Chapter Five - The Three Factors in Experience and Their Cyclic Transformation

In the preceding chapter the factor of subjectivity was shown to result from a condensation of the Wholeness of an organized whole whose attention had been aroused by a developing situation. This whole is organized, in the sense that it is based on and structured by a particular value and quality of the cyclically and symmetrically unfolding relationship between the principles of Unity and Multiplicity. This whole thus operates as one of the many manifestations of a particular and definable phase of the Movement of Wholeness. A great number of such manifestations occur because during the half-cycle when the state of being assumes the character of an objective universe, the drive toward self-multiplication and differentiation dominates all situations.

These existential situations take place at several basic levels of operation. The most primary level is the one which human beings interpret and relate to as "matter"; and the concept of materiality refers to a type of motion structured by patterns of interatomic and molecular activity. The next level is that of biological organization and organic function to which the ambiguous name "life" is given. At the level of strictly human situations, the state of personhood is gradually unfolding a set of far-reaching and radically transformative potentialities. These become actualized within the field of societal systems in which a powerful and compelling collective psychism develops. Cultures are formed, mature, and disintegrate.

Each level of organization activates a particular aspect of Wholeness, and consciousness is an inherent component of Wholeness. In any whole operating as part of a functionally effective larger planetary or cosmic system, a particular type of consciousness is at least latent. Consciousness passes from the state of latency, or of only diffuse presence, to that of focalized operation when a situation with which the whole is not conversant arouses its attention.*

*If there is no arousal of attention we speak of partial or total in difference. A particular type of indifference has been called "spiritual" because it refers to the non-operation and transcendence of the kind of desires related to the ego.

What I call the subjective factor in an experience expresses itself as a positive or negative desire for the experience. The term desire, however, should be given a meaning much broader than its common use, even in psychology and religious philosophy. As I stated in Rhythm of Wholeness (chapter Eight, p. 155), the word kama (desire) originally referred to the great Kama Deva, the first of the gods because he represented the divine desire to be, which led to the creation of a new world. In early Greek mythology, Eros was also the primordial god in whom this supreme desire was activated. I have interpreted such a desire as the infinite Compassion of the Godhead — the highest, most sublime manifestation of the subjective factor in any experience.

This subjective factor nevertheless operates in any experience and at all levels of being, even if we do not use the term desire to refer to the subjective factor. At the level of matter, this subjective factor operates in elemental modes of activity we perceive as atomic and molecular attraction and repulsion. In living organisms, desire has a functional organic character, where will manifests as instinct. But as the new relationship between an ascending trend toward Unity and a slowly retreating principle of Multiplicity makes possible and increasingly stresses characteristically human situations, a new type of desire gives an unprecedented character to the subjective factor in the experiences: that of an ego.

The ego, however, is not only a subjective factor, for its aim is to make a newborn and growing human organism as comfortable as it can be, and to satisfy its biopsychic desires as much as possible within the family and social environment in which it has been born. The ego is therefore a kind of compromise between what the innate biological temperament of a growing child and adolescent needs, and perhaps even more wants, in order to actualize its full potential of being, and what family traditions, religion, culture, and a particular kind of interpersonal relationship often relentlessly demand. Yet the ego should not be considered only a composite aggregation of habits, characteristic reactions, and more or less rigid patterns of feeling; it is also the first manifestation at the human level of the subjective factor in the process of experiencing any situation.

This human type of subjectivity has the already mentioned capacity to detach itself from the experience. Because it has become a detachable factor, subjectivity assumes an at least relatively exterior character with regard to the whole situation the human organism is facing. The subjective factor that was inherent in all material, cosmic, or biological situations before the appearance of homo sapiens in the earth's biosphere becomes the subject "having" the experience. The difference is crucial and I believe it cannot be adequately understood unless it is given meaning with reference to the long period of the Movement of Wholeness representing the entire evolution of mankind, and to the function and purpose this evolution fulfills in the entire cycle.

