There have been many recent
research projects dealing with what is defined as creativity or the creative
process. Because our contemporary Western Society is mainly concerned with
individuals — their rights, their development, and the
myriad of techniques devised to assist and normalize the actualization of their
innate potentialities — these studies of creativity are almost always focused
upon the root-causes, the necessary or optimal conditioning and the modes of
operation of the creative process in individuals. These studies are motivated by
the hope that when the process is better understood it will make it possible for
a greater number of persons to release effectively and harmoniously the
creativity now assumed to be latent in every human being.
Whether
or not such an assumption is correct and whether it would serve humanity's
essential destiny to arouse in every person an emotional eagerness to create
something, whatever it be and for whatever purpose, is not the main issue. It
can be stated nevertheless that such an emphasis placed upon the value of
individual creativity, and the popularization of analyses of the creative
process in personalities today regarded as especially creative, are developments
related to the apparent fact that our Western culture-whole has reached the last
phases of its cycle; these developments are typical symptoms of the
vulgarization process always accompanying the closing period of any
culture-whole. We would easily understand the reason for this if we realized
that the state of the culture and the approach to creativity are definitely
interrelated. It should be fairly evident that discussing the creative process
in individuals without much reference to the state of the culture-whole in which
these individuals are "being creative," and also to the character of
their relationship — conscious or unconscious — to the culture and the social
processes it features, makes very little sense. What essentially matters is the
two-way relationship between the individual and his or her society. To
consider the individual alone, as if he operated in an environmental vacuum, is
as fundamentally meaningless as to discuss social, cultural, economic, and
political processes with no regard to the individual human beings affected by
these processes who, to a large extent, give them a conscious direction by
formulating goals and means.
To be
creative in twentieth century America is to a large extent different from being
creative in the Europe of the seventeenth century. What the individual does and
how he feels about it acquires its basic meaning from what his society needs
and can accept at the time he is living and creating. As an individual, he may
think of his activities as creative, yet if there is no cultural need for them,
he will either not be able, for a variety of reasons, to bring his creative
activity to completion, or else what he somehow completes will remain
unrecognized and ineffectual; perhaps (in rare instances) he may be discovered
much later and interpreted as a premature prophetic vision. Victor Hugo once
stated that nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. What he
actually meant was that nothing is more effective and transformative than a
creative activity (however it manifests) that fulfills the then operative need
of a culture-whole toward which it is directed.
In other
words, if we want to deal significantly with the creative process we have to
consider the implied cultural need it is meant to fulfill. Whether or not the
"creator" is fully aware of that need, is certainly not the main
issue. Neither is what the process of "creating" does to the
psychology of the individual in whom it operates the most important factor in
the evaluation of the process. The essential value of the creative process, as I
see it, is in the answer it gives to the collective need of a culture and a
society, or of a special group or subculture within this society. It should be
an eminently convincing answer, arousing in the people coming in contact with it
not only the urge, but also the power to transform themselves in terms suggested
by this creative answer.
To create is
to transform; but the basic issue is what is being transformed. It may be raw
materials (clay, wood, words, pigments, or the patterns of social behavior) to
which a more integrated and meaning-releasing form is given; but it also could
be the consciousness of human beings and their capacity to respond effectively
to the challenge of a greater life.
In the first instance, one is dealing with what should more accurately be called productivity. The tribal artisan making beautiful pots or rugs, according to traditional models existing as prototypes in the collective unconscious of his people, is a "producer" rather than a "creator." He transforms the raw materials he uses into objects having, to him or his community, both a character of utility (whether he uses or sells them as articrafts) and an esthetic value. The artisan may modify the traditional forms and this may give him a feeling of exaltation or pride, especially if his community praises him rightly for what he has produced. Such a feeling is similar in nature to the emotional stimulation and the sense of increased power which a person receives from an especially successful sportive or even sexual performance. The organism-as-a-whole and its functions may be stimulated, but above all it is the performer's ego that is enhanced by a feeling of achievement. Because, in the performance, his biopsychic energies have reached a condition of greater fulfillment the artist-producer is more fully what he is.
