The purpose of this lesson is to establish the underlying fundamental process which ranges throughout the cosmic creative process. We are proceeding exceedingly carefully, because as we develop it step by step, down to the process of individual self-development, everything in that Self-development program will dovetail into this background. So bear with me, be patient with me, as I will probably have occasion to be patient with you, because I have a characteristic thoroughness, and if I can't do an adequate job I won't do it at all — and that's sort of an affliction. I work, manually, you know, around our retreat, and sometimes I work with a guy who says, "Oh, that's all right, let's get by." But there's no getting by with me. I want to do a thorough job or I don't want to do it at all. And I carry that characteristic over into presenting this marvelous, wonderful conception, perception, of this thing that we call life – what we're in, where we came from, what it's all about, and where we're going. That gives such meaning, such significance and purpose to every little thing every day.

I want to start with our referent for the word, mater, matter, which configurates into space as degrees of Self-awareness on the part of a Power-to-be-conscious. It begins with what we call Light. There is nothing comparable to the referent for this word, Light, in this physiological, ‘objective’ world, in the phenomenal aspect. There are many grades, degrees, gradations of brilliancy. Those who have seen this Light in its lower degrees of intensity have been shocked. With one glimpse it creates a shock, and we have the account of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, where he saw the Master in his Light body and was led around like a blind man for three days, the shock was so great. You will see it — if you haven’t already. That will come with self-development. In this course of lessons we will describe how you build the faculty whereby that Light is seen. One must become gradually conditioned to it in order to see anything in it, because at first it is so blinding you can’t see anything. We have to become conditioned to it until we can see in the Light and with the Light. The process we are now in is called the embryonic process. I often liken it to a little kitten just born. It has quite a struggle to get its eyes open and condition its sight to ordinary daylight. Similarly, it is quite a little while before a baby can open and control its eyes to withstand just ordinary daylight, which is dim compared to the brilliancy of what we call Light. And yet Light is a phase of matter. By many gradations Light is metamorphosed into energy. So, in a broad way of speaking, energy is the next phase in the developing process, in the cosmic process.

Those who study electronics understand to some degree the energy world. Electronics belongs to a lower level of the energy world which we call etheric substance. However, it deals with energy. Those who have not been conversant with such studies have a little difficulty in setting up an adequate concept for the word, energy. The best thing that we can do in a class of this nature which paints with a broad brush, is to say, think of electricity, the energy conducted by the conduits and the wires that give us light, heat, power, and what have you. That is the best referent that we can have to begin with. Until we get to the study of the deeper aspects, the best thing that we can do when we say energy is to think of an electric current. We can only form a concept. That is why I used the word concept instead of the word referent. We just develop a concept. No one who deals with electrical forces can tell you what electricity is. They will tell what it will do; they know how to harness it and direct it. Up to a certain point they know how to control it. But I want to set up some sort of concept that we can get our mental teeth into. So, we can use electricity as a referent, as a synonym for energy.

By gradual degrees electrical force is metamorphosed into etheric substance. Other labels may be substituted for etheric substance. For instance, we might call it vital force or vital dynamism. Plants, animals, and animal man — animalized man (what we might call one who is wholly physical, none of the finer forces of the psyche as yet evolved, in a broad way let us just say the aborigines) — function by a vital force, a vital dynamism. Henri Bergson labeled it elan vital, a vital energy. Bulwar Litton, in his book, The Coming Race, written around the turn of the last century, described a force which people learned to operate and control, and he labeled it vril, a force comparable to Henri Bergson’s elan vital. Let us relate that to the life force that flows in your nervous system, nerve energy. These are synonyms for this label, etheric substance. When we come to the Self-development program or part of our course, this is called prana. We learn to arouse, govern, and control prana, vital force, as the first step in learning to control the higher degrees of energy on our way into the Light. The metamorphic process is reversed, you see. Etheric substance, vital force, vital dynamism, life force for the physiological organisms of plant, animal, and man are dependent upon that vital substance, etheric substance, but the psyche and the Mind are not.

It looks like I am laboring this point, but I am so desirous of getting this across to you. Let us take a man who knows nothing except the conscious of this body, and if you ask him what he is he will point to his body and say, "This, as a ‘thing’, (not as a configuration of units of energy) is me." His consciousness is limited to that. Ask that man what he lives by, and he might say, "Life, life force," or something like that. That is what I am trying to describe as a referent for this label, etheric substance. Then, by gradual degrees, stages, and steps, it becomes teloplasm. It used to be called ectoplasm.

You don’t have to go to a materializing spiritualistic medium to get the idea of teloplasm or ectoplasm. All you have to do is be with a farmer and go out into the oat field or the wheat field and break the little kernel of wheat or oats and catch it between the milk and the cellular structure in that pupal mass state. Then the farmers cut it for hay. They don’t wait until it gets fully developed. Or, as we used to do as children, find a cocoon and break it open and find where that caterpillar is in a pupal state and has not yet formed into the butterfly. That pupal state is teloplasm.

