We are now ready to take up point number two in developing the correct attitude toward the psychic nature, the personality pattern. I approach this number two with a great deal of timidity. The description of descending to the point of departure from the natural order and then building back is difficult because of the problem of personal application. To describe the difficulty of descending to the point of departure from the natural order and then building back I’m going to approach the negative side of it first.

Keep in mind what we have given in the previous lessons of this particular course. Let us first consider the five levels upon which the Power-to-be-conscious functions in any given person—in you and in me and in everyone. The Power-to-be-conscious functions simultaneously on these five levels, but very seldom is there any means of communication from one level to another. I do not rule out the possibility of doing so, but generally speaking, a person has no consciousness of communication from one level to another. Each level is going on all the time as though the other levels didn’t exist.

The highest level in the evolutionary process, relative to the state of development of our race psyche, is called the Greater Self. It is a universalized state. We can use the scriptural terminology to describe this state: “And Moses heard the voice out of the burning bush.” Every configuration of units of energy represents a burning bush. If our psychic hearing was developed, every configuration would speak to us, because each carries its own intrinsic resonance. That is, the wave-frequency by which a given configuration can be described is characterized by its own resonant quality.

In the Biblical description, as Moses heard the voice from the burning bush he inquired, “Who is it that speaks?” And God said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM.” THAT has no particular label other than I AM. It just is—a sort of is-ness—it is. That is what we are labeling the Greater Self. The Greeks would label that Greater Self the Logos, a universalized state in which all personality has disappeared.

The next level down from the Greater Self is called the Higher Self. It is the Higher Self relative to our concept of our lower self. We animalized humans, that’s the lower state, look up, to this Higher Self, the Real Self. There is an individualizing process going on that began when there was a separation from the overall animal group soul, the oversoul, to use Emerson’s terminology. Any given animal functions under a group influence. But when one animal develops the ability to function a little bit independently from that animal oversoul influence, he becomes individualized. He is starting his individualizing process. That individualizing process continues and continues, round after round of incarnations, until it becomes perfected as a conscious Be-ing on the Mind Level, the lowest level of Light’s Regions. That Higher Self on Mind Level is above the psychic world, beyond all personality evaluations. The two levels, the Greater Self as the universalized state, and the Higher Self, the individualizing process within that cosmic field, are the background in which we are all functioning.

If we were good Christian Scientists we would change the label and say the Divine Mind, Infinite Intelligence. We would say that the individualizing process is working out the Divine Idea in the Infinite Mind. To correlate our labels with these labels, we could equate the Greater Self with Infinite Mind, the Divine Mind. What we label the Higher Self, the individualizing process on the Mind Level, would equate with the Perfect Idea in the Infinite Mind; that is, the Perfect Idea in the process of developing the Self as an Idea. The Power-to-be-conscious is in the process of becoming conscious of itself as a Be-ing.

We label the next lower level the psychic nature, the personality pattern. In earlier lessons I described how this psychic nature is developed out of the objective identification of consciousness. At this stage one thinks of these dynamic processes as ‘things’ and ‘objects’. He thingifies this dynamic process, this burning bush, and all the burning bushes. (Every configuration represents a burning bush.) Think of each burning bush as a configuration of Light and energy. Any scientist or any high school boy or girl that is studying physics can describe it. This is no longer an esoteric idea. Scientists now recognize any given configuration as essentially an ensemble of radiant light and units of energy configurated, formed, in accordance with a pattern. There is nothing deep, occult, or mystical about it. And from our mathematical physicists it is percolating down to general understanding. Boys and girls going to school today will grow up in it. They will probably marvel at the older generation who thought that this world was a creation instead of a dynamic creating process. And they will be amused at the older ones thinking that these are ‘things’ and ‘objects’. This is a dynamic world, a dynamic energy process, that is in process. It is a creating process, not a creation; and we are integrated in that creating process. Our goal is to learn how to function intelligently with it.

We call the thingifying of the dynamic process objective identification. The reason that we objectify and thingify a dynamic process is because our neural system and sense faculties cannot operate fast enough. Our afferent/efferent reflex arcs, our neural system, cannot operate fast enough to register the discontinuousness of the units of energy of which any given configuration is composed. Our neural, sense faculty system can only register the rapidity of motion as a whole. We make a picture of what we see due to the inability to register

the units of energy and the spatial interstices obtaining between the units of energy separately. Our picture world is in the psyche, the feeling-thinking consciousness. We make the pictures, then we identify the pictures with the configurations from which we receive the waves-frequency stimuli.

