*
SIXTH PHASE: RE-INCORPORATION - THE SATURN STATION
One of the main reasons for many confused and confusing statements found in writings on psychology is the apparent failure of the modern psychologist to take a realistic attitude toward the ego. The Theosophist's distinction between a "lower", personal ego and a "higher" Ego does not help very much in clarifying the issue because it presents itself as part of an a priori and abstract classification which, however correct it might be in the last analysis, can hardly be called a solution to pressing and very concrete psychological confrontations experienced by the average man of our day. The problem every individual faces when he seeks to overcome the narrow boundaries, the biases and the exclusiveness of a self-centered or egocentric attitude can be understood in its true nature only if the validity of the very terms, self-centered and egocentric, is questioned and the ego (or personal self) is understood to be in practical, concrete reality a psychic structure, rather than a mysterious subject.
The simplest way of approaching the problem is to analyze carefully and without prejudice the actual significance of the typical assertion made by every normal individual: "I am Mr. So-and-so". What does a person called Paul Smith actually mean when he says to himself: I am Paul Smith? Where is the emphasis? Where, the conscious focus of the statement? Which of these words (I, am, Paul Smith) really refers to the ego, as the modern psychologist understands the term, ego?
The most likely answer to such questions would be that the primary and central fact in the statement "I am Paul Smith" is the sense of being "I"; that is, the feeling of subjective being, of identity. In some manner, the many experiences and reactions of the person (body, feelings, mind) known as Paul Smith are referred by himself to an inwardly sensed permanent factor: this factor "I", to which all that a person consciously experiences is referred, is a center frame of reference. Should it be conceived as a point or a structure.
The familiar use of such adjectives as egocentric or self-centered, together with Carl Jung's definition of the ego as the "centrum of my field of consciousness", tend almost inevitably to make the ego appear as a point or core; somewhat as an autocratic all-powerful king is the center of the state. There is a "field of consciousness" and this field has a ruling center. The element of structure, if it is considered, would then refer to the field of consciousness (i.e. the typical way in which the person thinks, feels, responds to sensations and to the challenges of everyday life.) This psychic structure would be the result of the activity and will of the ego, somewhat as the "law of the realm" is the expression of the decisions and will of the autocratic king, who is the one supreme authority in "his" realm or kingdom.
The above concepts, however, imply much that should appear today as old fashioned and naive psychology. If the king rules the kingdom and structures its many activities by decrees of all sorts, what is it that rules the king? What makes him will this rather than that? What conditions his choice and decisions?
The answer is that the king makes the new laws, but the old laws make the king. The traditions, the ancestral customs, the basic cultural-religious patterns and "primordial Images" of the nation out of which he emerged, as a child conditioned by special training to become its king all these many factors structure the consciousness of the king, and thus determine basically, though not exclusively, his decisions. In most cases a king is the product of his national tradition and way of life far more than the maker of laws giving rise to a new tradition or structure of social behavior. When a king, like the Egyptian pharaoh Akh-na-ton, tries to alter completely the social-religious structure of his kingdom, more likely than not the attempt fails or is short-lived; the old patterns reassert themselves, proving that they are more basic and powerful than the king.
Another approach will lead to similar conclusions. Does the newborn child realize himself first as "I", or as "Paul"? As far as experience usually shows, the child will first speak in the third person, "Paul did this, Paul wants that", before he very clearly states "I want" and still more "I am". Indeed the clearly conscious feeling of "I am", in complete independence of the determining or conditioning qualification "Paul", the person's name, is the goal of a very long and very difficult process of spiritual development; not its beginning.
If one can truly say that the name comes first into the field of awareness of the child, then only later the realization, "I", the result is that, as far as the unfolding consciousness of a person is concerned, the primary factor is a "structure"; the realization of a center to that structure (i.e. the "I") is a subsequent experience. Moreover, this so-called center is not to be considered essentially as a geometrical center, but rather as a center of gravity that is, a point indicating the characteristic balance of forces and tendencies within the field of consciousness as a whole; a balance which is expressed in terms of will. "Behind will stands desire" is an old occult maxim. The direction of the will is determined by the balance of often conflicting desires; the principle of balance of power is the basic principle wherever will and decisions of will are concerned.
