The Four Crucial Phases of the Cycle of Being

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THE FOUR CRUCIAL PHASES OF THE CYCLE OF BEING

Dane Rudhyar

To speak of the beginning of a cycle in which every phase follows another in a continuum of changes with a repetitive structure implies that, though we are sufficiently objective to the cycle to be able to consider it as a whole, we are looking at it from the point of view of our particular position in it. The Movement of Wholeness itself has neither beginning nor end; it is a continuum of change which the human mind interprets as a series of moments in which events occur, every event being related to antecedent events and conditioning subsequent ones. What human beings call the first event of a series, its assumed "beginning," is the one before which no other (normally) can be known, because any antecedent belongs to a category (or level) transcending that of the knower's consciousness. Nevertheless, any "beginning" occurs as a result of impulses and determining factors which occurred at that transcendent level — and these in turn were determined by still previous occurrences. Every phase of a cycle whose structure is repetitive is related to every other phase, even though the events through which the phases operate need not be repeated exactly.

Human beings usually interpret the relation between events in terms of cause and effect. Nevertheless the concept of causality is not the most significant (because not the most inclusive) frame of reference within which to define the relatedness of all that occurs within the cycle of being. A more holistic interpretation reveals that the cycle as a whole constantly acts upon its components and constituent phases. During the Day hemicycle, it does so by readjusting the centrifugal tendencies inherent in individual forms of existence and in relationships between them. Christianity interprets this readjusting activity of Wholeness as divine Providence. Yet, however we formulate a deeper, more holistic interpretation of the readjustment, it operates through individuals, who operate as agents or catalysts for it. In Mahayana Buddhism, the immense compassion of liberated Boddhisattvas is said somehow to absorb (insofar as the overall cycle allows) the centrifugal activities of human beings unable to serenely fulfill their places and functions (dharma) in the planetary process of human evolution. In Hinduism, Avatars like Krishna periodically incarnate to restore the dharma, that is, to restructure the process of evolution.

Karma, if considered the cause-and-effect relation binding together the activities of human beings, is a valid concept where causal sequences can be given an objective meaning. This occurs in the world of measurements — which is also that of quid pro quo ("This for that," "An eye for an eye," and so on) — the world dominated by the principle of Multiplicity; and the concept is essentially atomistic. It had to be formulated in such a way to meet the need of a humanity essentially in danger of being destructured by a centrifugal, egocentric individualism. This danger is inevitable; it characteristically defines the nature of the human state of being, which in turn refers to the section of the cyclic process witnessing the rise of the principle of Unity.

The waxing of the principle of Multiplicity, which overtakes the power of the principle of Unity following Creation at the symbolic Sunrise, can be interpreted as the increase of randomness in the world of objective existence; but after the symbolic Noon, when the trend toward Unity begins to increase, order gradually overcomes disorder. What human beings call "freewill" reveals the operation of randomness at the level of human existence; the increase of order in the cycle of being is, as it were, appropriated by individualized human beings who compromise with the still powerful drive toward Multiplicity by insisting on following their own order. In such a manner, the power of the principle of Multiplicity becomes "introverted," and it does so as it is in retreat, gradually being caught up to by the principle of Unity. Therefore a paradox arises: human beings simultaneously insist on playing the game of Multiplicity as they, themselves, become ever more integrated yet separate "ones." This leads to the dualism of failure and success (as we shall see in the next chapter).

Yet whatever any human being does as a self-isolated individual center of consciousness and will does not affect the overall structure of the cycle of being. The destructuring forces of extreme individualism are balanced and harmonized by divine Providence or Compassion — that is, by the Wholeness of the cycle focusing itself in and through personages who act as agents of the Whole, as transpersonal human beings.

Because of this interplay between destructuring and restructuring (reorganizing) forces — which is also the interplay of Multiplicity and Unity seen from a particular perspective — no cycle exactly repeats a preceding one. Structurally there is one basic form of cyclic order; existentially the actual events of any cycle are unpredictable, occurring in answer to whatever needs arise.

The Creative Process Before and After "The Beginning"

Human beings today trace the cause of the beginning of a human body to the act of copulation of a man and woman providing the two different kinds of cells needed for the formation of an embryo. Behind and driving this act of copulation, some people idealistically assume, is the human couple's "desire to create." Theologians thinking anthropomorphically extend this concept of desire to God's creation of the universe: a supremely transcendent Godhead "fecundates" His/Its infinite Potency (Mahashakti) which, separating itself from the Godhead, becomes the source of the creative process (however this process is formulated). Yet no explanation can be given for the Godhead's (or Parabrahman's) "desire to create," which indeed is incomprehensible and "absurd" if God is the changeless One without any attributes or division, or without the evident incompleteness and lack always implied by a desire.

