This lesson requires a little explanation. Often Vitvan's introductory comments at the beginning of a class contain valuable information, though they are not relevant to the subject of the course. In publishing lesson courses these are often omitted. His explanation of the use of our mantram and AUM chant, given at the beginning of the taped Lesson 2, is a typical instance. So that it will become part of the School's printed record of Vitvan's teachings, it is included here.

After the transcription of Vitvan's opening remarks we are including a more detailed description of the mitotic process than Vitvan gave us in Lesson 3. His comment, "You are all familiar with this [mitotic process] so I am not going to labor it step by step," may not be true. Some of us may not recall high school biology or may never have been exposed to such information. The description provided here appeared in the older manuscripts of this course, although it does not occur on any of the tapes in this series. Regardless of its source, this explanation may prove useful both of itself and as an analogy of the development of the Power-to-be-conscious in the man state.

I am desirous of executing this mantram and AUM chant as nearly perfect as we can. The better it is done, the more effective becomes the force, the frequency, of it. So when we enter upon it, focus yourself within yourself and reach the perfection of it to your own satisfaction. The aggregate will take care of itself if each works on that point within himself. It is one of those things that is difficult to describe adequately. You only know it by the effects, the results. But it is so important. Through the years I have seen so-called miraculous transforma-tions, healings, the quickening of latent potentialities. One cannot sit in a group such as this and chant that mantram and the AUM more than a few times without the latent potentialities within him becoming quickened. It quickens and kindles something.

And of course, what we call Self-development rests entirely upon the awakening and quickening of latent powers and forces and bringing them into activity, wherein they develop faculty, aptitude, and therefore functional ability on higher levels. There is nothing that quickens the latent potentialities so immediately as to be in the proper frequency environment. The higher level energy world environment elicits and quickens one's latent potential abilities or forces in a way that nothing else can do.

That is what we might call the intrinsic result. Then there is an extrinsic result: the harmonization of your psychic nature, which eliminates discord. The representations of discord in the psychic nature are what we call disease and sickness. If you want to cure any disease or sickness, work on the harmonization of the content of the psychic nature. Bring that into perfect adjustment and alignment and the representations in the physiological organism will take care of themselves. That is fundamental, and there is no exception. One exception will disprove the whole rule. Complete harmonization of the content of the psychic nature will become represented on the objective level. The physiological organism is nothing else except the representation of the total content of the psychic nature.

When you go to a doctor, he examines you and says, "Why, you have heart trouble, or kidney trouble," or something else. He has mentioned the effects, not the causes, and he has to treat the effects. If the doctor is unconscious of motivating causes he has nothing else to do but deal with the effects. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it is palliative, because he doesn't reach the fundamental cause. Harmonization is the key-live in harmony. Accumulating things, objects, possessions, will do you no good if you can't enjoy them, so sacrifice everything, but preserve harmony. Maintain harmony in the content of your real personality, the psychic nature, at any cost. One who will maintain harmony in his psychic nature will never have any illness. Isn't that worth something? It's worth everything! Live in that harmony. That is the way the Kingdom of Heaven is brought to earth, brought to the objective state of awareness in which most of us exist most of the time.

I'm emphasizing how important this mantram and AUM chanting are. That's why I am striving to bring it as near to perfection as possible, because I realize the far-reaching effects of harmonization of the elements, the components of the psychic self. If you get nothing else for the effort of coming out here to this little class in this humble schoolhouse but participating in this mantram and AUM chant and lending yourself to the results of it, the healing effects, the quickening effects, the harmonization effects of it, you are well-paid for the effort. I am looking forward to the times when we will meet together and chant mantras and AUM for an hour or two and dismiss. We're so conditioned on the mental level that if we don't have verbalistic descriptions of everything, if we don't get a lecture or a class or a talk, we don't think we've gotten anything. But that is only the outer-what we have to suffer-suffer it to be so now. The other, just to meet together and chant the mantram and the AUM for an hour or so, is far more effective and beneficial. Do you know why we cannot do it now? It would precipitate the purificatory process. We want you to go through that purificatory process homeopathically, in easy stages, so we can't enter into intensification of the kindling of the fire, the awakening of the potentialities, the dormant, latent forces. We have to do that very gradually, circumspectly, until we are further along with our respective Self-development.

However, this gives enough indication of the importance we attach to the way we open our classwork. It is also a preparation for our lesson. Join with us.

For those who are not familiar with the process of cell division called mitosis, we begin this lesson with a brief review of the salient facts. We have used the chart which describes the phases of mitosis for many years in our work because it clearly and simply demonstrates a natural order process. In this School we are not content to believe in a natural order process. We search for scientific and other facts which will make the process more immediate to the perception of each student. The whole effort to correlate the ancient wisdom with scientific findings is a part of our attempt to make this process called fundamental reality more understandable to our students. "With all thy getting, get understanding."

