*
THE FORMATIVE AND SEPARATIVE ASPECTS OF MIND
Mind and Form
In its most fundamental aspect mind is the relatedness between the principles of Unity and Multiplicity as this relatedness operates throughout the cyclic process of the Movement of Wholeness. The character of the relation. Unity to Multiplicity, unceasingly varies, as one phase of the vast process of being follows another and announces the next. The nature of the activity of mind therefore also changes as the process unfolds and new situations arise. Nevertheless, the function of mind as revealer of the wholeness of any situation — and thus as an aspect of Wholeness — is essentially that of giving a form to the situation. Mind is always and everywhere the formative power of the beingness of any whole. In order to understand mind we have therefore clearly to realize what is implied in the concept of form.
As already stated, any whole is finite, since otherwise it should not be considered a whole; it is a system of organization of elements interacting within the boundaries of a "field," at whatever level of being this interaction occurs. Any finite field has boundaries which in some manner separate it from other fields, and these boundaries define its presence in terms of a particular shape and of the ability it may have to relate to and affect other fields. The enduring existence and activity of any whole also implies the internal operation of a principle of organization establishing more or less definite and permanent patterns of functional relationship between the many elements which constitute parts of this whole. These patterns, when understood in their operative totality, constitute the inner form (or structure) of the whole.
Unfortunately the words form and shape are often used interchangeably as exact synonyms, and this leads to a basic confusion found even in philosophical books, including books on Hinduism or theosophical doctrines in general.*
*The Sanskrit term rupa so important in Hindu metapsychology, has usually been translated as "form"; but I believe it refers to the concrete "vehicle" (vahan) necessary for the objective manifestation of a quality of being which can be evoked by sense perceptions and interpreted by the intellectual processes of the rational mind. It is claimed that these qualities can be experienced directly at a higher level as qualities without the need for a frame of reference which a vahan constitutes. Qualities, however, should not be considered formless. They are interrelated within the Godhead's vision of a new universe, as Letters are interrelated within the creative Word (the Greek "Logos").
The shape of an object is an external factor which refers mainly to the actual or potential uses for which this object is intended — thus, the shape of a surgical instrument for an eye operation is determined by the structures of both an eye and the surgeon's hand. Generally speaking, the shape of an object is defined by the space and color relationship between an object and whatever surrounds it Shape deals with external relations between a physically organized existential whole and other wholes, or between a well-defined system and the total environment in which it has to maintain its existence as a whole.
Form, on the other hand, refers to the specific state of relatedness of many elements contained in a field whose structural energies keep them integrated in terms of their function. The interpretation of the term function differs at every level of activity; for instance, the function of a melodic theme in a symphony differs in character from the function of the liver or adrenal glands in a human body. A discourse has form when the points the speaker makes follow one another in a consistent and ordered sequence revealing the workings of the principle of Unity in his or her mind. A work of art has form when every part of it concurs to convey a personal experience of Wholeness and meaning, or exemplifies a type of ordering and a traditional structure which pioneers in the development of the artist's culture had once envisioned as an archetype of relationship and institutionalized as a collective mode of expression.
Two different and indeed opposite types of formative processes have however to be distinguished. In one case, an area of space whose boundaries have been established is divided according to a cosmic or a biological principle of differentiation into regions intended to be the localities for the operation of specific functional activities. We see such a process operating when a fecundated human ovum divides into groups of cells which will become the organs of the fast-growing embryo. In another case, simple elements or wholes operating at a less inclusive level of integration come together, or are more or less forcibly brought together in order to constitute a more inclusive whole by accepting a schedule of organized and functional differentiations. This is the way in which a community of people, a business corporation, or a nation is usually formed.
In the first instance, the parceling of an area of space is involved according to geometrical principles studied in occult metaphysics, or according to genetic biological directives whose origin is unknown. In the second case, a building process occurs requiring the gathering of materials or people that may have belonged to some other system of organization, but have left or been wrenched from its field of integration. In both instances the result is a new whole of being which "has form," even if, at the level of an abstract system, one cannot really speak of its "shape."
The process of parceling of space refers, as we shall see, to the period during which the divine Mind, operating through celestial Hierarchies, gives form to the archetypes of the future universe envisioned at the symbolic Midnight by the Godhead's Compassion. Mind is then operating in its involutionary aspect. It becomes more specifically an evolutionary factor when, after the Noon (bottom) of the great cycle, its most essential task is the building of sociocultural institutions and religious systems and rites. Mind then increasingly attunes itself to the rising trend toward Unity, while during the earlier half of the cycle (from Midnight to Noon) mental processes were dominated by the principle of Multiplicity and the drive toward differentiation.
