The Person-Centered Harmonic Approach

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THE PERSON-CENTERED, HARMONIC APPROACH

Dane Rudhyar

For the last decades, atomic physics has opened to our consciousness a world of forces in which every concrete and seemingly solid object appears dissolved in whorls of fantastically rapid motion within a seemingly mostly empty space. Matter appears to us now only as a particular state of energy - energy operating under relatively enduring structural laws of Form. Most types of energy are polarized, positive and negative - and, in living organisms, anabolic (cell-building) and catabolic (destructive of useless forms).

However, the basic question is: "How does one interpret the relation of man to these forces," and, stated differently, "what is man?" Is man a small ephemeral organism fighting its way in the midst of mostly overwhelmingly superior planetary and cosmic entities - or is this world-picture, so much believed in by many last century thinkers, essentially false, in that it presents a totally inadequate evaluation of man? Is the universe to be seen as a scene of meaningless conflicts between blind unconscious forces all of which are inevitably to be leve1led off under the pressure of the god of nineteenth century science, "entropy" - or is the universe in its totality a majestic manifestation of cosmic harmony, a great ritual in which a fantastic variety of fields of activity are interrelated in an immense polyphonic interplay of more or less conscious wills and meaningful purposes?

In picturing in the preceding pages the type of event-oriented astrology which purports to study the action of planetary and cosmic forces, we saw man individually and collectively subjected to the impact of these forces. Now, I am presenting a picture in which man appears as the subject of a complex play of energies objectivized in a concrete earth-born field of activities - that is, in an individual person. Every individual person is a complex existential whole of activities, the wholeness of which expresses itself as "I" - I, the real man - real, because this man includes, encompasses and is able to oversee and to give meaning to a harmonic group of interrelated and interdependent activities; and "reality" is, at every level of existence from the infinitely small to the infinitely vast, the harmonic interplay of multifarious activities organized according to a characteristic structure and within a self-perpetuating field.

What this means, in simpler language, is that every individual person is a relatively independent organic whole in which a multitude of forces dynamically interact according to an original and originating pattern which establishes its life-purpose and its basic relation to all other wholes in the universe. This organic whole the individual person - is essentially no different from the almost infinitely greater and vaster organized Whole, which we call the universe. Indeed the individual person constitutes one particular aspect of the universal Whole. The individual person is this universal Whole, focused at a particular point in space and in terms of the particular need for it at the exact moment of its emergence into independent existence. This is the moment of the first breath because it is then that the individual's basic rhythms of existence are established within a particular environment.

All the forces of the universe are latent in this organized human whole, the newborn baby. They are all there in potentiality. They are the same forces in every human being - indeed in every truly organized system of activities but the arrangement (gestalt) of these forces differ, at least in some slight degree, in each newborn entity. This difference establishes the individuality and the particular purpose of this emergent human being. Likewise, every birthchart contains the same planets; and it is senseless to speak of "my" Jupiter, "my" Saturn, etc. The substantial elements or basic drives in every organized existential system are the same. What differs is the structure or "form" of their arrangement. If a botanist endowed with superhuman vision were able, after looking at an acorn, to make a two-dimensional graph defining all the essential characteristic structures which will become actualized as an oak tree, he would do essentially what the astrologer does when erecting the birth-chart of a newborn baby.

The birth-chart defines the structure of the individual person. It is, in this sense, the blueprint of what may become the finished "temple" of the fully mature and perfected man. I say "may" become; for the birth-chart refers only to potentialities. It does NOT promise anything in terms of concrete, definite events, any more than a gardener planting an acorn in a field can be certain that in a number of years it will have become a full-grown, healthy oak tree. Environmental circumstances, a poor soil, bad weather, storms, the interference of pests, animals or men, may blight the development of the oak; yet it will grow according to the basic structure of the oak species. It will not become an apple tree.

This means that man - the real man who says "I'; - is not outside of his birth-chart. He is the wholeness of the chart. He is not in fundamental conflict with the energies of human nature - or of their planetary counterparts in the solar system - for he is their harmony. It may be a mostly "consonant" harmony (thus with a fundamentally static character), or it may be a predominantly "dissonant" (i.e., dynamic) harmony. It is always essentially harmony, because it represents the whole universe focused at a particular point in space and time.

Every human being is a particularized aspect of the whole universe - or, religiously speaking, of God. In a more limited but more realistic sense, every human being is a particularized aspect of "man"; he is born in answer to the need of humanity at a definite time and place. Because this "need" is limited, as it refers to a temporary situation, the individual person, whose life-task it is to answer this "need" - and some would use here the word, "karma" - must have a particular temperament or character. He is what he is, because that is what is needed at this precise time. His birth-chart represents the solution of this need. It is the existential formula of his total being - his "signature" (in the occult sense of the term), his sacred name.

