EXPANDING STATES OF SELF-AWARENESS
LESSON 16
In this course of lessons we have played make-believe from time to time. For this lesson we are going to make-believe that we have the north half well organized, that we are clear and getting our eyes open for the first time. That is, we are beginning to see how we function. The Greeks of the Periclean age called one who had reached that point epopte, and the group was called epoptae, those who were getting their eyes open. So in our make-believe this morning, we are epoptae.
First, we awaken to a recognition. We began to see something we never saw before. If we had studied a little bit we could have seen it, but we were not sufficiently alert. We could look around us in what we call nature and we could readily see that there is no manifestation, no creative process anywhere, without the union of a positive and a negative. Students of high school physics now know that it is impossible to have an atom unless there is a positive and a negative in union, in polarity. Students of botany, are constantly impressed with the fact of pollination, and that there couldn't possibly be any creative process in the plant world without the positive fecundating pollen and the negative receptors.
We could go on and on and on, because it is everywhere. Get that point: it is everywhere and nowhere absent! But even with that understanding, did we ever apply it to ourselves? We did not! When we considered self-development, self-unfoldment, what did we do? We looked up there in the sky. "He's up there somewhere." See the attitude? We looked 'up there' for heaven. All the angels and bright beings and all the good people are all 'up there' somewhere in heaven with pearly gates and streets of gold and nightgowns and harps. But did you ever think of heaven as the positive pole of your own nature?
Years ago I had quite a discussion with a blessed orthodox preacher who believed literally in pearly gates, streets of gold, and harps and gowns. He was a very dynamic man, a leader in civic affairs, president of Rotary, and active in his ministry. I asked him, "Listen, just think a minute. What would you do with a harp, moping around with a nightgown on? And for eternity? Supposing you had that harp for just 10,000 years - that's only a tiny fraction of that eternal business. Here you are playing this harp - ten thousand years? You would throw that thing as far as you could throw it in three weeks! That would be about enough moping around and playing the harp all the time!" A dynamic man, alive and active holding onto such a notion! It belongs to the dodos! That concept belongs to the tribal, mythological state of development. It certainly doesn't belong to those who are getting their eyes opened.
Getting back to our awakening, the first thing that comes to our attention is the recognition of the great polarity. The Positive Power is indissolubly in unity with the Negative Substance, and by reason of that all creativity is possible. Without it, nothing can be created on any level. And in this polarity, the Positive/Negative form one active Power.
Let us take note of some of the implications of the recognition of this great, comprehensive polarity. The first implication is that we cannot run away. We cannot just get into the positive pole and ignore the negative - run away. That is what asceticism attempts to do. For over 3000 years in India they have been trying to get into the positive - Parabrahma, Purusha, and ignore everything else. But what actually results? They are forced back again in the process, as all are who have developed a higher state and then tried to jump out of Mater (matter) forever. And as the pendulum has swung too far to the right in asceticism, it then swings too far to the left. When they reincarnate they become the predatory wealthy class, captains of industry, and load themselves up with everything that they had denied in their asceticism. They have yachts, private airplanes, large estates and town houses, etc. Where they denied the very creative process in which they are indissolubly united in trying to get out, beyond, 'up there' somewhere, the process (the polarity) brings them back and they overcompensate on the other side.
A missionary who was sent from India to the United States was told, "When you go to that country you are going to meet more real Brahmans (those who know Brahma) than you ever will in Mother India." He had to be here for twenty years before he realized what they meant. As he began to meet and associate with some of the great builders who created transcontinental railroads, great companies, industries, and steamship lines, he discovered that they had power, lots of it, but they were over-compensating for their asceticism in a prior life. And yet they were Brahmans.
Here is another implication of our recognition of the great polarity. As a result of that recognition we now can understand parts of our own Christian Bible that we didn't understand before. It says, "The Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to earth." The referent for the word earth would be the earth state, earth consciousness, the configurational process, Mater, the Mother. So, when the Power-to-be-conscious begins to be conscious of itself it has to resist the tendency of trying to run away from the configurated world. It must turn right around and direct the light, bliss, peace, and power into the substance that gave it birth. Then that substance, Mater, is re-metamorphosed into that with which it can fully and completely synchronize in its polarity in a higher and a more dynamic creative process. And we will create higher worlds. We will create higher worlds - when we have reached that state.