When the subjective factor in an experience assumes that it is the subject of the experience, what is experienced becomes the object being experienced. Once the dualism of subject and object is definitely and unquestionably established as the "reality" of the human situation, a great variety of consequences follow. They characterize conscious behavior, personal feelings, and the way in which the subject refers and relates to the biological organism he or she calls "his" or "her" body. As the new attitude toward experiencing is defined, interpreted, and formalized by the mind factor, the subject speaks of "his" or "her" mind. This mind has come to confuse the evolutionary state of personhood with the experiencing subject.

The state of personhood is a stage in the cyclic unfoldment of the Movement of Wholeness. So are matter and life — matter as a stabilized condition of energy, and life as a type of material organization able to maintain, expand, and somewhat modify the scope of its activity through replication and sexual procreation. Personhood, however, has a crucial significance because in both its essential and ultimate meanings it represents the concrete actualization of the Solution which the Godhead envisioned during the symbolic Midnight phase of the great cycle of being. This Solution, then only a potentiality, is now totally infused with and dynamized by Compassion. Personhood should likewise be permeated and radiant with at least the reflection of this divine Compassion. It is so pervaded when it manifests as the Supreme Person who appears on this earth at the "bottom" of the cycle (the Symbolic Noon). Personhood is also filled with the same divine Compassion when individualized persons, who have become "perfect" through the metamorphic process often called the Path, in their togetherness constitute the Pleroma — the seed and foundation of a series of states of quasi-divine radiance. Though beyond personhood, these can only be attained through personhood. No step can ever be missed.

Personhood is a stage of the cyclic process of being during which human situations are to be experienced. But these situations should be experienced with the whole of the experiencing being, and not with a being divided into subject and object More significant still, in a realistic sense, is the similar division into a wielder of power and the power being wielded. The body is useable power; it is energy condensed into material (molecular and organic) structures, each of which has its function in the organismic whole. That energy has to be liberated into acts through muscles or through mental processes. Desire is the liberator, but the process of liberation depends not only upon the will which focuses the desire (as a lens focuses diffuse sunlight) but first of all upon mind. Mind is the technician that provides effective procedures enabling the subjective factor in the experience to relate to and act upon an available and adequate source of power at whatever level of operation is needed.

Desire and the will it mobilizes are ineffectual if operating alone. The activity of mind has to be included in the process. However, if the desire-projecting subjective factor assumes that it is essentially exterior to the situation which could fulfill the desire, it has to depend upon mind and its techniques in a way which not only distorts or vitiates the direct spontaneous release of the needed power but also gives intellectual and analytical procedures a compelling authority. Sooner or later the entire situation takes on a disharmonic character. The subject may be deeply frustrated by his or her experience, just because he or she believes it is "his" or "hers." No experience can ever be full if it is "had" by a subject essentially exterior to the experience.

What psychology today calls the ego is a subjective factor in experiences in which an evolving person tries to come to terms with parents, partner, the cultural environment, and with the body that is the essential source of power his is the case until a radical transmutation of desires has occurred. The ego is the first manifestation of subjectivity at the human level because, with the development of collective cultures, the generic power of instinct is no longer fully adequate to deal with increasingly complex and changeable situations. Cultures are matrices for personhood. I Just as the embryo begins to act as a foetus when it kicks against the maternal womb placing boundaries to its growth, likewise when a baby rapidly developing as a person on the basis of his or her particular biological temperament starts to feel frustrated in the satisfaction of his or her desires by the family "don'ts" and cultural taboos, the subjective factor in experience calls upon the mind to find procedures which could lead to desire-satisfaction in spite of the "don'ts."