[Please refer to the chart "Mitosis" on page 17 of last month's lesson.] The process of mitosis as pictured in our chart occurs in seven major phases. But remember, the cell does not pause between each phase to have its picture taken. We are looking at cross-sectional slices abstracted from an apparently continuous process. A scientist studying cell division would see a dynamic pulsating process in his microscope. We group the phases into seven parts for our own convenience and clear understanding. But after we have analyzed the process as separate phases, we must remember to synthesize it again and see it as a whole.

The seven major steps in the process are: 1) interphase; 2) early prophase; 3) later prophase; 4) metaphase; 5) anaphase; 6) telophase; and 7) interphase again.

(1) We call this resting phase interphase. During this period, the nuclear membrane is clearly visible and the contents of the nucleus are described as chromatin substances. One or more nucleoli may be identified. The nucleolus does not appear to participate in the process of cell division and will not be visible again until telophase.

(2) In early prophase, terrific activity begins. The centrioles split into positive and negative poles, and begin moving apart. The cytoplasm surrounding the nucleus develops delicate fibers which collect near each pole. These fibers represent the precursors of a structure known as the spindle. In this stage, they are called asters: star-like radiations near the divided centrioles.
At the same time chromatin stirs into activity. It begins to thicken and elongate. The nucleolus begins to lose its definite boundaries and blends into the fibers surrounding it.

(3) At the stage we call later prophase, the more or less undifferentiated activity of the early phase evolves into a clearer pattern of activity. The centrioles are further apart completely polarizing the cell. The cytoplasmic fibers are no longer asters, or little stars. They are clear radiating lines developing into a spindle. And the chromosomes are beginning to emerge from the chromatin.

(4) During metaphase the nuclear membrane is totally disintegrated and the spindle is completely formed, aligning all the chromosomes (now very short and thick). All the activity of the cell is now focused on the so-called "equator". Undifferentiated activity has evolved into focused individualized functioning.

(5) During anaphase the chromosomes split, and begin moving along the spindle toward the poles. The spindle fibers appear as the lines of force which underlie all this activity

(6) When the chromosomes group together again, the cytoplasm appears changed again. Telophase is the label for the completion of the cycle. A furrow is visible in the cytoplasm of the animal cell which marks the beginning of a new independent life.

(7) With a new interphase, the chromosomes dissolve into a mass of chromatin, and the nucleolus reappears. A period of growth follows when both new cells attain the size of the original cell. A period of quietude follows until the next prophase is excited.
Here we see the process in its major phases. None of this activity in Mother Substance is possible without the fecundating power of the positive principle. Each step can be seen as a special union of the Positive Power with Negative Substance. We need to dwell on that until we can work our consciousness into it. Once we have worked our consciousness into it, we can see that this same process is infinitely repeated from the lower to the higher levels. To understand anything we must work into an awareness of that fundamental process: the union of the Positive Power with Negative Substance.

To carry our understanding further, look at the cytoplasm and the chromatin as the Negative Substance. Then treat the centriole as the Positive Principle. When the centrioles divide and begin moving to opposite ends of the cell, a spindle of fibers emerges between them configurating the lines of electromagnetic force. We are familiar with magnets which produce lines of electromagnetic force in grains of iron dust. Here we see the same principle at work in a living cell. The chromatin develops into chromosomes along the lines of the electromagnetic field set up in the cell.

The chart, "States of Self-Awareness," later in this lesson indicates ways in which some sciences can be utilized to better understand Vitvan's descriptions of the expanding states of Self-awareness of the Power-to-be-conscious on many levels. While aristotelian scientists have an objective view of these disciplines, Vitvan helps us understand them as ways of looking at varying aspects of the expansion of consciousness. The lesson which follows focuses on the importance of understanding the part chemosynthesis plays in the Self-development process.- ed.

The principle point of this lesson hinges upon the meaning represented by the word chemosynthetical. As used here it means an adaptation to external stimuli, or the adaptation to environment. The Power-to-be-conscious functioning as one with the Mother Substance is emerging into Self-awareness. [Before we get into the details of chemosynthesis, however, I need to explain why] this doctrine as given in the instruction of the School of the Natural Order is not dualism. Dualism makes the assumption that a priori to any creative process there was a pure, pristine spirit which decided to plunge into the vast ocean of matter, then struggles and swims, and flounders to work through and get on the other side of matter-to its pristine state of spirit. But our doctrine is not dualism, because we have a pertinent question which no dualist has ever been able to answer. If one assumes that spirit in its pristine purity plunged into a vast cosmic ocean of matter, and after the eons of eons of eons of struggle it finally gets out of matter to its pristine spiritual self, well, it had that before it plunged into matter. Why did it take that plunge into matter? No dualist has ever been able to answer that one. Spirit plunged into the ocean of matter in order to get back to the consciousness of itself as pristine spirit, when it was pristine spirit before it started-why?

