THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER IX

RE-EXISTENCE

Section 4

The “fall of man,” i.e. the doer. Changes in the body. Death. Re-existence in a male or a female body. The doers now on earth. Circulations of units through the bodies of humans.

The doer that did not take that inner path continued to think of the companion as other than itself. As the thinking went on, changes came about in the male body of the desire of the doer, and in the female body of the feeling of the doer. These changes made it possible for the bodies to consort. The desire of the doer was reflected in the feeling of the doer, and each attracted the other until their bodies consorted. Thereby the doer, as feeling-and-desire, took the outer path. Some doers who took the outer path are doers who today live in human bodies on the outer earth crust.

Above, the pineal and pituitary bodies were closed because the doer had opened procreative organs below. With the closing of these inner organs the eyes became blind to all but human physical things. Light went out through the sexual organ and was lost into nature. The then unused front- or nature-column of the perfect body, (Fig. VI-D), was broken and its lower part dwindled away, (Fig. VI-E). Organs, among them the thymus gland, atrophied. Nerves of the front-cord which had been used for work with nature were transferred to run along the spinal column and there formed the right and left main trunks of what is now the involuntary nervous system, with which are merged the branches of the right and left vagus nerve; other nerves were scattered about and became nerve centers and plexuses in the body cavities, and those from the lower part of the broken column became the labyrinth of the intestinal tract. The arms and legs which once could move in any direction became limited in their movements; many of the ribs melted away; one-half of the double flexible pelvis faded away, and what remained hardened; the pubic bone is all that is left of the lower front part. The vertebrae of the front-column disappeared, and the only signs as vestiges of them are in the sternum, (Fig. VI-E).

The fourfold body, which had been used for the maintenance of nature, now became dependent upon nature. The body, which had been the servant of the doer, became the master; most of the time was spent in working for and serving it.

The body which had been nourished by matter taken into it directly from the four elements through the four senses, needed to be nourished by food. The food and drink became heavy and coarse and were taken in through the mouth. Much was waste; only a small part was used to support the body. Food became and has remained the problem of life. What is now the digestive system with its large organs was once a system of nerves through which the transient units came to maintain the body. Some of them became the liver, gallbladder, pancreas, spleen and stomach when the front-column became the bowels. The present circulatory system with the kidneys and adrenals and the bladder became such from a system of fine structures when the present digestive system became gross and adapted to gross food. The respiratory system was then the thoracic brain; the present generative system exercised its creative function from the brain in the head.

The doer knew it had done wrong. It knew that it had sinned against itself, and it was afraid. It knew division in itself. The doer no longer had communion with the thinker and knower. The doer-in-the-body no longer knew itself as the desire or as the feeling, but sensed itself as the human being. The doer which had known no fear because it lived in the Light, now feared. It was obliged to leave the interior of the earth where it had been, and joined other doers which had taken the outer path, the path of death and birth. These doers were separated from their former places and lived together in communities.

After the death of the two bodies of the doer, when the doer re-existed it entered a male body or a female body and in that body it did not have the power to put forth its counterpart. It selected a mate, a doer in a male or a female body, according to the predominance of feeling or desire. The doer itself has no sex. It is neither male nor female. It possesses the characteristic nature of both. Desire is characteristic of a man; feeling is characteristic of a woman. If the doer expresses itself as a male, it shows the nature of a man and does the things that men do; the body is masculine. The female side is suppressed in the body of a man. Likewise in a female body the male side is suppressed.

Some communities lived proper lives and remained in the interior. Others deteriorated and were led on, towards the outer crust, by a search for food suitable to their conditions, until they came to the outside world, where were men and women, doers who had fallen long before into the stream of birth and death. At times the newcomers were superior, at other times inferior to the people on the crust. At times they started a new cycle of civilization, at other times they were barbarians who overran a portion of the earth. At times they wandered out in tribes through caves, at other times they were borne out by waters and the waters filled up the openings through which the tribes had come.

In isolated cases a doer came in its companion bodies to the outside world as a pair, who were not born in the interior earth. The bodies of the pair were different from those around. Their bodies were superior in form, not subject to disease or fatigue. There was a beauty, freshness and liveliness about them that was distinctive. Their hair was as different from that of the people as is human hair from hemp. The doer had a vague memory of the Light, its Intelligence, and of immortality, justice, and happiness, ideas it had been conscious of when with its thinker and knower. Sometimes it told the people about that world from which it came and used the sun as a symbol for the Light in which it had dwelt. Sometimes the people believed it came from the sun. So original solar dynasties may have been founded. The doer did not know it had created its companion by dividing itself, but the two came together into the world and they felt that they were brother and sister as well as husband and wife. The legends of marriage between a divine brother and sister, as of Isis and Osiris, and the corresponding human customs may have originated in the appearance of such a pair. These legends are as distorted as are those of Jesus and of Adam, but there is a fact of human experience underlying each of them.

