THINKING AND DESTINY
Harold W. Percival
CHAPTER IX
RE-EXISTENCE
Section 18
Summary of preceding chapters. Consciousness is the One Reality. Man as the center of the world of time. Circulations of the units. Permanent institutions. Records of thoughts are made in points. The destiny of human beings is written in the starry spaces. Balancing a thought. Cycles of thinking. Glamour in which things are seen. Sensations are elementals. Why nature seeks the doer. Illusions. The essential things in life.
To review some preceding statements: Consciousness is the ultimate Reality; compared with it, all else is illusion, (Fig. VII-A). Therefore: Unmoving Motion, which causes homogeneous Substance to put forth into manifestation as the manifested, is an illusion. Substance is space, no thing, is nothingness, is illusion. From out of the quiescence of Substance comes the manifested. This is unqualified spirit or force, activity, made up of indestructible units, and is the sphere of fire, (Fig. I-A). It is One, and it is the source of all things manifested as nature. This sphere is the ultimate reality which human beings can conceive of as nature. Yet, it is an illusion—as compared with Consciousness.
In the sphere of fire the manifestation continues as activity of the indivisible units until an unexpressed aspect of certain ones of them begins to express passivity. So duality begins. The units so expressing are of a dual nature, one part of each unit being activity, spirit, force, and the other passivity. This is the sphere of air. There activity dominates passivity until among the mass are units in which passivity begins to dominate activity. This is the sphere of water. Among these units are some where passivity only is manifested and the active side is at rest. This is the sphere of earth, inertia. These four spheres are illusions as compared to Consciousness, the ultimate Reality. The spheres are permanent institutions for the passage of the units according to the Eternal Order of Progression, (Fig. II-G, H).
In the manifested side of the sphere of earth, certain of the units in the inertia become active as Light; the passive side of the units is not expressed. They are somewhat passive as compared with the activity of the fire sphere, yet have a potential double aspect. They make the light world, which is a colorless sphere of shadowless light. In some of the units the active side is expressed and they make the life world. In some of these the passive side dominates the active side; these units are the form world; and the physical world is made of units where the active side has disappeared into the passive. In the unmanifested part of the physical world the units so remain. In the manifested part of the physical world they repeat in a measure the previous progress downward and make the light, the life, the form and the physical planes. Further on they make on the physical plane four states and their substates and compose the realms of visible and tangible nature. Yet all is an illusion, as compared with Consciousness, (Fig. I-B, C, D, E).
It is because of the presence of Consciousness that Motion acts on Substance and that Substance manifests gradually as the units of nature in the four spheres and worlds. Because of the presence of Consciousness the units progress through subsequent stages in nature.
In the Universe are four kinds of units, broadly divided into nature units, aia units, Triune Self units and Intelligence units.
Nature units are merely conscious. They are conscious as the particular function which they perform. They never cease to be conscious; even when they are inactive they perform their function of being inactivity. Some do not perform more than one function at a time. As they give up one they take up another. They never go backward to function in a state which they have passed. On the physical plane some of them, those in the four subdivisions of the solid state of matter, make up the objects of animate and inanimate nature. These objects are the grossest of the illusions. They are the universe.
Aia units are not conscious as the functions which they are made to perform by the thinking and the thoughts of their doers, but they bear the record of all the impressions made on them. They do not function unless they are impelled to by doers. They are out of reach of nature. Nature cannot touch and cannot compel the aia to function without the sanction of the doer, in thinking. The breath-form is a unit, a nature unit. The form of the breath-form is the form of the body, and the breath is the life of the breath-form and builder of the body. In these two aspects the breath-form is the builder of each physical body in all re-existences of the twelve portions of the doer.
Triune Self units are conscious as feeling-and-desire, rightness-and-reason, I-ness-and-selfness; nevertheless the Triune Self is One. As a unit, the Triune Self is conscious, not only of and as its function, but that it is conscious and knows that it is conscious of its Oneness, as a Triune Self.