In fact, it goes without saying that the act of sexual impregnation in a human couple frequently has nothing to do with the desire to create a child. From a biological point of view, the copulating man and woman act merely as carriers of sperm and ovum; "life" uses them for its own purpose. In homo sapiens, the cycle of "life" operates in this hominal manner, while in vegetable species it works through the seed process. Such a process clearly reveals that the end of one cycle of vegetation becomes the beginning of a new cycle; the seed that falls from the dying plant becomes the germinating seed. Thus there is no break in the continuum of the biological vegetable cycle. Neither, actually, is there a break in the continuum of the human biological cycle; the sperm and ova of human beings are living cells (parts or rather subwholes) within the bodies of living human organisms.

There is also no break in the Movement of Wholeness — no break in the cycle of being in which the full development of mankind occurs and Man (archetypally considered) performs a crucial function. What human beings interpret as the "beginning" of the universe — our universe — and the start of the process culminating in the state of being human (homo sapiens), can be symbolized by the germination of the seed. It is not a beginning "out of nothing," but a critical turning point in a predominantly subjective process gradually becoming more objective. It is not caused by a "causeless Cause" external to the cycle of being, God, but by a series of prior changes during the Night period of the cycle. As the principle of Unity is then stronger than the principle of Multiplicity, the changes leading to the beginning of the new cycle are predominantly subjective.

These changes refer to a process operating at the level of mind — of a pre-cosmic type of mind, for the cosmos (the material universe human senses perceive and react to) is not yet in existence when they "occur." Cosmic existence begins when the principle of Multiplicity reaches a degree of intensity equaling that of the long dominant but waning principle of Unity. This is the case at the symbolic Sunrise, which is the final consummation of the series of subjective (but objectivizing) changes lasting between Midnight and Sunrise.

During this Midnight-to-Sunrise period, an almost total Oneness of being (symbolized by the Godhead state) gradually becomes manifold. Such a manifold of being takes the form of collectivities of beings who are still deeply unified in activity and consciousness and assuredly non-physical as yet. Occult traditions and religious theologies (and theodicies) speak of them as creative Hierarchies which become decreasingly unified and increasingly differentiated as the moment of Creation (the symbolic Sunrise) approaches. In their totality and togetherness, these Hierarchies are the creative God, Ishvara, the Word (or Logos,) Elohim (a plural noun in Hebrew). One may think of them as a descending series of subjective, pre-cosmic "Hosts" of beings. They have been called cosmocratores, "builders of the cosmos"; yet they do not "build" the material universe. Rather, they produce increasingly complex and differentiated archetypes or formulas of being — clearly defined sets of potentialities of existence, systems of organization to be used by the many elements of physical matter as structural foundations for concrete existence.

As the process of formation of archetypes reaches its final culmination at the symbolic Sunrise, the potential energy that had been "stored" during the Night period of the cycle is progressively released. It is released with extreme intensity at the symbolic Sunrise, when the principle of Multiplicity not only equals the strength of the principle of Unity but emerges as a dynamic, aggressive factor. For theologians of all religions, this release is the Act of Creation. But the Movement of Wholeness reveals it to be a particularly focused phase in the process of Creation: the continuum of change, never interrupted during the Night hemicycle but operating mainly subjectively, begins to produce objective, physical manifestations, according to the archetypes that had been formed (subjectively) between the symbolic Midnight and Sunrise. In this sense, Creation evokes the potentiality of time, for inherent in each archetypal form (which will be actualized as the physical universe develops) is a particular way of reacting to and eventually experiencing and interpreting the continuum of change.

As cosmic existence begins at the symbolic Sunrise, energy is being depotentialized. It is kineticized in discrete steps, as cosmic quanta, because the principle of Unity is still relatively powerful and compels the release to occur in units, at first according to simple cosmic forms (archetypes), such as whirlpools, which eventually become spiral galaxies. In accordance with these archetypes, powerful forces marking the initial triumph of the principle of objective existence (Multiplicity) over the principle of subjectivity (Unity) move, churn, and whirl what between Midnight and Sunrise had been an immense (but indeed non-measurable) "expanse" of inert, undifferentiated materials or protomatter (the "dark waters of space" referred to in Genesis 1:1). While I shall define the nature of this protomatter more precisely in the next chapter, let us say for now that it refers to a state of nearly total fragmentation, nonrelatedness and inertia produced by the failures of the preceding cycle — or, symbolically, that it corresponds to the chemicals and waste-products released in the soil year after year by the decay of leaves and other materials.

After the symbolic Sunrise, what I have spoken of in previous writings as a "two-way evolution" coordinates the involution of spiritual forces animating archetypal forms with the evolution of the protomatter of "chaos" (the "dark waters of space"). At first the archetypally defined forms into which protomatter is whirled are very simple; they become progressively more complex as galaxies, star-systems, planets, and various kinds of atoms and molecules.