On the
other hand, in the above-mentioned second instance, when what is transformed is
consciousness rather than materials of one kind or another, the creative
individual, as he creates, becomes more than what he was. He has
been moved by a power that is transcultural as well as transpersonal. Through
him this power is able to evoke in others the desire, or perhaps the will, also
to become more than they are, provided they open their consciousness and/or
their feeling-responses to the magic of the creative act.
The
dualism of creativity vs. productivity parallels that of magical will vs.
esthetic pleasure. In the first case, a transpersonal power operates through
the creator, or we should rather say the creative agent; in the second, the
productive activity flows from the artist who produces objects or
gives performances that meet the demands of the people of his culture, and
perhaps in some instances of mankind as a whole. The demands of
the culture-whole for objects of beauty or excellence should be clearly
differentiated from the need of that culture for a radical
transformation of its sense of value and its paradigms when a time of transition
has come. When such a time comes it manifests outwardly in a "crisis,"
which (etymologically at least) means the opportunity for making a decision.(1)
A
transition is a "going through"; what one goes through are boundaries.
It is a passage from the know and the familiar to the as-yetunknown. It
implies a necessary process of "defamiliarization," and this refers to
the disruptive, catabolic and "catesthetic" aspect of the truly
creative process. All creative processes have their shadow aspect,
but there need be no shadow in productivity, or (at the biological level) in
procreation and in the various forms of procreatively oriented sexual activity.
However, the creative-transformative (i.e., alchemical and regenerative) use
of the sex-force has its shadow aspect; and this applies also to the now
popularized process of the "raising of Kundalini."
The fundamental theme of this book
is that our Western culture-whole — and by extension the whole of humanity
subjected to its pervasive and catabolic influence
— is, and has been for at least two centuries, in a situation of
crisis. The crisis was brought about by the development of a new faculty, the
analytical power of the intellectual mind, whose most fruitful field of
operation is the world of physical matter, because all physical entities are
infinitely divisible. This faculty in turn developed as the result of the
general process of individualization of consciousness required for the
fulfillment of Man's place and function on the planet, Earth.
Man, as
the Individual, is intended to act as the conscious intermediary linking,
through many and varied forms, the realm of spirit and the world of matter. Man
is essentially Mind; but Mind is both "former" and
"transformer." In its purest aspect Mind is the formative principle of
the universe; but it contains within itself the power to destroy forms that have
outlived their usefulness as alchemical vessels within which
the "marriage" of spirit and matter can be performed.
When the time has come for a new phase in the cyclic (or cyclocosmic)
relationship between spirit and matter, this new relationship calls for a new
type of "marriage" and this in turn requires a new type of form
within which the quality of the new relationships can come to
maturity, as an embryo matures within a womb. Once matured this new quality of
being and relating can radiate through the form's boundaries and bring a new
inspiration to whatever it touches.
As soon as the evolutionary need
for the new quality of humanness is felt, the old forms begin to break apart and
to reveal their obsolescence. Then the crisis begins; it may be called catharsis
at the psychopersonal level, or revolution at the sociopolitical level. At the
telluric planetary level it may refer to a glacial period and an alteration of
the direction of the polar axis. When the crisis begins, the relation of a
significant group of individuals particularly sensitive and mentally alert to
their society's needs takes on, at least potentially, a new character. A new
role presents itself to them — a creative,
transformative role.
If
these individuals, consciously or only half-consciously, respond to the
potentiality of assuming such a role, this response involves a twofold relation
which to some extent is bound to affect their lives: a relation to the source of
the creative activity, the character of which they may not be consciously or
fully aware; and a new kind of relationship to the environment, group or society
which is eventually to be transformed by that creative activity. This
transformation may be interpreted by the people of the obsolescent
cultural institutions as destructive or constructive, and to some extent it is
both at the same time. The way it is interpreted could be considered of no great
importance to the truly dedicated creative agent; yet what this interpretation
does to the collective mentality of the new generation which will be most
radically affected by the forms it takes can have a crucial importance. What is
even more a determining factor is the quality of the relationship
which the creative agent is able to sustain toward both the source of his or her
creativity and the people to whom it is addressed. The creative agent should be
able to understand both what it is he is tuning to, and the character of the
need his culture has for his creative activity. He should understand his place
and function in the whole process of evolution of his particular culture-whole.
