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THE WAY OF TRANSCENDENCE
Life begins in a release of energy radiating from the nucleus of a complex cell. Where there is life and presumably any kind of existence there is an original center of radiation but there must also be, implied or inherent in this dynamic release of energy, a principle of "form"; and first of all there must be boundaries, which outline the field of biological activity and functional interaction. The boundaries separate the within from the without. In the well-known drawing by Blake, God the Creator is seen describing with a compass the circle within which the universe will develop. Likewise in ancient societies the building of a city or even of a temporary military camp always began with the establishment of a circular trench marking the boundaries within which men were to proceed with all the functions of their collective life; and the drawing of circular boundaries implied the recognition of a center.
Power radiates from the center outward; then, as the vibratory energy reaches the boundaries of the field, it rebounds, and returns to its source, only to spread again outward. A circulatory rhythm of energy (a basic life-pulsation) is established, which becomes the very foundation of the primary life-activities. The outward phase of this pulsation sends energy throughout the field; the inward (or centripetal) motion deals essentially with the development of some kind (rudimentary as it be) of consciousness, or (in the most abstract sense of the term) of "in-formation".
These two movements, centrifugal and centripetal, are found everywhere in operation. Everywhere we meet and are dealing with "wholes" complex units of existence. These wholes are organized fields of activity, and as their component parts become functionally interrelated and constantly interacting within the boundaries of the fields, consciousness takes form.
Any whole of existence exists within a greater whole, and it contains a myriad of functional parts which are also, at their level of activity, little wholes. A living cell functions, together with many other cells, within a larger whole, a body; but within each of these cells a large number of molecules are at work which are also complex units of existence; i.e., existential wholes containing likewise component entities. The living body of an animal or a man exists within the earth's biosphere (the realm of life, extending thinly above and below the surface of the soil); and we know now, especially since the first Geophysical Year (1957), that this biosphere is an organized field of activities within which all life-species are interrelated and constantly, rhythmically interacting; what disturbs one species affects, in varying degrees yet noticeably, all others. The interaction between the mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human "kingdoms" are well-known; and we can now have a vivid image of the entire planet, at least in its physical aspect, from the central core to the ionosphere and magnetosphere, and perhaps including still farther regions up to the Moon (the "sublunar sphere" of the Ancients), it is the image of an organic whole, even if we have to extend somewhat the concept of 'organism" to make it fit this planetary and eventually a similar cosmic picture.
What one generally calls "evolution" is the vast process according to which wholes of every greater scope and complexity are being produced'a process so beautifully outlined in Jan Smut's book Holism and Evolution and also in Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man.* There is, thus, latent in every existential whole, a tendency to strive toward the realization of, and participation in a greater whole. Such a tendency is unconscious during the lower phases of the world-process, if we use the term consciousness in a strictly human sense. When the human stage is reached, this movement assumes a definitely conscious aspect; and it may be thwarted as well as assented to and assisted by the mind and feelings of the human individual.
*The interactions of lesser and greater wholes has been discussed by Rudhyar in books written after Triptych, notably in The Planetarization of Consciousness. He gave the name of "holarchy" to an extended concept of 'two-way evolution', or of involution and evolution. (Editor's Note).
We speak then of the conscious human drive toward ever larger modes and forms of association, toward the integration of different personalities, of groups and races toward the synthesis of cultural attitudes and conceptual systems. The small tribe expands into kingdoms, which in various ways, after periods of crises, merge into multi-racial modern nations: and we are now becoming aware of a deep-rooted trend toward a global synthesis, toward the integration of humanity within the vast field of the whole Earth the Earth which we can now feel is the one home of mankind, and also of all the other forms of earthly existence. The trend seems inescapable, however much individuals and nations may still oppose it, perhaps because it seems still premature and so difficult. Yet there can ultimately be no other constructive solution to humanity's always more insistent problems. The only question is how to bring the inevitable end to concrete actualizations; that is, on what basis and by what means.