Eventually cells develop in which the integrative potency of "life" begins to operate. A biosphere (a life-field) is set in operation the moment molecules evolve into living cells. Life animates the entire planet, not merely the cells themselves. When archetypes belonging to the systems of organization we call "life" begin to interact with the molecules of the matter of the planet, the whole planet becomes alive. Living matter is still matter. It is constituted by atoms and molecules, but these are controlled by a more evolved and more differentiated type of structural organization characterized by its capacity to reproduce and multiply itself in a myriad of facsimiles.(1)

1. No rational basis exists for the modern scientific mentality's refusal to accept, even as a working hypothesis, the existence of spiritual energies mobilizing archetypal forms and "projecting" them on evolving earth-matter. According to the assumptions and paradigms of Western civilization, we should not have to have recourse to the "unnecessary" belief in archetypal forms if we can explain the evolution of inorganic into organic matter (a very big if indeed), because the latter explanation would be "simpler." This is a specious idea. It rests on the assumption that nothing is "proven" unless we can discover how the process operates in terms the human intellect and its machines can measure. Knowledge is thus limited to measurability — a limitation which is as much a "belief" as the belief in God, as the belief that mankind as we know it represents the highest system of organization of activity and consciousness on earth, or the belief that the earth is only a mass of matter.

In this type of organization, the principle of Multiplicity, which has continued to wax after equaling the principle of Unity at the symbolic Sunrise, is nearly over-powering. The principle of Unity can only maintain a power of integration able to some extent to control and contain the process of expansion, self-multiplication, and differentiation. From Sunrise to Noon, the principle of Unity operates at several levels; two of its manifestations are gravitation and the "binding force" holding subatomic particles in a stable state of relatedness. Another of its modes of operation during the symbolic Day-half of the cycle is the life-force (prana in Sanskrit, chi in Chinese), which keeps the myriad of cells of a living organism functionally active according to specific (archetypal) patterns of behavior. (During the second part of this Day hemicycle, from Noon to Sunset, the principle of Unity, then rising in strength, also operates as the power of psychism which maintains tribal and societal integration.)

The evolution of biological species within the earth's biosphere eventually leads to the animal stage of life and to protohuman races. As crystals and viruses may be transitions between complex inorganic molecules and living cells, and as intermediary forms of existence have been found between plants and animals, so fossil remains of protohuman primates found in various regions of the globe probably have to be interpreted as evidence of a gradual transition between animals and characteristically human beings. All "passages" from one level of organization to the next require periods of transition and the development of intermediary or transitional evolutionary steps. This occurs because the principle of formation develops inertia; all existential forms (including institutions at the social level) resist change. Existentially, any new system of biological organization emerges slowly from the preceding one, yet the archetypes which both systems actualize are clearly distinct, each archetype giving form to a basically different quality of being.

If the scientist believes in gradual material evolution and the occultist or theologian in the creation of distinct species by God, the seemingly contradictory beliefs arise because different types of persons view the same reality from different points of view. The fact of a continuous series of physical transformations does not contradict the periodic actualization of archetypal principles of formation. "Protohuman" races become increasingly "human" under the pressure of the involutionary descent of the archetype Man (Anthropos) when the inertia of animal nature has been at least partially overcome by the power of the new, fully human characteristics. Moreover, the beginning of a truly human stage has to take place in the biosphere of a planet being periodically (and in a sense continually) transformed; thus the appearance of homo sapiens — of human beings endowed with the potentiality of self-consciousness and autonomous decision-making — could take place only when conditions became sufficiently hospitable to the new, presumably more sensitive and vulnerable type of human organisms. (According to some occult traditions, this occurred in several regions, not in a single locale.)

The "descent" of the archetype Man into the biosphere (and thus potentially into every newborn human) is symbolized and dramatized in the myth of Prometheus. This probably follows the more complex and revealing Hindu story of the great beings called Kumaras, especially one of these beings identified as Sanat Kumara, who came to earth from another realm of being associated with Venus (whether or not this refers to the physical planet). The idea that the archetype of Man is "kept" within the thrice holy city of Shambhala in the deserts of central Asia may refer to the superphysical reality alluded to in such myths. In any case, all three myths can be considered highly significant evocations of a definite phase in the evolution of the earth, a phase during which a truly human type of beings appeared in a region particularly adapted at the time (perhaps millions of years ago) to its concrete manifestation.