The sum-total of these procedures, and their repetitive features, constitute the ego. To the parents they define the "character" of the child, which may be "good" and easy to handle, or "bad" and difficult. What the parents usually fail to realize is that they are not referring to the child alone, but to a family situation in which they are active and determining participants. The child's ego is an answer to the total situation; it does not develop outside the parent-child relationship. It is only that part of the evolving personhood which refers to the possibility of effecting a change in a frustrating situation. When, in spite of the more or less devious or dramatic procedures suggested by the mind and generally manifesting as muscular acts like crying or smiling, the situation does not change, the subjective factor — tense with repressed desires and perhaps the memory of physical harm — detaches itself from the family situation. What the psychologist Fritz Kunkel called "the breakdown of the We-consciousness" occurs. The shocked and distraught subjective factor in the experiencing child seeks and is able to disengage itself from situations it cannot change. Situations still occur, but they now seem to occur outside a rather mysterious entity, the subject. This subject first becomes identified by the name given to the child by the parents and the peer-group; but in a still more basic sense it is "I myself." In this assertion, the subject as "I" proclaims its being as separate from and exterior to all situations.

In previous writings I have referred to this process of detachment as the process of individualization. It can only operate gradually and it may be a very difficult, deeply upsetting process, which other factors in the person resist. Their resistance often generates acute psychic storms as well as psychological problems. The process of detachment does not only occur in early childhood or adolescence. It may be experienced whenever a person has accepted a limiting, but perhaps much-needed structuring relationship giving a sense of order and security to the confused and anarchistic personality — whether it be a relationship to another person (as in marriage), or to a set of religious or socio-ethical assumptions which at the time appear relevant and valid. If the process of individualization is "successful" in the sense that it does not merely emphasize and make rigid an ego intent on forcefully and jealously asserting its independence from all situations, this process may lead to the next stage in the possibility of development of a human type of subjectivity. I have referred to that stage as the state of individual selfhood.

This state assumes the at least relative independence of the subject, "I," from existential situations, but its legitimate evolutionary development necessitates a new factor which may be slow to develop: a sense of responsibility for choices that now can be made freely as an independent as well as autonomous "individual person." The detachability of the subjective factor from human experiencing acquires a positive meaning only when the subject assumes responsibility for the selection of one of several alternatives. Only then can the process prove itself attuned to the essential quality of the cyclic tide of being during the long human period of the cycle — from the symbolic Noon to Sunset.

The next stage in the development of human subjectivity, the Pleroma type of subjectivity, can only be reached through a lengthy, arduous, and often tragic process of radical metamorphosis of the three factors implied in human experience. The desires of the relatively isolated subject have to be transmuted; the formative and structuring mind has to operate in terms of transpersonal, integrative and compassionate desires free from biological and cultural compulsions; and a new kind of energy has to be made available. It becomes available after the strictly biological type of organization has become transubstantiated, and eventually totally attuned to, a super-biological and planetary kind of power gradually being concentrated in the Pleroma.

The condition of subjectivity manifesting at the Pleroma level evidently transcends our mental power of understanding. One can only state that a difficult-to-imagine combination of individual selfhood and group- unanimity seems to operate in it Though it is a stage of the Movement of Wholeness beyond the strictly human state, Pleroma beings are still related to humanity and its evolution. They participate in that evolution at both an objective and subjective level — thus as controlling factors in the evolution of the planet, and as inspirers and guides for human individual selves struggling to overcome their attachment to both biology and culture. (What the unfoldment — or rather the infoldment — of Pleroma consciousness means cannot be suggested, except that it seems logical to relate it at a certain stage to the radiant state of starhood instead of to the dense and heavy condition of planethood. This implies a galactic or cosmic situation. The process reaches its ultimate possibility of fulfillment in the Godhead state — a state of nearly absolute subjective oneness. In that state subjectivity operates as total, all-inclusive Compassion, the supreme and most sublime mode of desire. Through divine Compassion a new world is created, a new opportunity for the failures of the past to reach the fullest possible experience of Wholeness.

