As we start this lesson course, let us describe our intention, or focus. The first thing that we are aiming at is self-development. No one can be of any service or any good to himself or anyone else unless he has self-development. Now you may think you are well-developed, but I am talking about development in a particular way. The particular way is higher, keener understanding and insight into the fundamentals of existence. The more we can develop that understanding the more meaningful becomes our own life to our respective selves and the greater service we can render to others.

To accomplish that, we must understand the whole overall cosmic process, because we are entering what is called the Einsteinian age, the atomic age, or the new age. It is particularly characterized by synthesis. In earlier times when man set out to understand any given thing, he reduced it and reduced it down to a microscopic speck and analyzed that speck to find out the constituents thereof. In other words, in the old cycle, sometimes referred to as the Aristotelian age, analysis was the method used as a means of understanding. The new cycle upon which we have now entered will be characterized by a synthetical approach in order to understand the microscopic speck. That is, we have to proceed from a wide synthesis, from the whole to the particular, in order to understand that particular.

In the old cycle, for instance, a medical practitioner would try to analyze a problem and get it down to just what was ailing the heart or the lungs or the liver. Now, to understand even a corpuscle in the bloodstream you have to understand the whole organism and how every part has a bearing and an influence on every other minute part. We must understand the whole in order to understand the particular. That is the synthetical method of approach.

So to understand the self and to work with the self-development program we are going to emphasize, you have to have an understanding of the whole cosmic process, because each one of us, essentially, intrinsically is integrated in that cosmic process. Everything and every part of the world has an influence upon you and me—what's going on has a very strong bearing upon us even down to whether or not we are going to exist on this planet. So this cannot be overemphasized. In every respect we have to understand the whole in order to understand the part.

In the old cycle teachings we approached everything from a level of objective identification. That means we thought this world existed, had meaning and purpose according to the way we registered it with our physical senses. For example, we saw what we called an object, any ‘thing’ to which we could point. It looked solid, or soft, beautiful or ugly, and we thought that this world was just as we observed it through the physical sense faculties. But now, in the new cycle, we find that is the most deceptive basis possible. We cannot depend or trust that premise for one moment because it is false to facts. We now know that every apparent object is a dynamic powerhouse of light converted into energy. Therefore we have to abandon the objective basis of approach. Please remember that this teaching is not metaphysical. There must be an objective physical basis before you can have any meta-, under, back of, other than physical. As understanding grows in this system of thought, you will begin to observe, mentally understand and eventually see this world as a dynamic process, not as a static thing, object, or creation. There is no creation anywhere. This world is a creative process. Once this is understood, one becomes qualified to participate in the new cycle, the new age. The younger generations coming on must be prepared to participate in this new cycle, in this new age, because they will have far greater parts to play than those of us who are making the transition from the old cycle to the new.

This is the purpose of this work in self-development: to understand the whole, overall cosmic process, preparation for service, even though that service narrows down to guiding our children and preparing them to participate in this great new cycle. It is a non-Aristotelian doctrine or teaching, and it is non-metaphysical. There is no occultism or mysticism. That all belongs to the past. It does not belong to the future.

The chart below will serve to represent the Highest Triad in the cosmic process.

The three points of the triangle are marked with circles representing the positive and negative poles and the neutral power. That point of the triangle indicated by the positive sign is labeled Power-to be-conscious. The negative sign is labeled Mater (matter). The neutral one is not labeled here because as Spinoza said, "to define Him is to deny Him." Yet it is the most powerful force in the universe. In the atom it is the neutron that binds everything together—the positive and negative, the proton and electron. That same force binds you together; it binds your home and it binds our country together. We can approach a description of it from many angles.

Now let us consider the Mother principle. In the past there have been teachings in which the Mother, Mater, matter has been denied. We understand that everything to which we can point is nothing except an aggregation, a configuration of light, energy, etheric substance and living matter. Everything that we eat, wear and use comes from a substance called matter (which word comes from the Latin root mater). Those who state, "There is no life, there is no substance, there is no reality in matter," have no grounds for their statement, because the very vehicle they use to deny it is composed of it. I have to emphasize this because of the false concept that there is no matter, nor Mother, that has gotten into the race psyche. We give great emphasis to the Mother, to Mater, which, activated by a positive power, brings forth all that is. Mother gives birth to all that is, and without the Mother there wouldn't be anything, not even the Positive Power because it is only by reason of the activity of the Mother that we know there is a Positive Power.

