*
CULTURE-WHOLES AND THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION
If we are to understand clearly and
convincingly the significance of what we are facing as human beings seeking to
orient ourselves in a confused and cathartic world-situation, it is most
important for us to differentiate between what belongs to the realm of culture
and what should be referred to the larger planetary rhythm of the process of civilization. These two
italicized words have been variously defined and often
interchangeably used a practice which actually has confused basic issues. It
is therefore imperative to state unequivocally and as precisely as possible the
meaning I am giving them in this book. In so doing I may have to overemphasize
some of their contrasting features, but where there is contrast there is also
complementarity and interrelationship. The meaning of such a relationship today
is what we have primarily to understand, so that we can consciously and
deliberately take a meaningful stand.
The word culture can be used in both
a subjective and an objective sense. It has a subjective meaning when we speak
of "a man of culture"; that is, of a person displaying certain
qualities of breeding, education, and refinement of manners. The meaning is
subjective in the sense that it refers to the character and feelings of human
beings. On the other hand, the meaning is objective when we speak of a culture
and its development. In order to avoid any possible confusion I am using here
the term "culture-whole" in order to emphasize the objective and
organismic character of a culture.
A culture-whole can be defined as an
organized field of collective human activity having specific characteristics and
operating within more or less clearly marked even if in most cases gradually
expanding boundaries. The definite characteristics of that field, the
culture-whole, are derived from a set of philosophical-religious and
A culture-whole depends upon what the particular region of
the biosphere in which it was born has to offer in terms of natural resources,
These are provided by the soil, the water, the flora and fauna of the region;
and they condition, if not entirely determine, the way of life of the people of
the culture-whole. The region is the home of the people; its land is the
foundation of all they consider precious and significant, once they have settled
upon it and the character of the culture-whole begins to assert itself. They are
rooted in it almost as profoundly as trees
The people living in the space in
which the culture-whole gradually takes form have in many instances perhaps
always in relatively recent times at least two or three different racial
origins and original languages; but these languages combine in an often harsh
and violent interplay to form the official language of the culture-whole, as the
latter grows lo maturity and seeks to formulate its basic character and to
develop more effective forms of communication. Any fully developed culture has
also a dominant "religion" in the broadest sense of this term. It
accepts as basic, and most of its members take for granted, a number of
metaphysical ideas, psychological attitudes, and socio-ethical principles, and
it features a number of "rituals," festivals, and collective modes of
behavior a way of life which at least in some respect is uniquely or
characteristically its own. Such a way of life is an answer to basic needs
collectively felt and physically experienced by the people held together by the
psychomental magnetic field of the culture-whole. This answer manifests in a
myriad of forms, which have almost a "living" quality as they express
the particular character that the deeply generic urges of the human species as a
whole have taken as they have faced the conditions and the challenges of a
particular environment.
Everything that strictly belongs to
the realm of culture has a fundamentally biological character. It is a product
of a collective human response to the rhythms of the biosphere in the particular
locality in which the culture-whole has taken form and developed. Man, however,
has the capacity to express biological responses to nature in a symbolic form,
which serves as means of communication making possible group cooperation and a
collective way of fulfilling biological needs and meeting the everyday
challenges of human existence. Most and perhaps all animal species have such a
capacity in at least a rudimentary state, and it may exist even in the vegetable
kingdom; but the rootedness of plants and trees in the soil obviously restricts
the possibility of cooperative action to the barest minimum. In mankind this
possibility acquires a new dimension. As Count Korzybski stated in his early
book The Discovery of Man, man
is endowed with a "time-binding"
faculty which seems to be lacking in animal species.
Such an apparently innate faculty
makes it possible for human beings not only to communicate with each other by
means of symbolic gestures and vocal sounds, but also to transfer to their
progeny the knowledge resulting from individual and group experiences. Some kind
of transfer of knowledge is in some degree possible for animals; but it
presumably is limited to what the young learns from its mother and the adults of
the group during a very brief period of education through imitative behavior.
The symbol-generating capacity of human beings, even at the primitive cultural
level, goes much further. In man, biological urges not only have psychic
overtones, but these overtones can in turn act as fundamental tones acquiring a
degree of independence from biological drives and needs. A new, and let us say
"higher" or biology-transcending type of needs results from such an
independence. Gradually, as mankind evolves, this independence and the needs it
engenders produce a new realm of human activity. To use a now familiar term, a
noosphere develops with characteristics and potentialities of its own.