We describe the doctrine of this teaching as qualified monism, not dualism. Briefly stated, we say that because we recognize the individualization of Self and the integrity thereof. And the moment we recognize individualization of Self, it is not monism, it is not dualism. It is qualified monism. We use the Greek label Logos for that individualization of Self. Later on we will spell out all of this in greater detail.

That which has the superficial appearance of dualism is simply the fact that this Power-to-be-conscious alternates between consciousness of Itself in eternity and conscious of Itself in time. That is the great cosmic rhythm: the alternation from eternity to time, time to eternity. We on the lower level have the same rhythm. We wake up in the morning, have our shower, put on our clothes, have our breakfast, and then go about the day's creative work-"the day's creative work." At night we go to bed and go to sleep, infold. Unfold, infold; breathe out, breathe in. When the True Self does it, we call it reincarnation. But there isn't any such thing as a personality reincarnating. It is that Self that breathes out, breathes in, breathes out, breathes in. If you want a referent for it, look at a deciduous tree. (We gardeners love the Mother, the good earth, and when we work with plants we consciously work with their cycle of putting out leaves and flowers and fruit, dropping them and going dormant.) Just apply that to that True Self, which we are going to talk a great deal about in this lesson. It puts forth its leaves, flowers, and fruit (I hope), it's best creative efforts, the day of activity, the day of breathing out, the day of creativity. Life is a creative process, or should be when we get onto it and work with it. We have a whole day of the creative process, and then we indraw, breathe in, and then breathe out again. Some call that reincarnation; but nothing reincarnates, because it operates on a higher dimension of consciousness wherein time is only one of the components of the form of measurement.

Step that up to the cosmic process itself. The breathing out is time. That is, the activity creates a sensation which we call time. Whatever you are conscious of, when you are conscious you are active. To be conscious is activity. Then, after a period of activity there is a period of rest. There is a rhythm to it. You have the same thing on the highest possible level that we at our present state of development can conceive. Only that rest is eternity, absence of time; not endless time-no time. All here, all now-no time. So the rhythm of moving out of that state we call eternity into activity that we call time and withdrawing into eternity once again, superficially lends the appearance of dualism.

But what is dual about it? It isn't any more dual than what you do right now. Go to bed at night, become unconscious; perhaps just yet you don't know where you go, but you withdraw from activity. You could call that eternity. Many cases are on record where people have indrawn, lapsed into a coma, and several years later awakened and finished the sentence that they started and hadn't finished years before. They picked right up where they stopped being active, being conscious. Time ceased-eternity. So what is mysterious about this? What is occult about it? I don't see anything occult or mysterious. It's obvious, almost self-evident.

The Power-to-be-conscious cannot be known, it cannot even know itself, without Mater, without the Mother, light, energy, substance. And the activity of that light, the activity of that energy, the activity of that substance that we label the Mother is what we in our state of development call consciousness. That is our referent for the word consciousness. We describe the activity of that which we call light, energy, etheric substance, or living matter, in terms of waves and frequencies. Without the waves and frequencies you could not be conscious.
Let us go slowly now because I want you to get this. It is vast and full of meaning. Here is a simple illustration of how we are conscious. You hear the sound of my voice. Do you think there is any sound coming out of my mouth? Do you think there is any sound in this room? By the manipulation of the air by my vocal chords I can hammer the atmosphere like a telegraph key. I hammer the atmosphere, setting up waves and frequencies, that's all. Those waves and frequencies impinge upon the delicate mechanism of the ear, and the little hammer there hammers it out on the eardrum. Every time that the little hammer hits the drum it sends up an energy current that is transmitted by the neurons to the brain. Through that mysterious mechanism you hear a sound and know how to give a meaning to it (I hope). Where is the sound? In my voice? In my mouth? In the room? No. It's in you. The sound is in you. All phenomena is in you, in me.

We enjoy the beautiful bouquets of flowers that Connia fixes to cheer our classroom when we hold our classes. How do we enjoy them? The light reflecting back, according to the guna (quality) in the constituents in the structure of the flowers, strikes the retina of our eyes. This is how it operates: one can drop two pebbles in a very placid pond of water. If those pebbles are some distance from each other and they strike the water simultaneously, concentric rings are set up. If two of those waves having the same wavelength and frequency strike each other, they will nullify each other, bounce back. If they are not precisely synchronized they just pass through each other. That is the way we see color in the flowers. Light is manifold. We can break it down into its seven prismatic colors, but each one of those major divisions of wave-frequencies can be broken down-not infinitely, but very close to it, into a wide spread of shades, subdivisions of wave-frequencies. When the light strikes the structure, if it encounters the same wave and frequency by which that wave-frequency of the light is characterized, it will bounce back, reflect, and we see the color. Where is the color? Is it in you, or is it out here? This is a hard one. It took me thirty years to solve it. I used to say the color is in you. But it is in the structure of that which is seen in the configuration- as a quality, a guna-that causes the light wave to bounce back.

