The Word Foundation
Share this page



MAN AND WOMAN AND CHILD

Harold W. Percival

PART III

THE IMMORTAL AND INSEPARABLE TWAIN IN EVERY HUMAN BEING

There was a time in the unwritten history of the immortal Doer in every human body—truer than any human history—when as a twain it lived in a perfect sexless body, in The Realm of Permanence, which is usually spoken of as Paradise or the Garden of Eden, in the interior of the earth. The Doer of the Triune Self was conscious of itself as the twain, and as not the body in which it lived. It was just as sure that the body was not itself as the human is now sure it is not the clothes it wears. The body of the Doer had unfailing youth and strength and beauty imparted to it by itself as the twain, desire-and-feeling; and it was without pain or any of the ills and sorrows with which the human being now afflicts itself. And the Doer had power to see and hear in every part of the world, and to do as it willed. It was the “first temple,” or body, spoken of in Masonry. And so the Doer saw and heard and did. (See Part IV, “The Perfect Body” )

In due course the desire of the Doer desired to see the feeling of itself expressed in a body apart from the body in which it, the Doer, dwelt. Likewise, feeling of the Doer felt the need to see the desire of itself expressed in a body and apart from itself. And, as desire willed, there was breathed out from the body of the Doer a form into which, as though by extension from desire, feeling entered, by feeling itself into that form. So the Doer, by the extension of its body and extending a part of itself into the extension, lived in a double body, as the twain, the two bodies being united by bonds of attraction. This is the basis of the story of “Adam,” and the “rib” out of which was fashioned “Eve.”

Each of the two bodies was at first like the other because desire-and-feeling were one twain when the Doer extended the form; but, though each of the bodies bore a likeness to the other, each was different from the other. The likeness was caused by the one-ness and inseparability of desire-and-feeling. The difference was the result of the separation by extension, as two, into the double body. The single body had expressed the one-ness of desire-and-feeling, as one. The double body represented the one as two-ness, as desire and as feeling. The body in which was desire expressed power, in the strength of body; the body in which was feeling expressed beauty, through the form of body. So the structure and function of the body of desire were determined by the power as desire, and those of the body of feeling were formed to express beauty as feeling. And each of the bodies was in structure and function so formed as to relate to the other and to be the complement of the other, similarly as desire-and-feeling were related and complemented each in the other and by the other.

While desire-and-feeling were together one, they were conscious as one and acted as one. When one was an extension of the other they were still conscious as one, but in the double body they seemed to be two and acted as two. Desire acted more independently of feeling, and likewise feeling acted more independently of desire, although whatever each did was done with due regard to the other. Desire-and-feeling were conscious of their inseparability, but the more each in its body acted as though it were independent of the other the more the bodies changed, until the twain body became two separate bodies. The matter of the twain body of the Doer had been so perfectly related and adapted to the twain that it at once expressed in form and function the character of desire-and-feeling. The separation of the twain body into two separate bodies was therefore due to desire and feeling, not to the double body.

Desire looked out from its body upon the body of feeling and electrified the parts of its body into activity while it looked upon that form of beauty. Feeling gazed through its body upon the body of desire and magnetized the parts of its body into passivity while it looked upon that body of strength. Each thus looking upon the other through its own opposite and complementary body fell under the spell of the senses. And the Doer was by its body-mind beguiled into thinking it was two. That is to say, desire-and-feeling were conscious as one and the same while they thought in themselves as desire-and-feeling; but while they looked through their bodily senses of sight, the body-mind through sight showed them that they were two, and different. Their thinking followed the senses and each so charged and changed its body that the body of each attracted and drew to itself the body of the other. By the prompting of the body-mind, desire desired to be in and one with feeling through the body of feeling, instead of having feeling in itself; and feeling felt to get and be one with desire with the body of desire, instead of having desire in itself. While the Doer thus looked out from itself onto the two bodies of itself, desire-and-feeling gradually changed the nature and the structure of its bodies—which were not sexual until after many changes they eventually became sexual bodies. By thus thinking, desire changed the structure and function of its body into a male body; and feeling changed the structure and function of its body into a female body. When not led into thinking passively through their bodily senses, and when thinking actively in themselves, desire-and-feeling knew that each was an inseparable part of the other, but when they looked through or thought with the body-mind through the senses they were deceived by the body-mind into thinking passively through the senses of their bodies that they were their bodies. Thus, when the desire in the man body looked upon the woman body of feeling, it was by its male body-mind made to think that it was that man body and it desired union with the feeling of itself in the woman body; and, when feeling in the woman body looked upon the man body of desire, feeling was by its female body-mind made to think that it was that woman body and it craved union with the desire of itself in the man body. Each looking upon itself in the body of the other saw the reflection by extension of itself in that other body—like as in a looking glass. So, instead of having union of its desire-and-feeling as one-ness in the perfect body, the Doer had its man body enter into and have union with the woman body. Through long periods of thinking, the structure of each body was changed.