Any man wills to do what he desires most provided we do not limit the word, desire, to the so-called lower or most superficial elements of the personality. The religious ascetic starves himself because his desire to attain what he envisions as his greatest goal is stronger than the pressure of biological instincts. He rules his body's wants sternly; but behind this willfulness stands his desire for religious attainment or salvation. Behind this desire the images or concepts of spiritual liberation and sin, stand, not consciously perceived, yet powerful images formed by the religious and moral teachings with which his mind was impregnated during childhood and adolescence.
It is these teachings and ideals, the example of parents and neighbors or his rebellion against them and his "complexes" caused by frustration and pain which, together with still deeper inherited organic factors, have structured his consciousness. His ego did not structure the latter. The ego is rather a consolidation of consciousness, resulting from a realization of permanent individual characteristics, faculties and modes of response to life. It is a concentrate of those typical individual traits which differentiate the person from all other persons.
The ego, as a particular form of being, is a Saturnian factor, for Saturn is the lord of all particular forms or structures which are defined by their differences from all other forms; thus by a principle of exclusion. "Paul Smith" signifies the sum-total of a person's differences from all other human beings. And this sum-total of differences is established not only socially, but also in Paul Smith's consciousness, by his "name". In modern societies it is normally established at two levels by two names: a family and a personal name. The former is meant to establish collective differences (of race, of family, etc.); the latter, personal differences (individuality).
When the man says to himself or to others, "I am Paul Smith", what he actually means to state is not that he is "I", but rather that here is "Paul Smith". Paul Smith is the ego, with its individual and group structured differences. The name is the symbol of the ego. Jung knew this well when he wrote: "By ego, I understand a complex of representations which. . .appears to possess a very high degree of continuity and identity". He spoke of "ego-complex"; and every complex is a psychic structure (in our sense of the term, structure). But the ego-complex is not, as Jung added*, "the centrum of my field of consciousness" as much as it is the structural factor in consciousness. Because there is structure and order in the field of a normally mature person, the sense of permanent structural identity arises. This sense of permanent structural identity is what the average man today knows as the sense of "I".
To speak of it as a "center" tends to confuse the situation. It is both center and circumference; and it is, besides, the relationship of radius to circumference, the structural factor, Pi, which defines the form of the circle. More important still, in so far as practical psychological problems are concerned, is the fact that the ego is a state of concentrated attentiveness to structural problems. Indeed, the ego represents a condition of constant involvement in the business of keeping the structure of the field of consciousness intact against the pressure of internal as well as external agencies seeking to alter this structure; just as the State seeks forever to enforce its laws and regulations and to protect its boundaries and prestige.
*cf. "Psychological Types". page 540
The ego is truly the equivalent of the State in the realm of personality. The State may be controlled by a king, or by any other kind of official symbol of authority (like the Constitution of the United States); the ego may develop or fail to develop a sense of ruling '' 1'' - feeling. In all cases the essential factor remains the State-as-a-whole; and this State, being a structural factor, is found at work everywhere. What is called an egocentric and very willful person is much like a modern police State. The structural factor dominates and tends to stifle every part of the field of consciousness, regulating every function or sending every unwelcome thought or feeling into the outer darkness of the unconscious exile or concentration camp, as may be the case. The police State usually has an official dictator; but the dictator is a symbol and a symptom far more than a cause except in special cases which we shall study presently. He becomes, at any rate even when he was not so at first a slave to the rigid structures he has evolved, and indeed had to evolve.The average person, cannot be compared to a totalitarian police State. He is usually a very loosely integrated whole in which there is no actual strong central power. In him psychic wants or drives (comparable to "special interests", monopolies, cartels, church organizations, workers unions, etc.) fight for the position of central authority. The ego of the average person is a differentiating structure within which the balance of power changes constantly (or at least periodically) and the "center" is merely a symbol a seal or office)with which one powerful group after another identifies itself, and, through such an identification assumes the authority officially invested in the "center" i.e., in the realization: "I". The average man cannot truly say (save perhaps at rare moments of high realization) "I am" without any qualification; for to simply say "I am", with conviction and power, would mean that the consciousness has found its focusing center in an "I" unidentified with particular traits, attitudes and complexes which are the products of changing responses to heredity and environment.