Exactly when such an event occurred in terms of our time measurements is probably not important today, if only because the rate of the flow of time — which simply means the speed of planetwide changes measured by the revolution of the earth around the sun — may have been quite different then from what it is now.(2) The importance of discussing such an event is to understand its place and meaning in the entire cyclic scheme in which humanity has a definite place, function, and meaning to fulfill within the earth and the universe as a whole. To realize such a meaning and to fulfill such a place and function in an all-human, global, and all-inclusive sense is the intrinsic purpose of that period of the cycle of being which, at least for human beings, constitutes "human history" — past, present and future: the period of the great cycle between the symbolic Noon and Sunset.

2. The belief that the earth's motions (axial rotation and revolution around the sun) occur at the same speed throughout the whole period of the cosmos seems incredibly naive. It is tantamount to believing that the growth of a human body occurs at the same rate at age forty as it does at age thirteen. It is an assumption based on the unproved and unprovable belief that the cosmos is "nothing but" a mass of matter totally devoid of any living (and thus cyclic) characteristics. Astronomical theories — which have changed so often during the last one hundred years — reflect an extraordinary human hubris: the belief (at times fanatical) that physical sense-data conveyed to the brain-mind (which then interprets these data) provides quasi-absolute knowledge of unchanging and universal cosmic processes.

From Noon to Sunset & from Natural Man to Illumined Man

Understanding the meaning of the term Natural Man requires the consideration of the workings of the Polarity principle which complements the principles of Unity and Multiplicity by harmonizing these opposite trends of the Movement of Wholeness. Polarity reveals a special connection between opposite phases in the cycle, most significantly between Midnight and Noon, and between Sunrise and Sunset. In a more general way, a polar relationship also exists between the entire quarters of Sunrise-to-Noon and Sunset-to -Midnight, and between the quarters of Midnight-to-Sunrise and Noon-to-Sunset.

At the symbolic Noon of the cycle, the principle of Multiplicity reaches its maximum power to control the energies of the Movement of Wholeness. In Natural Man the energies of earth-nature attain their greatest possible differentiation; the centrifugal power of Multiplicity and differentiation reaches its natural limits — that is, in nature as it operates in our system of planetary organization. But this extreme of differentiation (or of possibility of differen- tiation in human nature) "challenges" the opposite point in the cycle, the most unified state of Godhead, to act to affirm Wholeness. The possibility of actualizing Wholeness in a release of concretizable energy is greatest when and where the two extremes face each other. In other words, Midnight is "involved" in Noon, because in the Midnight-Noon polarization Wholeness is challenged to become an actual experience.

This experience — like any integral experience of wholeness (purna in Sanskrit) — must have a form in which to occur, a form to contain it. The form is the archetype, Man. In the evolution of the earth, the archetype Man "descends" into the planet's life-field (the biosphere) when the Promethean or Kumaric "event" occurs. This descent must take place before the Noon of the cycle, so that the archetypal form, Man, can be completely stabilized on earth when the "bottom" of the cycle (the Noon point) is reached by the vast cosmic-planetary tide of the Movement of Wholeness (which we today call "evolution").

At this Noon point the Godhead "involves" itself, as it were, in the planet earth through a human being in whom the archetype Man is focused. In India, such a human being is called a great Avatar; the Christian tradition uses the term "God-man." But the process of involvement (or "intervention") can be interpreted in many ways. For the Christian theologian, it occurred for the first and only time nearly two thousand years ago. But Christian doctrine makes no fundamental distinction between the Godhead and God the Creator of the universe, (though the writings of mystics like Meister Eckart make this distinction); and the supreme event happened relatively recently. It was total and final, even if a Second Coming is still expected today. In India, at least eight great Avatars of the past are mentioned, and others are expected in the future. (Some Indians speak, apparently erroneously, of Gautama Buddha as the ninth Avatar, following Krishna, the eighth, and Rama, the seventh.) Lesser Avatars are also mentioned, and a spiritually illumined human being often is considered the avatar of his or her own divinity.

In a planetary sense (that is, referring to humanity as a whole), the original great Avatar embodies, as it were, the archetype of Man (Anthropos). But he may do so only superphysically, and the term "reflects" or "focuses into the planetary field" may be more appropriate than "embodies." In either case, what the first great Avatar "reflects" is the "vision" or "imagination" that arose in the Godhead state at the symbolic Midnight — the divine image of Man. But at the symbolic Noon, the "image" is as yet imprecise and unlimited by "form"; it is more a Quality (or rather a vast complex of spiritual Qualities) than a form. Religious mystics and poets have tried to express the character of this Midnight "image" in the "mind" of the Godhead by projecting it onto the sky as the "Heavenly Man" whose form was imaginatively and symbolically defined by constellations of stars. This Heavenly Man, however, was a latter-day religious projection of the archetype Man that already had "descended" into the earth-field with the coming of the Kumaras or Promethean spirits. Nevertheless, I do not believe that the central figure in the Hindu version of this descent, Sanat Kumara, should be considered the Supreme Avatar. Rather, he brought down the archetype Man to the sphere of the earth, anchoring it in the substance of the globe at the mystic place Buddhist tradition calls Shambhala.