This is extremely interesting, because when the fetus is formed it goes through this same process, from etheric substance of the mother’s energy or food ingested by the mother which is converted into energy; then energy is converted into a teloplasmic state or condition, which becomes metamorphosed further into living matter until the colloidal substance is developed. It is a process that should be very familiar to all of us, because we have all been through it over and over again.

For this reason one of the most interesting aspects that we have in the therapeutic work as presented in this school is the study of the colloidal functions. Colloids are not subject to chemical action. Please catch this. It is electromagnetic force, electromagnetic field influences, forces, etc. that govern the functions of the colloids, that lies behind or beneath chemical action. We will devote a great deal of attention to colloidal behavior in due course, as part of this background that I am laying.

Then the next metamorphosis, transformation, is from the colloidal state to the molecular. Between the colloidal state and the molecular state in this process we pass from the influence of the electromagnetic forces to the chemical, particularly in the study of biochemistry. We enter the world of chemistry at the molecular phase of the process. The conditions of home, influences of one upon another, the psychic forces, etc., operate upon the molecular substance through the colloidal phase, but not directly. That is why abstract qualities can rechemicalize the whole physiological organism. That is just a statement made in passing, but it is fraught with tremendous significance for this reason: There are scientifically developed men who will say that this thing that we call consciousness, awareness, is the end product of the totality of the cellular structure plus its organization. I took a course from Alfred Korzybski, on general semantics in Chicago a number of years ago, and Count Alfred stood up before his class and said, "Consciousness is the end product of the cellular structures plus its organization." I had an interview with him immediately after that class, and I said, "Count Alfred, why did you make such a cockeyed statement as that? How is it that an abstract quality can rechemicalize the whole physiological organism?" I didn’t have to labor the point with him. He said, "I know it, but these academic birds coming out of the colleges into this work wouldn’t take it if I gave that to them."

What I mean by an abstract quality is fear, love, sorrow, joy, etc. Let us take one quality, fear, and let me describe how that will completely rechemicalize the whole physiological organism. Here is one case that I happen to know of. A sweet, innocent country girl went to town to go to college. She and her parents had gone through all of the expense and all of the build-up of expectations and everything to send her to college. When she got to college she wanted to belong, so she was rushed and joined a sorority. During the initiation there were the usual pranks, foolishness, etc. But this initiation was serious. They went to the medical students of this same college, and they said, "We want an arm of a cadaver, just an arm." And you know, a lot of hellery went on. It’s against the law and all that, but the boys gave the sorority girls the arm of a cadaver. Then, from the adjacent room they cut a whole in the wall right over her cot. They stuck this arm through the hole just over her head, and then in a funereal voice they moaned, "I can’t sleep in my grave, I can’t sleep in my grave." They kept that up, until she awoke. She put out her hand and touched that arm, and she let out one ungodly scream and bit a chunk out of it. And her hair turned snow white! Fear, an abstract quality, had completely rechemicalized her whole physiological organism.

Thus, if you will follow through with this you will readily see that what is called awareness, what is called consciousness, cannot be the end product of the cellular organization or the cellular structure plus its organization, because water cannot rise above its own level. Nothing can touch it except that which belongs to that level, cellular structural level, etc. We are profoundly moved and influenced and motivated by forces other than those operating within the configurational process of cellular structure, or we wouldn’t be here striving for understanding, and I wouldn’t be here devoted completely to higher thought on a higher level and a higher world.

After the gradation between the colloidal state and the molecular state we could put in cellular structures and gradual gradations into living matter. Then carry it on down to the mineral state, and crystalloidal tectonics, which simply means configurating, form building, form making. This is our referent for mater, the mother principle in the cosmic process, the Mother Substance.

Now we are in process of reversing it. We call this reversal of the process transfiguration. We are going through a transfigurational process. We are told (I have no conscious experience about it, so therefore I say we are told) that way back in the beginning of the Lemurian period of humanity on this planet, the inhabitants of that age, that period, had bodies like iron. They were in the crystalloidal, structural, tectonic state. They manifested bodies like iron, relative to the softness, colloidal condition, of our present bodies. If it is true that way back, millions of years ago, in what is called Lemuria, they manifested rock-hard bodies, we have gone a long way in the transfigurational process.

But we are still in that process. When we get through with our karma and no longer have to take these physiological organisms to work out our ongoing, our lessons, our expansion and development, we will no longer have to come here into the lower levels of the cosmic process. We will have attenuated etherialized bodies of etheric substance. Then we will go on until, ultimately, in the ongoings of the ongoings, we will manifest a body of Light. One who has finished that transfigurational remetamorphosing process and elects to come back can condense this whole eonian process into an instant, and the transfiguration is real. But that requires one who has gone through it and through it, so that the time factor is lessened. Then, "in the twinkling of an eye we shall be changed." You and I at the present time can’t do it; we aren’t far enough along. But we have grounds for acceptance of a Greater One, an Avatar, who elects to come help us out of our animalized conditions. He could do it in a twinkling, because he has done it completely and synthesized the doing into one act of consciousness, seeing the process.