But, if the ego is a pattern of responses to heredity and environment the reader may retort must there not be That which does the responding? There is; and it is to this "responder" that the occultist-theosophist refers when speaking of the "higher self" or "Ego" with a capitalized E. However, by failing to give a clear picture of what the lower or personal ego is in terms of the historical development of personality and of normal conscious experiences in modern man, the "esotericist" indulges but too often in psychological escapism. He is trying to escape from "Paul Smith" into a vague but exalted feeling-intuition of "I". By saying and repeating "I am" he is seeking to feel secure and established in a spiritual reality which nevertheless he cannot as yet incorporate into his consciousness which therefore remains vague and transcendent, a "cloud of light" perhaps, but not a "body of light", or the "Christ-Body".
Not yet, in most cases. The "I" that is actually meant in the statement "I am Paul" is a symbol rather than an experienced reality. It is, to the psychologist, the dimly divined goal of a process of personal integration and perhaps eventual transfiguration; while to the esotericist it is the reflected image of a transcendent reality. This reality has been called the Higher Self, Solar Angel, or Augoeides. It has indeed been given a multitude of names in the attempt to concretize the belief which some men claim to be for them an actually experienced reality that to every Paul Smith a spiritual "He", a God-like being corresponds. What is called here the "Star" one among millions within the Galaxy symbolizes such a being of light.
What is usually not made clear enough is, however, that in the consciousness of the average individual of today this spiritual entity is only a potentiality of being. It has been called the "divine Spark" or monad; but it may be wiser to think of it as a God-seed, from which a full-grown plant of spiritual substance and power may grow if it is sown in fertile soil at the right season, and under proper climatic conditions. The fertile soil is the heredity and environment of the actual person, Paul Smith. The right season and climate refer to the social and cosmic conditions under which Paul Smith lives on this earth. But, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel parable, many seeds do not reach the stage of fully mature plants.
The I in the statement "I am Paul Smith" is not the God-seed. In most cases it is at best the anticipatory sense of a dimly felt inner stability and permanency. It is an uncertain intuition of what could be divinity at the core of Paul Smith's highest and most integrated experiences of actual living. The main goal of all true spiritual teachings is to strengthen this dim feeling-intuition by establishing it as a concept, as an intellectual corollary to the related idea of God's existence. "God is; I am" these are twin statements. If there is no universal " God ", then the spiritual "I" would exist in absolute and essentially meaningless contrast to an alien and incomprehensible universe; and if there is no "I" as a potentially complete expression of divinity, then human life is an unbearable tragedy that leads nowhere.
In terms of astrological symbolism, the Star, that is still for the man on the Illumined Road a transcendent factor, is a focus or lens through which the Universal being of God radiates as light and power. If the consciousness of that man can be made a clear mirror upon which the light of the Star is being focalized as a Ray of spirit, the universal form of God can appear on this mirror. But the mirror must be clear and turned toward the Star! When these conditions are fulfilled, when the previously defined steps on the Illumined Road have been successfully taken, then the formless sense of "I" within Paul Smith's consciousness becomes a gradually clearer perception of a formed "He". The image of God is seen within the consciousness, carried, as it were, by the Ray of the Star.
It is more than a mere image or reflection. It is a God-seed, substantial and vibrant with power of growth and fulfillment. It is an incorporation of spirit in the likeness of God. Jesus is the symbol and actual prototype of such a full incorporation; the "likeness of God" is Christ. Christ was incorporated in Jesus; and this is what is meant by divine Sonship a potentiality inherent in all individuals. To tread the Illumined Road is to take effective steps to make the potentiality an actuality within and through one's total being. Because Jesus was, at least in the cycle of our present humanity, the first man to become in full actuality an incorporation of Christ, he is the Son of God.