When they are stabilized, the forms which the involutionary mind evokes out of undifferentiated space, as well as those the evolutionary mind builds by the gathering and integration of scattered elements (physical or intellectual), have a common and essential characteristic: any form implies an inside and an outside. We can look at the distinction between inside and outside in terms of shape (the shape of an object or even of a discourse), or in terms of the internal principle of organization giving to the entity being considered its characteristic generic or individual structure — its form. But wherever mind works as a formative principle, the dualism of inside and outside cannot be totally dismissed as an unreal illusion. Shape, inasmuch as it refers to wholes of being, is the relatedness of inside and outside. However, such a relatedness acquires a different meaning at the Pleroma level, and the concept of shape is hardly valid in a predominantly subjective condition of being. Yet even a subjective state has an internal form; it excludes what the formative principle operating in it considers irrelevant or alien to the specific function of the whole. Thus a relative degree of exclusivity should be expected to exist even at the Pleroma level. The interpenetration of the consciousness of the beings integrated in a particular Pleroma organization does not preclude their common realization that they are components of a particular whole fulfilling a definite function in a still vaster Pleroma.
Such a function both includes and excludes other functions. In terms of a consciousness increasingly dominated by an all-encompassing subjective realization of Oneness, it presumably includes all other functions. But in terms of activity and of the power used in such an activity (however subjective and unexperienceable by human beings it may be), a degree of exclusivity has to be assumed. Every mode of power has its own rhythm and vibratory character, even though ideally they all combine into an immense Chord of being. In the Godhead state this Chord is almost one single Tone — but only almost. If there were no discordant vibration in that Chord — no memory of past failures which inevitably arouse Compassion in the Godhead — there could be no new universe, and therefore this present one would not have begun, and the writer of these words could not possibly exist.
While the internal form of a "lesser whole" determines its function in a larger system of organization of many other wholes, the function of each of them is interpreted by the consciousness of the larger system as also constituting its meaning, and with the concept of meaning the level of esthetical response is reached. Ethical judgment is based on the exclusion of alternatives which do not "con-form" to either an individual or a collective judgment, value, truth, or even reality. Esthetical response — at least when free from cultural prejudices and personal memory-associations — includes all the elements of an external situation in their interrelatedness.
In an esthetical response to a painting the interrelatedness of the colors and of the shapes they evoke is the factor generating the realization of the meaning of the painting. But if the viewer brings to the viewing of the painting the feeling that the color red, whenever stressed, is ugly and evidence of destructive energy, his or her reaction is ethically preconditioned. The preconditioning may be intellectual or emotional, it may be determined by the collective paradigms of the culture or the result of personal memory-reactions. In either instance the possibility of a truly esthetical response to the whole organization and meaning of the painting is at least partially destroyed. In the case of an ink drawing or engraving, form results from the contrast between black lines or areas and the white background. To consider the black evil and the white good is hardly possible, yet the shapes of the black lines or areas may suggest (or indeed intend to depict) unpleasant previous experiences in the world of nature or social activity; and as a result the ethical response may be obscured by emotional reactions. All characteristically emotional reactions have indeed an implied ethical basis: "This is good or bad for me, for my group or the society in which I participate."
When decisions have to be made in terms of a subsequent action which has to be performed or ordered, an either-or situation confronts the person who then has to operate as a subject charged with an executive choice. In some cases the choice obviously has to be made in terms of subjective desire with often immediate results: "I want what will happen, or I fear the consequences." In many other instances the issue is not emotionally charged; yet in all situations mind operates. It argues internally or in discussions with other minds, either on the basis of operative principles, group-traditions, and general social or business practices, or under strong personal feelings, intuitions, or even "voices" heard "inside the head." Such a level of mental activity implies that the subjective factor in the experience has become detached from the situation as a whole.*
*Words here are confusing, and the evolution of Western philosophy has emphasized such a confusion by reversing the meaning of subject and object A subject detached from its experiences becomes an object to other subjects who (or which) it regards as objective entities in another world.
The possibility for the subjective factor in an experience to detach itself from the experienced situation is, as I already stated, the characteristic feature of the human stage of evolution. Freedom of choice requires such a detachment. It requires facing human situations with at least a degree of objectivity; and mind provides what is needed for objective response: discrimination. Discrimination, however, implies analysis. Analysis requires a separation of the analyzing mind from what it analyzes, and it also necessitates some kind of fragmentation — the fragmentation of a whole into parts, which in turn can be studied objectively as wholes fragmentable into smaller parts, and this ad infinitum. This is the type of mental procedure followed in our present-day Euro-American science, and adopted by the greater part of mankind because "it works." The atom bomb worked! Where will mankind be led by such a mind whose stubborn association with ego gives an unquestioned validity and power of decision? This is a still unanswered and today unanswerable question.
The ego-mind is not the formative mind which operates in all phases of the Movement of Wholeness. It is only the first manifestation of a mind conditioned, and in a sense at least deviated and de-naturalized, by the development of the detachable type of subjectivity introduced in the earth's biosphere by our present-day humanity. It is the homo sapiens' mind. The image of such a mind's restless and argumentative activity should not obscure and distort the overall function of mind which is a cosmogenetic and form-building factor throughout the great cycle.
I shall now briefly suggest how this morphogenetic mind operates in the most characteristic phases of the cycle. But it is quite evident that when reference is made to prehuman and posthuman stages of being, only a reflection of situations which transcend the possibility of human experiencing can reach even the most sensitive intuition.