How does a person see anything? Here is what we call a poinsettia, a plant, a flower, (to use higher abstract terms). How do we see it? By the reflection of light waves and the registry of those light waves upon the sensitive optic nerve. If we did not register the light wave, wave-frequency, we would not see anything.

How do we hear? How do we smell? Taste? Touch? The same way. The senses are only modifications of the same system. When waves and frequencies are more rapid than the sense faculties can handle separately as they impinge on the sense faculties, the senses break down, so as to speak, and makes an overall picture, an ensemble. The picture is in the psychic consciousness. The dynamic process is still there, but when we project the image ‘out there’ and identify it with the dynamic process, then we say that we see, hear, etc., a ‘thing’. We call it an ‘object’, a static creation. Then we cast about, “What created it?” Then we have to resort to some of our myths. “Well, there must be somebody up there beyond the cloudbanks, up there in the stratosphere, that did it.” See the point? Then we say God created the creation!

Look where that led us. Read our history and see where that led us—into all sorts of fantastic myths. We’ve been worshipping myths and getting deeper and deeper in the slough of despond, getting deeper into chaos by the worshipping of myths. Those who have capitalized on our stupidity and ignorance have exploited the myth. Enough said.

This, then, is the private world: the myth, the images appearing substantive, not knowing that they are images in our consciousness appearing substantive, taking the world as it appears, and out of that building a mentalized manifold of values. Then, out of building a mentalized manifold of values we suffer the delusion that we possess ‘things’ and ‘objects’. Terrible efforts and strife ensue as we strive to acquire ‘things’ and ‘objects’. If only we could have had guidance whereby we could have put forth the same struggle and effort to acquire the understanding of the images appearing substantive that we put in trying to acquire the possession of ‘things’ and ‘objects’, we would have a veritable heaven on earth by this time. Then what was needed would be used, and when it was no longer needed, let somebody else use it, or go on past it. Our whole consciousness would have been converted into just the use, not acquisitive accumulation and possession. When ‘things’ had served their purpose, we would have no attachment whatever to them.

That will occur in the future, when we as a people will arrive at that state. But just now, and for the sake of this lesson, we must understand that this mentalized private world stands as a barrier between factual, functional reality and the way we think. The way one functions and the way he thinks he functions are two different things entirely. The private world is characterized by a censorship which cuts the understanding off from ascertaining the deeper motivating forces which determine the way we function. That is the cause for my concern about developing our second attitude toward the psyche. If each and every one of us here could step out, bypass the censorship, get out of our private world, and see this process as it functionally is, then I would have no timidity whatever. I’d have no misgivings about your misunderstanding this point in the instruction. If we had no censorship we’d have no false values. We would look at our functioning as if we were primeval, naked, simple, and pure.

Instead, I am going to resort to a device, and my device is this: I will state that theoretically, not to be practiced at all, this is what should be done. But no one is to apply it. This is just theoretical. One should descend to the point of departure from the natural order and then build back. I am presenting a theory for our considered evaluation. (Do you think I can get by with that?) Well, at least I am on record that I am presenting a theory and not advocating something to practice.

We are edging in on the next attitude we need to assume. We have the Greater Self, the Higher Self, then the psychic nature built up out of objectifying, thingifying this world as a dynamic process. That imaging faculty builds up the psychic nature, the personality pattern. Then comes the fourth level, the configurational world itself, and psychosomatically speaking, the physiological organism. We also have the private world abstracted from the four preceding levels. Each person has a private world abstracted from the preceding four levels which seem to be separate and apart from each other.

To quickly summarize the background: Due to our objective identification, believing this image appearing substantive to be the reality, we have developed a manifold of values based upon that premise. That manifold of values can be summarized in one word—ego—the personal, egoic good opinion of one’s self. And in order to maintain that good opinion we must convince everyone else of our merit and worth, of our shining virtues, how fine and wonderful we are. When we can get enough people to believe that we are wonderful and fine and just shining with virtues, then we believe it ourselves. But we must convince a number first. We must convince others that we are full of those shining virtues in order to convince ourselves. The job of the censorship is to keep us thinking that way. It even works in the dream state. When we study dream interpretation, we will see that this censorship operates in dreams and makes fantastic pictures to cover up our true motivations. Later we will take the lid off the lower psyche, the south half, and peek into it. Due to objective identification and censorship we have remained completely unconscious, ignorant, of what is going on in the subtle world that we call the psychic nature.