Some philosophers and scientists have seemed to picture
this noosphere as above and surrounding the biosphere; and perhaps the concept
is valid. It is valid if we think of vibratory frequencies that is, of lower
and higher vibrations (of fundamental tone and octaves of overtones of
increasing frequencies). But we should realize also that what is
"above" penetrates what is "below." It does so at least
until the center of consciousness is irreversibly shifted from the realm of
"below" to that of "above" from the biosphere to the
noosphere. Then
Generally speaking, what we today
call civilization refers only to the first stage of a planetary process which,
probably after millions of years, should utterly transform not only mankind, but
the entire Earth and the type of matter to which we are now accustomed. This
first stage has been extremely disturbing to the condition of the biosphere, and
today we are faced with a large-scale poisoning of this biosphere as the result
of the vast complex of human activities which we consider to be
"civilization." But is this really what should be called civilization?
Is it not rather the result of the first wholesale impact of the process of
civilization upon a type of culture which brought together special types of
human beings in a particular land, Europe, and at a time in the evolution of
mankind which called for such an impact?
What then do I exactly mean by the
process of civilization?
In France and England during the Classical and
post-Classical period of the Enlightenment the eighteenth century the
word civilization was used in contrast to barbarism. Europe was bringing to
barbarian or pagan people "the blessings of civilization," and these
of course included Christianity. In America, the European colonists who were
invading Indian lands were also bringing such "blessings" to the
"uncivilized" pagan tribes. This traditional use of the word
civilization was linked with the concept of linear progress, which dominated the
mentality of nineteenth century historians and philosophers and, after
Darwin, of natural scientists. The great English historian, Arnold Toynbee,
after World War I, made a slightly different use of the word, studying what he
called (almost interchangeably) past and present Societies and Civilizations. In
his view, mankind at a certain point of its evolution reached a phase of
development permitting the growth of a type of social living and organization
which he characterized by the word civilization. This occurred less than 10,000
years ago, and since then a number of Civilizations (or independent great
Societies) have been formed, have matured and disintegrated. Toynbee gives to
these Societies a quasi-organic character; and in his great work,
A Study of
What Toynbee calls Civilizations is
approximately what I mean by culture-wholes. The idea that these culture-wholes,
as they follow one another, are linked serially by a spiritual seed-harvest was
developed in my booklets "Seed Ideas" written in 1928-29 and published
in book form as
Art as Release of Power in 1931. It had occurred to me while a
student in Paris in 1912 when I wrote a book, of which only the least important
section was published, Claude Debussy et le Cycle de la Civilization
Musicale. I used then the word civilization in the prevailing French sense. At the same time
In Germany, the German historian, Oswald Spengler, was writing his once famous
book published in English under the title
The Decline of the West. In this book,
whose two volumes appeared in Germany in 1918 and 1920, Spengler extolls the
typically German concept of Kultur, and gives to the word civilization a totally
negative and indeed destructive meaning. According to him, civilization is much
like a disease which attacks cultures that are losing their vitality and
strength because of inner conflicts and the declining power of an aristocracy
whose task it is to uphold the "Prime Symbols" and great myths which
ensoul the culture.
Spengler's historical picture was
pessimistic, and in it our civilization and particularly our modern big
cities appeared in a purely negative role. Perhaps this was a partly
prophetic reflection, of what was to happen to Germany, and as well to our
Western world and humanity as a whole. Toynbee's picture, on the other hand, was
essentially optimistic, inasmuch as it was based on a belief in a progressive
evolution of the basic character of human society. According to him three basic
phases in this evolution can be defined: the primitive stage at a more or less
tribal level; the stage in which a number of civilizations develop and decay,
transferring their spiritual harvest to a progeny; and a still future stage,
which he does not clearly depict, in which the whole of mankind will somehow be
integrated.
This sequence
is not unlike the one
which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels envisioned. According to these men writing
in the middle of the 19th century, the historical development of mankind has a
"dialectic" character and passes through three stages: the stage of
tribal societies in which a compulsive unanimity prevails, at first under
matriarchal principles of organization; a period of class-conflicts during which
each of what the Hindu would call the four castes of human beings in turn
predominates (warriors, clergy, merchants, proletariat); and, after the
revolutionary proletariat finally has seized power, a classless society
in which
peace, abundance, and the happiness of all people theoretically should flourish.
Each of these historical pictures
came at a time when events were calling for them. They were visions of a future
which then seemed to the prophets an ideal that could be striven for. This ideal
had to be formulated in quasi-messianic and millennial terms because such a
formulation might bring, and indeed was intended to bring, to a clearer focus
the potentialities which then had begun to be perceptible.
The ideal of civilization vs. barbarism and of a
straightforward historical progress developed when the humanistic and scientific
spirit inspired the men of the 17th and 18th centuries and made the hearts of
nineteenth century scientists, sociologists, and philosophers (except Nietzsche)
beat with joyous expectation an expectation whose validity the first World
War brutally challenged. The millenial expectations of Marx and Engels, wherein
the "virgin masses" of workers of the world would triumph, were an
answer to the horrible conditions which the Industrial Revolution had brought to
the working class, an answer whose validity the Russian Revolution was to
disprove, at least considering the way it worked out in a world in conflict. And
Spengler's pessimism was a reaction to the trend of events In Europe and America
as World War I was being ushered in. The Nazi movement may have used Spengler's
ideas as an inspiration; unfortunately this led to drastic results produced by
an unholy mixture of the neo-tribal and pagan spirit of German Kultur and the
cold laboratory and industrial techniques of a
In contrast, Arnold Toynbee is a
representative of the English character, whose indomitable spirit made his
nation stand successfully against the German onslaught during World War II. But
his expectations for the future are confused and biased by his Anglo-Christian
tradition. Nevertheless these expectations reflect the seemingly inescapable
trend toward the global organization of human society and, first of all, of big
business and finance, a field in which England was the most successful pioneer.