To the universal, all-pervading spirit, everything that happens once had happened once-for-all in a "timeless" world. Yet to every man who functions consciously in a world of cycles and duration, the event of divine birth the incorporation of the spirit in the likeness of God is a potentiality in the process of becoming an actuality. This process is "the Path". It is "the Way and the Life", which Jesus-Christ shows, toward the full and clearly conscious realization of "the Truth" the truth of the divine Sonship latent in every man.
Jesus answered to the questioning woman of Samaria seeking to draw vitality from the ancestral well-spring of human energy and wisdom "I am He". In every Paul Smith there is also the possibility, however remote and incredible it may seem, that he too may be able to say to himself and perhaps to the world "I am He"; and saying this, to know with incontrovertible knowing that the Star is within his "heart" the Kingdom of heaven, the God-seed, the Christ-child yet to be.
The Illumined Road takes a new turn when this process of incorporation begins. Before, the Star was known as a center of light-radiation to become oriented to, to value more than anything else, to seek power from, to commune with, in an attempt to recognize effectively all that one had to contribute to the work of the world. But now, as this Saturn stage of the journey Starward is at least reached, an entirely new situation is faced. The Star is perceived within. A child is conceived of the Star. The future is incorporating at the vital core of the present. Now is being fecundated by eternity; which means, by the consciousness of the Eon. "I" is in the process of becoming "He".
And what of Paul Smith? He becomes the mother of the living God that is stirring within his consciousness. A mystery is being celebrated within him; a strange and often baffling ritual of gestation. Paul Smith now hesitates saying "I am Paul Smith". Can he even say truly: "I am"?
Until now, as he traveled through the first stages of the Illumined Road, he had sought strength and inner security in the realization "I am". He had striven to affirm his "I" as a permanent reality of spirit in contrast to the illusory complexities and conflicts that came to a sum total in Paul Smith in contrast to the constant flux of moods, desires and hopes of his human, too human existence among earth-conditioned, confused and greedy men and women. Yet, in his honest moments of clear perception, he knew fully well that this "I", which he claimed to be, was not substantial and actual in his experience. It was at best a presentiment or a threshold of experience. It was something hoped for, a presence as yet unveiled, a light, a power perhaps, but not yet a fact endowed with the incontrovertible power of all true facts the power of being experienced in fullness of conscious living and being.
To be fully experienced, the "I" had to be completely severed from the "Paul Smith" qualification. A negative process: a "not this, not this. .." denial of earth-conditioning, of hereditary and environmental pulls, of bodily urges indeed, of the very power exerted by the structural ego and its constant concentration upon, or attentiveness to, the problems of maintaining this structure of personality under all possible circumstances. The individual, Paul Smith, had to be nameless, before he could truly feel, I am. Even then, it was only a feeling, an intuition of beyond, an irruption of light perhaps, as if one was thrown into a sea of formless splendor and timeless ecstasy the mystic's experience, cosmic consciousness, glory and light; nevertheless it could not be called reality, because no effective organism for action no new body or personality had as yet been concretely formed.Until the new stage began. Until Saturn spoke on the Illumined Road. Until the Star came to be known within the consciousness: "He"! At this stage, the mystic proclaims: God lives me. At this stage, the great wonder is: He is I. The subject, I, has become the expression of a vaster consciousness, of a more cosmic organism. "I" has become an utterance of "He". In that moment "I" takes birth as an organic, a living reality, and not merely a feeling-intuition of some transcendent power which has to remain formless.
He is I and that, I am. The I am-ness of the individual that was known to himself and to others as Paul Smith is now re-established, re-incorporated in seed in the realization "He is I". One day, still far distant, the transfigured personality will be able to say, with Jesus: "I am He".