Mind as an Omnipresent Formative Factor
It is logical to start such an overview with the symbolic Midnight phase, because the potentiality of a new universe then takes form in the Godhead, incited by supreme Compassion for the failures of the concluding cycle. The Godhead state constitutes the extreme degree of subjectivity and unification possible during a cycle; yet such a state of being is a "situation" just as any other particular balance of power between the principles of Unity and Multiplicity. The subjective factor is not the only one active in the Godhead's experience of this extreme Midnight situation, just as the principle of Unity does not absolutely overpower the principle of Multiplicity. The subjective factor in the Godhead situation is the most sublime expression of "desire": desire as all-inclusive Compassion. But this divinely subjective impulse can only be actualized in concrete and conscious experiences when the factor of potency is simultaneously mobilized. As already stated, the once "spent" energy of the previous universe has become repotentialized between the symbolic Sunset and Midnight phases of the cycle. Everything is possible in this Godhead state. Yet what the Godhead "envisions" is that set of possibilities which will produce just the required new opportunities for the failures of the past to neutralize their ancient karma under new cosmic and planetary conditions. The Godhead's vision impregnates, as it were, the Eternal Virgin that is Space itself — Space as the infinite Ocean of potentiality.
Impregnation implies not only two polarized factors, but a process linking them. This process is the activity of Mind in its most inclusive and unified divine state — the mind of wholeness in its supreme state. This mind is inherent in the Godhead experience of the symbolic Midnight of the cycle. It gives form to the divine desire for a new cosmos. But this form is still only an ideal formula of relationship connecting a multitude of possible answers to the ancient karma. The formula is an almost entirely subjective response to the divine desire. It develops gradually into a vast number of archetypes, through a process which involves the various aspects of the divine Mind — aspects which have been mythologized into "celestial Hierarchies." Each Hierarchy is said to project its own characteristic nature into the womb of Space.
A finite area is set apart or outlined as the future field of cosmic activity. It is throbbing with processes of archetypal formulation. This activity takes place before the Creative Act marking the beginning not only of the universe but of the time which provides potential rhythmic patterns for the development of the world of energy-matter. Stirring this differentiating and formulating activity of the divine Mind is the gradual ascent to power of the principle of Multiplicity. The "sooner" (from our time-sense perspective) the Creative Act is to come, the more effective that principle, and the more differentiating the activities of the Hierarchy at work. The purpose of the entire process which antedates the world of physical matter is to define basic principles of organization which will operate as structural patterns within limited fields of forces. There must be an immense number of such patterns to answer the need imposed by the karma of past failures. And there must have been many ways for free human beings to introduce disharmonic surface variations in the tidal process of the Movement of Wholeness during the "Afternoon" period of the preceding cycle.
According to the Big Bang theory of modern astrophysics, the universe begins in a tremendous release of energy. Many religious Creation myths confirm such a single operation; yet other doctrines suggest several Creations, or rather a creative process occurring serially at several levels. Seen from the perspective of the Movement of Wholeness, there is one moment when the two opposite principles are exactly of the same strength but with the principle of Multiplicity in an aggressive kind of ascendancy. This situation would seem to provide the theoretical basis for a single creative Act. But what is meant by "creation" may refer to the initial appearance of the most primordial and undifferentiated protomatter (perhaps a super-physical kind of hydrogen). Matter, according to this cosmological outlook is energy stabilized by mind within a form. At the level of the equal relationship between the principles of Unity and Multiplicity above-mentioned, that form should be the most fundamental of all archetypal structures. It may be a kind of spiral formation, for a spiral-like type of motion is one in which the expansive power of the principle of Multiplicity has just become more powerful than the unifying principle of circularity.
The period extending from the symbolic Sunrise to Noon is marked, in terms of the development of the mind factor, by the involution of archetypes into the initial tumult of primordial energy-substance, feverish with the desire for differentiated and self-multiplying existence. Still strongly influenced by the principle of Unity, mind works to contain the explosive expansivity of the drive toward Multiplicity within archetypal structures. It is the servant of the inertial power of relatively stable cosmic, and later on biological formations. Biological processes may have their roots in interstellar galactic space, but their active manifestation requires conditions operative only in the state of material existence provided by dense and opaque planets — the state of planethood. Energy becomes stabilized into matter within a planet, and eventually the processes characteristic of "life" develop within material aggregations through a kind of functional specialization produced by the involution of archetypes of biological organization. Life-species become increasingly differentiated, but as a result their span of existence decreases. What they experience as time is the process of biological change bounded by the markers of time: birth and death. Each species has its own time, and the rhythm of its own life-processes.
The influence of the principle of Multiplicity increases until the symbolic Noon when, having reached the possible maximum of power, it is challenged by the rising principle of Unity. Cyclic motion reverses itself. But before it does, the planet's biosphere has become the stage of a fever of self-differentiation and self-replication of which modern biologists and paleontologists have, I believe, no conception. Fossilized remains are only partial indications of conditions existing on long-submerged land masses; and prehuman races have gradually been built, approximating the structural patterns characterizing homo sapiens. The archetype, MAN-Anthropos, is gradually being impressed upon biologically operative substance. The process leads to the manifestation at the highest level of physicality (the two higher "etheric" sublevels) of the prototype MAN. I have referred to such a manifestation as the Supreme Person, inasmuch as I see in personhood the Solution envisioned by the Godhead in order to meet the need of the failures of the ancient past It is such a Solution, however, only when through a long evolution it has reached a fully concrete and individualized state of operation which the Supreme Person had not only announced but catalyzed.