As the principle of Multiplicity asserts itself once more after the symbolic Midnight, the trend toward an objective actualization of the Godhead's compassionate desire in the concrete substantiality of an eventual state of planethood assumes an ever greater influence in the Movement of Wholeness. The almost totally unified Mind of the Godhead — the eonic Mind that experiences a whole cycle in a timeless instant — differentiates into "celestial Hierarchies," each of which represents a single basic aspect of the Godhead's Mind.

This mind — as we shall presently see — is involving through a series of transformations which the human consciousness can only intuitively perceive as reflected images. Esoteric traditions tell us that during this period of involution (from the symbolic Midnight to Sunrise) the two great principles of Unity and Multiplicity are in a state of what we may interpret as "conflict" — just as we think of conflicts when considering the often stressful, symmetrical relationship between the many egos and an organized society during the period of evolution of humanity (from Noon to Sunset). Various mythological narratives refer to "wars in heaven," and religious traditions give great importance to the personification of the process of division and differentiation gaining momentum during the rise of the principle of Multiplicity — a principle which always acts as a denial and repudiation of any experience of oneness.

Though in the situation religions assume to be the Creation of the universe the two great principles of Unity and Multiplicity are of equal strength, the desire to be many and to experience being in a multitude of ways has an aggressive kind of power. It forces the trend toward Unity to retreat (as it were) inward. All the latter trend can do is to contain the expansive energy of whorls of protomaterial and subatomic elements within spiral-like structures. What was once subjective centrality uses its available energy in order to build and give a firm reality to circumferences. Mind operates within these circumferences, impressing the existing archetypal structures upon the plastic and receptive substratum of being which not only fills space but (in its essential Beness) is space, the infinite ocean of potentiality.

Even at the primordial level of beingness called "matter" we should assume the existence of a subjective factor in the elements with which the human mind has to deal Hydrogen, iron, or uranium "experience" at their level of wholeness; but obviously the nature and quality of these experiences and of the subjective factor in them differ vastly from those of human experiencing, because the situations being experienced in both instances differ so greatly. Yet the dualism of atomic or chemical attraction and repulsion, present in all matter, is analogous to what is experienced in human situations as a pleasure/pain, love/hate or success/failure polarization.

This dualism takes a somewhat different form at the level of biological organization, especially when a differentiating type of structural replication operates as sex. Mind then is feverish with the urge to discover new techniques of self-multiplication which makes possible the haunting satisfaction of the increasingly differentiated desires of an atomized kind of subjectivity. However, when the phase of maximum multiplicity is reached, a reversal of the cyclic Movement occurs. After this symbolic Noon, the strictly human type of subjectivity begins to be a possibility because new situations, now with a human character, result from the altered relationship between the principles of Unity and Multiplicity. As we shall see, these situations are profoundly affected by the mysterious but powerful Presence of the quasi-divine prototype of personhood, the Supreme Person.

Energy, understood in its most fundamental nature, is the product of a dynamic state of relationship. The concept of Wholeness implies such a state, whose two polarities are the principles of Unity and Multiplicity. As these are polar opposites of equal strength, alternately and cyclically waxing and waning, the movement their relatedness produces is balanced. It is a state of dynamic equilibrium. The energy unceasingly generated by the harmonic process of bipolar relatedness is as constant as the structure of the cyclic relationship is invariant. In its most basic sense, the word Space (capitalized in order to avoid misunderstanding) refers to both the dynamic state of balanced relatedness and the energy inherent in it. Space is a plenum of energy because it is fullness of relationship.

Any relationship implies what normally is called space. If there is no space (no dis-stance) between two entities, they cannot be considered related, provided we do not limit the idea of distance by thinking of it in terms measurable by physical yardsticks or any other material means of measurement; thus, in terms of what can properly be called "di-mension."* But this dimensional and measurable space is not Space (capitalized) any more than personal emotions are cosmic Motion, or the love/hate dualism that so often tears the integrality of human persons is the changeless relationship between the principles of Unity and Multiplicity. This relationship generates energy, and energy inheres in Space in both the potential and kinetic modes.