Let us use the mitosis chart to illustrate the process. None of these stages or phases of what we call the Mother, mater, matter, is possible, without the fecundating, motivating, activating Power. When we study mitosis we see that. Once we get on to the process, the union of the Positive Power with the Negative Substance, then we see that it is infinitely repeated, from higher to lower levels, or from lower levels to higher levels. There is an infinite repetition of the same fundamental process or fundamental principle. To understand anything we must first comprehend that fundamental process. Then our eyes will begin to be opened, to see the light, and see in the Light.

Let me illustrate this with the chart on the following page which shows the mitotic process. You are all familiar with this, so I am not going to labor it step by step. Every sixth, eighth, tenth grade child in school is familiar with the cellular structure and the embryonic process of what is called mitosis. Here on the chart we see one cell, one cell, egg. That egg would spoil and never produce if it were not for the centrosome, the Positive Power. With the egg we have the Negative Substance. With the centrosome we have the Positive Principle, just as in the pollination of plants or the fertilization of an egg. When these centrosomes, positive and negative, divide to each side of the cellular wall, a spindle is set up between them, a power, a force. Remember this spindle between. It is the electromagnetic field within the cell, and by the lines of force of that electromagnetic field the chromosomes are formed and rearranged according to the lines of force that operate between the poles.

We will make reference to this again when we come to the development of the Mind, the Mind level, when we come under the influence of the Christos, the Christ Light of the Mind world, because in you and in me there is this axis between the positive and the negative. We call it the sacral-conarial axis. Lines of force form between the sacral center at the base of the spine and the conarial center, the thousand-petalled lotus, at the top of the head. Between these two, like the centrosomes in cellular structure, lines of force are formed, and upon that spindle the embryonic, physiological, configurational, psychic self is built. Out of that embryonic process the Be-ing, the Real Self, your Higher Self, the Christ, the Christed Self, the Awakened Be-ing emerges. To me it is wonderful to know that we are in process. We are in the process of developing the Christ Light, the Christ Self, the real, immortal, eternal, birthless, deathless Be-ing. I am of this opinion that the sooner and the better we understand the process, the more intelligently we can cooperate with it — instead of being ignorant of the process and blundering, messing around, groping, in trying to get on to this thing that we call life.

We explain this, we labor it, we do everything that is possible, to describe this whole system called the cosmic process for only one purpose — in order that we may intelligently work with it. And as we intelligently work with the process we immeasurably cut short the ages that would be required to accomplish it otherwise. Here is the real highlight and significance of our work in this school. We seek to understand this thing so thoroughly that we can intelligently cooperate with it and find our place and play our part where we are basically conscious of our respective selves. The entire mitotic process illustrates what is infinitely repeated from the highest conceivable level down, down, down, to the cellular structure level and even below.

I am of the further opinion that as we understand it and cooperate with the natural order of it all, we preserve joy and happiness, peace and health, and when we depart from it we develop a condition we call dis-ease. Any departure from it immediately inaugurates a state of dis-ease. Your mental, emotional, feeling, and your physical aspects will manifest and reflect the results of a departure from the natural order process. To me it is like this: We learn to intelligently cooperate with it, willingly and joyfully and happily, or we learn the hard way. The hard way is to violate its laws (the way it functions is what we call laws), and fall under the consequences of the results of the violation, become sick and miserable, in the physical, the psychic, the mental, and the spiritual levels, until we are so sick and miserable that we lie down. We become good dogs. So sickness and misery, psychological as well as physiological, have great therapeutic value. We think that because we are sick and miserable that it’s bad, terrible, because we want to get back where we can go ahead and violate some more. We want to maintain a good organism and a good healthy psyche and a good, clear, keen mind so we can go out and do what we want to do, instead of saying a prayer with intelligence, "Thy will be done." Thy will, thy process, not my will, be done. I surrender it, I give it up, I quit, because I have tried it over and over. That arbitrary personal will gets the bit in its teeth, and the ego struts its stuff and says, "I’ll show ‘em! That’s what I want to do." Will you? Try it — until you’re stricken — stricken to the point that "...every knee shall bend and every tongue shall confess." Everyone must give up sooner or later. Why not just give up now? See? Quickly, happily, joyfully — just give up now and fall in line and pray the prayer, "Thy concept, thy will, be fulfilled in me, with no interference, with no opposition. Let me tread the path happily and joyfully." Why not? If we don’t, it’s that "or else" business, you know. Come along happily, joyfully, with laughter and dancing — or else!

Sometimes I say, "Have you had enough ‘or else’?" Lie down, lie down and die. And the it becomes the all in all, life becomes joy and happiness, and we can say, oh my we can say, "Thy will, thy process will be done, even on this earth as it is in the Higher World." We don’t have the Higher World on the diagram yet, but we’re going to put it on very shortly.

The purpose of this lesson is to pinpoint the union between the positive and negative, infinitely repeated, as exemplified in the mitotic process. Hold that as a fundamental, as a background, because we never will depart from it — in function or in our future lessons and teachings. We will always come back to that. The Power-to-be-conscious unites with the Mother Substance, and the process occurs as illustrated on this chart on mitosis.