Here is another ramification of the recognition of this polarity. Mater, substance, matter, must be purged, cleansed of all that we have loaded it with in our ignorance. Little by little we purge and cleanse the substance with which we function (and can't function without it), in order that the whole is raised to a higher state, a higher more creative level of functioning. Look how that sets metaphysics on its head. In fact, in the recognition of that polarity there can be no metaphysics. There is no something behind, above, back of, or other than, the creative process in polarity. Any departure from that creative process in polarity is metaphysics.
When one starts mentalizing, intellectualizing, about rounds and races and higher states, or Brahma or Purusha beyond the Mother, beyond Mater, that mentalizing is metaphysics. Here in our School we check and double check against mistaking clear intellectual understanding with development. Sharply differentiate, because any one of us can be a walking encyclopedia of all of this information intellectually and yet have very little development, because we departed from the polarity and went into metaphysics, something other than the functional process at our state. So we constantly check and double check against confusing intellectual understanding with process, with development, with conscious functional ability.
In the recognition of the polarity we also learn patience. If one understands a process, his attitude and his deportment could be called patience. For illustration, we lovers of Mater, lovers of the soil, plant a seed. We don't expect to go out the next morning and gather the fruit or pick the vegetables. We understand that there is a process that must occur. So do you. You understand the growth process, and you know that in due course you will gather the fruit. That understanding of the process that the plant goes through from seed to fruit could be called patience.
And we must exercise that same patience with ourselves. As the dichotomy takes place in the psyche where we get clear in the north half and our understanding dawns, all of the unexpurgated denizens that have occupied the psyche retreat from the Light and the Fire, because they can't take it. They retreat to the south half, and there they try to fortify themselves and organize to wage the great battle. All of those denizens we have cultivated and acquired exercise a sort of right that we have given them. In our ignorance we deliberately practiced cultivation of objects of desire, etc.
We also acquired entities from others, because they migrate from one to another all over the world. One forms a rapport, a unity, for the fulfillment of pleasure and desire, and transference of entities takes place right there. Lots of transferences are going on, so that we accumulate many of them. When we felt that "This is the life; hail, hail, the gang's all here, set 'em up again," we cultivated them and gave them a right to be there. They came in and occupied our psychic substance. In fact, that is all the psyche is - an ensemble of entities, an aggregation, a menagerie of them. We have the peacock, the jackal, the monkey - oh, we have a barrel of those when we are being a part of the gang, etc. And we gave them the right to be there but when we reach the cleared place in the north half they all retreat to the south half and try to exert that right. They are going to fight for what they think is their domain. But they are usurpers; they have usurped the temple.
When we awaken and get our eyes open, a great urge arises in us, a desperateness to purge the house, to cleanse the temple, particularly the psyche, the second story of our temple. But we find that the job is beyond our power and our strength. Here is where understanding and patience come in. We must make allowance for time. Why time? In order that we may get organized in the clarified north half. On the basis of that organization and understanding the ability to see functional motivations dawns. We must raise the consciousness until the Power from the higher level, the Christos, the Light, the Fire, is contacted and brought down. Only with the help of that Power can we finish the job of cleaning the temple.
This is the esoteric meaning of our Christian scripture. It was only when Christ entered the temple that even the keepers of the temple realized that the money changers, the vestal virgins, and all that went on in the temple was wrong. Before Christ entered the temple (the three-story house in which we live) all of these unseemly things that were going on seemed natural, all right, because there was no higher frame of reference. There was no experience "beyond" with which to relate it. What did the Master do? He took a whip. When we are no longer playing make-believe that we have reached this point there is no Pollyanna, no goody, goody, sweetness and light business in the battle which is joined. The Master takes that whip, and he cracks it! That is the dynamic determination that must be used to purge the house. That is the dynamic determination that must be brought to bear to get all of those entities out of the temple. We must get hold of that "something else" beyond our own present strength. We call that getting hold of something else reorientation of consciousness, recognition of the great polarity.
So what is involved in this reorientation of consciousness? Your or my consciousness operates automatically under and in all the constituents of its own state, each factor making up the whole ensemble of factors that we call constituents of the state. Each part is that which we have recognized, lent ourselves to, cultivated, and built in. Consciousness automatically operates on what has been built in. Particularly on the psychic level, where most of us function, consciousness automatically operates in accordance with the impressions, the results of experience, which have been built into consciousness. It operates automatically, but when the recognition of polarity comes, we recognize that the positive Power must be increased on its own level, the Mind Level, Light's Regions. We realize that the dynamic Power-to-be-conscious is the only source of power that can be developed to overcome the organization of the invaders, the usurpers, of the south half. We can go along and live in the north half, but as soon as we are off guard the denizens of the south half will seize every opportunity to gain control. They'll even seep in if there is a crack left anywhere. We can't constantly maintain our guard, because we have to sleep; we have to relax sometimes. So the battle gets sharper and more intense at this state. Then we need time in which to change our habits, to retrain the consciousness and give it new habits and new experiences to have something to operate on or with. Understanding - patience - becomes a factor. We must allow time.
