THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER VIII

NOETIC DESTINY

Section 3

The Light of the Intelligence. The Light in the knower of the Triune Self; in the thinker; in the doer. The Light that has gone into nature.

The Triune Self receives Light from the Intelligence to which it is related; that Light comes from the light faculty of the Intelligence into the noetic atmosphere of the Triune Self. The Light is not a part of the Triune Self and never becomes a part of it. It is loaned to the Triune Self so that by the use of it the Triune Self may become an Intelligence.

The Light is a Conscious Light; it is conscious that it is Light, and is conscious as Light. The Light, that which is with the Intelligence and that which is loaned to the Triune Self, is one. The Light is indivisible, though it appears to be divided. If the doer sends it into nature the Light is still one, no matter into how many different beings and things it has gone, or where it is, or in how weak a being it is, or how much it is obscured by the matter of nature. The Light of an Intelligence is the same Light irrespective of the forms in which it is. It seems to be confined in them, but it really is not.

The reality in the Triune Self above all else, except Consciousness, is the Light. The Light lets things be seen as they are, shows what should be done by the beings in whom it is, leads them to be conscious in further degrees and shows them the power to change, without itself being changed. It bears, as long as it is with the doer, the evidence of the uses to which it has been put by the doer. The fact that the Light is there causes these various processes to go on. The Light does not act, but it keeps beings in action by stimulating the active principle in them. It does not act nor does it suffer nor does it react. Its presence is the cause of all things spoken of as light. Starlight, sunlight, moonlight and earthlight are various functionings of matter made active by the Light of the Intelligences sent by the doers of their Triune Selves into nature. Human beings do not know the Light as such.

The doer is in the sphere of its Intelligence and receives a certain amount of Light from it. This is the amount the doer should have in order to acquire its education through its human beings. The amount is at times increased or decreased, depending on the thinking of the doers of the human beings, and is the outstanding feature of their noetic destiny. The Light so loaned may be sent by the doer into nature and become attached to nature units to which the doer by its thinking ties the Light.

In nature the Light is attached to units, that is, the Light is bound up and blended with them and so remains until the doer draws it back. The Light allows nature to unfold in every field and it evokes the latent sides and forces in the units. The presence of the Light makes the latent energy of nature active. In nature the Light sent out through doers is the intelligence often called God, who is supposed to have created the world and to carry it on. The doer is responsible for the Light it has sent into nature and must redeem it. Redeemed Light goes out again and again until it becomes unattachable to nature. Then it remains in the noetic atmosphere, is of the noetic world and is beyond and free from noetic destiny.

The Light is clear in all of the noetic atmosphere that does not penetrate the mental and psychic atmospheres of the human. The Light is taken into the noetic atmosphere by the noetic breath, and makes the atmosphere conscious in the degree of I-ness-and-selfness. The matter of the noetic atmosphere has the characteristic that it tends to oneness. This matter is conscious in various phases of I-ness-and-selfness and is potentially that out of which will be developed the light faculty and the I-am faculty, when the Triune Self becomes an Intelligence. In the atmosphere flows the noetic breath which is the active side of a part of the atmosphere and connects the remaining part with the knower. The knower has two aspects, passively I-ness and actively selfness. From I-ness comes the identity of the Triune Self which in the human is manifest as the feeling that it is the same today as through all past years, notwithstanding the changes in the body. Selfness is knowledge. The knower of the Triune Self is conscious in the highest phases of the degree of I-ness-and-selfness; the breath and the matter of the atmosphere are conscious in lower phases.

In the noetic atmosphere there is neither place nor time. The matter is everywhere at once. The Light is throughout, in the atmosphere, in the breath, and in the knower. The Light quickens and brings out what is potentially in the atmosphere. That which is in the atmosphere has no direct or special bearing upon the noetic destiny of the human.

That which is noetic destiny of a human is Light which is in the part of the noetic that is in the mental atmosphere of the human, (Fig. V-B); also Light that is tied up in the physical body and Light in nature which will be called on by the human.