The concept I am presenting in this
book, and which I have discussed to some extent in previous writings(2) is also an
answer to our time and the deepening crisis in which all the culture-wholes of
the world are now involved. This answer is founded upon principles that are
implied and partially formulated in various Oriental and esoteric traditions,
and more particularly in the encyclopedic, but often greatly confusing, work of
H. P. Blavatsky,
The Secret Doctrine. This answer differs from the ones given by
Western historians, sociologists, biologists, and most
Western archaeologists and historians
painstakingly try to unearth and discover records of events; but these, and
above all their interconnections, can be interpreted in many ways. Witnessing
what industrialization, the development of huge cities, the flight from the land
of masses of people, and an increasing vulgarization of great ideas, symbols,
religious myths, and behavior had been doing to the old European culture, Oswald
Spengler interpreted these factual developments as a process of decay. If we
adopt his strictly cultural and aristocratic point of view, the presence of
decay is evident. Such an approach extols the trinity of "blood, land and
folk"; and in their own primitive and pure ways, all typical tribal
societies including the American Indian tribal society have been molded
by it. The question is whether the total, and indeed the most characteristic
potentialities inherent in Man's essential nature, can be actualized through
such a cultural way of life.
The ideals such a way of life
glorifies belong to the biosphere and are overtones of the deep fundamental
urges and needs of the realm of "life." Can there not be another realm
which does not relate to particular local conditions of race, soil, climate,
natural resources a realm which has been prefigured by the intuitions, the
visions, the discoveries of great human minds reaching after universal
principles, cosmic laws, and an understanding of rhythmic processes transcending
the birth-growth-decay cycle of culture-wholes? Just as the vast period covered
by the evolution of the entire human species on this Earth far transcends the
birth-maturity-death cycles represented by the life-span of particular human
organisms, can there not be a larger planetary
In fact, both the Marx-Engels' and
the Toynbee concepts of human evolution introduce a broader frame of reference
according to which the development of human societies takes on a
quasi-dialectical character.
The evolutionary picture I am presenting retains such a character if seen from a broad and holistic point of view; and it is by grasping what each of the three stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis represents that we can most easily understand the character of the relationship between culture-wholes and the process of civilization.
The stage of "thesis" is
represented by human societies totally bound to the local biospheric environment
where they are born and develop. At this tribal stage a society reveals an
internal and psychic harmony, a unanimous consensus in all vital matters, and
complete dependence upon nature. However, at this stage man endows nature with a
double character, psychic and physical. In, Medieval European times this dualism
was expressed by the terms natura naturans and natura
naturata: the realm of
psychic energies representing the active-formative aspect of life, and that of
material bodies controlled by these biopsychic forces personalized as gods,
nature-spirits, devas, guardian angels, etc. At this biopsychic stage of
sociocultural development there are of course fights between tribes for land,
water, and means of survival; but these fights parallel, at the human level, the
constant struggle for survival between animal (and also vegetable) species. They
have exactly the same meaning and ultimate value.
The second stage of
"antitheses" in which mankind is still living today is characterized
by a process of internal differentiation. It is also a process of
individualization an essentially difficult and often tragic process. These
two processes begin as the results of a variety of natural causes tribal
expansion, conquest of weaker cultures, slavery, inter-marriage, even climatic
changes. These causes lead to important changes in the structure of tribal
societies; cities and kingdoms are born. But are these changes the result of
natural and social causes alone, or do they not reveal the very gradual workings
of an impulse which operates as a type of purposeful activity whose character
transcends that of the biosphere a transforming, fiery activity which
develops as
The next question is: what does this civilization factor seek to bring about? The basic answer is that it seeks eventually to develop in human beings their inherent potentiality of operating at a level of existence transcending that of life, as we know life in terms of biospheric conditions on this Earth.
Superphysical does not mean
supermaterial or immaterial. We know today that matter is only a relatively
steady form of energy, and it is rather senseless to take for granted that only
one form of energy can exist, thus one type of "matter." In fact,
until the Classical period of European society, every human society has firmly
believed that matter does exist at a superphysical level, and that superphysical
organizations of subtle types of matter can be perceived by at least some human
beings who innately possess that ability or are willing to undergo
To repeat in a slightly different way
what has already been stated: Civilization, as here defined, is a process whose
purpose is to develop in human beings the capacity to operate at a
life-transcending level of existence in an organized field of consciousness and
activity depending for its support on a superphysical type of matter. Such an
operation essentially implies the transfer of the center of consciousness and of
the sense of individual identity from the biopsychic level of Earth's nature to
a "higher" because more inclusive level which we may call, for
lack of better terms, spiritual-mental.