The most important thing to remember is not to give up. No matter how long it takes to cultivate new habits, to re-cultivate orientation of consciousness to the Light, do not give up. Do not hurry over that word, orientation. This process is a reorientation. As you stand in that cleared place, you are tremendously impressed with what will result if you give up. You can't mentalize it. You must get to that cleared place in the north half and stand it in with eyes open. Then you see motivations as you never saw them before. You see everything by which you are motivated, that you never saw before. Before, you were so busy mentalizing reasons, alibis, excuses, and justifications for your actions you didn't have any time to reflect and grow into the consciousness of the motivations. In your private world you were too busy mentalizing and emoting, acting and reacting. We call that squirrel caging. Mentalizing is like a little squirrel on a treadmill. On his little treadmill he makes the cage spin. Sometimes you can mentalize a little and the cage spins slowly. Other times you really get to mentalizing and that cage just whirls! But in both cases, when you stop you are in the same spot only worn out; the only thing you have accomplished is that you just got tired. Watch yourself if you don't believe it. Go to bed at night and get that cortex and private world mentalizing going. Mentalize, mentalize, mentalize all night long; you wake up in the same spot, but you are all worn out. You didn't accomplish a thing!
So we get to squirrel caging, "This is too slow. I can't wait. I want it, and I want it right now. I want to clean this temple and go into higher company. I want it right this instant; therefore, I am not going to sustain any effort." So what? Are you going to surrender and let the dark forces take over again? You dare not relax even for one moment! Keep hold of that whip, and keep cracking it. "I will not surrender." Then be patient. Allow the time factor to create a new habit. The new habit is turning to the Light, turning to the Christ, tuning to the positive pole of the polarity, the Power-to-be-conscious, and increasing its power to be conscious. You can do it; you can help immeasurably. We increase the Power-to-be-conscious in the temple until that Power enters it. Then watch the cockroaches scramble to find a crack to crawl in, when the light is turned on! When the Light is turned on they will scramble into any crack they can find. So we cultivate a new habit until the consciousness takes it over and automatically functions in that new habit, the new orientation.
If you can sustain effort long enough without discouragement, there comes a point when the effort will sustain you. When I am basking in that sustaining presence I want to sing an old hymn, "My yoke is easy, my burden is light. I've found it so, I've found it so." You know, there is power and meaning in some of those old hymns. Once that Christ Light, the Christ Power from the positive pole of your own being comes in, it sustains you. Everything is easy. You don't even have to carry your own body. It carries your body, makes every burden really, literally, light. This is all by way of explanation of one word, orientation. But let me say to those of you who have any tendency to be discouraged: Don't give up, because you will sink irrevocably into the abyss of darkness. One can sink into that abyss and can never retrieve himself; that would be the end product of giving up and not sustaining the effort.
We need one more word to complete this description. Here are the three words that summarize the process: polarization, orientation, and identification. Identification will follow orientation. But before we take up identification, let us stand, imaginatively, in this clear spot and reminisce a bit. We can look back and see what we never saw before, something we couldn't see when we tried to look up from a lower state. You must be above it; then you see it very clearly. The psychic nature appears to us as a great disk having variegated colored light. Perhaps we could demonstrate it if we could rig up a powerful spotlight with a cylinder with variegated colored glass in front of it. And as we turned the cylinder, the clear light would shine through each different colored glass in turn. This is the way the psychic nature appears when we have accomplished that orientation. At this point we are not out of the psyche yet; we haven't made the second crossing into the Light World, but we see as we never saw before even though we still have a long way to go.
Please refer to the chart of the Four Somatic Divisions of Man in Lesson 14, page 94. We have been talking a great deal about opening the heart center and the development of the north half by reason of having brought all of the creative forces up to the heart center. That is what made the cleared place in the north half. But now we begin directing the force from that organizational position obtained, developed. Using that organization of the north half we are now able to direct the force up through the pharyngeal center, the organ of communication of what is perceived. At that point we perceive, not conceive. Then we direct the force on up through the rational, into the clear lucent knowing. As that force is directed up, the center in the forehead is opened. When that center is opened lucid sight in psychic light occurs.