Though Light comes in the first instance from the Intelligence, some Light comes back into the noetic atmosphere from nature when it is reclaimed and some from the mental atmosphere when a thought is balanced and so the Light in it is freed, and some when knowledge of the conscious self in the body results from thinking without creating a thought. There is a circulation of part of the Light from the noetic into the mental atmosphere, thence by means of thought into nature and thence back from food and thought into the mental and thence into the noetic atmosphere.

Light is sent by the knower into the mental atmosphere with the noetic breath. I-ness sends Light to be used in thinking, reason checks the amount that is allowed to go. Selfness sends Light to rightness when conscience speaks, and to reason as an intuition. The Light that I-ness sends becomes diffused in the mental atmosphere. The Light that selfness sends remains clear and direct. The noetic breath conveys some of the Light to the mental atmosphere, which receives it through its mental breath.

When the Light is in the matter of the mental atmosphere of the human it is diffused, modified, dimmed, dulled. The Light itself is always the same and has lost none of its character, but it appears in the mental atmosphere as though it were in a fog. This is caused by the matter of the mental atmosphere. In the lower part of this atmosphere, which is the part the human uses to think with and in which the thoughts connected with his thinking circulate and whirl, the Light is most fogged and clouded.

Whereas the Light itself, being of Intelligence and being Truth, shows in the noetic atmosphere everything as the thing is, the Light in the mental atmosphere must be freed from obstacles and interference, and must be held steadily on the subject and brought to a focus, before the Light as Truth can show what the thing is. The Light in its clear state in the noetic atmosphere cannot thence be sent into physical nature. The Light in the mental atmosphere is in a state where it can be mixed with desire and so may be sent into physical nature in that portion of a thought which is exteriorized.

The presence of the Light diffused in the mental atmosphere stimulates the matter of the atmosphere and keeps the mental breath in circulation, and the Light circulates with it and allows reason to act through its thinking. The Light in rightness is not the light of the mental atmosphere, but is clear Light that is sent in flashes from the noetic atmosphere by selfness.

No Light is in the psychic atmosphere, but there is Light in those parts of the mental and noetic atmospheres which are in it. The matter of the atmosphere is conscious in the degree of feeling-and-desire. The matter is usually dark, heavy, gross and sluggish. The psychic atmosphere pulls on and weighs down the mental and, in a lesser degree, the noetic atmosphere of the human by those parts of them which pervade it. The Light therefore is dimmed in those parts. The noetic destiny is the absence of the Light from the psychic atmosphere, from feeling-and-desire and from the psychic breath.

The chief characteristic of the psychic atmosphere is a feeling for and the desiring and rushing after something it longs for, yet fears. That something is the Light of the Intelligence and contact with the thinker and the knower. The atmosphere is not conscious of the Light. It is never quiet, but when impressions from nature, elementals or desires of other doers enter through the avenues leading from the openings of the body, it is stirred into turmoil. It pulls and it pushes, it sucks in like a whirlpool and it tries to get into everything. It surges in these ways during eating, amusement, dancing, celebrations, sermons, funerals and all trading. The atmosphere is conscious of these its activities, but is not conscious of why it has them. It has them to get Light, the Light it once had, but which was withdrawn.

The psychic atmosphere is represented in the feeling and the desire of the doer. If feeling and desire could get the Light into the atmosphere the doer would not desire to change its present condition, it would continue to seek satisfaction from nature, it would have a greater intensity of satisfaction because of the Light, and it would not advance and so it would retard the progress of the doer. Because the doer has no Light it is in the dark, it cannot tell one thing from another, cannot form a judgment, but can only feel and desire. When things are pleasant it tries to hold them and get more of them; when they are unpleasant it tries to get away from them. Not having discrimination it does this over and over again.