In a somewhat different way, the process of embodiment of the archetype Man into the crude physical organisms of human beings then controlled by biological energies may be represented in Genesis 6 in the story of the "sons of God" (Ben Elohim) who married "the daughters of man" giving rise to a race of "giants." As the Creator-God Elohim refers to a "Host" of beings, so the term Avatar may be understood most significantly as a series of manifestations, emanations, or interventions of the Godhead state (the state of maximum Unity) throughout the whole period of the actualization of the archetype Man. For this reason, when I use the term Avatar here, I mean the series of great Avatars. In the past I have used the term "the avataric process" to refer to this continuing yet periodic process. This process occurs between the symbolic Noon and Sunset.

The function of the Avatar is to "inject" into the consciousness of successive races and cultures — to graft upon their collective consciousness — one aspect of the archetype after another. The Avatar is able to do so (at least to some degree) because the power of the Godhead is focused into or through the core of his being. He reveals to evolving mankind one "Name" of God (one fundamentally human spiritual Quality) after another. Each avataric "revelation" becomes the basis for the set of great symbols and images (Urbilder) that ensouls a culture-whole.

In a different sense, every human being who becomes identified with his or her individual archetype can be called the avatar of this archetypal reality which (as we shall see in Part Three) is itself only the "form" taken by a spiritual Quality — that is, by one of the immensely numerous aspects of the Creative God, one "Letter" of the creative Word (the Logos). Such a human being has reached the condition of Illumined Man; the "divine Marriage" between a spiritual Quality and a perfectly adequate human vehicle for it has been consummated in him or her. The illumined being has reached this condition as an individual, ahead of the masses of mankind. At the close of a large planetary cycle of the earth's evolution, all traditions tell us, a more or less large number of such fully individualized persons will have reached this stage. They will constitute a spiritual Race or Community. This Community — transhuman even more than human (in the present sense of the word) — is gradually forming even now. I call it the Pleroma. It is forming through the periodic addition of individuals who consciously become avatars of their individual spiritual Quality.

At the close of a great planetary cycle (the symbolic Last Day), the Pleroma is the consummation of human history. In theosophical symbolism it is the "Seed Manu, Savarna." The Pleroma is the polar opposite of Elohim — the Omega answering to the Alpha of the half-cycle during which the principle of Multiplicity is stronger than the principle of Unity. Every human being reaching the state of Illumined Man "reflects" or actualizes one aspect of Elohim, one Letter of the Creative Word. Within this Letter (or spiritual Quality) pulsates, as it were, the immense Compassion of the Godhead, the state of maximum Unity toward which "Pleroma beings" unanimously evolve through the increasingly subjective states between the symbolic Sunset and Midnight.

From one point of view or another in all of my previous writings on philosophy, psychology, culture, and the arts, I have discussed the many-sided developments occurring between Noon and Sunset: the formation and gradual complexification of cultures and religions; the process of individualization; the development of mental faculties and of separative egos; and the transcendence of biological and cultural forces. Human history is the progressive rise of human consciousness through many cyclic ups and downs. Collective human needs for security and well-being have to be answered. Then human consciousness has to become individualized — that is, the collectively determined consciousness of persons, products of greatly varied cultures, has to reach a focus in the clearly formed minds of autonomous and responsible individuals. Such individuals are able to choose between the constructive and destructive use of the energies generated by the Movement of Wholeness and by the tension between the two great principles of Unity and Multiplicity.

Generally speaking, what occurs between Noon and Sunset polarizes what occurred during the opposite Midnight-to-Sunrise period. During the latter, activity was primarily subjective; it operated within the "divine Mind" (as I shall define this term in Chapter 7), through the work of creative Hierarchies gradually more removed from the Godhead state. Their activity manifested through the building of archetypal forms through which the purpose of the Godhead eventually could be actualized in a material universe. During the period of strictly human evolution (from Noon to Sunset), what develops is the human mind and a series of cultures able to give conscious meaning to the immensely varied formations and relationships which in their togetherness constitute "nature" — and eventually to the entire universe accessible to human perceptions and interpretations. Thus conscious meaning polarizes archetypal form.

The activity producing archetypal form, however, is rooted in unity and subjectivity; the bestowal of meaning is conditioned by an immense multiplicity of objective, apparently separate human beings or groups of human beings. According to their states of consciousness these beings may bestow a meaning which reflects either a separative and divisive ("atomistic") or a unifying and integrative ("holistic") approach. Besides these two approaches, a third may gradually emerge if the holistic-integrative approach already has been taken. This is the cyclic or polarity approach I am presenting. It is founded on the realization of Wholeness, the realization that all opposites are inseparably included in Wholeness. They are harmonized in Wholeness, not absolutely unified; for there can be neither absolute Unity nor absolute Multiplicity in Wholeness. Yet because activity at any particular time and place cannot be oriented in two opposite directions at the same time, it must be polarized by an opposing trend effective at some other place or time. Consciousness, however, always can be established in Wholeness.