This is much different than getting "psychic" on a lower level, seeing spooks, apparitions and all that sort of thing. This clear seeing has nothing to do with that. This is lucidity, clear seeing in clear light, even though the south half is not yet completely purged. The unpurified qualities are still down there in the basement trying to get up to the ground floor. But you've gone on, to the clarification of consciousness in what is called Ajna, the center in the 'forehead'. We must single quote 'forehead' because that center is not in the brain or the cortex; it is not in the skull. It is in the structure of the psychic nature. However, when this center is opened clear seeing develops. And the whole psychic nature appears as the variegated colors. If you look closely you will find that there are seven colors in that disk, ranging from the ultraviolet at one end of the spectrum to the red at the other end. Each one of these represents a past incarnation, the building of a definite personality. There are many factors that need to be introduced here in order to provide a well-rounded picture of each of these points. Please be patient while I describe some of them. It is difficult to decide where to begin to introduce all the factors.
Sometimes in the course of an incarnation a person meets with insurmountable obstacles. On his road called life he meets a hump that looks too great for him to surmount; he can't climb over it. So he regresses, falls back. In so doing, he regresses and falls back to a personality that had developed in a prior time around in the palingenetic cyclic process. Then we say of him, "He has a dual personality," - a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in varying degrees. I have had a number of experiences in my investigative work and consultation with others where there was even a triple personality to deal with. This occurred because when the personality which had been developed in a prior time around asserted itself and then encountered obstacles, that negative yielding, giving way, was repeated and brought in a third personality. In fact, psychological research has uncovered cases of multiple personalities.
Many have experienced this in minor degree. When everything was flowery and lovely, proceeding well, he has one personality. But when trouble shows up and he is thwarted, blocked, another one will assert itself. And as a personality dealing with personalities, we often find that in dealing with a certain person: husband, wife, sweetheart, lover, child, what-have-you, everything is lovely so long as they are not thwarted. But cross them, and they are not at all lovely! Another personality will assert itself that is entirely different. If they were psychoanalyzed thoroughly, it would be found that they had reached an obstacle, a difficulty, and instead of getting that handle of the whip in their hand and cracking it good and plenty and fighting it through, they yielded, gave ground, backed up until that yielding and backing up became a habit. In doing that they broke an inner concentration. They couldn't hold against opposition, and another personality asserted itself.
That was just an observation. Let us return to our description of the psyche. When this highest center is opened and we see clearly, we see that the whole psychic nature is an ensemble of all of its prior personalities. The psychic nature does not reincarnate, but in each incarnation in the palingenetic process, the psychic nature is a synthesis, an ensemble, of all of the personalities that have been developed in the past. And in the last seven, the seven major colors of the seven gunas are condensed and synthesized. They are not synthesized into the seven major colors of the spectrum, but those would be the finest illustration and analogy of the gunas, qualities, which would predominate in each one.
You could also consider all of this as the development of the seven rays and their synthesis in a given state. (Refer to the lesson series Seven Rays of Development for further information.) At the state peculiar to this position that we have now attained, the cleared place, for the first time we actually see it. It is nothing that we read in a book or mentalized about; we actually function in it and see clearly. We reflect the higher, the Autonomous Field. We haven't crossed over into complete identification with it, but we see that Autonomous Field with its positive and negative pole called the sacral-conarial axis.
Notice on the chart of the four somatic divisions that there are five centers, from the genital center to the center we call Ajna. In zoological symbolism, Ajna is symbolized by the moon in Cancer. Remember, this is only symbolism designed to explain a process. The moon in Cancer means the Individualizing process has reached its highest point of development and then recedes, goes backwards. That recession, going backwards, is due to the polarity with Mater. We must return. We must go back and bring up Mater, bring up the Mother. That is, we must purify the substance in which we function. In that higher state we can reflect the Light Regions long before we have reached identification with that which is reflected.
We have another scriptural statement which illustrates this particular point. "And I saw as it were the 144,000 who were saved standing on the glassy sea." What is the meaning of that 144,000? When all of the major and minor centers of the psycho-neural organization are completely understood there will be 72,000 of them, each one having a positive and negative pole, making 144,000 in all. Without getting technical, we can say that the whole psychic nature, including the neural structure of the physiological organism, has been brought into a state of utter calmness in which, the higher worlds, Light's Regions, are reflected. In the quietness, the stillness, the placidity of the psychic substance, that reflection can occur, but when the emotions are disturbed and turbulent we can't see anything.