The center of a person's
consciousness and identity has to be raised to a new level; or, from another
point of view, a new frame of reference for the sense of being "I" has to appear
to the consciousness. This appearance
These results occur because the
development of a well-organized and potentially independent mind begins in the
context of a powerful system of biopsychic energies. Biological urges are
intense, and as they dominate the field of the human organism in which this new
mind at first weakly develops, the latter is seized upon by the biological
We are witnessing now, on a global
scale, such a destruction of life by the products of a collective mentality,
either at the service of biopsychic urges and passions, or at least unable to
free itself from the conditioning
Denial, however, is not a valid
solution. Saying that a diseased life-condition does not exist at all is not a
sound way of restoring health. It pushes back the biological reality into the
unconscious depths where it may fester and poison the roots of consciousness.
The development of a new level of mind-activity should enlarge the consciousness
so that it becomes able to encompass both the anabolic and catabolic
manifestations of life in physical nature, and those of the transcendent level.
In other words, the basic problem is how to establish an adequate and valid
relationship between what in us belongs to life and what is developing as a
potentially independent factor in our total field of existence a mind able
to operate according to its own rhythm and purpose. There are, however, several
levels, or realms, of mind activity; and the recently formulated concept of
noosphere is much too simplistic and undifferentiated as understood by the
majority of the people using it as a basis. We should rather say that, just as
several kingdoms of life exist in the biosphere, several types of mental
processes operate in the noosphere. A symbolic kind of correspondence between
the biospheric and noospheric levels of activity may help us to better
understand the character of the different kinds of mind-processes which man
today can experience.
There are in the Earth's biosphere
three basic modes of existence: mineral, vegetable, and animal. Organic life
results from the harmonic and hierarchical interactions of the activities
related to each of these levels. Plants are composed of chemical substances
which they raise to the level of biological integration within specific and
generic forms of life and consciousness. Animals feed on plants and breathe the
atmosphere which the vegetable kingdom has generated; and animals help the
fertilization of plants and the spread of seeds.
The mineral kingdom reaches a special
state of existence in the crystal. In a somewhat analogical sense man, at the
strictly biological-tribal level, occupies the place of the crystal, for at that
level he brings the tremendous life-energy and the mobility of the animal
kingdom to a perfectly formed state in which cosmic harmony is reflected in
material art-forms and even in the building of villages. Some cultural objects
have a "sacred" character because they are felt to act as means of
communication between the psychic-cosmic realm of life-gods and the human-tribal
sphere of existence.
Human beings can also become
sacralized and mediums for the transmission of vital messages. They can be
consecrated or offered in sacrifice to tribal gods who symbolize and personify
various aspects of the great power of life. Every event can be given a symbolic
and revelatory character by the mind which, crystal-like, reflects the light of
divine intent and purpose. As higher overtones of cultural activity and
consciousness are sounded, this capacity for reflecting the light of divine
Beings takes the form of what we now call devotion or bhakti. But when that
devotion not only reflects, but uses for collective purpose the supreme power of
the highest psychic realm light the devotee has reached a state
corresponding to the vegetable state; because as we know, plants capture
sunlight and transform it into potential food for the animal kingdom, while also
releasing oxygen for animal breathing.
In the animal kingdom, life becomes
free motion, and emotion. The rudiments of intelligence and of the abilities to
produce tools and to construct useful structures develop, and definitely social
patterns of behavior prefigure the rise of the primitive types of human culture.