Because human beings operate during the Noon-to-Sunset period in which the principle of Unity rises, to act in tune with the Movement of Wholeness necessitates working toward greater integration. But this activity need not ignore, abjure, or abhor the power of the principle of Multiplicity. The realization of Wholeness can permeate the consciousness of the acting individual, who then is liberated from emotional attachment to the goal his or her actions serve. Action can be performed "in the Name of" Wholeness and serve the purpose of the particular moment of the performance — a purpose which is defined by the moment's and performance's place in the entire cycle of being.

In other words, because human beings exist during the phase of the entire cycle of being when the rise of the principle of Unity is the fundamental issue — and thus the necessity of its victory over the inertial power of the previously dominant principle of Multiplicity — the essential function of humanity throughout its evolution is to be attuned to and exteriorize in integrative acts the evolutionary trend toward an ever more inclusive manifestation of the principle of Unity. The keynote of human history, therefore, should be cooperation and harmonization. On the other hand, because the principle of Multiplicity is still dominant and (now in a more introverted way) insists on differentiation, a truly human form of cooperation and integration should correlate truly autonomous units of consciousness. Such an autonomy requires the development of mind as an individualized principle of formation. The principle of Multiplicity gives power to the development of individuals; but this development of a consciousness of individual selfhood should be bent in a centripetal direction by an increasingly conscious and powerful allegiance to the rising trend toward Unity. Individuals must learn to act at the service of a common purpose and to be inspired by an integrative power.

Individuals nevertheless are "free" not to align their centralized and individualized energies — their wills. Their wills can resist the mounting trend toward the all-human experience of wholeness that develops through ever more inclusive modes of organization and co-active behavior. Their self-conscious egos and egocentric minds can cling to the experiences they can have as separate persons. If human beings do this, they become partial or total evolutionary failures.

In the next chapter I will discuss the problem of evolutionary failure. For now let us say that the possibility for it exists the moment the power of the Godhead polarizes Natural Man at the symbolic Noon. The powerful downpour of energy of quasi-absolute, "supreme" Oneness objectivized in the experience of the Avatar state engenders an equally supreme problem. A human being whose entire organism is flooded with that feeling-experience of quasi- absolute Oneness cries out, "I am the Onel" This cry is so powerful that most of those around him fall in awe and worship what they can relate to only distantly and vicariously. Eventually a cult or religion is formed which, more or less instinctively, establishes the fundamental assumptions and paradigms on which a culture develops on an exclusivistic basis.

From the point of view of Wholeness, this is the first failure; but it is also, perhaps inevitably, the result of the polarization linking the symbolic Midnight and Noon. Without this polarization, the trend toward ever more differentiated and separate forms of existence would continue, one might say, unchecked. The principle of Unity has to assert itself so powerfully that the total trend of the Movement becomes reoriented. In a symbolic "change of gears," Wholeness acts by suddenly reversing the direction of the Movement. The results of this reversal are overwhelming to the living organisms then developing on earth. These changes are outlined briefly in Genesis 6 beginning with the marriage of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men. '' There may well have been an "original sin" in Eden (whatever Eden exactly means), but the results of the marriage constitute the collective failure of mankind — a vicarious experience of wholeness through the worship of a personalized and exclusive manifestation of Unity.

When human consciousness becomes individualized — that is, centralized by an ego dominating a rigid, formalistic mind — this once-collective failure becomes individual. The individualized person feels and experiences himself or herself as a separate whole, as being exclusively himself or herself — "I myself," unique, and therefore a god-like One. The alternative to such a negative end of the process of individualization is the radically transformative experience of belonging (at least potentially) to the vast Communion of Pleroma beings who experience Wholeness as a Community — or better still, as a "Commonsoul" (in contrast to the materialistic concept of a Commonwealth).

In other words, what essentially counts is the level at which the feeling- realization of Wholeness occurs in a human being. Wholeness even now can be experienced too soon by a weak, sentimentally personal, and unprepared mind (a form of consciousness). But a strong mind centralized and controlled by a powerful ego may be able to experience Wholeness only in terms of a separative and exclusivistic type of individual selfhood. Separativeness and an extreme, rigid refusal to belong to any greater whole leads to a crucial depletion of psychic energies and to an unbearable sense of isolation. Yet this inner emptiness must be filled; it is a spiritual hunger. The way to satisfy it leads to the dark path, the end of which is a state of quasi-absolute isolation — the state of a center without any circle, a mathematical point without substance or dimensionality. Such a state is the reverse of the Godhead state in which the spiritual harvest of all conceivable experiences and their meanings are condensed in a consciousness of nearly absolute unity and simplicity.