*Two entities occupying the same area of space at the same time are not related; they constitute a single entity. The concept of knowledge through what is assumed to be "identification" is the result of a semantic confusion. Perfect resonance is meant, not identification. Similarly, a reflection is not the "real" source of the light-rays.

Potential energy is expended as kinetic energy when the desire for its use arises in a subject confronted by a situation requiring the use of energy. The energy used does not vanish from Space; it becomes dis-organized. At least part of this energy ceases to be concentrated within the structure of a finite field of being in which a subjective factor is an active presence, able to manifest as a source of desires and perhaps of will. As this energy is used in various modes of activity, it becomes scattered and loses its cohesion. Yet it may also be re-potentialized and once more condensed within a field of being. The potential energy which had been kineticized and spent by the multitude of biological species in a biosphere almost frantic with differentiation and proliferation is repotentialized when the trend toward Unity asserts itself with sufficient power. However, this mainly occurs during the last phases of human evolution, still far in the future for the masses of humanity. It presumably is one of the functions of the planetary Pleroma.

Today the type of expenditure of energy engendered by sociocultural and interpersonal relationships can already be controlled, neutralized, and repolarized as part of a process of conscious and willful repotentialization. I have already mentioned such a process in terms of a somewhat different frame of reference when speaking of asceticism, or the conservation of energy. This demands either attunement to the rising trend toward Unity, or an intense devotion to the Avatar who once gave concrete form to a new archetype — the great symbols and myths of the culture which developed mainly after the dissolution of the Avatar's bodily field of existence. Both approaches are valid, yet one of them is usually the dominant factor in a person whose dharma befits him or her for such a repotentializing activity.

It should be clearly understood that energy is never created. Energy is the substratum required to enable any organized whole of being to experience Wholeness. But the quality and intensity of the experience is basically determined by the level of beingness at which this whole can operate. While the energy is always "here," it may be too diffuse to be useable in the fulfillment of a conscious or subconscious purpose. Space is a plenum of energy; yet the state of plenitude does not imply the possibility effectively to use what fills the space-field. There must also be condensation and concentration.

In science, space can be thought of as a dimensionless mathematical point, but this is a strictly formalistic meaning, and Western science is indeed a formalistic system of interpretation of data provided by physical senses.* In a deeper sense. Space can be condensed in a nearly unextensive area (or core of being), or it can be diffused in terms of quasi-infinite extension. Yet, according to the philosophy of Operative Wholeness, Space and the plenum of energy it symbolizes can never reach a state of infinite density and become an absolute center of Beness, "the One." Neither can Space be absolutely fragmented and differentiated in an infinity of "ones" unable to experience any desire for relationship because they are synchronously deprived of useable energy. To repeat a previous point, there can be no absolute states of either Unity or Multiplicity — only states of maximum oneness or multiplicity which, when reached in a cycle, call forth at once a reversal of the Motion and radically alter the character of the ever-changing but always cyclically balanced experience of relatedness.

Energy is usually defined as the capacity to perform work. As it performs work it operates in its kinetic mode; but before the performance mobilizes it, the energy is "present" in a potential state. It is mobilized or kineticized either by a natural change in a situation producing a basic need, or by some kind of intentional personal desire. As it passes from a potential to a kinetic state, energy seems to be "spent"; yet it is not lost. It merely changes state and passes to a lower level of potentiality, especially becoming heat. If it were continually spent for the satisfaction of a multitude of needs or desires, the energy potential of any organized system of activity would sooner or later be dissipated. This dissipating trend is what is now called entropy, and it would lead to a "dead level" of energy. However, entropy applies only to closed systems of being. In open systems an opposite process, negentropy, is also at work.

