi-mystical literature by the razor's edge. The choice between darkness and light lies but too often upon a distinction between what appears as two degrees of light.
The ordinary man's mind cannot make this distinction unless it has become repolarized by a descent of spiritual power and, in many cases, by the compassionate action of a Great One who stands at his side, as Krishna stood at Arjuna's side when the latter faced in utter despondency a poignant decision which was to destroy his relatives and friends ready to fight on both sides of the field.
At the entrance of "the Path" it is indeed often quite difficult to distinguish between true comrades and foes, for the individual, though he has definitely resolved to walk on the Illumined Road to the Star, finds himself not only attached to human beings of all kinds, but attached also, at least in some degree, to traditional judgments as to the meaning of categories of facts. He has to gain a new point of view, a new frame of reference for truth. He needs a new Image of reality; and this is why, again like Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, he begs Krishna, his charioteer and his guru, to reveal to him in a vision the all-encompassing Countenance of the Supreme Being.
It is an awesome vision; and Arjuna's mind can hardly stand looking at it. He begs his Teacher and divine Master to take again His limited form as a human being. He is not yet ready to face what, in our astrological symbolism, would be the real Form which would be seen if we could use the whole lens-shaped Galaxy as a lens to see beyond the core of our universe. Such a "failure of nerves" is common indeed. The Gospels tell us that the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration could neither stand nor understand what was happening to their Master. Eugene O'Neill's remarkable tragedy "Lazarus Laughed" ends with these poignant words: Men forget. They forget because, even in the best among them, that which understands is but a fraction of their mind - a mind not yet established securely on the Illumined Road, a mind divided against itself.
New experiences of seeing, hearing, sensing are needed. There must be "vision" - clear, undimmed, perceptive, free from hallucinations and seductive shapes or from mere moods of unity misunderstood for "cosmic consciousness". At this stage on the Road, the disciple may think of God as the universal Eye - the Eye not only that does not close, but that cannot close, the lidless Eye of all-encompassing consciousness. Every individual that has come to hold fast to the light of his solar Ray, which alone can lead him to the Star that is his celestial Identity, must never let go of consciousness. He must face all things and all men, all loves and all decisions, with open eyes that gradually become incapable of closing.
This requires indomitable strength - a strength and a courage quite incomprehensible to the man whose eyes but uncertainly register, and whose inner being does not fully respond, insulated as it is by the Saturnian structure of his egocentricity. To see utter darkness and desperate anguish and yet to respond in understanding and in love, while holding fast to the Ray of spirit and not being swerved from the Illumined Road; this indeed means strength. He who arises filled with that strength has passed through the Mercury portals. He has successfully met the ordeals of repolarization of consciousness. He is moving on with centered gaze through new experiences of reality.