Let me repeat that for emphasis. It is only by reason of the activity of the Mother that we know there is a positive power. "No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son ... hath declared Him." The Positive Power itself is dependent upon the Mother for its own Self-awareness. So, we cultivate the soil biodynamically, organically, and treat the soil as the mother that brings forth the nourishment by which we sustain our configurations. We have great deference, almost reverence, for mother earth, mother soil. And if you lived here with us you would see us digging in it, and we don’t call it dirt, even though it gets under our fingernails. We love it, because we are helping the Mother to supply us with the nutriment that is prerequisite to our existence. We have gotten away from all of this naturalness, but we must get back to it, culturally speaking, and become integrated in it.

Throughout the whole past cycle the Mother has been in eclipse and the Father principle has been emphasized. So we are also going to emphasize the Father principle at the very beginning of the study as presented in this school. There is a particular reason for our emphasizing the Father principle. The Mother is without form, there is void and darkness upon the face of the deeps until the Mother is motivated, contacted, activated by the Positive Power. Therefore we must also recognize the importance of the Positive Power.

As the beginning premise for the instruction given in this school, we say, "There is a power to be conscious, which is axiomatic, self-evident, therefore undeniable." If this teaching began with a statement, "God declared, ‘Let there be Light,’"that statement could be challenged. Those who are called atheists (I say called, because I do not believe there is any such person) will challenge such a statement. "I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe there is any such thing called God." They can challenge it, or if they are agnostic, they can doubt it. Agnostics just doubt it, they don’t deny it. But when we say there is a power to be conscious, it cannot be challenged. Because let somebody challenge it and you can turn right around and say, "With what power do you challenge? With what power do you doubt? With what power do you deny that there is a God? With what power do you deny that there is any matter?" It is self-evident, is it not? It is axiomatic; it needs no proof. All right one can turn around and say, "I believe in God." And then ask the question, "With what power do you believe?" And then the second question right on the heels of it, "In point of importance, which is greater, the power with which you believe that there is a God or the concept that you have called God?" There is a great difference between believing that there is a God and the concept that there is a God. But in both cases, with what power do you believe? Is not the understanding and the realization and the identification with that power more important than all that you could predicate upon your belief? Consequently, we emphasize the power to be conscious, until we have achieved conscious identification with that power and fulfilled the scriptures, "Ye are Gods." He is not up there in the stratosphere, not behind the cloudbanks—intrinsically, essentially, embryonically, ye are gods—when the fulfillment of the realization of that great truth has been attained.

If you put God up there behind the cloudbanks or in the stratosphere how in the world are you ever going to become identified with him? Look at the tremendous gulf and barriers that are created between the state in which you are now conscious of yourself and unity with that great One! But when we say there is a power in you with which you are conscious, with which you doubt, with which you affirm, with which you believe, that power in you "is closer than hands and feet." It is closer than breathing, because it is the power with which you operate hands and feet and breathing. This is a fundamental statement. Emphasize it over and over and over in your consciousness. It is the power with which I am conscious—no matter of what you are conscious of—it is the power with which I am conscious that constitutes the reality of my being and existence. It is the power with which I think, with which I feel, with which I desire, with which I act. Without that power you couldn’t even lift a feather, you couldn’t even sustain your body upright. It would collapse without the power. Emphasize that, don’t lose track of it. This is a valuable tip for your self-development. This is what you must meditate on, concentrate on. You must think of it. Do not let yourself go out, up, away somewhere, "Why stand you gazing," that sort of thing. Think of the power. Meditate upon the power. There is a power with which I think, feel and act. Go little by little, into the consciousness of that power. You do it by thinking of it. You do it by meditating on it. You do it by familiarizing yourself with it. If you have no feeling of it, just start with a concept and say, "Well, there is a power with which I do everything." Do not say ‘within’, because everything, as we are going to find out a little later on in this course of lessons, is within the power, as a state of consciousness. Even your own so-called body is within the power, as a state. You are not a body running around with a power in it; you are a power conscious of yourself as a body. Your body is in the power, as a state in which it is conscious. So I don’t say that the power is in you. You are in the power. That’s different.