From Sunset to Midnight

Evidently it is impossible to say anything objective and concrete about this quarter of the cycle of being, because whatever "is" has a predominantly subjective character. In relation to human beings as we know them today, this section of the total cycle of being refers to the postmortem state, which is a state of increasingly subjective being, yet which also must have some kind of objectivity because the principle of Multiplicity is still relatively strong, though waning. I shall deal with the postmortem state and the concept of reincarnation in Part Three, chapter II.

From a planetary and cosmic perspective, this quarter begins with the Pleroma, the Communion of the more or less large minority of human beings who have reached the state of Illumined Man. The latter is expected at the Gate of Silence — the brief instant of the cycle of being in which the principles of Unity and Multiplicity are in perfect equilibrium — through which these perfected, spirit-radiating individuals pass. This state of illumination polarizes the cycle's other moment of perfect equilibrium between Unity and Multiplicity — the Gate of Sound through which the creative Word was uttered by the Creator-God in whom all the creative Hierarchies operating between the symbolic Midnight and Sunrise were unified.

The image of the Pleroma that forms in my mind is similar to, if not identical with, what the founder of the modern theosophical movement, H. P. Blavatsky, sought to convey by the term "White Lodge."(3) But sadly, this appellation has been abused and materialized. A Pleroma is essentially a Communion of individualized yet unanimous beings of "Light." The qualificative "white" applies because such a Communion totally reflects the originating "solar" vibration of the creative Word that was in the beginning, yet which remains pulsating throughout the entire cycle it opened. During the long process of multicultural development, "Lodges" (secret brotherhoods) are formed, each of which can be symbolized by a particular color of the spectrum of light (Blue Lodge, Green Lodge, and so on). The Pleroma is "white" because it is the harmony of all colors and all cultures — of all "Rays," as occultists are fond of saying.

3. The term Lodge undoubtedly was inspired by the tradition of Freemasonry, which was so important during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Pleroma beings are still "individuals" in the sense that each is the actualization in concrete form and specific modes of activity of one of the myriad "Letters" of the creative Word (the Logos). They are their fulfilled individual dharmas. But a Pleroma being is fully conscious that an individual dharma constitutes but one note in the immense chord of the planetary Commonsoul. The chord as a whole resonates through each individual who, using his or her past identity as a modality for action among persons who are but human, performs "transpersonal" acts not only for the whole but as the whole. A Pleroma being is humanity acting through an individualized mode of response to a human and planetary need particularized by a definite time and place. Deeper still, he or she is Wholeness-in-act.

The Pleroma is a planetary reality. It can be considered the "illumined Mind" of the earth, while present-day mankind constitutes the planet's concrete mind — a concrete mind born out of the complex relationships human beings live through in the biosphere and to which they give meaning in terms of their various cultures. In this sense, we can assume that some kind of human beings exist on any planet able to give birth to and sustain highly developed forms of life; that these beings are "human" in the sense that they have developed some kind of mind able to give meaning to the activities taking place in the life-field of their planet; and that toward the close of the planet's cycle of objective being, a Pleroma emerges out of such a "humanity." It emerges into an increasingly subjective and inclusive state of consciousness and one-ward activity. In that state, it finds itself related to the Pleromas of other planets, be they in our solar system or in other systems within the Milky Way or any other galaxy.

Astronomers now speak of groups of galaxies and metagalaxies, but the preconceptions and empirical limitations of modern science compel them to deal only with the level of the cosmos to which our senses and instruments can react; these reactions are then interpreted intellectually according to the rationalistic postulates of logic and mathematics. The picture I am presenting is also an interpretation; but it is based on a different kind of consistency and logic. It postulates a relationship between the subjective and spiritual aspects of galaxies, and the possibility of cosmic Pleromas. These cosmic Pleromas represent states of predominantly subjective being close to the condition of nearly absolute unity I have defined as the Godhead state — a state of nearly pure consciousness and utterly simplified and condensed subjective being.

After Sunset the Movement of Wholeness proceeds from the planetary to the interplanetary, galactic, and cosmic Pleroma states of increasing unification, simplification, and concentration. This process polarizes the period during which a series of ever more complex and objective cosmic, stellar, planetary, and biological forms of existence were produced after the symbolic Sunrise. Thus, during these two quarters of the cycle of being (Sunrise-to-Noon and Sunset-to-Midnight), the Movement of Wholeness proceeds in opposite but complementary directions. One of these directions leads to Natural Man (at Noon), the other to the Godhead state (at Midnight).