The feeling or the desire is so evident in the human that it seems to be all there is. The doer occupies not only certain nerves of the voluntary nervous system, but also some which belong to the thinker and the knower. No noetic reactions may be felt, and mental reactions are felt but vaguely. If the thinker and the knower are noticed at all, they are interpreted as feeling and desire. On the other hand psychic conditions, mystic trance states and visions are supposed to be what is spoken of as “spiritual.” When a human suffers he usually seeks consolation and hope in religious promises, rather than an understanding of the facts. In the psychic atmosphere feeling and desire act without the Light.

Because feeling-and-desire came into being through Light and had their greatest satisfaction while Light was with them, and because they can reach completeness only when they are in the Light, they want Light. The place where they can get it is in the mental atmosphere in the heart and principally in the lungs. Feeling cannot get beyond the heart, but desire can, and feeling gets satisfaction from desire. When the psychic atmosphere and the doer become agitated, desire rushes towards the mental atmosphere in the lungs to get Light. It cannot get into the atmosphere until it has passed rightness in the heart. Then it is in the mental atmosphere in the lungs. Desire cannot get that Light until it compels its mind to think, to gather and to focus the Light on the impression; the Light bonds the desire with the impression. The thing which is being created by thinking is a thought and is a new being. In the thought are desire of the doer and Light of the Intelligence, with which desire could not come into contact in any other way than by this admixture by thinking.

The Light is not changed, though it is bound up in the combination until the thought is balanced. Desire pushes the thought, and the Light guides it toward the first exteriorization and toward every subsequent exteriorization. When a thought is exteriorized Light goes into nature, some of it is bound up in the thought and some is diffused in the body of the human. When Light thus goes into nature it is attached to units and is part of the Light which acts as the intelligence, order and law of nature.

Only a doer can contain or direct Light of an Intelligence; no physical body, object of nature or even matter of the light world can deal with the Light, in the same sense.

The Light that is in the noetic atmospheres of the doers also illumines the light world, which is on the nature-side, and there, though not mixing with the matter, keeps that matter illuminated and in constant action. It also shows what goes on in the light world and what has been done with any of its matter while that matter was in the lower worlds. But the light world of nature does not contain the Light. The Light is there because of the atmosphere of the Triune Selves.

The Light in the mental atmospheres of the doers pervades the life world. This Light is the diffused Light in the mental atmospheres and is not mixed with desire. Light mixed with desire does not function in this way; it does not get into the life world; when it is mixed with desire and so is bound up in a thought, it remains in that thought in the mental atmosphere. The Light in the life world stimulates there the active side of the units and so starts what appears later as life on the physical plane. The Light does not illumine the form world, because there is no Light in the psychic atmosphere.

The bright lights, pictures and colors seen by psychics are matter of the physical world, for psychics cannot see into the form world, as their psychic atmospheres do not carry Light. The form plane of the physical world is not illumined by Light of the Intelligence. Its matter is lit up only in exteriorization of thoughts, not from the Light in the light or life worlds.

The physical plane of the physical world is lit by starlight coming through human nerves, by sunlight coming through hearts and lungs, moonlight coming through kidneys and adrenals, and earthlight from the sex organs and digestive systems. Starlight is diffused between the stars but is focused by the sun. Starlight, if it could be seen directly, would be seen to penetrate and to bear the other three kinds and to be more powerful than any of them. Sunlight focuses starlight into a steady stream, as thinking focuses diffused Light. Moonlight adjusts the sunlight. Earthlight takes in or passes on or throws back the other three kinds of light. All four kinds of light work together in causing a tree, a flower or an apple to be compacted or to grow. Starlight, sunlight, moonlight and earthlight are not and do not possess light themselves; what is called their light is their property of showing their active side when this reflects Light of the Intelligence. In this sense the Light of the Intelligence, which is self-luminous and self-conscious in the noetic atmosphere, is hidden in the objects of nature which were wrought by the presence of the Light. The process is not physical and cannot be coordinated with conceptions of dimensions.