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CONSTITUTION OF MAN:

THE SPIRITUAL ENTITY & THE HIGHER MIND

 

Dane Rudhyar - Photo1

Dane Rudhyar

 

Between the symbolic Noon and Sunset of the cycle of being the fundamental goal of evolution is the consummation of the "divine Marriage" of spirit and matter within a human being. In this union of opposites, the all-encompassing meaning of Wholeness is revealed in a moment of Illumination, in a moment of dynamic equilibrium in which the principles of Unity and Multiplicity are of equal strength. The union must be contained within a form that can resist the union's intense "heat" and not be shattered by it.(1) This form is the mind of wholeness — a mind totally filled with the harvest of a long series of life experiences that were spirit oriented yet rooted in the substance of earthly existence.

1. A good symbol for such a need is provided by the attempts of atomic physicists to use the energy of atomic fusion for practical purposes. A tremendous heat has to be generated which would vaporize every known material substance within which the process could take place. So far, the only solution has been to create a tremendously powerful magnetic field as a containing factor.

When this mind reaches a perfected state of development, karma is fulfilled; the distortions brought to the harmonic and serene Movement of Wholeness by a series of human personalities during their life spans — their "sins" of commission and omission — have been harmonized.(2) In the ultimate moment of Illumination and within the integrated formations filling this mind of wholeness, Wholeness is Meaning. The full meaning of the Image of Man conceived in the previous Godhead state is understood. It is one vast, all-inclusive meaning; or as occult and mystical traditions say, Man is potentially not only the microcosm of the objective manifested universe, but also the alchemical vessel within which all the powers of the symbolic Day and Night of being can find themselves harmonized in their essential nature, which is both spiritual and material. Man is potentially the complete manifestation of Wholeness. To be such a manifestation is Man's dharma, and the field for such a manifestation has to be given form by the mind of wholeness —  the mind illumined by spirit, thus by the Compassion that radiates from the Godhead state in which the principle of Unity reaches the apex of its power (in Sanskrit, manas taijasi, the illumined mind).

2. What is implied in a series of human personalities is discussed in The Cyclic Process of Spiritual Embodiment.

While the forms built by this mind are such that in them the principles of Unity and Multiplicity can reach their harmonized expression, the energy animating these forms is the power of Compassion. Spirit is the active factor in them; for at whatever level it operates, spirit is rooted in Compassion and the will to inclusiveness. Compassion provides the incentive to build a new dharma to balance and harmonize any ancient karma — dharma and karma being two complementary aspects of Wholeness. Mind builds the archetypal forms of dharma. Each archetype structures an invisible "field of forces" within which spirit seeks to establish a definite and steady relationship with a particular human organism, produced according to the laws of nature operating in the earth's biosphere.

In my book The Planetarization of Consciousness, I called such a field of forces the "ideity field".(3) This field acts on the great variety of cells and organic functions in a human being, functions which seek to hold the attention and draw to themselves the power of the central self. In this field, spirit as Compassion and the drive toward unity seek to affect this aggregation of desires inherent in the state of biological and psychic existence.

3. See Part Two, Chapter 7, "Soul-Field, Mind, and Reincarnation."

This state of existence is what the popular mind understands as life, but this is because Western mentality has refused to see in life a universal power that is only for a period focused upon and pervading a fecundated ovum (or vegetable seed). Sri Aurobindo referred to that condition of biological existence and its multifarious desires as "the vital." In some manner, integrative spirit and the too often discordant voices of the vital have to meet and come to terms with one another. Mind, in its individualized aspect, builds the ideity field to provide a meeting ground. But at first mind must deal with the basic biological drives of the organism whose existence must be assured and perpetuated. This biologically dominated mind becomes at the human level of existence the "lower mind," for which a better term is the concretizing mind. Another type of mind, however, operates at an existence-transcending level. It usually is called the "higher mind," the builder of archetypes. It gives a definite form to the dharma of the individual person.

The "body of individuality" I mentioned at the close of the preceding chapter is, in principle, the manifestation of this archetype; but it is such a manifestation only when the individual performs his or her dharma. In the early stages of the process of individualization, the ego often usurps the power essentially belonging to the true self; when this occurs the "body of individuality" (or mental body) is "fed" mainly by the concretizing mind intent on sorting, generalizing, assimilating, and conceptualizing the experiences of personal and sociocultural living. These experiences are conditioned by the desire (kama) for a multitude of relationships with objects and other persons — relationships which are mostly acquisitive and possessive.

