This lesson requires the reader to employ the skills of imagination and visualization. In the 1930's, when Vitvan's work was given under the name of the School of the Sacred Science, Vitvan commissioned a group of oil paintings to be made. These paintings depicted stages in the growth and development of the psyche and the pneumatic ovum. None of us now associated with the School know who painted them or under what conditions they were created. However, they are the same representations as the illustrations in C. W. Leadbeater's book, Man, Visible and Invisible, originally published in 1902 and republished most recently in paperback in 1993. With permission of the publisher, Quest Books, we have produced computer sketches of some of these pictures for the purposes of these lessons. However, the Leadbeater book provides a series of beautiful colored illustrations as well as more thorough descriptions of the pneumatic ovum. If you would like to purchase this book, there is information regarding it at the end of this lesson. Both Vitvan and Leadbeater remark that colors in pigment are a poor substitute for actual colors seen in psychic light. So unless you have psychic sight and see auras, their pictures and descriptions and your imagination will have to suffice for now. -ed.

Please refer to the chart on page 28 of our last lesson, "Vehicles of the Son of Man." Let us begin with number four, Mind, and come back down. First we must set up a referent for what we mean by the Mind. I will use some of my old charts to help our understanding.
When the Power-to-be-conscious differentiates its consciousness from the animal oversoul, an ovum is formed around the configuration. [See figure 1 on page 30.] No animal has this ovum. The animal has a background oversoul of a group-conscious field, or a group field in which the Power-to-be-conscious functions as a group unit, but no particular individualization.

(A number of years ago, I have to go way back to 1910, I gave a lecture in the Beach Hotel in Long Beach on this point, the differentiation between the animal group oversoul and the particular individual. I had the ballroom of that hotel crowded with people, so I felt I had to popularize it. And I said, "The animal has a soul, but it is an oversoul." I didn't know that there was a reporter in the audience who planned to write an article about what I said. When he wrote it, the headline proclaimed, "deBit Claims the Animal Has a Soul." Why, I had all the psychiatrists, doctors, and all of the ministers in Long Beach at loggerheads with each other discussing whether or not the animal had a soul. So now I am extremely careful about the way I describe these things.)

However, the point I am making now is that no given animal has an individualized state. It functions automatically, instinctively, under the group influence. For illustration, here is a little thing that you may notice. For years and years the only companions I had were dogs. I used to be a forest ranger, camping out weeks and months at a time and seeing nothing but my dogs and wild life. And when the dogs would come in to the campfire, they would turn round and round and then lie down. That is instinctive functioning. For ages and ages the animal oversoul motivated the wild dogs to turn around and round in the high grass and make a nest. You can watch your dogs on your living room rug, no tall grass, turning round and round before they lie down. They're making a nest in tall grass. They can't function out of the motivation of the oversoul of the group-until individualization comes.

Man, Visible and Invisble by C. W. Leadbeater The Theosophical Publishing House Adyar, Chennai 600 020, India

When individualization comes this pneumatic ovum is formed. [See Figure 1.] Pneuma means the inner breath, the breath of Brahma, the breathing out of Brahma. Our breath of air in our lungs is a lower level reflection of that inner, higher, breathing of the 'spirit'. We could also call that ovum the Autonomous Field or the Mind. This figure represents that pneumatic ovum, the Mind Level Field of a given man at the point in development when he is differentiating consciousness from the influence of the overall animal group field. [At this state] he begins to have a little individualization whereby he can function free from the controlling instincts of the animal group. As far as the man is concerned, that is the beginning of the development of individualization, the Autonomous Field, the beginning of the development of consciousness of Mind.

When this pneumatic ovum is formed, the building of the psychic nature begins. Now how does it begin? We need a very clear understanding of that process before we come to how we are going to treat and deal with that psyche. We need to comprehend how the psychic nature came to be and how it became integrated in that emergent process as the Power-to-be-conscious was bringing out its representations in the Mother Substance and functioning in them. The psychic nature began when the process of individualization started on the Mind Level, because with this differentiation of an individualized field, consciousness awakened to objective identification. For the first time in the long, long eonian history, or the long, long eonian past, the consciousness of the Power-to-be-conscious awakened to Self-awareness. But that Self-awareness was objective self-awareness, culminating immediately in objective identification.

[Here is another parenthetical description that needs to be included at this point.] Every time round in the ancient palingenetic process, the eonian process is repeated. A rudimentary study of embryology will show how in nine months in the mother's womb the fetus condenses and repeats an eonian past and synthesizes it in the present state of the race as a whole. But that repetition of the past does not stop with the birth of the baby body. You will see this point that I am making if you will watch your little babies. There's quite awhile after the baby is born that it waves its little hands and feet around and is unconscious of it. Then the day comes that it sees its hands, it sees its feet, and gradually, it begins to make the association, "This [body] is me."