Before the union of its two bodies, the Doer did not sleep. Sleep was not needed for the Doer in its perfect body or for either of its bodies. The bodies did not need sleep for rest or repair or refreshment, nor did they need human food, because they were maintained by breathing alone. The bodies did not cause the Doer to suffer, they were unaffected by time and were kept young and beautiful by desire-and-feeling. The Doer was continuously conscious of itself as desire-and-feeling under all conditions, in or without its bodies. Then the Doer could think of the differences of itself from its bodies. But after the union of bodies it could not so think. It could not think clearly or steadily, nor could it see or hear as it formerly had done. What had happened was, that the Doer had allowed its body-mind to put it as feeling-and-desire into a self-hypnosis; it had hypnotized itself. This it had done by thinking of itself as the senses had led it to think; that is, to think with the body-mind that it as desire was the physical body, and that it as feeling was the physical body in which feeling was. By so continuing to think, desire-and-feeling imparted its active and its passive powers to the units of the physical bodies, and so unbalanced and charged the two bodies that each attracted the other until the bodies had sexual union. Thus the bodies completed the self-hypnosis which the Doer had put itself into. Sexual union was the “original sin.”

By its desiring and feeling and thinking union of the man and woman bodies, the Doer had drawn together and concentrated the elemental nature forces of fire and air and water and earth. By thinking, desire and feeling were focused with those elemental forces and were, so to say, attached and wedded to their physical bodies. During the union a light of the eyes of each of the bodies was transferred to their sexual organs; so the eyes were dimmed and the hearing deadened. The Doer’s perceptions through the senses were limited to impressions on the organs and nerves of the physical senses. The Doer had put itself to sleep; and it dreamed, of sensations.

Formerly the Doer had not depended on the senses to tell it what it should think or what it should do. Before the Doer had desired union of bodies it was in direct relation with the Thinker, that is, with rightness, its law, and with reason, its judge. Then reason tutored desire, and rightness inspired feeling in all their thinking and in all their acts. Then desire-and-feeling were together one Doer. The Doer had no preferences for some things, nor prejudices against other things. It was not in doubt about anything, because where rightness and reason are, doubt cannot be. But now that desire-and-feeling of the Doer had made themselves appear to be divided and separated from each other by the man and woman bodies—there was doubt, which is indecision in distinguishing sense from reason. Doubt caused division, as it were, in desire. Desire, on the one hand, desired Self-knowledge and desired reason to guide it. Desire, on the other hand, desired sexual union and allowed the bodily senses to lead it. The desire for the sexes rebelled against the desire for Self-knowledge, but could not control or change it. And the desire for the sexes had eventuated in union of the man and woman bodies. Desire for the sexes divorced itself from the desire for Self-knowledge, and so from rightness and reason. Desire-and-feeling were conscious of wrong, and they suffered. They were in fear. Instead of thinking and desiring for their rightness and reason to enlighten and direct them, the desire-and-feeling for the sexes turned from the Conscious Light, which is Truth, and which comes through rightness and reason. Without the Conscious Light, Truth, desire-and-feeling allowed the body-mind to identify them with the senses of seeing and hearing and tasting and smelling, which cannot tell what things really are. So the thinking and actions of desire-and-feeling were impelled by the promptings of the senses of the man and woman bodies, in which they wished to be hidden from their own rightness and reason.