In its archetypal aspect, the "body of individuality" is presumably what is known in Hindu philosophy as karana sharira and among Theosophists as the causal body. The term body, however, is confusing because it gives the impression of a well-organized system of activities endowed with some consciousness of its own; in most human beings today, the "body of individuality" is barely organized. Even the "body of desires" (or astral body) usually is not a field of activities sufficiently well organized for a centralized consciousness to operate objectively in it — as objectively as the ego can operate in a physical body. An effective type of organization requires a strong, active, form-building, and organizational mind.

At the level of the desires for existential relationships — with their ups and downs and their inherently dramatic as well as aggressive character — the organizing factor is the concretizing (or "lower") mind. It is the intellect (in the modern sense of the term), which both systematizes and conceptualizes the experiences of the body and the psychic level of the personality and gives them meaning. It does so by referring these experiences either to the collective tradition and life style of the community or to the established character of the personal ego. The ego in turn is rooted in the biological temperament of the person and its particular balance of functional activities and needs.

For a "higher mind" to develop effectively, the spiritual entity to whose purpose this mind would be consecrated has to have reached a point in its unfoldment at which it can focus its energy — the energy of Compassion — in the direction of a particular human organism. But the achievement of a one-to-one relationship between a particular human being and spiritual Quality also requires that mankind as a whole (the biological species homo sapiens) has reached a certain stage in its physical and (through a series of culture-wholes) psychic evolution. The attainment of this stage makes possible the birth and development of human beings sufficiently sensitive to respond to the "call" of a spiritual Quality — a call that must be formulated by the higher mind.

In other words, the process is twofold and involves a "descent" (or the involution) of spirit into a well-defined organization of mind and the "ascent" (or evolution) of living forms toward not only a fully human but a definitely individualized state. These opposite currents meet at the level of mind; but because mind has a basically neutral (that is, nondirectional) character, a human mind finds itself divided by a twofold task: it must contribute well-defined structures to both the descent of spirit and the ascent of biological systems spawned by the earth's biosphere. The usual result is that a human being is divided into two systems of activity and consciousness. These systems are popularly called the "higher Self" and the "lower self," and Christian tradition has long featured the concept of human nature as a precarious union of angel and beast.

These two aspects interrelate and often confusingly blend at the level of mind. Actually, mind represents a third factor in addition to the duality of spirit and matter (which has been overly emphasized). Because of mind, the opposites can be harmonized and eventually united, after a long process of preparation and many repeated attempts. Thus Man's organization is actually triune, and each of the three components itself has a threefold character. Nevertheless, for practical purposes today, the dual nature of human beings may be more apparent. The most fruitful approach combines the two concepts: while it gives to mind a pivotal, all-important character, it also deals squarely with the realities of human existence and the often hidden cause of many deep-seated inner conflicts.

In the following I shall attempt to enumerate and briefly describe the main components of a total human being, beginning with the triune spiritual entity, the permanent factor in a series of personalities — the factor that is related to the principle of Unity. In addition, I refer the reader to the diagram in The Physical &  Psychic Bodies.

The spiritual entity in Man is a combination of (1) a universal factor, the power of divine Compassion that is the foundation for all modes of existence; (2) a particular spiritual Quality of being; and (3) a principle of individualization, the function of which is to exteriorize, define, and focus the particular spiritual Quality so it may enter into a one-to-one relationship with a human organism produced in the earth's biosphere.

The first factor can be considered simply the reflected light or power of the Godhead state. In this state the principle of Unity reaches the greatest power it can attain in the particular cycle under consideration. But because there are cycles within cycles—a hierarchy of cycles—the degree of inclusiveness and the quality of the Compassion radiating from the Godhead state of any cycle of being is relative to the level the particular cycle occupies in the hierarchy. As there can be no state of absolute Unity, so the character of all-inclusiveness and universality of which we can speak when dealing with the total being of a particular individual is only relative; it is relative to what is possible in the cycle of this individual being who operates within the larger cycle of humanity-as-a-whole, the planet earth, our solar system, and so on.

The second factor in the spiritual entity is related to the creative Word of which the spiritual Quality is one single Letter. In another symbolism, this second aspect of the spiritual entity is one "Ray" of the spiritual "Sun" — one of the many Rays or colors of the spectrum of divine Light. Occult traditions speak of primary and secondary Rays, just as other traditions distinguish between Mother-Letters and other Letters in the cosmic Alphabet of being.