The animal state is there when the baby is unconscious of its little hands and feet, unconscious of its body. An animal is unconscious of its body. If you raise cattle, horses, dogs, etc., you may attribute that they are conscious of their bodies. Oh, they will scratch a flea or something, instinctively, but there is no consciousness of its body. It's like a man who has a marvelous, stupendous, incomprehensible Power-to-be-conscious, and is unconscious of it. So on a lower level the animal has a body, but it is not conscious of its body until this individualization comes. That is repeated in each incarnation. You see it when the baby discovers that it has a body and becomes identified with it. That identification is the beginning of the formation of the psychic nature.

When objective identification comes, that is Self-awareness for the first time, but it is objective self-awareness. The animal has gone through a long period of avoiding pain and suffering and seeking animal creature comfort, that is, action and reaction [to stimuli]. But when objective identification dawns, man goes a little further than the animal. He will cultivate that which gives him pleasure, not just seeking animal creature comfort or pleasure to avoid pain, suffering, or discomfort. It is that little turn of cultivating that which gives pleasure that builds the psyche. Building up, accentuating, and cultivating pleasure for hundreds of thousands of years until that cultivation of pleasure as a thing in itself evolves into the profit motive. That is, one seeks profit in order to have more pleasure. Then we have the pleasure-profit motif. There is another motif we are seeking that is still higher than that, but the point to register now is that every time pleasure is cultivated as something desirable in itself the qualities, gunas, are built in into the dynamic process. As the Power-to-be-conscious is becoming conscious and putting forth its representation on the configurational level it is building a psychic nature. Every feeling has a quality, and when the pneumatic ovum is formed, those qualities built in become the psychic nature.
There is an evolution to the cultivation of pleasure as a thing, desirable in itself. [If we could see the aura of the primitive man in Figure 1, there would be little color displayed in his pneumatic ovum. In the Leadbeater picture and in Vitvan's oil paintings, the slight coloration appears similar to the rainbow colors seen reflected in a soap bubble. Not much quality has been built into his psychic nature at this stage in his development.]

Here is a point that is one of the most difficult points to establish in the understanding of beginners of this instruction. I want to do it so carefully and so circumspectly that a child could not err, because not understanding it is fraught with more grievous errors than any other point in the whole instruction. I might have to labor the point and present it one way and turn it around and present it another way, until it becomes clear. Here is a description of the point.
This whole process, the development, growth, expansion, evolution, the adaptation to the environmental stimuli, etc., is from the Mind Level. After individualization from the animal oversoul has taken place, during the process of development of the Power-to-be-conscious on Mind Level and reflected on the configurational level, the psyche begins to be developed. That development is concomitant to the major cosmic process.

In the major cosmic process at the mineral level and at the plant level, there is no psyche. The overall Mind, like the Mind that was in Christ Jesus, our Lord, the Mind of the Logos that has gone beyond individualization, develops its representations, configurations, with no psyche. It is only after objective identification is developed on the part of the Power-to-be-conscious that the psyche begins to be developed. You will remember our referent for the word psyche: the vehicle with which you feel, or the substance in which you are conscious of feelings, desirings, lovings, emotings, and thinkings.

The psyche is the substance in which you are conscious of feeling. Please remember the point that I made in Lesson 4 and apply it to this development of the psyche. Without the substance there is no consciousness of being. That is, without the Mother, the Power cannot be conscious. Apply this to the development of the psyche. When Self-consciousness emerges out of the great dark night of unconsciousness, of nescience, objective self-consciousness is the first Self-conscious state that is developed. The Power-to-be-conscious becomes conscious of itself as an individualized self by identifying itself with a vehicle which it has developed through the eons as a means whereby it can become conscious. Please track carefully with me here. At the man state the Power not only becomes conscious of that vehicle, he identifies with it and thinks it is he. "This [body] is me" represents the objective self-conscious state. And as this consciousness in the Field develops, at each little infinitesimal change in the state of the Positive Power becoming conscious in the substance-in Mater, in Mother, in her womb, in the cosmic egg-the configuration represents it. That is, the configurational self comes right out as a representation of that state.

At that point of objective identification with his thingified abstractions from the reality, the psyche begins to be developed. An animal just instinctively functions for a long, long time before he begins to feel a predilection, "I'd rather have this instinct than that one." "I'd rather have the exercise of the instinct that gives me pleasure than the exercise of the instinct that makes me run away and crawl into my hole." "I'd rather have the feeling of pleasure than the feeling of pain." Pleasure and pain are the motivating forces, and accentuating the pleasure-feeling-what else is it?-develops the psyche. Eventually at the man state one becomes conscious of the ensemble of those little entities called feelings; he makes groupings, gestalts. He makes gestalts of feelings, and we call those gestalts desires.
Then a person will say, "I desire this," "I do not desire that." Feelings have graduated into a higher level, further developing the psyche. With fulfillment of the gratification of desire there comes pleasure-for awhile. Being thwarted in the fulfillment of urges in desire arouses feelings of anger, hate, and animosity, and being thwarted in desire leads to negative feelings and reactions. One reacts to values given in desiring.

Now move on up to loving. I hope you've had a lot of experience in good human loving. It's wonderful. Here is where the blossoming of the forces in the psyche occurs. You love, then eventually, when it is all cut off and thwarted, you 'crawl into your hole' hurt, wounded. And then perhaps you'll say, "Away with it all. I'm going to the South Sea Islands and get away from it all." See? Actions and reactions in love. I want to show you what develops this psyche-actions and reactions to values given in the objective self-conscious state, in the man state.