If this be so, saying that, "the wise man rules his stars" makes little sense. The true Sage is the perfect harmony of all the energies which operate and exteriorize themselves through his total being at any particular moment. He totally fulfills his "dharma," his truth of being. Each moment of his existence is for him one phase of a total process which unfolds in beauty, significance, purposefulness and peace. The only will he knows and applies is the will to become and to remain fully, perfectly, what he is as a particular focal point for the activity of Man - or of the universe-as-a-whole, or of God. He is the Whole acting at a particular point in time and space through the focalizing structure of his total person; and he knows it, even though he is only one of myriads of aspects of this Whole.

If some individuals consider themselves separate and alienated from humanity-as-a-whole and from the universe, and if they think they have to rule over natural energies which they feel to be alien because they, as Souls, are exterior (and metaphysically superior) to them, this simply means that they do not realize what they are. Such a person has experienced a false kind of individualization. He does not want to recognize - out of a false pride - that the energies playing through his nature are the same as those operating in all human beings. He does not realize his common rootedness in the common humanity of all men. His mind reacts only to local conditions of family, culture and religion. He has no realization of what a global consciousness means.

If one lengthened the taproots of all the trees of the Earth, they would meet at the center of the globe. If all human beings were to stand erect at the same time all around the globe, the extended axis of their spinal columns would meet at the center of the globe; yet each one of these individual spinal axes would point to a different star of the galaxy. This is a symbolic picture worth meditating upon; it could change the course of human history if it stirred up powerfully the imagination of all men. It would explain at least one aspect of the meaning of the old Kundalini Yoga, which so many people talk about rather emptily these days.

"Man" is to be found, symbolically, at the center of the Earth-globe, not in the sky; and this is why a Humanistic. astrology should be geocentric. But this is only one aspect of it; it should also be "person-centered" - each person having his own real (not merely "rational"!) horizon, his zenith-star and his antipodal polarizing factor. Astrologically speaking, a man's unique function in humanity depends upon his exact orientation to galactic space - not, ultimately, in terms of a more or less mythological zodiac which refers only to the character of the basic energy powering his bio-psychic vitality, but with reference to single and mostly nameless stars of the galaxy. The star at the exact zenith of his birth-sky symbolizes, and, who knows, perhaps in a very real sense is - the man's celestial identity.

The task of astrology is to reveal to a mind still confused and usually perverted by the pressures of his social-cultural environment, the basic structures that characterize the particular manner in which the energies of human nature are organized within him, so that he can orient, polarize. and re-order his activities (at all levels of his personal life) according to this celestial pattern. This celestial pattern is his true Name.

The "rational" horizon is not the "sensible" or physical horizon, but is obtained by supposing a line drawn through the Earth's center parallel with the real horizon. What should be used is a "mean" horizon which would flatten out the relatively small variation produced by hills, valleys, etc. It is the manifestation of his self in the realm of "form and name" (to use an old Sanskrit phrase). But what I call here "self" must be differentiated from "ego"; and it is because many modern psychologists fail to make such a differentiation and give to the term, self, a very ambiguous and over-extended meaning (actually the meaning of "person") that there is so much confusion in psychology - as much, indeed, as in the astrological field.

The ego is not the self. The self IS. It is the "fundamental Tone," the vibration which sustains the whole organism (body and psyche) of an individual human being. The self is power, not consciousness. It is the pure "I" unconditioned by concepts, or words. The ego, on the other hand, that thinks and says "I am, " always adds to this assertion the conditioning features of "this particular person, Paul Smith, or Jane Strong." Thus, the ego can be described as the "reflection" of the self upon the socially and culturally conditioned field of consciousness of the whole person. The ego is, as Jung stated, the "center" of this field of consciousness. It develops out of the early years of human existence in a particular environment which gives to and indeed forces upon - the new born organism a name (personal and family), a language conditioning his mental processes, a code of conduct a basic way-of-life, and which even conditions (if not determines) his modes of thinking and his feeling-responses .

This is not to say that the development of an ego is unnecessary and "bad." Just as the embryo has to develop its organs within the enveloping and narrow confinement of the mother's womb, so the mind (built by and operating through the nervous system) needs to pass a number of years within the matrix of his family and culture in order to reach a formed and "viable" state of consciousness which permits emergence from this social-cultural womb-like psychic environment. This process of formation of a potentially independent mind produces an ego. This ego is not the self; though without the integrative and sustaining power of the self, there could not be any ego.