As the Doer had divorced itself from its Triune Self, of which it still was nevertheless a part, and had attached itself to nature, it made itself dependent for guidance on the four senses. Without desire-and-feeling the body and its senses would be at a standstill, inert. But with desire-and-feeling and their power to think, they could produce phenomena of nature. The immortal twain identified itself with the man and woman bodies, and the four senses became its representatives and guides. All that the twain desired and felt and hoped to be was interpreted by it in terms of the four senses. Its desires multiplied; but, however many, all had to come under the generalship of four desires: the desire for food, the desire for possessions, the desire for a name, and the desire for power. These four desires were related to the four senses, and the four senses represented and guided the four systems of the body. The four senses of seeing and hearing and tasting and smelling were the channels through which the radiant and airy and fluid and solid matter flowed into and out of the generative and respiratory and circulatory and digestive systems. And the four general desires of the desire for the sexes, thus harnessed into and geared to systems and senses and states of matter and elements of nature, kept the body-machines going and, likewise helped to keep the nature-machine of the man and woman world in operation. The Doer continued, as it were, to personify the body and the four senses. It continued to relate itself to the things of the senses until it could not think of its desire-and-feeling as being distinct from the body and the senses. But the desire for Self-knowledge was never changed. It will not be satisfied until the Doer accomplishes the real union of desire-and-feeling.

The perfect body of the twain was not born, it did not die; it was a body of Permanence, a body of compositor units which were balanced, not male or female; that is, what had been the active and passive sides of the unit were equalized; neither side could control its other side, and all the units were balanced, complete, in harmony with The Realm of Permanence, and therefore not subject to growth and decay and the wars and re-adjustments in this physical world of change. The bodies of man and woman are in a continual process of growth and decay from birth to death. The bodies eat and drink and are entirely dependent on nature for the maintenance of their broken, incomplete, and temporary structures, and they are out of tune with The Realm of Permanence.

The perfect body, the “first temple,” in The Realm of Permanence, was a body with two spinal columns, in perfect accord with the four worlds of nature through the four senses and their systems. The front column was the nature column, in which were four stations for communication with nature by means of the involuntary nervous system. Through the front spinal column eternal life was imparted to the body from the immortal twain. The rear spinal column was the column of the Doer, the column through which the twain could operate with nature and for nature by means of the voluntary nervous system, through the four senses. From its rear spinal column and through the four senses the Doer could see and hear and taste and smell any object or thing in any state of matter in any division of the physical world or form world. The duty of the Doer was to use the permanent body as a perfect machine with the four senses and their systems as instruments, for the sensing and operation of the units making up the great nature-machine.

At this point in its course the Doer had a duty to perform and a destiny to fulfill. Its destiny was that its desire-and-feeling be in permanently balanced union, so that it would be perfectly related to the otherwise perfect Triune Self of which it was an integral part; and, so that it could be one of those who guide the operations of nature in relation to the affairs of mankind. Desire-and-feeling in such permanently balanced union could not then in any way become attached to or affected by nature.

While the twain had dwelt in its body of Permanence it was conscious of its Thinker and of its Knower, and its thinking was in accord with their thinking. By effecting the union of its desire-and-feeling the twain would be a qualified officer of nature for the perpetuation of law and justice in the physical and form worlds. Desire-and-feeling did not then see and hear and taste and smell after the manner of human beings. These were the instrumental functions of nature units, as senses. Desire was conscious power; it functioned as I am, I will, I do, I have; its functions were to change itself, and to empower nature units to action and to progress. Feeling was conscious beauty, and it functioned as perceptiveness, conceptiveness, formativeness, and projectiveness. Desire-and-feeling were conscious of the objects and doings of nature by means of the senses, and they were to deal with objects and events according to the dictates of law and justice. To be competent to act in harmony with law and in compliance with justice it was necessary that desire-and-feeling be immune from the allurements or temptations of the senses and to be unattached to the objects of nature.