This process manifests in a variety of ways. At the biological level we see it operating as eating and feeding (in the most general sense of the words). Through eating, the spent biological energy is restored; but restoration can only operate within relatively narrow limits, and the life-system that was born must die. It dies in a state of biological impotency. It must do so because the principle of Multiplicity aggressively dominates the realm of life-systems, and the principle of Unity can only maintain the operation of the system as a whole between two markers of time, birth and death.

At the sociocultural level, the process of negentropy assumes the character of "information." In childhood one may refer to it as the process of education; but what is usually called education is actually instruction. To be "in-structed" is to be fed informational data, operational formulae, and officially tested and validated techniques. At the level of the collective mind, the nature of such an intellectual "food" conditions the character and quality of the energy which the culture is using. Yet at the very core of the collective societal organism, a little-understood kind of energy is also operating. It has been developing and making itself felt through the simple fact of human togetherness and cooperation. It is the energy of psychism.

Psychism operates in terms of often rigid principles of organization, and through the binding power of great myths, symbols, and deeply rooted common feelings. It may be compared to the energy which keeps the activities of many types of cells functionally integrated and consistent; yet a basic difference exists between the life-force and the power of collective psychism. The former belongs to the involutionary arc of the cycle of being; the latter to the evolutionary process characterizing the development of humanity, a development which (at the symbolic Noon) follows the great reversal of the Movement of Wholeness and the manifestation of the Supreme Person in whom the Solution for the ancient karma is embodied. Yet at first the power of biological instincts is still so compelling that the energy of psychism is hardly distinguishable from the power of the life-force. Similarly, the subjectivity factor which, in the experiences of prehuman organisms, was centered in the whole species rather than in any particular specimen, remains identified with the entire tribe. It is often projected upon a superphysical realm assumed to be "spiritual" (though it is only psychic or "astral") as the god of the tribe.

This god is endowed with the attributes of personhood, but it is the kind of personhood which the collective mind of human beings, still so close to the biological level, is able to picture; and the picture is at first very crude. In it the balanced cyclic Motion of the Movement of Wholeness can only be experienced as "emotion," and the energy produced by the harmonic tension between the opposite and complementary principles of Unity and Multiplicity is interpreted as the Will of a personal god.

According to the religious approach to existence, the means to effect a degree of repotentialization of energy are identification with the divine will, total devotion to the ideal of personhood spiritually manifested as a god, and a rigid control of the expenditure of energy through simplification of interpersonal relationship and even asceticism. The process of neutralization or absorption of ancient karmic failures does not demand an expenditure of energy; instead it implies a repotentialization of energy. This process inevitably acquires a stronger momentum when, at the symbolic Sunset, the strength of the principle of Unity begins to overcome that of the trend toward Multiplicity, which by then is in retreat and in a defensive role. In the Pleroma type of organization the process of repotentialization leads to an increasing condensation of energy.

Space itself is being condensed. This condensation process is the polar opposite of the cosmic scattering and differentiation of energy which followed the "Creation" of the universe, now given a new form (perhaps as mythological!) as modern science's Big Bang. The repotentialization of energy through a hierarchical series of metacosmic and predominantly subjective Pleroma states leads to an almost total concentration of energy and space. Space is condensed into an increasingly small area, yet can never be reduced to a mathematical point. Moreover, all quantitative values and the possibility of measurement are evidently not applicable to such a "divine" state. In this Godhead state everything may seem possible, and potential energy might be considered infinite. Yet as immense Compassion arises, the Solution envisioned has to balance and exactly fit the karmic remains of the by then concluded cycle. Everything is possible that is needed.

Energy is always there, available; but the character of that available energy is determined by the balance of power of the two principles of Unity and Multiplicity in that particular phase of the Movement of Wholeness. The availability of the power is also related to the nature and material characteristics of the locality at which energy is to be used. What we call "matter" is a condition in which energy has reached a degree of stability. Matter (or in a more general sense, substance, whether or not it is "physical") is energy in form; and as we shall presently see, form (in the true sense of the word) is the basic product of the mind factor. However, this is mind operating at a cosmogenetic, biogenetic level and, during the human period of evolution, as builder of the complex structures of a vast series of cultures. Each culture is intended to stress a particular aspect of the supreme ideal of personhood which the Godhead had envisioned during the Midnight phase of the great cycle.