What the animal kingdom brought to the biosphere parallels and symbolizes what
occurred when a type of mind appeared which gave rise in man to the
individualized experience of "I am" and to the urge to reach beyond
the essentially passive reflectivity of the strictly biopsychic
This emergence of the I-am
consciousness has been considered by most ancient traditions to be a supreme,
even if potentially tragic gift to mankind, a gift involving a great sacrifice
performed by a divine or semi-divine being. In Greek mythology this is the
Promethean gift for which the giver had to suffer ever-renewed tortures. When
Prometheus, out of compassion for animal-like and earthbound human beings, gave
them the fire of the gods which he had stolen from heaven, he incurred the wrath
of Zeus, the Sky god, who chained him to a peak of the
The symbolism of the myth should be
clear: in ancient Mediterranean cultures the liver was considered the location
of the life-force and the vulture is the symbol of the death process. Thus
Prometheus, who gave to mankind the possibility of transcending the animal
compulsions of the realm of life and, as we shall presently see, of achieving a
super-physical kind of at least relative immortality, has to expiate for his
compassionate deed by having his own life-center endlessly torn, rebuilt, and
torn again by the bird of death. He who wishes to transcend life must accept the
possibility of tragedy in some form; and whoever incites and teaches men how to
proceed to the path of life-transcending metamorphosis makes an enemy of the god
of life. In Greek mythology,
This god of life and of all tribal
cultures, worshipped under the many names which each culture has given him,
appears in Genesis only at the second chapter. He is "Yahweh Elohim"
only one of the Elohim, as Elohim is a plural noun. On the other band, the
creative process depicted in the first chapter of Genesis should be understood
as referring to creation at the level of archetypes. The second chapter deals
with the creative process only as it operates at the physical level of the
biosphere, and particularly with reference to mankind.(3) Archetypally man is
essentially different from animals, because, as male-female, he is
"created" within the divine Mind in the image and likeness of the
entire Elohim Host the spiritual-cosmic Seed of a previous cosmic cycle (or
in Sanskrit a manvantara). The archetypal potentiality of being Godlike is
inherent in archetypal Man; but the Yahweh aspect of the creative God that
dominates the cultural evolution of mankind, until another aspect reveals itself
to Moses in the Burning Bush, is only able to give to natural man the power of
life. It is not concerned with the power of free and responsible individual
selfhood.
This is not a new concept, as it can
be found in all Gnostic and Alchemical traditions. These also point out that the
"first Adam" was neither male nor female. "Its"
consciousness but passively reflected the harmony of Edenic life; even if it was
intuitively able to "name" (i.e., to sense the innermost character of)
animal species. The formation of Eve was necessary in order to actualize the
archetypal potentiality of Man mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis
(1:26-27) the potentiality of developing a consciousness which through the
experience of duality (which includes sexual polarization), could learn to
transcend dualism and the conflicts it generates, and to consciously and
deliberately enter the realm of divine unity.
Life is rooted in unity, however
differentiated its multiple aspects; but the only kind of consciousness which
life of itself is able to produce can only passively reflect that unity. What
most people, clergymen included, seem to have forgotten is that at the center of
the Garden of Eden two trees stood: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil. The god of the biosphere, Yahweh, tried to frighten
Adam from the latter by telling him that by eating of its fruit he "would
surely die." What this means is obvious: the dualism of Good and Evil is
The living-dying process is cyclic,
and thus is symbolized by a serpentine and sinusoidal motion. The knowledge of
cycles is a knowledge of the constant interaction of two opposite and
complementary principles, which Chinese philosophy named Yang and Yin. The Tao
consciousness is nondual; yet it can be attained only through the full
The two trees at the center of the
Garden of Eden symbolize the two levels at which man can operate: the level of
life and culture, and the level of civilization based on knowledge acquired by a
mind able to deal with the constructive and destructive aspects of existence.
The crucial question is how that mind deals with relationship. Any relationship
thus any interaction between self and not-self, and between "I"
and "the Other" can either be given a positive, integrating
character or approached with the fear and insecurity which are the twin roots of
war, hatred, and indeed of all evils. Civilization is a process based on
relationship. How individuals and collectivities approach, face, interpret, and
resolve the problems engendered by relationship determines the character which
this process will have.
The animal lives in a biosphere where
"eat or be eaten" is the basic, impersonal, accepted law. Man, as he
comes to a point in his collective evolution at which he is impelled, by inner
growth as well as by outer sociocultural developments, to individualize
his consciousness, is faced by the alternatives "love or hate." He can
choose. As man collectively and individually chooses, so civilization develops
as a blessing or a curse. It can be a little of both at the same time, yet one
polarity must prevail.
During the yearly cycle either the
day or the night must be longer, except at the "magical" moments of
supreme choice, the two equinoxes, when day and night are equal; but even then,
at the spring equinox the basic momentum is toward more daylight, while at the
fall equinox the trend toward an increase of darkness is inescapable. The two
equinoxes are polarized in opposite ways. Autumn must bring the decay of
vegetation. It brings also the fall of the seed into the humus pungent with the
scent of disintegration. Cycle after cycle a time comes in the development of
culture-wholes when the increasing inner emptiness and outer rigidity of its
"Prime Symbols," having become institutionalized, are revealed. Then
the process of civilization overcomes the organic biopsychic character of the
culture. At such times, whether or not they are aware of this compulsive fact,
the people of the culture-whole are forced to face a crucial symbolic choice: to
disintegrate with the leaves, or to participate in the formation of seeds,
foundations of a future cycle of vegetation a cycle that will begin with
their ritual death, germination.
What is always at stake is the
quality of all human relationships and the character of man's allegiance. It is
what mankind and every individual able to envision the possibilities open to
him or her by the Promethean gift of the fire of selfhood and responsibility
will do with that ambivalent gift and its inherent potentialities. Today, more
than ever, the state of conscious individualized existence may mean alienation
from the universe, the inability to enter into and maintain meaningful
relationships, tragic isolation, and a frightened regression to the law of the
biosphere, "eat or be eaten," which at the level of the mind and of
civilization becomes not only internalized, but far more cruel and implacable.