What the family and social-cultural environment powerfully impresses upon the child need not be in tune with the Tone of the child's individual selfhood. Thus, when the teenager says "I am" and speaks of "doing my thing," what speaks in him is most often an ego that is not his true self. The basic vibration of this self has been so covered up by sheath after sheath of foreign material and unauthentic thinking and feeling (i.e., by "complexes" and automatisms, by biases, fears and sterile habits) that this vibration is not ordinarily perceived by the consciousness. Yet there may be rare moments, now called "peak experiences," during which the submerged tone of the self reaches the field of consciousness - moments when the ego-king, who ordinarily rules that field, abdicates temporarily its power. Then, because the real self is but one tone within the immense Chord of the Harmony of the universe - and of "Man" and of the Earth, the one home of the one humanity - the consciousness of the person is able to resonate to at least an aspect of this cosmic Harmony; and he may speak of an experience of "cosmic consciousness" and of unity - an experience of "light."

The ego bases its sense of value and its urges upon what makes it different from other egos. Ego- consciousness excludes everything that does not fit in with its patterns. To the ego, the foreigner or alien is always a potential enemy. It therefore lives in a world of perpetual conflicts - potential if not actual conflicts - a world in which "force meets force" and existence is a life-and-death struggle between' 'rugged individualists" greedy for power and wealth, trying to get all they can from other people. In such a world ethical and strictly rationalistic judgments are required for survival. This is good; that is bad. I love, I hate. I am right, he is wrong. Everything is either, or. Opposites are more or less irreconcilable adversaries.

The individual who has overcome the separative, dogmatic possessive and jealous tendencies of his ego can emerge into a different kind of world. It is this process of emergence which of old was truly called "initiation" or "the Path"; and today it seems that the whole of mankind is challenged to take a definite new step along that Path, or to perish. Those who cannot take it most likely will perish, in one way or another.

All this, needlessly philosophical and psychological as it may sound to many people who are merely interested in the set type of traditional doctrines which they call astrology, has nevertheless the most immediate bearing on the very practice of an astrology which could validly meet the needs of a New Age humanity - a truly humanistic, holistic and harmonic astrology. The purpose of such a type of astrology is, above all, to help the individual who is beginning to question his ego-attitudes and desires, to discover what his true self is - which means what he is as a total person and what his function in mankind is. Such a person wants to know the blueprint (or archetypal Form) of the individual that he is not yet, but would like to become. "What am I?" he asks. And the first answer the Humanistic astrology should give him is, "This whole sky, the whole universe." The second part of the answer should be, "This whole sky seen from a particular angle of vision which defines the purpose and meaning of your existence from birth to death." The birth-chart defines the potentialities, but also the limitations which result from its being only a particular focal point for the operation of the universal Whole (or of Man) one focal point among billions of them.

The consequence of such an attitude to the individual person is that nothing is "bad" in a birthchart. Everything concurs to define what the individual truly is as a self - his archetypal structure of being, or some may prefer to say, God's idea for his having been born at a particular time and place. Everything is "good" in its proper place and in relation to everything else. The humanistic approach to a birth-chart is a total Yes-saying to existence. It considers nothing worthless. Therefore it cannot accept ethical good-bad, fortunateunfortunate judgments - unless these answer specific questions referring to limited concrete instances, such as, "Would this project be good for a particular purpose?" - or, "Would it contribute to my self-actualization?" In the latter case, the answer would have to be related not only to the chart as a whole, but also to the present phase of the questioner's development ("progressions") and to the conditions prevailing in his environment ("transits").

Ethical, either-or judgments apply to concrete situations at particular times; but not to the whole chart or the whole life of an individual. Every birth-chart is the "best" for the particular purpose of the individual to whom it refers, because he is, in structure and function, this chart. Every life is valuable in that it is a particular aspect of the whole universe; and all these aspects have to be actualized in concrete existence in order that the Whole should be a perfect, all-encompassing "chord" (or motet) of polyphonically evolving centers of conscious existence.

This does not mean that there are not catabolic as well as anabolic forces in any living organism, and in the universe as a whole. To call these forces 'good and evil', in the ordinary ethical sense of these terms, is to fail to realize that both types are necessary - just as there would be no healthy metabolism in a living organism if there were not both a process of food assimilation, and one of evacuation of the unused material as waste products. Neither would there be assimilation of needed food if the teeth and digestive juices did not reduce the eaten foodstuff to a condition of absorbable chemicals.