Without
such an at least intuitive understanding, the creative agent's relationship to
either his source of inspiration or his culture (and most likely to both) tends
to be inadequate because vitiated or distorted by egocentric reactions and
mental or emotional confusion. The formulation of such an understanding may be
difficult for the creative agent, for it inevitably implies a philosophical and
historically aware mind; and such a mind need not be fully developed in the
creative agent, or developed along the traditional lines of the old culture,
which might be worse than not developed at all. Yet, in some way, the creative agent
should be aware of what is taking place within him and at least of the ultimate
purpose of his creative process. If he is not aware of being an
instrumentality through which a creative power takes form this most
likely (and perhaps always) means that the creative process working through him
has only a catabolic or catesthetic character, even though he may feel during
the creative act the same personal emotional exaltation as that experienced by a
creative agent consciously and transpersonally dedicated to a purpose of
collective transformation.
If the
men and women of our present-day culture are fascinated by technique, always
eager to know the "how to" of every doing, and intent on producing more
of "bigger and better" things, it is because they consider and value
almost everything in terms of how an individual person feels about it. If some
type of activity feels good to a person, and it increases his or her material
and psychological welfare and productivity, then —
it is believed — everybody
should learn how to act in the same or a basically similar manner; thus
psychologists study the "successful" artist or business executive and
attempt to extract from such a study "recipes for success."
This is
a spiritually meaningless endeavor. Its results add to the process of
vulgarization dominating the last period of the life-span of a culture-whole.
Everybody must create so as to feel better, it seems! But the results are not
really "creative." More things are produced, more canvases painted,
more novels written, more of everything to glut the psychomental environment of
people, each of whom has to feel what "successful people" are supposed
to feel as they produce more and more and, in many cases, useless
ego-titillating objects, including what passes as "works of art."
Productivity,
even in the field of art, is not what should be called creativity. One may
experience a real thrill at giving birth to forms, integrating pigments, chunks
of clay, words or musical notes into forms which may or may not relate to the
actual shapes or sounds of our physical experience or to the traditional
conceptualizations of the culture in which one has been born and educated. But,
in the sense I am using the term, this is no more creativity than is giving
birth to a baby reproducing the generic pattern of biological integration long
established by the human species. To give birth to an entity or object organized
by a formative power replicating its blue-prints ad infinitum
according to a standardized procedure is to produce, not to create. Creation
implies transformation, a definite act of radical reorganization by, or if it is
a truly significant creative act, through a mind dynamized by
spirit — the power said to forever "make everything new."
Spirit
creates, culture reproduces. Spirit releases a new creative impulse which the
creative-formative mind then objectivizes as archetypes. Spirit
sounds forth the Tone, the AUM of a new cycle
— or it may be a subcycle or sub-subcycle:
mind concretizes the Tone into "forms of power." When personified by
the Avatar, or the Hero whose great deeds anchor the ideal archetypal structure
of the emergent new cycle, these magical forms become prototypes.
These prototypal realities of the world of collective existence are then seized
upon by the poet. His inspirited mind makes them into myths; and upon these
myths (prime symbols which in turn become paradigms in the hands of
concept-builders and institution-builders) a culture-whole is formed. Once
formed, the culture gives birth to men and women who produce the immense number
of objects and systems multiplying the original prototypes. This multiplying
operation is productivity; whether in the field of what we call art or in terms
of the production of an ever increasing variety of wares.
To be
productive is of course a highly satisfying personal activity for the producer.
Productivity has ample room for what we call originality, because an individual
person can be a new variation on an original theme. The producer's
mind can succeed in integrating new elements provided by his individual (and
therefore relatively unique) experience into the basic forms established by the
traditional prototypes. It can extend the scope of operation of a prototype —
let us say, in music, a sonata form — by incorporating it into a new
element abstracted from his experience; and obviously the personal experiences
of individual human beings gradually changes as the culture-whole evolves from
infancy to maturity and eventual death.