While desire-and-feeling had been in direct relation with the law and justice of rightness and reason they could not do wrong or act unjustly. The rightness of law and the justice of reason were in perfect harmony, in union. They needed no perfecting, they were perfect. Under their direction desire-and-feeling would think in accord with their thinking. Desire-and-feeling could not in this way again be of themselves immune to the things of the senses. To be immune it was necessary that desire-and-feeling be tried, and of their own free will proven immune, in the balances of nature; that is, in a man body and a woman body. The balancing must be done with separate bodies. Through the perfect body the twain had observed the perfected Triune Selves working with the nature beings in the light world and life world and form world with relation to human beings in the physical world. But the twain had merely observed. It had taken no part in such work because it was not yet a duly qualified and constituted officer of law and justice. It had observed the coursings of the nature units in their comings and goings and it had observed the administration of justice to the desire-and-feeling in human beings in servitude to sensation. It was conscious that the attachment of the Doers to the things of the senses and their ignorance about themselves are the causes of the slavery of human beings. The twain merely observing, did not try to think and it did not try to judge. But it was with rightness and reason and it was informed by them concerning nature, and about the causes and their results concerning human beings and human destiny. The Doer being thus advised was left free to decide what it willed not to do and what it willed to do. The Doer willed, that is to say, it desired. Desire willed to see feeling in a form apart from the body in which it was.

In the course of events, the perfect body of the Doer was changed until it had separated into a male body and a female body. It had been made invulnerable to all forces and powers, except to the power of the Doer. By thinking, desire-and-feeling could and did change the units of their bodies into active-passive and passive-active, but they could not destroy the units.

According to the plan and purpose of the test, this was as far as the Doer should have gone in its change of the units of the perfect body. To go further would defeat the purpose in the changing of the one body in which the units were in perfect balance, into the male and the female bodies. These two bodies were figuratively, so to say, the bodies as balances, by which inseparable desire-and-feeling were to be adjusted to each other until they were balanced. The standards of balancing were reason and rightness. Desire-and-feeling were to do the balancing. Desire was to be in accord with reason by thinking and desiring itself into accord. Feeling was to be in agreement with rightness by thinking and feeling itself into agreement with rightness. When desire-and-feeling, the Doer, had by their thinking with reason-and-rightness, come into perfect relation with the Thinker of the Triune Self, they would by so doing be at once in right relation with each other, in union, and permanently balanced. The two bodies as scales, were to be the means of effecting such a balance and permanent union. The union was not to be of the two bodies as one, because they were the scales and should remain two until desire-and-feeling had each desired and felt in balance with reason-and-rightness. Thus in balance, they would be balanced in complete union. Then it would have been impossible for feeling-and-desire to be deluded into believing they were two bodies because in reality they were one and their thinking with rightness-and-reason had made them conscious as one, the Doer. As the one body had been divided as two, so the two were to be again united as one. And the two, again one, could nevermore separate, because the Doer in the then immortal body would be one, and conscious as one with the Thinker and with the Knower as the Triune Self. Thus the Doer would be the agent of the Triune Self and would be one of the administrators of destiny for nature and for mankind.

That would have been according to plan and purpose and would have been the result if desire-and-feeling had trained their own desire-mind and feeling-mind to think according to rightness and reason. On the contrary, they were led by the senses to think with the body-mind. The body-mind was to be used by the Doer in thinking for nature, but not until after desire-and-feeling had first learned to control and use their own minds. As the Doer, they had observed other Doers. The Thinker had made plain that they should control their own desire-mind and feeling-mind by thinking for union with each other, and that after their union they were to think with the body-mind for nature. The Doer had observed that the condition of the Doers in human bodies was the result of their thinking with the body-mind, and it had been warned that such would be the destiny it would make for itself if it should do likewise.

The thinking of desire would have led it to the knowledge of itself as desire, and the thinking of feeling would have led it to the knowledge of itself as feeling. Such thinking would have balanced and also would have enabled them, as the Doer, to think with the body-mind without identifying itself with the senses and as the body. Instead, by their thinking with the body-mind they hypnotized themselves by thinking of themselves as their bodies, and thereby desire-and-feeling identified themselves with and as the sensations in those bodies. This condition could not have been brought about in any other way than by thinking with the body-mind for the body. Thus the Doer brought about the division and separation of the once perfect body into two imperfect bodies. The body in which desire was, retained the form of the rear spinal column unbroken, though the structures of the lower part grew together, and the lower now called the terminal filament—and the body lost the strength it once had had. The body in which feeling was, retained only a remnant of its broken front column. The sternum is the remnant, with bare cartilaginous vestiges of the once articulated front column. The loss of one of the two columns disorganized and weakened the structure and deformed both bodies. Then each of the two bodies had a rear spinal column but not a front spinal column. Both bodies were further deformed and limited in their functions by the transformation of the front column and cord into the digestive system with its nerve structures, which included the vagus nerve of the voluntary nervous system. The front spinal cord was the conductor of eternal life and youth which the twain gave to the body while the body was one.