This situation — the state of personhood — implies the possibility of freedom of choice. Such a freedom is the result of the relationship which, after the symbolic Noon, develops between the rising principle of Unity and the still dominant but largely internalized and psychically effective principle of Multiplicity. Personhood develops, as we shall see, first at a collective level — because it is dominated by the inertia of biological (cellular and organic) processes — then in individualized ways. The desire for individual existence (tanha in Sanskrit) is centered in the human person, while at the level of life it has been (and remains) centered in the species. This manifestation of the principle of Multiplicity in human persons operates both as new types of individualized desires and as new distinctive and singular ways of exteriorizing and actualizing these desires. These ways (or one might say "techniques") of fulfillment are presented by mind to the human "subject" eager for free decisions and experiences it considers "its own." However, through a long period of human evolution these are not in tune with the rhythm of the Movement of Wholeness. They create strife, confusion, and often tragedy. They engender karma.
These results refer to the level of mental activity which characterizes the ego-mind; but they still occur when the mind is on its way to a more integrated and conflict-free state of operation, yet still insecure and apt to be misled by or to overreact to complex internal situations. Besides this insecurely individualized mental activity, formative processes of a larger scope are at work at the beginning of any enduring and stable culture. They are brought to a focus in the initiating Avatar of the culture and released into the chaos of a disintegrating social order by a few of his disciples, acting as a germinating "seed."
The basic myths, rites, ethical principles of interpersonal and social relationship, and paradigms of the whole culture are products of the formative aspect of the mind; but this is not the ego-mind. It is mind as a formative principle and acting as a foundation for the development of personhood. Such a foundation is essentially archetypal, but as it manifests in a particular society, it is at first a collectively accepted pattern of thinking-behavior. From collective it becomes individualized through the process I have called "the process of individualization."
The Supreme Person is a perfectly individualized person. But it is a singularity, a single prototype, whose beingness at the symbolic Noon of the cycle can only operate at the sublevel of the physical realm where perfect integration is possible because it reflects the Godhead state of almost total oneness. The singleness of the Supreme Person therefore has to become the "multi-unity" of the Pleroma state, consummation of human evolution at the symbolic Sunset phase. I speak of multi-unity, because in that phase the principles of Unity and Multiplicity are of equal strength. A Pleroma is constituted by a multiplicity of individualized selves that nevertheless are a "Communion" of co-conscious beings. In that situation, planetary in scope, the operative mind is the fully developed mind of wholeness.
The mind of wholeness is the mind that consciously and freely accepts the karmic solution to the problems once caused by at least partial failure. All life-situations have to be accepted in the fullness of their implications, however dramatic the results may be. The transmutation of basic desires has to be achieved, but mind is always needed as the technician. Perhaps the technique has been learned "before" — in some old manifestation of personhood directly related to the present attempt. But the way to use the potential energy of one's nature (physical as well as psychic) in any case has to be mentally determined anew in each life-span. This way may be determined by the traditional models and procedures of the culture; it may also result from an involuntary and previously uncharted type of investigation, struggle and discovery.
What mind actually is, as a formative power in the Pleroma state that leads to the Godhead, cannot be directly known by a human person because the condition of personhood and its principles of organization have first to be transcended. I have already spoken of the process of repotentialization of energy and the condensation of Space. It seems that the complexities of the mind operative in personhood, and therefore at the stage of culture and social interrelatedness, have to be gradually reduced to a state of simplicity — irrespective of what Teilhard de Chardin may have believed. But this process of condensation does not mean a decrease in intensity. It implies an increase in speed of motion — a heating up process. Yet what we experience and interpret as heat may be a poor approximation of the character of the Pleroma state which is primarily a subjective condition of being, and has very little to do with molecular motion or even subatomic activity.
The Pleroma state cannot be totally subjective. Individuality and unanimity somehow must be integrated in a system of organization that transcends not only the human condition but the planetary level of reality. In such a system, revealing itself in the radiance of its component units, radiance does not mean expenditure of energy, but rather an ever greater condensation of potential energy. In the Godhead state marking the consummation of the one-ward period of the cycle of being, Space and potency are almost totally concentrated in what, to the human mind obsessed with and confused by multiplicity, must appear to be one Being. Yet it can only be almost one Being, for absolute Unity is inconceivable. There is always and everywhere Multiplicity — even if it be only the memory of the many failures with which the "almost One" had been associated in the past universe. In the Godhead state resurgent memory is transformed into Compassion; and the all-encompassing Mind answers the call for new forms of relatedness from the all-compassionate Godhead. The cycle continues, invariant in structure, yet never the same in the sequence of events, because the principle of Multiplicity always demands the possibility of differentiation.