This basic cycle of organic
unfoldment is not the only one to consider. Within it subcycles and
sub-subcycles operate. When these smaller cycles reach the seed-condition of
their own life-span, new prototypes — outstanding personages —
appear personifying in every field the essential character of new subcycles and
revealing the new quality of living, feeling, and thinking to be demonstrated
during their limited span of operation. New symbols and a new style of life are
"sung" by poets and given generalized meanings by philosophers. These
seed-men become the origins of new subsidiary developments, of variations on the
primordial themes of the culture-whole.
Within
the range of the periods of the culture's development which their activity has
inspired, these seed-men are indeed "creative," but from the point of
view of the culture-whole, their creativity is less characteristically different
from the productivity of the rank and file of intelligent and mentally effective
members of the culture, because it is less radically transformative. It produces
variations on themes already existing within the culture's field of concepts and
symbols. They did not create the themes. they only developed one or another of
their inherent potentialities. Such a process of development does not
necessitate a catabolic form-destroying prelude, because a new variation on a
theme does not do away with the theme's basic identity.
Thus one
can say that there are several levels of creativity. Because all human cultures
can be seen as successive variations on the great planetary theme, Man, the
life-span of a culture-whole may be interpreted as a subcycle within the much
vaster planetary cycle of the evolution of mankind. And if we wished to envision
still larger cycles, we could speak of the evolution of the Earth as a planetary
organism, of the solar system as a whole, of the galaxy. But then we would no
longer deal with human creativity; we would have to think of divine creativity.
The typically human organism and the human mind are able not merely to perceive,
but to experience. Man, moreover, not only can experience a multitude of
conditions and situations, he is able to communicate the meaning and value of
what he has experienced. This can be done only through symbols which can most
easily be transferred and developed. Myths are organizations of symbols. Algebra
is a myth as much as is any religious cosmogony. Without man's mythopoetic
capacity, there would be no human culture-whole.
In an advanced culture-whole the mythopoetic capacity takes on an extreme variety forms, and once the process of individualization of human beings started in earnest, taking public sociopolitical and religious forms, a new factor began deeply to affect the human condition. The focusing of man's attention upon the individual, and the recently intensified concern of individuals and of society as a whole with the problems resulting from living and functioning as an individual are now producing very drastic stresses and strain within our Western culture and all that remains of ancient cultures. Tensions are generated which must be solved. They can be solved only by a reformulation, and indeed a radical transformation of "the Myth of the Individual" which has dominated our Western culture.
The Myth of the Individual
To use
Spengler's symbolic statement, this myth has for centuries in Europe and America
taken the form of the "Faustian man," and I have already outlined the
main characteristics of what Spengler meant in formulating the type. Faustian
man has led us to experience spectacular trips to the moon and the
transformation of atomic matter into energy and deadly fall-out. He has spread
his inventive genius all over the globe; but in so doing he has poisoned the
Earth's biosphere. He has achieved these extraordinary feats by allowing every
individual to pursue his anarchistic egocentric interests and his uncontrolled
cravings for ever-increasing power and productivity. This has been done in the
name of laissez faire and of a freedom whose scope man's ego was
supposed to be able to define and justify. In principle the ego definitions were
supposed to obey much talked about religious and ethical directives; but in fact
these have turned out to be enforced only as window-dressing and mainly in order
to keep a power-elite in control.
The global crisis we all are
facing is a struggle between myths. Mankind is struggling to build a new Myth of
the Individual. Mankind is in a prolonged crisis of parturition; and the odds
for miscarriage are still high. It needs great poets to name and sanctify a new
image of the individual — and perhaps first
of all an Avatar to give to the slowly emerging ideal of the "new man"
a substantiality which only a fascinating personification can give to an ideal.
It must be "fascinating," because what is needed is a concentration of
human energies upon one single image that for a time blots out all other images,
as in the case of hypnotic trance.
The
early Christians won over the might of Rome because their consciousness was
hypnotized by the Christ myth: the most precious Son of God dying a horrible
death out of incomprehensible love for each human being without distinction;
thus "for me also." By this sacrificial love, I, you, every human
being became sacralized, made valuable, made equal. What a vision, what a dream!