Then one begins to think. He goes to school and graduates, matriculates and goes to college and thinks and thinks and thinks and thinks. What for? So that he can figure out how he can fulfill his desires-and outsmart the other guy while he does it.

The University of California at Berkeley put a great big illuminated billboard up on the corner where the street of Berkeley turns over to Oakland [while I was living there]. It said, "Those who finish high school have (figures) so much of a degree (percentage) of an advantage over those who do not finish high school. Under it, in bigger letters, "Those who finish university have (great big figure now) advantage over those who don't finish university. Underneath, "Why not go to the University?" One strives to get the advantage, outsmart the other guy-in materialistic pursuits-not to increase the wisdom of the Divine Self. Is there anyone here wise enough to stand up here and tell me that isn't what the educational system is geared to?

What motivates technological development? "Russia is turning out 10,000 more engineers a year than we are (1956). We must get busy and turn out more engineers." What for? To outsmart the other guy before he outsmarts us. Meanwhile, almost as a side issue, that develops the psyche. [That is how coloration and organization occurs in the developing pneumatic ovum.]

This is the tricky part that causes so much confusion and misunderstanding in handling the whole problem, psychosomatically, therapeutically, and otherwise. How do we deal with this psyche that has been introduced into the process from the Mind to the configuration? This is what we must learn to understand in order to deal with it intelligently. I want to show you how this psyche is interlaced, intruded into, and integrated in that process. When you can understand that you will know how to handle the psyche. But if you don't learn how to deal with the psyche, it's going to handle you and run you ragged!

Due to the way the psychic nature functions, we identify the image, the picture, with the reality, instead of separating the two and living in this beautiful, marvelous, dynamic world of reality. Then we try to take some kind of flight to try to get behind it, or above it, below it, under it, or somewhere, you know, meta-. So, in order to understand the treatment, the attitude, etc., regarding the psychic nature, we must sharply differentiate the psychic nature from the Mind Level and separate those two from the configurational level.
[It is important as we proceed with our descriptions] … to separate the phenomena from the dynamic process without denying this world as a configurational dynamic process. The phenomena, that is, the thingifying, image making, picture making, etc. is within the consciousness of each of us, respectively, but the dynamic process is not within our particular consciousness. The process is within the overall consciousness in which the Be-ing is integrated. Separating the image we make from the dynamic process is the key to the non-metaphysical aspect of this instruction.

Between the beginning of the psychic nature portrayed in Figure 1  and that of Figure 2  thousands and thousands of years have intervened. [During the many incarnations that have occurred in that time span the psyche has undergone vast changes. The colors (qualities) built in have gradually changed from a chaotic mix throughout the psyche to a high degree of organization.] Those gunas, qualities of Mother Substance, are all organized as displayed in the psyche by the bands of color. The color as seen as content of the psychic nature has a language. Color is a language more accurate and definite than our spoken words. The nearest thing that is comparable to the language of color is the language of music. Color and music are closely related as a means, a method, of communication.

The colors in the psyche all have significance. Blue indicates devotion. Mauve to violet indicates unselfishness. The crimson red shown here represents protective, human love, while the dirty red orange at the bottom of the psyche indicates elemental, naked animal passion. [The green of adaptability in this psyche] is tinged with the brown of selfishness. The flashes of lightning represent flashes of jealousy in his nature.

Figure 2 - The Developing Psyche

… The lower, coarser, grosser, more animalized qualities, gunas, settle to the bottom and the more refined, aesthetic, spiritualized gunas, qualities, of feelings, of desirings, of lovings, of emotions, of thinkings, rise to the top.… The Egyptians understood this so well that they labeled the upper half of the psyche the north half, and they spoke of the "man up north." (That tradition has been handed down, and there are still certain orders and lodges today that use this same terminology.) To the Egyptians, the word pharaoh means the Sun God, from which our Son of God idea has been handed down. But in Egypt he was called outright the Sun God, pharaoh. When a pharaoh was seated for the first time, his first official act was to organize the armies in north and south Egypt and go to the borderland with the armies of the north and fight a terrific sham battle with the armies of the south. And after the sham battle was all over, the reign began.

This was all understood in ancient Egypt at that time, the first to the fifth dynasty particularly, that each man has to organize all of the forces of his north half and do battle. Similarly in Indian lore, the Bhagavad Gita describes how Arjuna, on the fields of Kurukshetra, had to stand and not run away into Nirvana, or extinction of consciousness, but he had to battle all the forces of the south half, until the forces of the north half had conquered all the forces of the south half, and the psyche became purified. We are going to describe that battle at length when we begin to describe our attitude toward the psyche. But I wanted to introduce it here as part of the description of the charts.

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

REFERENCES:
Leadbeater, C.W. Man, Visible and Invisible. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1993.
This book may be ordered from Quest Books, P.O. Box 270, Wheaton, IL 60189-0270.
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