Stated in such terms, the picture of the cyclic movement of being may seem so vast and unexperienceable as to have little value for helping a distraught person, confused by a variety of religious, metaphysical, and sociocultural claims, to find emotional stability and inner security. Yet such a picture can be a guiding dynamic structure in all basic situations which an individualized human consciousness has to meet. However, it should be understood to be an abstract formula whose effectiveness does not depend on the level of reality and feeling-experience at which the individual operates at any particular time, as long as he or she operates as a whole.
The Godhead state is present at the human level of personhood to the extent that its presence is possible. It is implied in the subjectivity of the deepest dreamless sleep — a situation in the life of every human being. Similarly, the Supreme Person could be a daily revelation of the power of personhood as one awakens at the dawn of a new day. All the periodically experienced phases of daily and seasonal existence can indeed be given cosmic and metacosmic meanings without losing any degree of practical efficacy and validity. The attribution of such cyclic meanings to every event and situation is implied in the ideal of living sub specie eternitatis. This is symbolic living — existence experienced in terms of essential and impersonal meanings. It is living not only in the serene and inclusive acceptance of the process of karmic readjustment, but also with a profound and unceasing gratitude for the compassionate activity of those Beings who silently and unobservedly perform, as much as the ineluctable rhythm of cycles makes possible, the readjustment of anarchistic and separative ego-activity to the tidal motion of the cycle of being.
The Discursive and Argumentative Mind
When a living organism, operating strictly at the level of biological organization, reacts to a situation, its reactions are determined by instinctual patterns characterizing the entire species to which it belongs. In computer terms, the organism is programmed to react in a specific way. Generally speaking, this way is the best which the desire for survival, self-replication, and expansion inherent in the stage of organization called life has yet found to fulfill itself in terms of what is possible for that particular biological species. The organism cannot choose another type of response. Whatever programmed the instinctual reactions left no other available option. From the point of view of the philosophy of operative Wholeness, the programmer is mind - mind operating as the formative power of biological evolution by impressing upon the sensitive material available in the biosphere definite structural patterns of action and reaction embodying archetypal formulas of relationship between cells and organs.
When, however, the great reversal of the cyclic motion of being occurs at the symbolic Noon, and a new balance of power between the principles of Unity and Multiplicity begins to operate, the new situation introduces a radically different type of possibility: the possibility of multiple options and of personal choice. The human person may use his or her will in an at least relatively or partially free manner. But this simply means that the person is able to bring to the experience of a new situation a subjective factor — a "desire" for or against — which is not determined by either a biologically set program of instinctual reactions, or a family, religious, and sociocultural tradition. Actually, however, any human person is first a living organism belonging to the genus homo sapiens, then a member of a particular family, class, culture, and social organization. The human being is therefore at first partially but inevitably programmed by the generic mind of his or her race and biopsychic ancestry, and by the collective mind of his or her culture. Yet being human, this person is able to disregard or oppose to some extent the instinctual reactions of his or her biological nature, and/or the imperatives of family and class traditions stamped since birth upon the interconnecting patterns of neuro-cerebral activity. The person can make choices on a personal basis as a singularity of being. He or she can choose to act in terms of what he or she desires (or fears) to experience.
Choosing to act, however, implies the selection or the working out of a succession of more or less clearly defined acts or processes. The subjectivity factor — the newly emerging desire or the sharply focused and concretizing will — may be present; but there is a gap between a desire and the concrete acts involved in its fulfillment. Only mind can bridge this gap. At the biological level of organization, mind does the bridging according to the archetypal patterns produced by the celestial Hierarchies. The mental processes are not free even though mind may seem to act by directly, spontaneously, and randomly reacting to the nature of the energies operating in the biosphere. But when the development of personhood begins and the subjectivity factor in human experience is able to detach itself ever so slightly from the situation a human being has to meet — only then can mind operate in relation to subjective desires having a "personal" character. The desires are "personal" in the sense that they are not totally determined by specific archetypal and/or cultural patterns. The essential character of personhood is revealed in the immense multiplicity of possibilities it encompasses. It must encompass them all because it is the "Solution" the Godhead envisioned for an equally great variety of ancient failures and therefore of karmic patterns to be neutralized.
It would be impossible, however, to pass at once from the state of totally compulsive biological organization to that of inherently free, autonomous, and responsible individual selfhood. It is equally impossible for the archetypally directed biological and generic mind to be transformed in one step into the mind of a totally individualized person. An intermediary phase of human evolution has been (and remains) necessary: the stage of culture. From the foundations of generic biological organization a collective type of sociocultural organization has had to emerge. It has been made possible primarily by the development of language and of other systems of symbolic intracultural communication, thanks to the development of the forebrain and of an immense number of neuro-cerebral interconnections. This "new brain" contains billions of cells which, though interrelated into many thousands of operative groups, seem to have a relative individuality of their own. In their totality these cells may be considered the many aspects of an all-human potentiality of personhood; thus they constitute or make possible the entire solution to the problem of karma envisioned by the Godhead. Though this solution is potentially operative at the highest levels of earth-matter in the prototype of personhood, the Supreme Person, it has to work out at the more material levels of existence where the karma of past "failures of nerve" or misdeeds have to be met consciously, without evasion, yet without engendering new disharmonic reactions.