In recent years the Bahai's who believe the Persian Prophet, Baha'u'llah, to be
the Manifestation of God, Avatar for the New Age, have shown a similar faith
which can truly be called "fascination." At all levels, the
charismatic personages fascinate those who come in touch with them. If their
charisma is not merely based on extraordinary vitality or personal radiance, if
indeed it proves to be the manifestation of a transpersonal flow of creative
power and not merely a passing answer to a superficial need of the people or of
those who dictate collective fashions for personal gain, the charismatic
personage and his or her deeds and words may become the foundations of a myth.
But the foundations are not the entire building. On the foundations embodied in
the Avatar's or the great Hero's life, the poet builds the visible and effectual
form of the myth, while the philosopher seeks to convey its meaning to the
community.
In
nineteenth century America, Walt Whitman most closely filled the role of
myth-creating poet for the ideal "New World" which fascinated millions
of European immigrants. Jefferson, Lincoln, and many others contributed to the
creation of the myth; the great millionaires of last century also brought living
material to the formation and dissemination of the "American success
story," a myth of great power to which millions of egos all over the world
responded. Every historical period — every subcycle within the cycle of
development of our Western culture and of the Greco-Latin and Hebraic cultures
which not only preceded it but form with it a large coupling — has produced
characteristic modifications and variations on the theme of "the
individual." Some of these variations have ended in violent discords,
others in strenuous and ineffectual modulations; and today we are faced with the
awesome problem of dealing with the highly toxic products released into both the
biosphere and the noosphere by the negative aspect of the forms Europe and
America have given to the Myth of the Individual.
It seems unnecessary to restate
here what has been said so many times concerning what these toxic results of our
Western culture brand of individualism are. Our air, our homes, our cities, our
newspapers, radios, and T.V. sets are so filled with them that for many people
it is at times hard not to give up any attempt at creative transformation, so
oppressed does one feel by a sense of futility and powerlessness. But this is
precisely what one must not do or feel in a time of radical crisis and
sociocultural catharsis. Carl Jung has vividly spoken of overcoming the "cramp
in the conscious"; but there are other kinds of cramps to endure and allow to
dissipate — spiritual cramps and gut-reactions.
What today is essential for any potentially creative person (certainly a limited
number, yet larger than one might think) is to stimulate in oneself the courage
to see oneself and to act, in whatever way it might be, as myth-maker, as one of
the small groups of individuals who are co-creating the new image of the
individual.
How does one become co-creator of
the new myth? Always at first by the individual manner in which one
straightforwardly meets one's own crises within the context of the collective
crisis of Western man. The myth-maker does not meet his crises in terms of
strictly personal circumstances and idiosyncrasies; he sees in them symbols; he
expands their meaning until they begin not merely to reflect, but bring to a
personal focus, the crisis of his culture and, perhaps in the larger sense, of
humanity. He lives a symbolic life. But it is the kind of symbolic life that
fits in and gives meaning to a crisis situation; it is therefore a life of
transformation, an alchemical life, a hierophanic life, revealing of the
sacred nature of the world crisis.
Our
world-crisis is "sacred" because it is a rite of passage and all rites
of passage have a sacramental character. They contain, pulsating at their core,
the power to make a new beginning — the power to re-create oneself, not as an
isolated, lonely, and frustrated ego, but together with those who also have the
vision, the lucidity of will, and the gut-strength to begin again, and by so
doing to co-create a new Image of Man, a new Myth of the Individual. This great
myth is central to the development of mankind at least for the last twenty-five
centuries. Every human advance, every new faculty human beings have developed,
every spiritual realization, every truly heroic and creative act or
pronouncement has revolved around and contributed, positively or negatively, to
form the Myth of the Individual. Everything revolves around the meaning we give
to the individual. If our Western world is in a state of potentially tragic
crisis it is because our culture as a whole has not been able to sustain the
image of individual selfhood and of autonomous self-reliant and responsible
"parenthood" which had been rather imprecisely and only partially
outlined by the spiritual and intellectual leaders of our Greco-Hebraic
tradition. Many of these leaders failed to understand the possibilities and the
problems inherent in the glorification of the individual and all its by-products
at our present stage of human evolution. They either did not provide
sufficiently strong and precise safeguards, or else they tried to force the
nascent realization of individual autonomy and rational mind-power into the
straitjackets of religious dogma and intellectual dependence upon an already
perverted or misunderstood Aristotelian empiricism.