The two-columned body did not need for its maintenance the food which the human now consumes, because that body was self-perpetuating through the breath and did not die. It was a body composed of units in stages of progression. Death had no power over the units because they were balanced, poised, immune from disease, decay and death. The units were complete, the body was complete, the body of units was a body of Permanence. The only power which could either interrupt or continue the progress of the units was the power of desire-and-feeling, the Doer. That is to say, if the twain so willed, by thinking it would be united in inseparable union, unaffected by the senses—it would be free. So thinking and acting the Doer would keep the units of its body in their order of progression. But the Doer in the man or woman body of today did not take that course of thinking and acting. It let its thinking be controlled by the senses of the man and woman bodies into which were divided the units of its permanent body. And by thinking of itself as two, the balanced units of its permanent body were thrown out of balance. The units were then subject to change, and the bodies required food for the maintenance of the changes until they were interrupted by death.

The unbalanced units of the body act as active-passive in a man body and as passive-active in a woman body. To so act, the front spinal column and its cord, which conducted the Light from the twain down the front cord and up the rear spinal cord back to the head, and which gave life to the perfect body, were transformed into the alimentary canal and the involuntary nervous system, joined by the vagus nerve. Now, food holding Light and life must pass through this canal so that the blood may extract from the food the materials needed for the upkeep of the body. Thus, instead of having its Light from desire-and-feeling, the body now depends for its life on food from nature which must pass through the alimentary canal, this being a part of the reconstructed spinal cord of the former front column.

Because of its wrong thinking the twain destined the compositor units to leave the transient units of its body to disperse; and after a while to recompose other transient units into another living body; that is, to live and to die, to live again and again to die, each life followed by death and each death followed by another life; and it destined itself to re-exist in each new life, in a man body or in a woman body. And because the body had been made subject to death through sexual union, so also it must now be restored to life through sexual union in order that, as desire or as feeling, it might re-exist.

The Doer cannot cease to be, it is immortal, but it is not free; it is responsible for the units of its once perfect body—they cannot cease to be. The Doer will inevitably redeem itself from nature and will have union of its desire-and-feeling; it will balance and re-establish the compositor units as the perfect and permanent body for the uninterrupted progression of nature, which they are.

Since its first existence and after the death and dissolution of that body, the inseparable twain has periodically re-existed. In each re-existence desire-and-feeling are together. The twain does not re-exist in a man body and in a woman body at the same time. Desire-and-feeling, always together, re-exist in one man body or in one woman body. In the natural man body there is the twain, but desire dominates feeling and feeling is subordinate to desire; in the normal woman body feeling prevails over desire and desire is in abeyance to feeling. The periodical re-existences continue, but they cannot always continue. Soon or late every Doer must do its duty and work out its destiny. It will from inevitable necessity awake from and take itself out of its hypnosis and will free itself from bondage to nature. It will in the future do what it should have done in the past. There will be a time when the inseparable twain will be conscious that it is in dream, and will discover itself as not the body in which it dreams. Then by its efforts to think of itself as itself, it will distinguish itself to be different and distinct from the body in which it is. The Doer will, by thinking, first isolate its feeling and later isolate its desire. Then it will bring these into conscious and inseparable union. They will be in everlasting love. Then, not before, will they really know love. The Doer will then put itself into conscious relation with the Thinker and Knower of the immortal and self-knowing Triune Self. As the Doer of the Triune Self it will be in right relation with rightness-and-reason, as the Thinker; and with identity-and-knowledge, as the Knower of the Triune Self. Then it will be one among the intelligent Triune Selves who guard and guide the destinies which the sleeping Doers in human bodies make for themselves, while these continue to sleep on and to dream over and over again the lives of human beings, through life and through death, and from death again to life.

Such is the history and the destiny of every immortal twain in a human body which, thinking as desire, makes the human male a man; and which, thinking as feeling, makes the human female a woman.