Today, all but a relatively few human beings operate at the level of existence categorized as "personal." Yet this qualificative is ambiguous because the development of personhood has to pass through several phases; and in a forthcoming chapter I shall speak of several fundamental types of crises leading from one phase to the next Each phase can be characterized by a specific type (or level) of subjective desire; and each of these desires calls upon the mind factor to provide a technique of operation assuring its satisfaction.
The ego-mind, in its primitive and crude forms, is the attempt by a newborn and growing child to find the most satisfying and pleasure-producing method of adapting its particular biological needs and relatively unique temperament to the pressures and demands of the familial and sociocultural environment. A particular strategy has to be devised — flexible or rigid as the case may be — in order for the child and adolescent to define his or her stand (and probably as a result, his or her status) within the biological family-group, the peer-group at school, and the social class of people to which the youth soon realizes he or she belongs. Mind is the strategist — but mind subservient to a desire-factor having become aware of its potential ability to partially control daily situations.
One can only control that from which one has to some extent become detached. In terms of the subjectivity factor (desire) one can speak of detachment, because it seems that an enfolding matrix-like structure to which one was attached is letting go, unable to resist the challenge of a new type of emergent energy. In terms of the mind's activity, subjective detachment becomes separation. This state of separation is objectively perceived and assessed as an incontrovertible fact in a new kind of situation.
Chaos (that is, the total lack of activity of the formative, order-producing power of mind) would be produced by a sudden, radical, and complete separation from the level of mental activity until then dominated by the archetypal power of instinct. This condition of chaos is avoided because a new type of organization (embodied in its prototype, the Supreme Person) enters the planetary stage. Moreover, the shift from the long-dominating principle of biological organization, "life," to the new principle, personhood, occurs very slowly. It occurs through gradual development of a long series of cultures whose collective patterns of order act as overtones of the fundamental tone sounded by biological processes. As these culture-building overtones are forms of organization less compulsive than biological drives, their power can be more easily challenged and overcome. What overcomes these drives is still the personhood principle of organization, but personhood in its individualized aspect: the individualized person operating, making choices, acting, and responding to other persons, thus dealing with karma as a singularity of being. Only where this state of individualization is achieved (which is not what Jung meant by "individuation") is personhood truly operative.
Personhood, however, can operate negatively — thus against the neutralization of karma — as well as positively. The ancient failure which produced the resurgence of karmic memory-patterns (subconscious though that memory is) may be repeated, and the patterns made less easily erasable; or ancient hate may be wiped out by Compassion. To repeat, personhood is what the Godhead envisioned as the Solution to the problems left by ancient failures; but whatever has to apply this Solution has to be free not to do so. . .and thus free to fail once more. It is a test of strength — thus, of the quality of the desire factor as it operates in a situation difficult to meet. It is also a test of the clarity of the mind. A clear mind — in the spiritual Buddhistic sense of the term "clear" — is a mind able to overcome the inertial power of the habits developed when the person was mainly controlled by the patterns of his or her culture, and also by the still more basic impulses derived from biological functioning.
Mind indeed finds itself in a difficult and precarious situation as the evolution, and especially the individualization of personhood proceeds, for it has to deal with conflicting forces. It has to deal with still very strong biological compulsions (hunger, sex, desire for self-multiplication and expansion of territory) and also with sociocultural imperatives impressed since birth upon the nervous system, brain cells, muscles, and metabolic functions. As participant in the collective activity and the psychism of a culture, the mind factor in the experience of personhood may have to fight against biological urges when cultural taboos or ascetic religious ideals are still powerful factors in a quasi-tribal environment. In any case, mind has to use symbols, words, and gestures belonging to the particular culture (or today the generational subculture) which had deeply influenced or controlled its growth, intellectual habits, and emotional responses or expectations. Mind has to deal with the karma of other persons with whom it is intimately related through life's shared purposes' and activities, as well as with the personal karma of the ancient past.
The situation is indeed highly confusing because it repeatedly presents a variety of options whose validity can hardly be rationally determined. Though there is a deeply felt urge to take free and individual decisions, the decisions taken are not really free because they constitute the convergences of many event-lines whose origins and developments cannot be known by the mind of a normal person. What seems to be the relatively unimportant choice of a person moved unexpectedly by the rise of a strong desire may spark an unexpectedly wider series of repercussions. In any "personal" choice, much more may be at stake than the mind of a person advancing on the way of individualization or on the subsequent Path of discipleship; nevertheless, mental processes are always operating in any human situation. They operate in and through the immensely complex interconnection of cellular processes, chemical-molecular transformations, and electromagnetic currents, often conflicting with one another.
Because of such a situation, mind has very often been considered the enemy of spiritual development and the "slayer of the real." Mind has been compared to a noisy group of restless, chattering monkeys; and yoga has been developed to "control the operations of the mind." The usually unasked question, however, is: what could control these inconsistent random motions of a mind wandering from word to word, image to image, concept to concept, method to method, and even at times seemingly from purpose to purpose?