After we become familiar with this idea that there is a power with which we are conscious, and that power constitutes the essential Self, then we turn to Mater (matter, Mother). Then we can say, "The Mother is essential to the Power because it is by reason of the Mother that all manifestation, existence, waves-frequencies, and development of configurations or vehicles in which we function is possible." Turn to the Mother as the state in which the Power becomes conscious. Every state has its representation, but the state belongs to the Mother. The Power-to-be-conscious in a given state is the power in unity with the Mother.

Here we are emphasizing the mother principle, because this mother principle is as essential to the whole cosmic process, to our existence, to our understanding, as the power-to-be-conscious, until the two become blended into one inseparable unity. When we are thoroughly familiar with the state as substance supplied by the Mother in which the Power-to-be-conscious is becoming conscious, then the Mother principle and the Father principle become inseparable to our consciousness and we treat them as one.

This fundamental principle of the unity of the positive and negative, of the Father-Mother, of this whole cosmic process, is infinitely repeated down the levels or states of consciousness to the atom. So from the atom to the galaxy we are going to show the operation of the two as one. No atom is possible without it, because all of the electrons in the universe will not make an atom, all of the protons in the universe will not make an atom. But let one little submicroscopic electron find one little submicroscopic proton and we have an atom of hydrogen. Manifestation, the creating process, occurs. The atom is two in one held together by a third, the binding power. These represent the great trinity.

Now think of yourself. Do you think that you are isolated from the whole cosmic process? You are part and parcel of it. So am I and so is everything. There is a story about the fish in the vast ocean who held a convention, and they divided into factions and argued fiercely, "Where is that ocean?" And one faction said, "There isn’t any such thing as that ocean that we have heard about." And the other fish said, "Yes, there is! It is somewhere if we could just discover where that ocean is." Like those fish, we in our little pinhead intellects sometimes think that we are out of this vast ocean, and we argue whether it is or it isn’t. One on the higher level could look down just as we look at the fish holding their convention and arguing about where that ocean is. We live in the very midst of it! So one half of a person, in his essential nature, represents the Positive Power. And the other half represents the Mother, the Negative Power. We are fifty- percent male and fifty- percent female. If we turn the male inside out, we have a female, and if we turn the female inside out we have a male. Just opposite poles, fourth dimensionally speaking. It is as if you could reach into a glove and turn it quickly inside out, that is precisely what the essential self on the Mind Level does in what we call the palingenetic process. It turns you inside out for seven times round, and turns you inside out again for seven times round, so that you develop your negative, Mother, qualities and so that you develop your positive, Father, qualities. When you get keen you can observe the process at work. When a female is approaching the masculine tendency and when a male is approaching the feminine tendency, you can see that the next time they incarnate they are going to turn inside out! You don’t have to go to the atom if you just understand yourself, structurally speaking. You’ll find that you’re two in one, or you wouldn’t exist.

How do you suppose beautiful flowers come to be? The two in one are at work in the plant world as well, and in every cellular structure you will find the chromosomes and the centrosomes, positive, negative, and if they weren’t there wouldn’t be that which we call a rose. Familiarize yourself with the idea of two in one. And when we give voice to it, we say Father-Mother. The two operate as one. And when we learn how to pray we address ourselves to the Father-Mother-God so that we can become a worthy Son born of that Father-Mother. That is fulfilling the purpose of existence: to grow in stature and in understanding and in Light so that we are a worthy son, Word, Logos.