Therefore our
task is to illumine and reformulate the image of the individual, to understand
how and when it took form, and in terms of man's place and function on our
planet, for what purpose we must disengage it from the ruts of a materialistic
and egocentric Western tradition. By seeing the individual in a new and
challenging light, as the lightnings of the present historical storm strike our
collective consciousness, we may give it a new philosophical and cosmic, as well
as practical and psychosocial meaning. Thus in the very midst of the crisis we
may receive the revelation, and as poets we may incorporate it into the new myth
for which an incipient New Age is waiting.
How then can we formulate, or at least evoke the new image? What is, essentially, the individual?
The
Principle of Integration, ONE
In the
"cyclocosmic" philosophy I have outlined in my alreadymentioned book
The Planetarization of Consciousness, I have used the
all-capitalized term, ONE, to represent that universal principle and power
responsible for the fact that energy is released discontinuously in quanta
(or units of energy) and that existence is to be conceived in terms of
wholes,
of units of existence we call entities. We have seen that existence is
cyclic. It operates within a defined and structured field of activity, whether
this be microcosmic or macrocosmic, an atom, a human organism, a planet, or a
galaxy. A cycle of existence begins with a creative impulse, a creative Word or Logos
which releases a limited set of potentialities, immense perhaps, yet limited.
These potentialities will be gradually actualized through a process whose
life-span is also limited.
But
why should there be existence and cycles of existence? The fairly obvious answer
is that potentiality implies the urge to become actualized. We can however,
express this in various ways. We can speak of a metacosmic, ineffable God
"desiring" to manifest the infinite potentialities of His nature, a
difficult concept to picture except in the anthropormorphic image of a glorious
Being who forever creates new universes as a human artist produces many works,
all of which do not exhaust his creative capacity. We can also imagine some kind
of "infinite Ocean of potentiality," out of which periodically (and
perhaps also simultaneously) universes of concrete substance emerge,
objectivizing immense spurts of energy and, after passing through long cycles of
growth and transformation, collapsing and returning to the undifferentiated
metacosmic state of potentiality.
If
we think of a series of such universes, we cannot avoid conceiving the process
as endless, and there could be no reason to think of an absolute beginning
or end. The series is endless because every release of new potentiality should
be thought to operate in both a positive and negative manner; there will be some
entities who will succeed in perfectly actualizing the potentiality being
released in the beginning of the cycle, others who will fail to do so and will
drop by the wayside and decay as waste products. And our human experience makes
it possible for us to see how in theory the process can work out, as any new
What does
organic integration mean if not the joining together of two factors: the power
of integration we usually call "life" and the mass of earth substances
taken from the soil as foodstuff? In metaphysical terms we speak therefore of
spirit and matter. Existence manifests as fields of activities within which
spirit and matter are in the process of being integrated. This process needs a
structure of some sort to make it effective and to give it form, at whatever
level of activity it might be. This form is the product of mind. Spirit
acting through mind integrates matter within the boundaries of structural fields
of activity: this not merely at the physical level, but at other levels
of subtler or coarser types of matter. What we call the cosmos is such a
structured field of activity; so is the planet Earth, the atom, and the human
organism.(2)
A human
person is a structured field of activity operating at several interrelated and
interacting levels. In popular terminology one speaks of body, mind and soul,
the word soul being given a rather ambiguous and uncertain
meaning. At the level of the physical organism, the human body, we can
distinguish material elements (or chemical substances) being
organically integrated by a principle of integration, life, acting
through a structural web of lines of force to which esoteric
philosophy usually refers as the "etheric" (and in some cases the
"astral") field — unfortunately also spoken of as a
"body." Thus the three basic above-mentioned factors of "spirit,
mind, and matter" are present, but they manifest in the special manner
pertaining to the realm of "physicality"; and the "matter"
factor plays a dominant role which colors the whole level of physical activity.