What is needed of the infinite potential of energy available to the Godhead at that Midnight moment of reversal of cyclic motion is used by the divine Mind, acting through what past mythologies have called "celestial Hierarchies" of Builders of the Cosmos. However, the mobilized energy is operating within the divine Mind, of which these Hierarchies are differentiated aspects. Each Hierarchy releases a specific type of energy which eventually, during the evolutionary development of humanity, will be characteristically available to a particular series of cultures. Human persons may become "agents" for the release of the energy or the basic archetypal structures that a Hierarchy, with which the persons are in tune, has created.

True "creativity" is the ability to reflect and concretize an archetype existing at the higher level of mind. Creativity should not mean merely or essentially personal "self-expression." If it does it has to be considered the release of internal tensions. Most of the time, however, it refers to the making of a product which answers the desire of a group of human beings, and may bring some kind of profit. But productivity should not be confused with creativity.

Internal psychological tensions do undoubtedly generate some kind of energy-but emotions operate at a level essentially different from that of cosmic or evolutionary movements.* These are attuned to what is intended and possible in terms of the karma-neutralizing process. They work through personhood, but they acquire the particular character and often inconsistent rhythm of emotional releases (perhaps interpreted as self-expression) engendered by the desires of a subject (I, myself) having separated itself from the cyclic process and intent on proving its freedom of choice. When this occurs, personhood becomes a means which insists on being an end in itself. This happens when mind provides a rationalized interpretation and justification for the desires of the subject of whom it has become a servant. That mind, however, may refer to a collective type of mentality superimposed upon the individual situation, whether this mentality is traditional and religion-based or the product of a generation's revolt against past standards. Mind can indeed be a tyrant after having begun as a servant.

*ln my earliest work Art as Release of Power (1930) I stressed this distinction between Cyclic (or Cosmic) Motions and personal emotions, particularly in the chapter "Art of Gestures and Art of Patterns." A few copies of this essay are still available, though the whole book has long been out of print.

In any situation a desire is aroused. It may be an unconscious or a conscious desire; it may be the taken-for-granted motive that once led to the formation of a habit — a subjective manner of reacting to an often repeated situation. But however it manifests, and whatever the name given to it, the desire factor is operating, expressing a subjective state of being, a preference for a particular type of response.

The desire-motive requires the release of some kind of energy in order to be actualized; yet many psychologists and philosophers do not seem to realize that the subjective factor never deals directly with energy. A third factor, mind, is needed as an intermediary. Mind has to operate not only as a linking activity but as an interpreter and (in the broadest sense of the word) a technician.

In a famous illustration, the dualistic Sankhya School of philosophy in old India spoke of purusha (spirit) as being lame, and prakriti (the substratum of matter-energy) as being blind. Purusha is being carried over Prakriti's shoulder, showing the way to the blind. This is, however, an incomplete and misleading image; for while Prakriti may be blind, it is shown in the story to be organized as a body able and trained to walk, while the seeing Purusha can somehow choose (or is led to choose) one of several possible options in directing the steps (the operational activity) of Prakriti. A third activity is implied in the activities of the pair. This factor — mind operating at the biological level as a generic formative principle — has given an organically effective structure to the vital energies of the integrated collectivity of cells of the body; this body can at least walk. This same factor, operating at the level of culture and personhood, enables the desire to reach a goal (or at least to follow a definable direction) and to translate itself into a directive or order which can be transmitted to and sufficiently understood by the blind body of Prakriti.