A traditional European psychologist-philosopher may answer: the will. But as will is a power, there must be a source to that power — some kind of being using it, directing it along some kind of path. From the Christian point of view, this source of will is the God-created Soul. The authors of the Upanishads presumably thought of it as atman. From, the point of view of the philosophy of operative Wholeness the will, in its totally impersonal holontological aspect, is the Movement of Wholeness itself. It is the power that, in the cycle of being, drives one type of situation to the next. It is what the Zen master, asked to define Zen, may have meant when he said: "Walk on." But when the level of individualized personhood is reached, a subject, having detached himself from the cyclic Movement, assumes that he does the moving and the walking because he feels free to choose the direction of the walking. The choice, however, is determined by the desire to walk either with or against the tidal movement of evolution. And at a stage of evolution (in the symbolic mid-Afternoon), the trend toward Unity is becoming increasingly powerful, though not as yet dominant.
The subject, however, having detached himself from the Movement, may be unaware of and unconcerned by the direction of the motion. He may be too busy proving to himself and to others his independence from the culture that formed his mind, or even (as an adept proud of his abnormal powers) in perfect control of his biological and psychic energies. In the experiences of such an individualized person, the mind factor becomes a battlefield in which various desires are contending for mastery of the mental processes: the desire for a more abundant physical and emotional life, with greater happiness and/or comfort; the desire for wealth, social prestige, fame, power; the desire either to be more original and unique as an individual, or (out of sheer weariness and confusion) to renounce individual choice in order to find tranquility and what seems to be security by conforming to an ancestral tradition or a new mass-movement. Yet beyond these desires, the mysterious pull of a state of being transcending this "human, all too human" situation may also be recognized by a mind having been impressed in quieter moments by books or associates presenting this transcendent state not only as an ideal or Utopia, but as an actualizable possibility of existence. In the midst of this conflict of desires, the karmic pattern of some ancient failure that once had occurred at a similar or related phase of the cycle of personhood (or a subcycle thereof) may operate. It may manifest as the resurgence of some unfinished, situation seeking fulfillment, or as a sense of futility and depression, or in a variety of either clearly related or (more often) seemingly unrelated events. Mind has to deal with all of these factors.
Though it is the theoretical servant of the subjective factor seeking concrete fulfillment through the effective use of available energy, mind may cling to some old formula of its culture or religion, as to a plank of salvation. This may even further confuse the situation on the battlefield where desires are fighting against one another for the strategic use of the available power of the mobilized will. Moreover, once the subjective factor in the experience is detached from the evolutionary Movement, the now isolated subject finds itself dependent upon the forms and procedural techniques of the mind. When the person is operating at the ego level, trying to pass from compelling biological urges to sociocultural desires, the situation may not be too confusing for the mind; options tend to be limited by a for-or-against, either-or dilemma. But when the traditional patterns and the future development of the culture are sharply criticized by the mind in the impersonal terms of their validity as principles of organization, and at the same time are no longer able to satisfy the personal desires of the experiencing subject, the whole person may be involved in a difficult cathartic process of readjustment. Taking a resolute new step leading to a new phase in the development of personhood may require either a situation-altering external event, or a clearly focused and undismissible feeling-awareness of the reality of a transhuman stage of development just ahead.
Such a realization may be impressed upon the mind in various ways, but it implies the directed activity of a factor operating at the culture-transcending Pleroma level. This factor is likely to be a particular Pleroma being to whose field of superpersonal planetary activity the individual in crisis potentially belongs. Such a being helps the struggling individual to realize the essential place and function which the individualized subjective self potentially occupies in the Pleroma. The so often mentioned Higher Self is that place and function. It refers to a spiritual Quality which is one of the many components of the "Soul" of the Earth-being — or, symbolically speaking, one among the myriad of Letters of the divine Word (Logos).*
*See The Planetarization of Consciousness, Chapter 6.
As a truly individualized self, the subjective factor in personhood is only a single Letter, which in itself does not reveal the meaning of the Word (the creative Logos), yet which is indispensible to the fullness of that meaning. Such a Word, with its billions of Letters, constitutes the archetypal Solution envisioned by the Godhead in the Midnight phase of the Movement of Wholeness. Every fully individualized person is potentially one of these Letters. But one can significantly speak of "letter" only when one is aware of the "word" of which the letters are component parts. Similarly, an individualized person realistically points to and actually participates in the divine Solution, personhood, only when integrated with all other such persons.
A human society and culture are preliminary and transitional attempts to produce enduring structures of interorganismic and interpersonal integration; but these structures are still dominated by biological forces and rhythms. The Pleroma type of integration is based on the use of energies that basically transcend the biological level of operation. It is based on the kind of individual selfhood which does not depend for its operation on what is perceiyed today as a physical body. The full power and meaning of personhood, as a totally effective Solution to the karmic situation having taken form as our planet Earth and all it includes, are actualized and understood only in terms of the Pleroma experience in which all individualized persons are to participate. This italicized "all," however, refers to what will be left of humanity in the omega phase of our cycle of planetary evolution (and in the larger sense, of the cycle of our entire universe)-the biblical "remnants," the Seed-Manu as a "race of Buddhas and Christs" (The Secret Doctrine, volume two, p. 483, original edition).