The biosphere and the planet Earth are facts which cannot be denied. The interrelatedness of all sections of mankind has become this century an equally undeniable fact, thanks to modern technology, and historians now are beginning to realize that the development of the various cultures, when active and creative on this or that continent, has followed somewhat parallel paths through the centuries and millennia of the past.*
*Cf. Les Metamorphosesde L'Humanite, Editions Planete, Paris, France. 1953 and hereafter.
This process of all-human integration, however, runs inevitably into many obstacles. Any living form and at the human level, any social or religious institution develops a resistance to change. Inertia which is actually the principle of resistance to change is a basic fact of existence. This fact is powerful in the development of human consciousness; it manifests in the clinging to privileges and to the security of familiar values, concepts and feeling-responses. It is this inertia which gives to a person's ego (using the term in its psychological sense) its obstinate repugnance to modify its controlling attitude and to reorient its behavior and its sense of value.
Until the egos of a significant number of human beings especially of individuals able to assume social and ideological authority have been able, willing and ready to accept all the implications of the pull of evolution toward the stage of all-human, global integration, the process will always risk running into catastrophic crises which would vastly delay its wholesome completion. The drive toward synthesis and toward a condition of quasi-organic participation in the activity of a greater whole succeeds in proportion as men intensely develop a sense of underlying human unity in proportion as they are vividly aware of * 'Man's common humanity" underneath and through all superficial differences between individual persons, groups and races.
What we call religion especially the recent "great religions" constitutes an attempt to make this sense of Man's common humanity vivid and compelling by projecting it, as it were, upon the broad screen of the heavens as a supreme Being named God. Religion tells us that we are, either multiple aspects of one all-inclusive transcendent Reality, or sons of one Father-God or, in tribal days, descendants from a common Great Ancestor. In this way the ideal of the Brotherhood of Man is held with emotional vividness before the mind of millions of individuals who otherwise would only be aware of the ego-differences and the conflicts of interest between them.
The great ideal of "unity" has thus been given a religious, transcendent power; and everywhere groups of men and women "fascinated" by this deified ideal of Unity have been led to take what is called "the Path of Return" the return to the One-that-was-in-the-beginning and whose unity will be reconstituted as all men's consciousness become synthesized and in some way merge at the end of the human cycle. It is to this final consummation that Teilhard de Chardin refers when he speaks of the Point Omega, an incandescent state of spiritual Christ-consciousness. In a similar way, in the last chapters of his great book The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo speaks of a Gnostic society of men transfigured by the descent and incorporation of the Supermind.
The religious projection of the ideal of all-human unity upon the screen of the heavens ruled by an all-powerful and all-loving God, pictured in the shape of the Ideal Man, has taken many forms during historical ages. One of the oldest forms was the foundation of astrology. Astrology was based originally on the realization that the sky presented a magical picture of order and infinite peace. This picture instilled in primitive man, harassed by violence and fear in tropical jungles or in dark and dank northern forests, the faith that he was nevertheless living in an ordered universe where seasonal changes were predictable and the return of spring and fruits could be relied upon. Agriculture was born of that faith.
Then men began to people the sky with gods and creative Hierarchies. Constellations of stars were pictured with profound symbolic meaning revealing to the initiated the cyclic processes of growth, affecting all human beings because they referred to "Man's common humanity" all men being "brothers in the stars" and multifarious expressions of the Sky-god, the Great Man in Heaven, the Macroprosopus or Great Countenance.
Today this picture of the Zodiacal Man appears archaic and quite meaningless to the majority of educated men and women, for a new picture of the universe has been presented by modern astronomers and we worship a science which has been able to discover and utilize basic laws of the universe. We see the earth as a small planet revolving around the sun, a not too impressive star among millions gathered within the immensely vast Galaxy separated by incredibly great distances from millions of more or less similar spiral nebulae and even more mysterious celestial objects.