From Midnight to Sunrise: The Activity of the "Builders of Archetypes"

In the Godhead state Wholeness assumes, as totally as possible, the subjective character of all-inclusive oneness. All-inclusiveness, however, implies the inclusion in consciousness of the failures of human evolution mentioned above. Many of these failures are almost totally unconscious centers of circles so empty of contents that circumference and center are indistinguishable. They do not "exist," but in some mysterious subjective way they "inist" as the shadows of Wholeness in the "memory" of Pleroma beings who at any level (planetary or cosmic) must include them, for these "failures" are as much a part of the cycle as the "successes." This inclusion in subjective consciousness is what divine Compassion means.

Such a compassion is not a "feeling" in the human sense of the term; it is the resonance of a state of subjective being. It is nearly absolute Unity remembering Multiplicity, and this remembrance renders absolute oneness impossible. It is Wholeness compelling an almost totally subjective One to summon back to objective existence all that has failed, totally or partially, during the whole Day before Midnight; for in the consciousness of this One is condensed the total potency and the entire spiritual harvest of the experiences of the cosmos approaching nearly perfect unity. It is Wholeness compelling the Movement to radically alter its direction, to let the principle of Multiplicity rise to an eventual supremacy once more at Noon. It is Midnight dreaming of this ineluctable Noon, and this dream is a vision of a future universe that will answer the particular need of the failures of the cycle-that-was — the need for a "second chance" to experience Wholeness in the plenitude of concrete objective living, as participants in a new humanity on a material planet.

The existence of such a humanity able to choose the meaning it will give to its experience is still immensely remote. It can occur only after a workable form of living has been built. This requires, not only the formation of archetypes and the transmutation of potential into kinetic energy but also the arousal of the partial failures of the past from their long "sleep" in states of unconscious or semiconscious subjectivity. Before this, the inertia of the nearly absolute failures of the past cycle (symbolized in Genesis as "the dark waters of space") must be overcome.

During the period that follows the symbolic Midnight (the Godhead state), the energy of the Movement of Wholeness that had been condensed in the state of nearly absolute Unity must be, first, transmuted into active divine Compassion. Then the "dream" of the Godhead must be defined gradually in terms of various levels of archetypes. This process of formation is predominantly subjective because the principle of Unity is still dominant; but the principle of Multiplicity is rising to power, and what is produced in the subjectivity of the "divine Mind" becomes increasingly objective. The process — the formation of archetypes — is hierarchical. Esoteric traditions and many theologies refer to it as the establishment of a graded series of "creative Hierarchies." The more distant these Hierarchies are from the Midnight state of Godhead, the more their components develop particularized functions.

Western traditions speak of a single Creation, a divine "Let there be light!" But Eastern seers and metaphysicians refer to several Creations, which imply a creative process. Yet the character of the process is primarily unified, because the principle of Unity has tremendous inertia, even in retreat. It holds in check and contains the operation of the principle of Multiplicity as long as possible. A critical point, which may be explosive, probably occurs. Yet it need not resemble the Big Bang still envisioned by most astrophysicists. It might have been more significantly evoked to the human consciousness by the vitalistic images of the great "bird of eternity" (kalahansa) emerging from the "egg" of space; but this "space" is that of the divine Mind. The definite outlines of a future universe having been formed step after step, creative Hierarchy after creative Hierarchy, in that Mind, the Word or Logos is "uttered" — essentially one, yet already subdivided into many "Rays" or "Letters."

The Word is both kinetic energy and form; it is the vast, multi-level spectrum of cosmic vibrations. And through the fast-spreading energy contained within the magnetic lines of force of a cosmic formative Mind, the immense Compassion of the Godhead radiates. Ancient philosophers and holy men bowed in reverence to it, calling it "the One Life." Nevertheless, it soon breaks into a fantastic multiplicity of "lives," wherever favorable planetary conditions of existence develop. In each of these locales, species of life collectively experience the continuum of changes — changes now taking objective and eventually (when mankind evolves) measurable forms — each life-species reacting to change according to its own structure and temperament.

The continuum of change kept on unfolding during the Night period of the great cycle of being, but change was then far more subjective than objective. It could not be measured by the motions of planets or stars because there were none. We should therefore think of it as subjective duration. If objective measures of time are given for the "length" of the Night period, it can only be by establishing corresponding time values based on the assumption of an essential symmetry inherent in the Movement of Wholeness. This assumed symmetry is the manifestation of the balanced dualism of Unity and Multiplicity. It is inherent in the concept of cyclicity, which itself is but a way of understanding the dynamic essence of Wholeness.

Having thus sketched out as many of the most characteristic developments of the cyclic process as I can understand, I shall next attempt to clarify some points I have only touched upon in the preceding.

Rhythm of Wholeness