We use this illustration: Sit by a mountain lake on a clear night with the moon shining. Notice how placid and still the surface of the water must be to reflect the clear, round-orbed image of the moon. The tiniest little ripple will break up the moonlight into thousands and thousands of little facets and we see only a multiplicity of fragments of light. The surface of that water must be perfectly still to reflect the whole moon. Take that as an analogy. The psychic nature, your feelings, desirings, actions and reactions, your thinking, everything must be so placid and quiet that it is like a glassy sea. In that reflection we see the polarity of the Autonomous Field, the sacral-conarial axis. That spindle develops in psychic substance between the sacral and the conarial centers. It includes the five psychic centers we have been talking about, from the genital center to Ajna.
We also see that every physical body (configuration) is a representation of three distinct and separate levels of consciousness. The first level is called the elemental world. There are many unknown formative forces of nature, elemental substances which pertain to the etheric level of the physical world. Sometimes in the human organization we refer to the etheric substance as the vital dynamism. It is the force with which one functions when he is in complete objective identification, before the psycho-dynamism of the psyche is sufficiently developed. The formative forces constitute the basis of all of the elements of the periodic table as well as the elementary world. For this lesson I will refer to them as etheric substance. You will remember that we described Mater as the transformation of Light into energy and energy into the etheric substance, and etheric substance into teloplasm, protoplasm, cytoplasm, living matter, and cellular structures. Here we are just considering the segment labeled etheric substance that lies, frequency-wise, between the energy world of the psychic nature and the protoplasm, cytoplasm of the configurational world of cellular structure world.
These elemental formative forces of nature, of Mater, are composed directly or indirectly of this etheric substance, irrespective of whatever other labels we might give them. The configuration is an ensemble of these elemental forces, elemental substances, and is a representation of that elemental world. This is the first story of our "three-story house" in which we function.
Now let us consider the second story. We have talked about the waves and frequencies of every given "this." We have talked about the wave and frequency of a feeling, a desire, an emotion, or a thought. Today the understanding of this electromagnetic world is becoming commonplace. Many understand the language of the electronic world. We know that the electronic engineers who deal with radio or television will load information onto a wave of a certain frequency so that the wave becomes a carrier of the information. In a similar way, we, in our psychic consciousness, load the gunas or qualities of our feelings, desirings, lovings, thinkings, etc., onto the waves of the Autonomous Field. We load on the qualities that we generate respectively and racially, and they carry through and become part of the representation.
This is so fraught with importance that we are of the opinion, that the therapeutic science of the future lies dealing with these qualities of the emotions, etc., which occupy the psychic nature. The therapeutic science of the future will treat the psyche, not the representation. As an analogy, if you were watching a movie, looking at the shadows on the screen, you know that if you wanted to change the shadows, the pictures, you would have to get into the projection room and change the image on the film. That is easy to understand. All right, I am saying the same thing. If we want to change the coloring (the qualities) that we load onto the waves-frequencies represented in the physiological organism, we must turn to the color through which the light shines and change it. The ramifications of this are dumbfounding. I see tremendous possibilities in the near future once we get onto this.
Now let us consider the third story of our three-story house. At each point in what we call time, the intrinsic Power-to-be-conscious is conscious in a certain state. That basic state in which the Power-to-be-conscious is conscious automatically creates its own field. It automatically creates lines of force in the Autonomous Field because it is independent of the psychic world and it is independent of the physiological world. Instead of saying basic state, I am going to say the degree in which the Power-to-be-conscious becomes conscious of itself on its own level. That degree of awareness exercises an influence that we call the Autonomous Field. The physiological organism, distorted and colored by the quality of the psyche, is basically a representation of the state in which the Power-to-be-conscious is conscious. Fundamentally the physiological organism represents that pattern of the field in which the Power-to-be-conscious is conscious of itself.
When we identify the Power-to-be-conscious with the label and meaning for the word God we can quote scripture again. "Be still and know that I am God." Let me paraphrase: Be so still, even in your psyche, that in this lucidity and knowing you can know the I am I of me. Each one of us can say it, because the I am I of me is the only God there is. There is no other. Any other is only a concept in your private world, metaphysics, a departure. And we don't get metaphysical in this School. Get quiet within yourself and be so still that you can know, "The I am I of me is God." That's good scripture. Meditate on it. And remember, the physiological organism, basically, is a representation of the degree of that knowing.
-Vitvan, Tape series dated 1955 - 1956 Marj Coffman, ed. 1998