The picture of the sky has changed, but it is still a picture of immense power operating in an ordered way. The urge to explore interplanetary, and perhaps someday interstellar galactic spaces, has seized humanity; and this at the very time a global society, relating in some definitely and vitally organized manner all human beings, has been made possible. We are becoming "Terrans", whose home is the Earth (in Latin, Terra). As Terrans for our effort spaceward implies a cooperation of scientists from all nations of our globe we feel the need of relating ourselves to the whole solar system; and this need takes the perhaps fanciful or rather the as yet unproven, form of communication with beings from other planets, just as it arouses in the fertile imagination of science-fiction writers the image of a "Galactic Federation".
Imagination is a powerful force; but, alas, today it is too often used in the pursuit of commercial (or military ) goals. It tries to make stories or to gain adantage over other men; it seems to have lost the power to create symbols, that is, to focus the collective energies of multitudes of men upon an "Image" able to arouse intense, enduring faith and hope, and the will required to make actual the "great dream". The collective emotions of national groups of men, when aroused in recent times, have basically been directed by shortsighted leaders toward some sort of quasi-religious "Crusade" against an enemy pictured in monstrous terms. The much publicized "Cold War" has been given, by both sides the cruel intensity displayed by the Wars of Religions of the past. It is indeed a Civil War of Man, for today mankind is factually a whole. What happens in a remote corner of the globe affects at once the lives and the jobs of men everywhere; and the press, radio and television make it impossible for us to forget this fact unless we desperately hide our ostrich-heads in the sands of our comfortable suburban existence.
We should look again to the sky for some great faith; and indeed our yearning to move in gravitation-free spaces underneath the utilitarian and military aspects of these costly ventures is a sub-conscious attempt to forget the Earth's warring dualities and to participate in the ordered grandeur of the pageant of planets and stars. Soon we may feel that if the Earth, Terra, is our home, the solar system is our village- community. Then some more adventurous minds will begin to dream they are already doing so! of the unknown paths that will lead from our solar system to some other cosmic community and eventually to the great metropolis, the White City at the core of the Galaxy.
We are now able to think of such an adventure in terms of physical displacement, depending on the controlled technological use of energies powering some sort of concrete vehicle; but in the past there have been men here and there who have dreamt of such spaceward journeys in terms of a Soul-quest powered by psycho-mental energies in vehicles of consciousness not made by human hands, but built by spiritual faith, daring courage and unflinching will. We may call such men mystics, occultists, initiates; names matter little here, for we are not concerned with techniques as such and recipes, but rather with the understanding of what these men have ventured after, of the way they have followed, of the symbolic utterances they have left us so as to stimulate our own endeavors. They did not speak, these men, of galactic center; but they told of the Light and Love that pulsates throughout the universe, of the mystic Way, of ineffable glory or absolute stillness, to describe which they could only use this so much abused little word, God.
Now, in the new scientific picture of the universe, many men can find no room for an actual and concrete God; yet we can give to this ancient symbol, God, a new form, a galactic frame of reference. We can still think of a Path of Return; but now we see this Path reaching toward the core of the Galaxy and, as conscious men who have succeeded in producing the tremendous heat of the fire that burns in the "heart of the Sun", we can travel on this Path along with solar rays; for we too have become miniature suns. We have the power; we need only the imagination, the faith, and the daring to leave behind altogether our now obsolete vehicles of coarse matter and to set our minds firmly upon the course that our spiritual telescopes and radars enable us to map.
Symbols, of course; but is not the word God a symbol? Is not "space" a human word measured by our brain's responses to changes of awareness? Men are forever building new goals, and ways seeking to lead our imagination and feelings to these ideal goals. Men create their universes; each man, in some respect, his own. We start from the near, the sensed, the felt; and we venture forth, dreaming and in dreaming we trace pathways to the stars which others will follow, more cautiously perhaps, yet, if too cautiously, perhaps too late to catch the dewdrops of light upon the vast meadows of galactic space.
The will to tread this pathway to the stars which leads to the very core of the Galaxy is the motivating power of a third movement which we must see as existing beyond the twofold rhythmic oscillations of "life". We can no longer refer to it as the involution of solar energy into forms, or as the evolution of consciousness from activity in forms. I have spoken of it as "transvolution". The path that this movement follows is the Illumined Road. It reaches symbolically from the Heart of the Sun to the very core of the Milky Way.