The basic issue is whether one has a partial view of life-processes or one is able to reach a whole-view of the total process. Only such a whole-view can tell us what we are as "wholepersons," and what the meaning and purpose of life as an individual may be. But if we have only a partial view of life this can only mean that what we see are merely events - i.e., something that happens in the physical or psychic environment in which a mysterious, transcendent Soul (or "I") has been plunged at birth for mysterious reasons. It is only as one is able to envision the whole being and the whole life-cycle of an individual that one can see the person that he is, and that the rhythm of the self that is power, beating at the core of and throughout the total field of activity which this person encompasses, may be experienced.

Such a seeing-feeling requires - as I have repeatedly stated since 1934 when I began writing my book The Astrology of Personality - an esthetical approach to man and to the universe - a holistic or harmonic approach. If one looks at a painting, one would not merely examine certain colored bits on the surface of the canvas, and like or dislike this spot of red or that square of blue. One has to face the painting as a whole. Only then can one have a truly esthetical experience of the art work, and resonate to the meaning which it seeks to convey.

It is the same with an astrological chart. What a chart represents is the whole sky with all that it encompasses of energies and of potential meaning. True, it is only this whole sky focused at a particular time and place; but if the astrologer does not "feel" first of all the presence of the whole sky, and only after that determines' the particular arrangement of the planets and stars at the time he does not have a whole-view. Moreover, if he does not even concentrate his attention on the entire planetary and house pattern, but merely reacts emotionally and "ethically" to this and that good or bad aspect, to a wonderful Jupiter or a "crystallizing" Saturn and an "aggressive" Mars in conjunction or square, then he cannot meet his client (or himself if he studies his own birthchart) as a human person. He perceives only forces trying to do him good or harm, and events resulting from the operation of these forces.

No planet essentially represents anything better or worse than any other. No aspect is inherently good or bad. No zodiacal sign or house should be valued more than any other. The negative judgments so often passed on the sign Scorpio, or the twelfth house, may indeed have most destructive effects on certain individuals. The attribution of most negative characteristics to some degrees of the zodiac (I quote, "a degree of suicide. . . . a degree of homicide. . . . a degree of insanity") on the basis of statistics which isolate only one somewhat more salient planetary feature out of many, and on a relatively small number of cases, can be almost criminal as to results.

Of course there are birth-charts which in the present state of society and mores suggest either a rather smooth or a most likely "difficult" life for the individual in question; but it is time that we go beyond the moralistic illusion that a normal, average kind of happiness linked with a minimal number of. challenges and crises represents "the good life." In periods of history when every person had to struggle terribly hard for survival under conditions of generalized scarcity, Jupiter may have appeared to be "the great benefic" fulfilling the ambitions of the ego; but in our affluent suburban American environment, it may blot out deeper than ever the purpose of the self. Likewise, a dominant Venus may indicate, in our permissive society, a more than average indulgence in sensual satisfactions.

The astrologer who presents lists of good and bad features, favorable and unfavorable days or months in terms of expectable specific events, does not really treat his client as a human being, still less as an individual person, but rather as an object registering series of events. Besides, it remains to be seen, whether the expectation of danger or misfortune evoked by the more or less thinly veiled and ambiguous statements of so many astrologers will help the person to be "prepared" - or whether by creating anxiety or fear for the future it will not be a "self-fulfilling prophecy." The rugged individual type may rejoice in expected challenges, for he trusts in the strength of his will and the resourcefulness of his mind to ride the storm - a great adventure feeding his already dominant ego! But are we always dealing with rugged individualists with strong wills, and is a society where this type of individual predominates, the kind of society we want to live in? Will it, should it be the society of the new Aquarian Age?

Sociologists are now seriously concerned with this self-fulfilling character of social prognostication, and the result can be just as unwholesome if it is success and good fortune that is expected, for it may lead a person to relax in his efforts and to become careless or self-indulgent. The most basic psychological issue, is, however, whether crises should be avoided because they are "bad." The humanistic astrologer being concerned with the fullest possible actualization of the potentialities inherent in the birth-pattern considers that no significant step ahead can be taken except through some kind of crisis. It is not the predictable events which are important, but the attitude of the individual person towards his own growth and self-fulfillment.

Moreover, a harmonic picture of the universe implies that nothing occurs in a human life except for a purpose, and that this purpose is the purpose of the great Whole acting through one of its trillions of focalizing instrumentalities, the individual person. If this be so, any man has within himself the potential capacity to meet significantly whatever crisis occurs to him at the time it occurs; but this does not mean that he would have this capacity developed two years or even two weeks before. Thus, if this crisis is announced to him when he is not actually ready to meet it with the whole of his being, the announcement may cause him an anxiety or fear which will act as an extraneous, man-made cause of failure in meeting the crisis - and this applies also to prediction of major good fortune.

Person Centered Astrology