In our school there are certain studies that we emphasize. One is anthropology. Intrinsically, it is the study of the Power-to-be-conscious, that is, Self-awareness, as the whole human race. Aristotelian scientists make a serious error, according to the way we see it in our school. They study all about the phenomenal aspects of these vast and comprehensive subjects but they leave out the motivating power, the Power-to-be-conscious. We study the human race as a whole as a vehicle in which the Power-to-be-conscious is conscious, not as something that is self-existent. The human race as a whole cannot be self-existent, apart from the Power.

We study ethnology, which we understand to be a breaking down of the human race into its manifold divisions: racial, national, cultural, etc. Then we narrow our focus down to the study of a given man, somatology. This comprehends physiology, anatomy, histology and many other subsidiary studies. In due course, we must introduce the psychological factors—how the psychic nature came into existence, why it came into existence, and how it functions as an independent vehicle in which the Power-to-be-conscious is conscious in its feelings, desirings, emotional activities, its lovings, hatings, actions and reactions, and its thinkings. We study the psychic nature as a separate vehicle.

We cannot understand the human race, the divisions of that race, or a given man unless we understand the psychic nature. We must comprehend how the Power-to-be-conscious functions in it and when it is fully developed, separate and apart from a physiological organism. We will find in that study the etiology, that is, the causative factors, of all with which the physiological organism is afflicted. I said all, because the physiological organism is an ensemble of the representations of qualities developed in the psychic consciousness. That statement is so full and comprehensive that I am going to say reiterate it and I hope my explanations will substantiate it. There is no physiological manifestation that is not a representation of a priori conditions, qualities, influences, forces, etc. in the psychic nature. So, in order to maintain physiological health and well being and grow old sweetly and graciously, let us learn how to function in the psyche and keep it clean. Now don’t think we are going to see spooks and use ouiji boards and get messages from our dear beloved ones that have passed on. It is nothing like that. I am talking about the way you feel, because you don’t feel with your physical body. You feel with your psyche. A doctor can give you an anesthetic and he can do anything with your body because he put your psyche out of it. He can put your psyche out, partially or totally, and then your physical body doesn’t feel anything. You have to have your psyche there to feel. The only thing you can do with your physical body is act. You can’t feel with it. So when I talk about the psyche I am talking about feelings.

All of your desires are in the psyche, and all of your emotions, your elations and depressions, your reactions, likes and dislikes—that is all in your psyche. Then consider your human love. You cannot love with your physical body. Love is something else. It is a synchronization and a unification of the feelings, desirings, thinkings, and lovings of your subtle self, a flowing together, synchronization, of your psychic exchanges and rapports. So you can’t love with your physical body. Nor can you love with your cortex. Anyone who gives a reason why he loves doesn’t love. One just loves, period, without a reason. That flowing together of the finer forces of your psyche is what we call love. Your feelings, desirings, emotions, lovings, and even all of the thoughts you think are motivated by forces in the psyche.

You, your real person, the ensemble of all those feelings, desirings, emotions, and lovings is your personality, and the personality is what we in the School of the Natural Order call the psychic nature.

After studying the psyche we have to take up biology, because that it is a study of self-awareness as an ensemble of previously developed evolutionary states. This means that any given man or woman now represents the whole past rolled up like a scroll. It’s an ensemble of all the states of the past, now.

Then we must consider the study of embryology. Just the superficial study of embryology will show you how all of the past, eons and eons and eons, all of the past is rolled up, now. And your tomorrows represent your todays added to the scroll, until when we will have fulfilled the scriptural admonition, conscious of being gods, the whole cosmic process is now in the consciousness, not something we left behind. That is what Paul meant when he said, "We are all things unto all men." Do not look down your nose now at anyone or anything. You have been it, or you are going to be. All the way along the line, you have been it; you have been all of it, because it is all wrapped up and rolled up in your now. And so embryology gives us the idea of how the Power-to-be-conscious becoming self-aware is an emergent process out of the womb, the tomb—both are symbols for the same thing—Mater (matter, Mother). The stone is rolled away and the real Self emerges out of the tomb, womb of the great Mother. The Power becomes conscious of itself. But it is the Mother that gave it birth. And so that study of embryology highlights that gradual emergent process, of the Power out of Mater, out of matter. We are each in the process of doing that very thing. And the study of it is practically illimitable.