It may also mean the attainment of supreme and all-encompassing consciousness
through a mind that, because it fully accepts relationship, is illumined by a
love relating all opposites and contradictions to a universal and all-inclusive
principle of Harmony a love within which all colors experience their
multifarious essence in white light.
Civilization may lead to the
megalopolis (the Biblical Babylon) where cultural values are vulgarized,
poisoned by greed, fear and loneliness, and where the jungle-existence of
tenements borders the pompous yet vacuous displays of "the beautiful
people" with empty souls. But the process of civilization could also lead
to the Holy City, the New Jerusalem "descended from heaven" the
world of divine Archetypes and universal Principles of Order and
all-encompassing Harmony: two alternatives and one essential human choice, ever
repeated through the myriad of opportunities for relationship that living in the
biosphere presents to us all, human beings touched by the fire of individualized
consciousness.
The old myth states that Prometheus,
chained on the Caucasus mountain, can and will be released from his torture. He
can be released only by Christ-like men and Boddhisattvas whose universal,
impersonal, non-possessive and redeeming love offers the one and only way to
overcome the catabolic and tragic aspects of civilization.
This love does not deny life. It
transmutes its energies and transubstantiates its physical basis. By so doing,
it establishes a harmonic relationship between "life" and
"mind" between culture and civilization by accepting both, yet
not being attached to and compelled by the rhythms of either one. This universal
love allows the
Such a form of matter has been called
"astral"; but today this word has been misused and its meaning
debased, and there may be value in using the Sanskrit term, akasha, though it
too is being materialized by pseudo-occultists and self-styled clairvoyants
claiming to be able to read "akashic records." Astral means "of
the nature of the stars," and the realm of stars symbolizes for man the
possibility of existence of radiant forms of consciousness and organized fields
of energy in which the principle of universal Harmony is manifested in its many
aspects. When at long last this principle operates in man, what was a tyrannical
ego-master swayed by biologic, emotional, and sociocultural impulses, becomes a
gradually more perfectly formed and translucent lens of pure
This is the stage of
"synthesis" in the dialectical process, not only of human but of
planetary evolution. It is that stage which Tellhard de Chardin envisioned and
formulated in terms of his Catholic background as the Omega state. At critical
times in the history of a culture-whole, men dream of it as an approaching
millennium. They do not seem to understand that it can occur only when they
themselves have transcended the bondage of biological drives and intellectual
ideologies of emotional passions, dogmas of both science and religion, and
of the craving of their egos for the joys and sorrows of separate individual
existences.
Civilization is a means for man's
liberation from biopsychic bondage to the narrow boundaries of a land-based,
traditional culture, which determines his basic emotional responses and his
collective moves; but liberation and freedom have only the meaning which the
kind of use man makes of them determines. In themselves they have no meaning.
Civilization is a means to an end. It is a process; not a fixed state or a
consummation. The end is beyond both culture and civilization. At the close of
his great work,
The Life Divine,
Sri Aurobindo attempted to make us participate
in his epic millennial vision of what he called the Gnostic Society. Over forty
years ago, in a large unpublished book, I sought to base on a total picture of
human and cosmic evolution the expectations for a future "Age of
Plenitude" that would succeed our present "Age of Conflicts".
More recently, in my book
The Sun is also a Star (Dutton, N.Y. 1975), I have
spoken of "the Galactic Community" prefigured in the theosophical
concept of the White Lodge, the spiritual seed harvest of humanity. These may be
dreams, yet in some sense and at some level, they must be realities
existential realities. The future does polarize the past. It draws to itself
whatever, in the ever-altered present moment, strives however uncertainly to
discover a guiding star by which to orient and consciously direct its efforts.
It is the direction that is important, not the star itself.
Once on the path cut through the
jungles of the biosphere, mankind may well rest, sing and dance on the fertile
banks of great rivers, but the Promethean imperative will ineluctably seize new
generations; and if the cities which men have built on the river banks have
become monstrous cancerous growths, many will die so that a few may live and
continue the cyclic journey toward whatever culmination of human achievement is
possible upon, or even beyond, our Earth.
What is most important for us, today, is to know, clearly and unequivocally, where we stand, individually and collectively. It is consciously to assess the value of what we so long have taken for granted in passive, uninspired worship. It is to realize what point in the cyclic relationship of culture and civilization we have reached, so that we may be able to understand how to use the mind which civilization has built for us in a manner that may open a way toward the formation of a new and more inclusive culture, even while the end-products of the cultures of the past slowly disintegrate under "autumnal" skies.
References and Notes
Chapter 2
Culture-Wholes and the Process of Civilization
1.