The third component in the spiritual trinity is related to the Promethean gift bestowed upon Natural Man. It is the principle of individualization, the power of exteriorization required to bring the spiritual Quality to a clearly focalized state. It is closely associated with the "higher mind" needed to formulate — to give an archetypal form — to the spiritual Quality. To focus a spiritual Quality so that it can enter into a one-to-one relationship with a human organism is to "individualize" it. This individualization of the spiritual Quality polarizes the required individualization of the human person, that is, the latter's emergence from the collective psychism of his or her culture. The individualization of spirit requires the operation of the spiritual will, which is the true will; but what most people today call will is the concentrated energy  of desire (kama). Spiritual will is "light" rooted in Compassion; the ego-will is "heat" generated by the spasmodic nature of desire.

The higher mind gives a steady form to the light of will; the lower mind gives unsteady and often changing forms to the heat of desire. The process of human evolution consists of the transmutation of the fire of desire into the light of Compassion, and of the confused multiplicity of the lower mind's thought processes into the unified revelation — the "seeing whole" — of the illumined mind, the mind of wholeness.

The lower mind nevertheless performs an important function during the first phases of the development of human consciousness, when this consciousness emerges from the state of biological (vegetable and animal) consciousness — a state in which it is structured and controlled by instincts. When Natural Man enters the stage of biospheric existence, he is "overshadowed," as it were, by the power of the Godhead released through the primordial Avatar in whom the archetypal Image of Man manifests as a spiritual entity. Both the power of the Godhead and the archetype that gives it a form are almost totally beyond the consciousness of human beings just emerging from the biological state. These emergent human beings are still so close to the animal condition that their minds can operate only as the lower or concretizing mind.

The function of this mind is to give concrete form to what makes protohuman organisms human. At that time, "giving concrete form" means expressing the inexpressible and incomprehensible in symbols based on unusual or particularly intense experiences of life in the biological world. The concretizing lower mind thus reflects the realities of the realm of archetypes — the realm of the higher mind — which is then utterly transcendent and ineffable. This, indeed, is what the lower mind always should do. Its function is to translate spiritual realities into life terms, thus into symbols, images, and ritual gestures which become the foundation of cultures uniting and "ensouling" increasingly large groups of human beings.

However, the consciousness of primitive human beings is still bound to life energies and instincts operating as rigidly set mechanisms seeking release in fulfilling activities. Therefore, the symbolic forms and magical rites of the culture inevitably are misused and made to serve life desires. Sooner or later, human beings whose biological energies are particularly powerful use the concretizing mind to bring these energies to a sharper, more effective focus. The lower mind then performs two functions: it rigidly maintains the culture's traditional structures and form, and it gives strength to the developing psychism of the community, which usually is dominated by one or more powerful human beings.

When the process of individualization begins and culture-wholes are formed whose dharma is to pay particularly focused attention to the archetypal ideal of autonomous and responsible individual selfhood, the concretizing mind gives sociopolitical form to such an ideal. The concepts of democracy, of the "worth and dignity of the individual," of the primacy of the individual over the collective, and of universal reason over particular feelings gradually become official tenets of a new social order. These ideals acquire some kind of religious sanction and eventually are formulated into political laws; but the majority of the people repeatedly and most often successfully circumvent sanctions and laws, often with the tacit approval of priests, prosecutors, and judges. The desires that fill and energize the psychic-astral realm use the lower mind, which has become the servant of the ego.

The ego is a psychic structure organized by the concretizing mind, but it is also to some degree a reflection of the principle of individualization within the triune spiritual entity described above. Ideally, the ego reflects this spiritual principle of individualization as the moon reflects the sun. Thus the ego and the other components of the personality over which the ego rules have been called the lunar self, while the triune spiritual entity in archetypal Man has been called the solar Self (or sometimes the Solar Angel).

This solar Self and its servant, the higher mind, constitute a fourfold spiritual soul at least potentially active in every human being. It might be related to the Pythagorean Tetraktys (1+2+3+4). The solar Self persists during the entire cycle of Man; it retains its identity, not only through the symbolic Day period of the cycle of being, but also through the Night period. However, when the immense majority of human beings today proclaim, "I am Peter" or "I am Jane," they are not referring to this solar Self. They are at best but vaguely conscious of its existence in the symbolic form given to it by their particular religion or metaphysical group. Rather, when they say "I," they are referring to their personal or lunar self or (psychologically speaking) to their ego.

Therefore the next chapter will give a more detailed account of the combination of factors which together constitute the lunar or "lower" self (the personality). Also it will examine the origins of these factors and whither they go when death disassociates them. This picture of what precedes the formation of a personality and will follow its disintegration will pave the way for a discussion of the process popularly known as, reincarnation. The reader may already have surmised that such a process is far more complex than is popularly believed and that the term reincarnation may be misleading.      

 

Rhythm of Wholeness

 

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