We have two forces operating in that psychic nature. One can be described as the instinctive urges, the animalized propensities, the biological instincts, or we could say biological urges. Those are telekinesical. Those are ‘within’. If we would employ the dual words ‘objective’/‘subjective’, and I have to single quote both of them, we could say that those remnants, holdovers of the animalized state of development, and the instinctive, biological hungers and urges belong to a realm from which we have departed. We have gone beyond, and we have mentalized an ideal, that good opinion we have of ourselves, that we have convinced others we are. We must maintain that mentalized ideal of ourselves, particularly since ecclesiastical authorities teach us to do it. We must be noble, honorable, virtuous. We must act as if we are not bipeds. Conceal every natural function of nature. Shush-shush, you know, from the time we were little children, even about the use of certain words. Sh-sh-sh- we were hushed up and such functions were put out of sight, all choked down. Down where? Into the unconscious—so that we might keep that mentalized good opinion, that shining light idea of ourselves.

That is what we call telekinesical, the inner motivations. Then comes the affinity which operates in the psychic world, particularly in the lower psyche. It functions under the same laws as the laws governing chemical affinity. We have in our psyches, built in our past evolutionary state, qualities that attract like qualities. “Birds of a feather will flock together,” our grandmothers and grandfathers used to say. And “You can’t make a silk purse out of an old sow’s ear....” Those are old clichés, but they have meaning. Here is where the censor, our good opinion of ourselves that we must maintain, enters in. “We will not indulge in anything like that!” and we resolutely repudiate whatever it is and turn away from it to maintain that ideal of our shining virtue. But the psyche pays no attention to that censorship. If it has an affinity for something, it goes right out and takes it on. We pick up subtle influences, subtle vibrations, subtle waves-frequencies wherever we go, with whomever we visit, what we read, etc. Even the home environment is registered and goes into the quality, processes of the psychic nature, in addition to the intrinsic, telekinesical holdovers from the past.

The psychic nature can be described this way: The entire past, including all of the palingenetic cyclic putting forths and drawing ins, all of the past, is rolled up like a scroll. The psyche contains all of it right now. But the ideal shining virtue that the censorship strives to maintain will not recognize that. So I say, theoretically each and every one of us are filled with peacocks and jackals and all sorts of animals and primitive savagery. Wrapped up and rolled up within the psyche of each and every one of us are qualities from all along the evolutionary scale. Given environmental opportunity some of those things will come out. Some of them come out when the censorship is dethroned. We call that condition insanity or schizophrenia or neurosis. Sometimes we dignify it by saying someone had a nervous breakdown. When a person has a nervous breakdown and the censorship is dethroned, out it comes. It also comes out in sleep, camouflaged by the dream images and pictures.

How are we going to descend from the shining ideal that the private world and the mentalized censorship has created? How are we going to descend to the natural order point from which we departed in not fulfilling all of those concealed and hidden urges in the psyche? Here is the great problem with which we are confronted. You will readily understand what has overtaken our people where constituted authorities are alarmed by the accelerating increase of insanity and neuroses. The shining ideal developed in the private world is in conflict with the point of departure from the natural order evolutionary process. There is the problem. Did you hear that one word, conflict. The breakdown is due to the conflict between the mentalized private world—our egotistical image of ourselves—and the Power, which is the evolutionary force at the basic point of development from which we departed.

That is one form of conflict that causes the breakdown. What breaks down? The creative urge at the basic point of development doesn’t break down; the natural order doesn’t break down. The opposition, the blockage, breaks. Could we advocate that we kick the censorship out? Could we peek through the private world that operates as a blockage? I mean we need to take the lid off of the psyche. Whatever is there, let it come out! “Powder River, let ’er buck!” Like water that has been dammed up, the dam would break, and the first rush would be terrific. But if we could get through the first rush, we’d settle down to a normal evolutionary process and build back from the point of departure—theoretically.

We do not do that. We can’t do it in our society. But do you know the Great Mother has a provision to take care of the fact that we can’t do it? The blessed Mother has taken care of it. Do you know what she does in the face of this enormous problem, this breakdown? The palingenetic process of the Higher Self takes care of it. If the forces are sufficiently powerful to counteract the aspirations to the influence from the Mind level that we call the Christ, then in the palingenetic process a given person is thrown into an incarnation where the environment is conducive to expressing everything at the point of departure from the natural order in order to build back from there. If the forces repressed, suppressed by the mentalized censorship in the private world and the teachings germane thereto, are sufficiently strong to counteract the influence from the Higher Self to the psyche, then the palingenetic process takes care of it. We go back to the point of departure and build back.

So, while it is a serious problem, the Divine Mother has taken care of it. She puts us back where we can let our hair down and be natural with no censorship, none whatever, and then we build back from the point of departure. But we can develop a new attitude toward the psyche, its south half and its north half, before we have to be thrown back in the palingenetic process. That attitude will be described in our next lesson.

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

Lesson 10