On pages 209 and 210 of the Abridgement of A Study of History
(Oxford University Press, 1947) Toynbee discusses the two "stock
answers" to the question of "the relation in which societies and
individuals stand to each other." One of the answers is "that the
individual is a reality which is capable of existing and of being apprehended by
itself and that a society is nothing but an aggregate of atomic individuals. The
other is that the reality is the society; that a society is a perfect and
intelligible whole, while the individual is simply a part of this whole which
cannot exist or be conceived as existing in any other capacity or setting."
And he finds that "neither of these views will bear examination." He
dismisses the "atomic way of life" attributed by Homer to the Cyclops
on the basis that "in fact no human beings have ever lived Cyclops-fashion,
for man is essentially a social animal inasmuch as social life is a condition
which the evolution of man out of sub-man presupposes and without which that
evolution could not possibly have taken shape." Toynbee rejects also
Oswald Spengler's concept of Kultur (a term which he translates
as "civilization" thereby missing an essential point) as an organic form born
out of the formless primitive psychic conditions of an undifferentiated
humanity, as a mighty soul which comes to flower on the soil of a country with
precise boundaries, to which it remains attached like a plant. He rejects this
"organic" concept as he dismisses as "myth-making or fictional infirmity of the
historical mind . . . the tendency to personify and label groups or institutions
'Britain,' 'France,' 'the Church,' 'the Press' . . . and so on
and to treat these abstractions as persons." He adds that
"it is sufficiently evident that the representation of a society as a
personality or organism offers us no adequate expression of the society's
relation to its individual members" (p. 211). He sees a society as
"the product of the relations between individuals, and these relations of
theirs arise from the coincidence of their individual fields of action. This
coincidence combines the individual fields into a common ground, and this common
ground is what we call society. . . Society is a 'field of action' but the
source of all action is in the individuals composing it."
We shall
return to the relationship between individuals and their society in a later
chapter, but it seemed valuable to point out early in this book what I shall
call the Myth of the Individual
the individual
person considered as a starting point, a source from which creative activity
flows. The Creative individual of course is a source, as the French philosopher
Bergson indicated in a passage quoted by Toynbee in support of his ideas. But
while the source is the starting point of a river, the water flows through it
rather than from it. This water in most cases comes from an underground
reservoir, lake, or water-table. The source and the river constitute only
specific phases of the vast planetary cycle of water
ocean, clouds, rain,
underground water, source, river, and ocean.
Toynbee,
Bergson, and the personalist Jan Smuts (whose book
Holism and Evolution
popularized the words holism and holistic, yet is hardly ever
mentioned by the
persons now using those terms) are modern exponents of the type of empirical and
rationalistic individualism characterizing European culture and leading
to the glorification of the genius
or of a "creative minority"
in a personal
sense. In the approach I am presenting here, the creative person
whether individual or collective (as an "aristocracy")
is understood to be a
source through which the answer to an existential human need given by a
metabiological and transpersonal Power (in whatever way it is precisely
conceived)
takes a focused and formed external manifestation. That answer-releasing and
activity-inspiring Power is not an abstraction; nor is it a personification.
It is the very real spiritually fecundating principle at work in the process of
planetary and human evolution. Humanity itself, in its global totality, is an
"organ" of the planet Earth, which in turn belongs to the solar system
(the "heliocosm"), itself but one small constituent in the immense
cosmic cell, our Galaxy.
This is the
holistic view of the universe and of Man. A "holarchic" principle
infuses all experience. The universe is a hierarchy of wholes, of structured
systems or fields of activity, operating at several levels. Before such a
world-picture
the naive classical Greco-European concept of "the individual" pales
into insignificance. It reflects the empiricism of a Renaissance, reacting violently
against the rationalism of the Scholastics, and the dogmatic exclusivism of the
medieval Church whose real character was revealed by the Papacy's dependence
upon military force and by the Inquisition.
There is
nevertheless a sense in which Toynbee and his supporters are right in denying to
a human society or culture the character of an "organism." A living
organism originates in one single cell
a seed or a fecundated ovum. The
organism develops through mitosis
the process of division of each cell into
two new ones. Thus each of the billions of cells of a human body is directly
related to the one original ovum in the mother's womb. This biological process
of selfmultiplication operates at the level of physical matter.
It is quite evident that a society does not develop in such a manner, in spite
of the Adam-Eve myth according to which all human beings would have a common
ancestry. Yet it is also clear that the members of a tribe, operating within a fairly
narrow environment and increasing in size through intermarriage and the conquest
of other tribes, come to have common genetic characteristics as well as common
social features derived from common experiences in that special environment.
Moreover, from my point of view, it is the culture-whole,
rather than the group of socially related human bodies, which constitute
an organic field of activity; and at the root of this culture-whole
that is, of a complex system of
symbols, ideas, feeling-responses, and institutions
we could find one and
usually two fundamental psycho-spiritual impulses which act as
"parents" of the culture.