Every doer now on earth has been re-existing as a human being ever since the time it fell and had to leave its companion bodies at their death. The vast majority of the doers came in and belong to this present Fourth Civilization which began millions of years ago on this earth. However, some doers have been re-existing since the Third and some even since the Second and the First Civilizations. These are old travelers who have had many ups and downs and have each cycled through wealth and poverty, prominence and obscurity, health and disease, honor and shame, culture and crudeness, in short lives and in long lives, and most have made little progress in untold millions of years.

Among the doers some earned their freedom and passed on. The majority keep on the treadmill of life and death, repeat their experiences and learn little or nothing, while they are issuing thoughts and weaving destiny.

The re-existing portions of some doers got into a condition where they lost so much Light that the Triune Self withdrew the Light from the embodied portion; and those doer portions were “lost,” that is, they are in darkness and their re-existences are suspended.

In some bodies that appear to be inhabited, there are no doers. Among them are some whose doers have withdrawn and will have no further embodiment during a long period. Such beings as these are unable to conceive of the doer and are opposed to the thought of it; they have a horror of death. If they show mental abilities these are due to working according to the patterns made on the breath-form before the withdrawal of the portion of the doer that was in the body, and that are prompted by nature; they are automatic and are carried on by the brain and voluntary nervous system.

During the immense periods which have passed in this Fourth Civilization, there have been many changes in the structure of the earth’s crust, in the surface distribution of land and water, in the inclination of the poles, in the climates in different parts, in the magnetic and electric currents in the earth, the water, the air and the starlight, in the relation and influence of the four elements and in the manifestation of forces and phenomena in them. These changes were produced as the exteriorizations of thoughts of streams of re-existing doers. Amidst these varying surroundings came many different types of minerals, plants and flowers with strange properties, and also came animals of varying types, all put into form by human thought.

There were changes in the colors and features of human bodies and a constant swinging of cycles from primitive rudeness to the refinement of culture. Amidst all these changes in outer nature, the governments, morals and religions gradually have changed too and have ever repeated themselves in cycles. All changes of the conditions under which the doers lived were the externalizations of their thoughts.

From the standpoint of man with his conception of length, breadth and thickness as three dimensions, the earth, if it could be seen, would appear as a sponge-like spherical crust, between three outer spherical layers and three inner spherical layers. The earth crust has an outer and an inner surface. The distance between these varies from about two hundred to eight hundred miles. The outside is the world of men and is the only world men know of.

Between the outer and the inner skin of this solid layer are large and small subterranean chambers in which there are fires, airs, oceans, lakes and rivers, which often differ in their qualities and colors from the things seen on the outer crust. Minerals, plants and animals are different in their forms and habits from those known to human beings. Forces are operative there which are dormant on the outer crust. Gravity and other forces are changed from what they are as known to man. Many peoples in various degrees of development exist between the outer and the inner skin of this layer. They differ as to color, size, features and weight. To some of them the crust is as transparent as the air is to men. To others it is opaque, but they have a diffused earthlight by which they see. To these many races, in the different strata of the crust, their environment is a world. The beings inside and beyond the crust are of the nature-side or of the intelligent-side. Each set has its own world in which the constituents, requirements and possibilities are different. Beyond the outer and the inner skin conditions are such as to be incomprehensible at present.

On either side of this solid spherical layer is a fluid layer, which is not water, but is the element of water as it appears through and is affected by the earth element. The two layers of water, one on each side of the solid layer, are in reality one mass which moves through and in the solid layer. On either side of this fluid layer is a layer of air. These air layers, though they would appear as one on the inside and as one on the outside, are in reality one mass, which moves in and through the mass of water and the rind of the solid earth. On either side of the airy layer is a layer of fire, and the outer and inner layers of fire are really one mass. What would appear and is conceived of as the central portion of fire inside is one with the vast layer of fire matter outside. The spherical mass of fire is and moves in and through the air, the water and the earth.

The earth which would thus appear to be made up of seven layers is made up of four globes, the earthy globe being only a spongy rind and not solid throughout. These are the four states of matter on the physical plane, (Fig. I-D). The fire extends from the center to the outermost portion through the earthy rind and through the fluid and the airy masses. The earthy shell is thus supported and maintained by the other three states of matter, and the four move through it as a fourfold stream of breath.

The apparent contradiction that the three outer layers are one with the three inner layers is due to people being acquainted only with one dimension out of four. Their sight reaches only surfaces, they know only surfaces, they live on surfaces, their thoughts are about surfaces. The surface dimension is on-ness. If people became conscious of the other dimensions, the earth would not look as it does now. It would not even look as if in layers, but would be a mass of fire, containing, pervading and supporting a smaller mass of air, containing, pervading and supporting in its turn a lesser mass of water, containing, pervading and supporting the hollow earth crust. But to one who saw four dimensions this description would be insufficient. There would be no globe or layers or masses, nor would the solid layer on which is the outside crust be a ball.

The solid layer extends as an atmosphere of diffused particles of matter beyond its compacted state, into the fluid layer. This atmosphere of solid particles extends to the moon. The moon is a body in the zone of water and this zone extends to the sun. The sun is a body and center in the airy layer which extends to the stars. These are bodies in the zone of fire. The planets are bodies in the zones of water and air. What is called the space through which the earth moves around the sun is matter more closely compacted than the earth, through which the earth moves like a fish through water. In the region of the stars is little sunlight and less moonlight and earthlight. In the sun is starlight and sunlight but little moonlight and less earthlight, and in the solar spaces, that is, in the area around the sun, there is hardly any moonlight or earthlight, (Fig. I-E).