A human
person operates also at a level to which we generally refer as that of mental
activity. According to the esoteric concepts developed in all advanced cultures,
but particularly known today in their Hindu formulation popularized by the
Theosophical Movement, and later on by Hindu swamis and yogis, the mind-field of
activity is also basically threefold. It has a spiritual integrating factor, a
structure through which this factor works, and a substantial base which
manifests as a kind of "mind-stuff," as yet mostly unperceived by modern
scientists and investigators. At that level of mental activity the spiritual
integrating factor is no longer "life" (as we know it at the physical
level), but a power that sustains and unifies all mental activity. It is the
power responsible for what we call "individuality" or the I am-realization.
(I have referred to it in the past as individual Identity, or as the "individual
soul," and to the field of mental activity as "the ideity
field."). It is individual because "indivisible." If what we call
in psychological terms a breakdown of the mind, split personality, or
schizophrenia occurs in a human being, this does not mean that
this principle of individuality becomes "divided," but rather that it
ceases to be effective. What breaks down is the mental structure
through which it operates, the breakdown of the structure either renders this
operation impossible, or at least partially or temporarily suspends it. What we
call psychological complexes, innate tendencies and, at a more collective or
generic level, archetypes, refers to the structural aspect of the mind-field (or
ideity field).
As to
the level at which the Spirit-factor of the above-mentioned metaphysical trinity
operates in a most central and dominant manner, we today know very little about
its existence per se. We refer to it in a metacosmic sense as the
three aspects of the Deity, of the three persons of the Catholic and the popular
Hindu Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. By so
doing however, we only create a myth, the Deity Myth, which probably obscures
rather than elucidates the operation of whatever it is that is responsible for
the process of cosmic existence.
In the symbolic language of modern
Theosophy and in relation to man's being, the trinity of principles at the level
of activity dominated by spirit is that of Atma, Buddhi, and Manas. Atma refers
to pure unconditioned Spirit; a "mere breath" without substance or identity
(wrote H. P. Blavatsky) perhaps therefore pure Motion or rhythm. Buddhi gives to
this rhythmic activity a substantial foundation
— its involutionary aspect is divine creative energy; its
evolutionary aspect is divine wisdom. Manas refers to the conditioning and
particularizing principle of structure, and therefore can be related to — and,
in a sense but not exactly, identified with — what at the level of the ideity-field
I call "individuality." In terms of the process of involution one may speak
of it as the primordial desire to manifest. At the close of the evolutionary arc
of the cycle it is the desire for individual existence which is the last
obstacle to be overcome by the "individual soul" (and the mind it
operates in) before reaching liberation or nirvana, the extinguishing of all
desires.
What
then do I mean by "the individual" with reference to the planetary
crisis mankind is now experiencing and to the "need for a new Image of Man?
The
individual is the human being operating as mind integrated by the principle of
individuality (the I-am principle) — ideally, mind in a harmoniously structured
fullness of mental substance. But in order to understand the function such
a mind and the principle of individuality operating at the center of its mandala-field
are meant to fill in the total scheme of unfoldment of planetary existence, we
should first of all consider the place they occupy in the scheme.
Man, the individual, stands at the mid-point of existence. He occupies the
"middle realm." He is essentially the intermediary and the mediator.
His function is to bring together, to connect, correlate, and integrate spirit
and matter.
What we have next to realize is that at the core of the three basic levels of
cosmic activity — spirit, mind, and matter — the principle of integration, ONE, operates.
It operates as pure, undifferentiated spirit, the Atman, in the transcendent
field of spiritual activity; it operates as the I-am principle (the
individuality or individual identity) at the level of mind; it operates as
"life" at the level of organization of physical or chemical particles.
It is the same principle at all three levels, a principle endowed with power.
This power is irreducible and undefeatable; yet it may be challenged for long
ages by solely mental beings who have cut their individualized will from the
Spirit and are "all-ego." But these beings of total spiritual darkness
inevitably face dissolution at the close of a more or less vast cycle of
existence.
Individuality
is power; it is the power of integration, ONE, operating through mind.