This Pleroma experience includes and requires the activity of a mind that has become at least aware of the operation of a super-individual (or rather trans-individual) principle of organization which is not limited to the level of cultural or social integration, but operates in terms of the whole planet. This new mind is the mind of wholeness to which I have referred several times. But it is also mind as the still unsure but dedicated servant of the subjective desire to identify one's personhood (if it has acquired an individualized form, distinct from the mass vibrations of present-day mankind) with the place-and-function in the planetary structure of the Pleroma which constitutes the person's supreme identity. This place and function are, as it were, waiting to be actualized; but the process of actualization requires the operation of a principle of organization which transcends the level of any culture and of a culturally defined personality whose name symbolizes its bondage to the psychism of the culture as a whole.
In the immense majority of instances today, the type of personhood actualized in molecular, biological, and sociocultural structures is only a crude approximation of what personhood means when understood in terms of the entire cycle of the Movement of Wholeness. Similarly, the ego-mind, or even the mind of an autonomous and responsible self, represents only a transitional state of mental development It is a state still heavily dominated not only by the compulsiveness of life-instincts and the exclusiveness manifest in any culture, but by the pressures of karmic patterns. It is mind in crisis, trying to operate on the battlefield of warring desires, but pulled in rapidly altering directions by the ups and downs of the encounter.
The formalistic and inertial character of mental processes, and especially of their neuro-cerebral means of operation in biological and social terms, adds to the confusion. The unfamiliar and novel nature of the potency factor in such situations (that is, the nature of social power, manifesting today mainly as the possession of money) presents another set of problems.
The three factors in the type of experiencing possible at this new human level are involved in the difficulties and crises engendered by the development of personhood. The most basic problems in this "human condition" are derived from the capacity of the subjective factor to detach itself from a situation and to assume as an external entity the role of a subject, "I myself." In that role the subjective factor may have desires and preferences which do not conform to the developing trend and the rhythm of the Movement of Wholeness. Aroused by such disharmonic desires, mind also begins to operate in a state of non-resonance to archetypes which the divine mind had developed as Solutions to problems raised by the ancient failures. A "personal" mind replaces to a large extent the "archetypal" mind.
But today, as mentioned already, the term "personal" does not usually refer to the personhood manifesting in the Supreme Person as a divine solution to karma, but instead to a very limited and relatively individualized aggregate of desires. These desires, in most cases, remain dominated by biological needs and/or by a more or less violent reaction to the collective patterns of the basic culture and the popularized procedures and fashions of a class or a generation of human beings reacting to the emergence of a new kind of power. This personal mind, more or less a faithful servant of the desires of the individualizing subject, is adept at rationalizing and evading basic issues in the development of personhood. It should rarely be trusted as a constructive factor in complex crisis situations.
Mind can also act in such situations as a power of disintegration. The analytical mind, which fragments, reduces to what seems to it basic facts, and endlessly argues to prove its points, is a catabolic factor in the process of individualization. It can be very effective in breaking down old unsubstantiated beliefs and sclerotic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavior. It may also disclose the massive, relentless, yet hidden operations of a will which (like a national Army and its leaders) has learned to use power for its own glory. Power may be used simply to perpetuate itself as a dominant force, either in a nation, or in an individual person racked by a poignant sense of insecurity and/or impotency. In such cases the danger to avoid is the growth of a super-ego (or super-individualized self) that becomes so separative and power-intoxicated that the development of a Pleroma type of integration is rendered impossible.
An answer to, or antidote for such a danger is provided by the rise of an intense feeling of devotion (bhakti) to a personage able to radiate at least some of the characteristic qualities of the Pleroma level of being. It should be, however, devotion to a personage as the performer of a role which should focus upon him or her at least a reflection of Pleroma power, rather than to a person. When such a devotion is a dominant factor, mental processes are usually devaluated. The ultimate purpose (consciously understood or not) is the transmutation of desire; yet the overcoming of the fear of being separated from the mass-vibration of the community at its normal level of operation, and thus of being isolated and alienated, may be the first requirement to be met. The higher Community (the Pleroma) always seeks to act, to help the individual subject in crisis. Nevertheless, karmic patterns may present obstacles which have to be dissolved; and the process of dissolution often operates in "strange and wondrous" ways.
A fundamental reorganization of the mind should be synchronous with a repolarization of the subjectivity factor. When the subject, I-myself, ceases to feel separate from the tidal flow of the Movement of Wholeness — thus, when personhood is reintegrated in the Movement and is conscious of itself as an essential polarization of the principles of Unity and Multiplicity — mind sooner or later is re-attuned to the process that created archetypes before the beginning of this objective material universe. In that attunement mind finds a strength that transcends the vagaries of the many systems of cultural, religious, and interpersonal relatedness. This strength is based on the realization of invariant principles operating through all cycles, long or brief as they may be. It is the strength of a consciousness free at last from the tension and the pride of individualized selfhood, and able to interpret and evaluate any situation sub specie eternitatis.
The Fullness of Human Experience