There is a constant circulation of the masses of units of the four states of matter. They circulate in a stream which is fourfold when it passes through the earth crust. Each of the parts comes from its own layer. The course of the stream is from the stars through the sun, through the moon, through the earth to the corresponding layers and back again.

The sun is the general center and focus of the fourfold stream. Starlight, radiant matter, is everywhere; but it has centers which are the stars, and a stream of it enters the solar focus. The sun centers also its own light, airy matter, and moonlight, fluid matter, and earthlight, solid matter. As the stars attract and are centers for starlight, so the sun acts for sunlight and the moon for moonlight and the earth crust for earthlight.

There are thus four lesser currents which make up the main or fourfold current that goes through the sun to the earth. The sun sucks in starlight and sunlight directly. It does not in the same manner take in moonlight and earthlight. The moon is a focus and center for the layer of moonlight and sends that into the stream of starlight and sunlight that is pumped from the sun to the earth. The moon also sucks in earthlight and pours that with its own light into the sunlight that goes to the earth.

Thus is made up the fourfold stream that goes through everything on the outer surface of the earth. On the earth it circulates as a fourfold stream, it goes back to the moon which cleanses, modifies and regulates the earthlight and the moonlight, which then go with the purified sunlight and starlight to the solar focus. There the moonlight and the earthlight are vivified, and the sunlight and the starlight stream on to their own layers. This fourfold stream of radiant, airy, fluid and solid units is the fourfold physical breath that comes and goes through all things on the earth crust and builds, preserves and destroys them. This breath is kept in circulation by the fourfold physical breath of human beings, which is the active side of their breath-forms.

It is the breath of human beings that keeps the starlight active among the most distant stars, that breathes the sunlight through the sun, that drives the moonlight through the moon and that causes the fourfold breath stream to flow into and out of the sun, the moon and the earth. This fourfold stream circulates outside as the arterial and venous blood does inside the human body, and envelops and penetrates all things on the earth crust. It leaves behind some units, those that are caught, and carries away others, those that are no longer held. The units that are held so as to be the mass of a thing, that which is seen, are coming and going. This mass appears to be permanent, but it is not.

The physical bodies of human beings are the centers around which all turns and through which all circulates. Without human physical bodies, what is known to human beings as nature would cease to act. There would be no phenomena, no colors, no sounds, no forces, no beings, no things celestial or terrestrial. Physical matter would be at a standstill. The physical universe is an expression, projection and extension of the human body. The solid earth crust is the sex, the moon is the kidneys and its atmosphere the adrenals, the sun is the heart and its atmosphere the lungs, the planets are other organs and the stars are the brain and nervous systems of the universe on the fourfold physical plane of the physical world.

The fourfold breath goes through all human bodies as the generative or fire breath, the respiratory or air breath, the circulatory or water breath and the digestive or earth breath, which ebb and flow in their respective systems, the upper three breaths pervading the earth breath. The fire breath or starlight comes along the nerves of the eye and generative system; the air breath or sunlight along the nerves of the ear and respiratory system; the water breath or moonlight along the nerves of the tongue and circulatory system, and the earth breath or earthlight along the nerves of the nose and digestive system. The fire breath goes out along the nerves of the testicles and prostate or of the ovaries and womb; the air breath along the nerves of the heart and lungs; the water breath along the nerves of the adrenals, kidneys and bladder, and the earth breath along the nerves of the stomach, intestines and anus. At the same time these breaths come in and go out through the pores of the skin. The breaths swing in from above while they swing out from below, and swing in below when they go out above. In the body the heart is the center for the air breath which is the carrier and mixer of all the breaths, and there is another center in the physical atmosphere outside the body. The mixing and distributing of the four breaths is done chiefly by the heart, corresponding to the sun, and secondarily by the kidneys, corresponding to the moon. The breath that is noticed in breathing is the air breath only; the other three breaths which it carries are not noticed.

The breath of human beings comes and goes many times in a minute. It causes the fourfold breath of the earth crust to come and go every few hours, and the water breath of the moon to come and go as ebb and flow twice a day, and the solar breath to come and go twice a year. The speed of the radiant, airy, fluid and solid units in the solar breath is immeasurably greater than that in the human breath. Nevertheless, the human organs are so geared with the celestial bodies that there is a constant reaction between them.

The fourfold physical breath flows from conception by means of the mother’s breath until birth, and then by independent breathing until death. The fourfold current builds up the fourfold body, maintains it, and destroys it when, individual breathing having ceased, the outside breath carries the fleeting units into their elements. When there is a conception for the new body the swing of the physical breath, that was suspended, begins again where it left off. So the whole row of lives of the human beings of a doer is a unity because of the continuity which is provided by the aia, when it revivifies the form for the new breath-form to take up and carry on the fourfold breath of the body.