My point in bringing all of this out is to explain the activity of the substance by which we are conscious. If we didn't register the atmospheric impulses, waves-frequencies, we wouldn't hear. If we didn't register by sight, if we didn't register the reflected wave-frequencies, we wouldn't see, or we might be color blind. We are conscious by reason of the waves and frequencies, and not otherwise. The waves and frequencies are the activity of the Mother. So the Power, in order to be conscious, has to have Mother to be conscious. Being conscious is the Mother, but the Power-to-be is Itself. Have I made myself clear?

Because this is classwork I will drill and drill this until you can stand in it-not intellectually get a concept, but stand in it and functionally experience it. If you can't stand in it and have the experience we are just intellectualizing. Do not think that forming a concept is understanding, realization. I want to bring you into the functional reality of experience.

One more little reiteration, then we will go on. There is no dualism in the unity of the Power with the substance in order to be. "To be or not to be, that is the question." To be, you must have a mother, or you would remain for ever non-being, non-conscious. How does it work? The Power in the act of being conscious is one. Not two, one. But that one is dual inasmuch as the Power in the act of being conscious is the Mother.

And then the great alternation occurs that lends itself to the appearance of dualism-from eternity to time. Out of time, into eternity. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Between the tick and the tock there will be somewhere between four and five billion of our earth years. Tick-tock, tick-tock. In the absence of time, in eternity, what difference does it make whether it is five seconds or five billion years? You pick up right where you left off. "It was the hour before the gods awake..." as Aurobindo described it.

Let us get back to our description of chemosynthesis. The Power, in order to be conscious, can develop the Mother Substance to suit any environment. That is a very large statement. If that Power had to develop the instrument, a configura-tion of Mother Substance, in order to be conscious in the sun of our solar system, it would do it. Be careful now; don't think I have gone off the deep end. The fire, infinitely more intense than anything we can conceive in physical sense, the fire of the Mother, is that in which the Power functions in order to be conscious. And if it had to adjust and adapt a vehicle to the environment of the sun of the solar system it would do it, just like it does in the environment of the earth. It will mold the Mother Substance into whatever shape or form that is necessary in order to be. When Frederick Nietzsche caught that point he labeled it "the will to power." That label was later grossly misinterpreted, but at a high cosmic level he caught that point: the Power...to be...conscious. So irrespective of the environment, that Power will mold a vehicle to suit the environment in order to be conscious. There are beings, we are told, who live in the sun. (Since I have no personal referent, I have to qualify that statement. There are beings who live in the sun, because that Power-to-be-conscious can use the Mother Substance on that level the same as on any other level. That is all I wanted to stress about chemosynthetical photo-synthesis.

In the overall, the broad and general picture, there is an adaptation of the substance, Mother, with which the Power clothes itself to be conscious, and adjusts itself to the environment. If you were in the ocean, instead of having hands, fingers, claws, you would have fins. The Power adjusts itself to the environment in which it has to be conscious at that state, at that level. So it goes, irrespective of the environment. The Power will develop the needed instrumentality with which to be conscious.

Now I direct your attention to the chart labeled "The Vehicles of the Son of Man." By vehicles we mean the configurations in which the Power is struggling to be conscious. For the phrase "son of man" use the words man, mankind, or Adam here. These are generic terms, which mean man in general, man as a whole. Our referent for the word man is the objective self-conscious state on the part of the Power-objective self-consciousness. The "son of man" is to be born in that general overall state that we call man, humanity, generically. I put this "son of man" in double quotes because so many exoteric students of our Christian Bible stumble over that phrase in the Bible. Often it says Jesus is the Son of God, but He says in various places that He is the son of man. So in passing, I wanted to elucidate our referent, (and I qualify-the way we understand it in our School) for that phrase in the Bible, the "son of man." The Power-to-be-conscious becomes conscious of Itself as the son, offspring, of that human, objective-self-conscious state that we call man.

The vehicles in which a given man, "son of man," functions are these: (1) a private world, which is nothing but a thingified abstraction, (2) the configura-ional representation of the state in which the Power is conscious (that is, the configuration as representation of the state in which the Power-to-be-conscious is conscious; we break down the configurational representation into two divisions: the etheric and the somatic structure), (3) the psyche, which we divide into lower and higher, and (4) Mind, which functions autonomously, the Autonomous Field. That Field functions independently of the psyche, the configuration, and the private world.

-Vitvan, Tape series dated 1955 - 1956  -Marj Coffman, ed., 1997