Because the operations of mind are manifold and assume varied aspects, the whole range of the mind's activity is not recognized for what it is. Yet these activities should never be absolutely ignored or denied, just as a subjective and a potency factor can never be entirely absent from any situation. They may at most be rendered temporarily ineffectual or intentionally paralyzed in some special and abnormal experiences. The inactivity of any one of the three factors may indeed be valuable in some special human situations, but such an inactivity can only be a means to force an issue which has produced intense stress and tensions. In the best possible cases it may produce a state of extremely focused "at-tention" to the possibility of solving a problem posed by human free will; and free will is the strictly human ability of the subjective factor to detach itself from a situation and operate as an external and assumedly unconditioned subject.

In one identifiable mode of activity or another, mind operates in all situations, thus in all phases of the great cycle of being. It is the operational aspect of the principle of Relatedness which is implied in the concept and also the experience of Wholeness. It is a universal, ever-present activity. It provides channels through which the factors of desire and potency — one might also say consciousness and power — may interpenetrate and interact. These channels, however, can become too rigid and control a process they are meant to assist and indeed make effective. Starting as a servant, mind can become a tyrant, blocking the expression of new subjective desires and keeping the will in a straight-jacket. Mind indeed can so condition the acts of will that this will becomes moulded by mental prejudices and idiosyncrasies, especially by those which a collective culture and family tradition have forced upon a child since birth. Yet as we shall see, the restrictions and restraints imposed by a culture have perhaps irreplaceable value in allowing personhood to emerge with a steady rhythm from the state of life. By limiting the possibility of options available to a child and adolescent, a cultural and religious tradition acts as a structuring factor providing a relatively calm and safe psychic, familial, and socio-political environment. When ideological or personal storms unfold their potential of violent mental transformation in the child's close environment, the development of an ego tends to assume a stressful and catabolic character, and personhood takes neurotic forms.

The main purpose of modern psychology, and especially psychotherapy, is to deal effectively with these forms. Philosophers compelled to become psychologists and analytical scientists by the spirit of the times (zeitgeist) try to reduce to mental processes the neurotic, experience-disorganizing tensions of the many persons seeking happiness and sociocultural fulfillment. Depth-psychologists dig into the subconscious of their clients in order to uncover the memories of unassimilated and rejected situations which impaired or distorted the flow of subjective desires and the capacity to mobilize will. Most psychologists and psychiatrists attempt to renormalize the individual person and make him or her able to function more peacefully and productively in their society. But if they are successful, the result is likely to be the stabilization of personhood at the collective level at which the culture and its processes operate. It may be a stabilizing process, a strategic withdrawal needed to regain strength and re-establish an effective contact with the potency factor — what is realistically possible for the perhaps prematurely individualizing person in an unfavorable sociocultural situation. It may also be the unconsciously accepted loss of opportunity to raise the subjectivity factor to a new level and thereby to effectuate a transmutation of desire.

In all instances, mind is involved. Its activity is required as an intermediary between the subjective and potency factors. Mind has to interpret to the subject, eager to experience the fulfillment of desires, the ways of power — thus the effective modes of release of kinetic energy from a state of potential, non-operative being. Mind imagines solutions, invents instrumentalities and specific methods. Mind is the technician, concerned only with what can be reliably proven "to work" at the practical level of the control of natural energies. But mind also operates at another level in terms of the sequential emergence of phase after phase of the Movement of Wholeness. In fulfilling such a cosmogenetic function, mind is an impersonal or superpersonal evolutionary factor; while as it operates in the field of development of personhood, in most cases mind acts as a cogitative, discursive, argumentative and also conflict-producing factor responding to the pressure of conflicting desires as well as to the possibilities of using power for the satisfaction of these desires. Because the cosmic scope of the universally operative first aspect of mind is only understood in a limited sense, and because so much confusion seems to exist in assessing the value and purpose of the function of mind in the development of personhood, the next chapter will be devoted to a study, brief as it must be of these various levels of mental activity during the entire cycle of being.