But being in the middle of the dualism of spirit and matter, mind can be
attracted by either pole. The I-am power centralizing the mind's activity can be
so attracted, so fascinated by either spirit or matter, that it loses the sense
of its essential function, which is to bring together, to firmly link and
(eventually) to completely integrate these two poles of existence. The
individual can become spirit-mad or matter-mad; and because at this time of
racial evolution on our planet the forces of materiality are stronger than those
of spirituality, it is far easier for the individual to be fascinated by the
exciting play of material-biological energies than by the rarefied atmosphere of
In the
vitalistic age of tribal development during which human beings normally operated
at the biopsychic level of activity and seedmultiplication (agriculture and
cattle-raising), the human mind had mostly to be the servant of the power of
life. But once the process of individualization began to affect the collective
or public consciousness of mankind, especially in the Western world, what used
to be biospheric norm: the real meaning of "fate" began to take a new
character. The mentality of the whole culture became "materialistic"
in a conscious and individualized way — in a destructive way.
Mind, aware of its place in the universal scheme, turned away from it.
Materialism became the betrayal of the individual's function.
The
beginning of the process of individualization, which emphasized activity at the
level of the mind, occurred long before our Western culture and the preceding
Hellenic or Greco-Latin culture took form. The coming of the Promethean host had
given to mankind the possibility of experiencing the mysterious
fire of I-am-ness and of developing a structural capacity for
"reflective" self-consciousness. But this possibility could only be
realized under very rigid safeguards and within the precincts of sanctuaries;
thus, in relatively rare cases, through initiations implying a transfer of
function (and not merely power) from Initiator to long-tested
disciples. But since the day of Buddha, and even more Christ, the process of
individualization has begun to operate publicly and on a large scale. This is,
twenty-five centuries later, the essential cause of the unrest our Euro-American
culture has brought to the world and of the entire crisis man is facing. Unless
this cause is understood, there can be no lasting solution to humanity's
problems, to man's crisis of growth and, shall we say, to our global menopause?
Mankind
is indeed facing a crisis similar to the "change of life" experienced
by individual men and women in their forties or fifties. It is a biological and
a psychosocial turning point. Both the individual person and the organizational
character of human society are confronted with a radical change. This change
has a truly planetary character. It implies the need for a fundamental
reorientation of consciousness and a repolarization of human activity at the
level of mind-activity; and the central problem is a re-evaluation of the
meaning and function of individuality. The feeling of being I-myself
must be given a new meaning. And perhaps the only way to consciously grasp
this new meaning is to realize that the individual experiencing this I-feeling
stands at the mid-point between spirit and matter. The very fact that we can say
consciously and deliberately "I am" should reveal to us that Man, the
individual, stands at the crossroads of existence, mediator between spirit and
matter.
If we
clearly and powerfully realize the character and meaning of this stand, we are
potentially able to create a new Myth of the Individual. We can anchor the new
myth in a metaphysical understanding of what this cosmic place of the individual
entails. We can "see" Man as the archetypal manifestation of the
crossroads of existence, and of the function of intermediary between spirit and
matter belonging to whoever assumes such a position. If our "seeing"
is clear and penetrating, we can deduce a wealth of images and symbols from such
an experience in consciousness. These in their togetherness constitute the Myth
of the Individual.
Gautama the Buddha extolled the Middle Way. Jesus presented himself as Son of
Man and Son of God — thus as the point of convergence of the human and the divine fields of
existence. In the Christ-Individual the two currents meet. This meeting is the
substance of the Myth of the Individual. The new Image of Man is revealed in
that meeting at the crossroads of existence. It is that meeting,
which should lead to a merging. The philosopher may speak of the meeting of
opposites, la reconciliation des contraires. The mystic may glory
in the dialogue of I
Many, names have been offered to characterize the new Image of Man that is rising in the consciousness and in the heart of future-oriented creative persons in search of a focalizing concept for the work of transformation. What such a name should evoke is the deepest, most characteristic and most sublime function of Man — Man standing at the center of the cosmic interplay of spirit and matter, focusing through his translucent mind the universal Presence of ONE, the Integrator; Man, the Compassionate Individual, in whose plenitude all the polarities of existence are reconciled and merge in a magic Tone, whose vibrations stir in all beings, whether in heaven or earth, the will to transformation and to ever more encompassing wholeness.