One can of
course insist that the word, organism, should be kept to characterize physical
organizations of cells issued from two male-female parental cells.
One
could object to the vitalistic use of terms such as "the One Life"
when referring to the dualistic Yin-Yang principle animating or ensouling the
entire cosmos. Yet when science tends to accept the "Big Bang theory"
to account for the origin and development of the universe, it does not seem too
far-fetched to think of this universe as an "organism" originating in
one sudden release of energy-substance. I therefore am using the term organism
to mean a structurally self-regulating system of interrelated and interdependent
activities operating at any level.
2.
cf. particularly Modern Man's Conflicts: The Creative Challenge of a
Global Society (Philosophical Library, N. Y. 1948, but written in 1945-46 and
before that in my book,
Art as Release of Power (1928- 29) the chapters "The
Cycle of Culture and Sacrifice" and "The Individual and the Work of
Civilization"; also several essays (particularly
Toward the Unanimistic
State) and the unpublished large volume
The Age of Plenitude
(1941-42).
3.
Biblical scholars explain what superficially seems to be two "Creation
myths" by saying that each came from a different cultural-religious
background. Such an explanation satisfies the empirical and factual approach
dogmatically pursued by our factories of data-processing which we call
institutions of learning. It is of no real importance when one tries to
uncover the meaning of human existence and evolution. It is such a meaning that
the Sacred Books of any culture "re-veal," presenting it "under
the veil" of myths essentializing the existential historical facts. Events
of themselves are meaningless. Man gives them meaning by establishing
relationships in depth between them. A myth is a series of deliberately
interrelated facts, which, in their holistic coherence and "organicity"
evoke in the open and ready mind a complex and basically transformative
meaning. This meaning satisfies a vital emotional or intellectual need.
The
first two chapters of Genesis, as all occultists should know, reveal their
meaning through a consideration of the Kabalistic values of letters of the
Hebrew alphabet and of their combinations in words whose significance differs
according to the level at which they are read and understood. This is a highly
complex study, and Kabalistic interpretations may greatly differ in substance,
though based on the same principles. In my book
Fire Out of the Stone:
A Reinterpretation of the Basic Images of the Christian Tradition (Servire
Publications,
A
"creation in mind" always, consciously or not, precedes a
"creation in life." The latter reflects perfectly
in theory, but in practice only embodies more or less accurately, the elements
of the former. The second chapter of Genesis refers solely to the creative
process as it occurs within the Earth's biosphere. This process operates at a
material biological level; it deals with the "dust of the ground" and
the "breath of life" which Yahweh breathes into man's nostrils. Man
becomes a living soul; but as such he is only a passive reflection of
divine Nature, which at that level is Life itself. Yahweh is the god of Life,
ruling over all bio-psychic processes.
In the center of the Garden of Eden two trees grow, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. By partaking of the fruit of the latter, Man, who by that time has become the dualistic entity Adam-Eve (or more significantly Ish-Isha), enters the world of existential duality the world of choice between alternatives and of personal responsibility. He-she are on their way to the state of individuality, later symbolized in its absolute supercosmic aspect as I AM THAT I AM, the Name of the Creative Principle operating at the level of personality-integration and (in Jungian terms) of individuation.
4.
The
original end-purpose of yoga and the deeper goal of the martial arts in China
and Japan
in which the student of higher grades must be choked to death,
then revived by his master-teacher
were to experience death and return to the body
with a consciousness transformed by such an experience. In my opinion at least,
Hindu yoga developed out of the experiences of the "Forest
philosophers" of the early Upanishads period. According to the life-system
codified in the Laws of Manu, during the last of the four stages of his
life-span, the man of higher caste retired in the woods surrounding his village
and, by detaching his consciousness from all the biological personal and social
activities and interests to which he had been attached in the performance of his
dharma, prepared himself for the transition into a transcendent metabiological
and supercultural state which we know as "death." Eventually after a
long period of non-manifestation and absorption into the universal ocean of
being, the unfinished business (karma) of the preceding life would reactivate
the Soul-entity and impel it into a new body.
It must have occurred to some of the Forest-philosophers that, if through death, they could experience the transcendent after-death state of consciousness, and then return at once to the same formed body and its mature mental faculties, a step of tremendous significance would have been made, throwing a new supersensual light upon human existence; and that light would revolutionize philosophy, psychology and, in fact, the whole of man's culture. To this end the idea of pranayama, which literally means "the death (or suspension) of the breath," was developed into a definite and graduated practice; it was based on the archaic belief that the breath is the essential spiritual factor the animating principle in all living entities. The ability to experience states beyond the death-transition led to the realization of a condition of nonduality (a-dwaita; not-dual) transcending the level of life and all modes of existence based on the interaction of two polar principles.
Culture, Crisis, and Creativity