An Intelligence unit is the last stage in which a unit is conscious as a unit. Intelligence units are conscious as their seven faculties and of themselves as Intelligences, as the Oneness of the seven. They are conscious as their Light which they lend to their Triune Selves, and which from the doers goes into nature, causes the units of the light world to appear as light and is the intelligence and order in nature and which is that of which some people speak as God. They are conscious in nature as that Light wherever it is, in rocks, plants, animals, human bodies and the gods of nature or of religions. Intelligences are conscious that they order universal nature; and, with complete Triune Selves, adjust the affairs of human beings according to the law of thought. These are the four classes of units.
By the presence of Consciousness an Intelligence of the highest degree may, when its Triune Self has become an Intelligence, leave the manifested and become Conscious Sameness. An Intelligence does not lose its individual intelligence when it becomes Conscious Sameness, but it ceases to act as only an Intelligence by becoming something beyond it. Sameness is unmanifested and is all that Substance was, but it is all-conscious as Sameness, whereas Substance was unconscious Substance. Conscious Sameness is conscious of being the same in and as every unit in the manifested. It is conscious as being in them and as their being in it. Yet it is conscious that it is not a being. An Intelligence is conscious of itself as a separate unit, and carries this to the highest degree of being one individual, though it is also conscious of all other Intelligences as units under the Supreme Intelligence which rules the four spheres. Sameness is conscious of itself as being one in the same degree as Intelligence was, but it is further conscious of being through all units of whatever kind and of their being in it. To Conscious Sameness the state of being conscious as Intelligence, even as the highest Intelligence, is an illusion.
Conscious Sameness becomes Pure Intelligence by the presence of Consciousness. An Intelligence is a name here used to designate the highest order of units, which are Intelligences, but Pure Intelligence does not designate any unit. To Pure Intelligence, Conscious Sameness is an illusion. Pure Intelligence is conscious in a higher degree than anything in the unmanifested that is not Consciousness itself. It is not conscious as being in all things and all things being in it. It is unaffected by anything except by the presence of Consciousness. To it even Conscious Sameness is an illusion, and to it Consciousness is the One Reality. Pure Intelligence is not power, but it enables all Triune Selves and Intelligences to have power according to their capacity to receive and to use it. It enables them to do this irrespective of the purpose for which they use the power. It decides one thing: to become Consciousness; then it appears to itself as an illusion.
The manifested Universe and its four spheres and all that is in them on the nature-side and on the intelligent-side are conscious units because of the presence of Consciousness. There are no planes, states, phases or degrees of Consciousness. Consciousness does not change. Units change according to the states in which they are conscious. Consciousness does nothing, causes nothing directly or indirectly, but by its presence all beings are enabled to be conscious and to change in the degrees in which they are conscious. Its presence in them makes them conscious of or as what they are. Consciousness cannot be apprehended by thinking of it as or comparing it with any matter, force, thing or being, or by thinking of it as performing any function. It is unmoved and unmoving, unattached and unattachable.
Consciousness is the One Reality, all else is in some degree illusion. Units below the Triune Self cannot distinguish between reality and illusion. The question of reality and illusion has no meaning to animals or to elementals. To them, things are. But a human can think, and therefore can distinguish what is illusion from what is reality—to it. Things are seen as realities on the plane on which one is. When one becomes conscious on a higher plane, the things on that plane are realities, and the realities of the plane on which that one was before become illusions.
A human is conscious of his four senses, of the things of the senses and of outside nature. He is conscious of feelings and desires, conscious of himself as a personality. He is not conscious of himself as the embodied doer portion. But he can become conscious as the doer, which he is, and of the thinker and the knower of his Triune Self. He can become conscious of anything he wants to think about. He can do this by feeling and desiring and by thinking. He can become conscious of anything in the world of change through the doer portion in his body. He has in him connections with everything. As all nature of the human world circulates through him, he can become conscious of that part which he feels and of which he thinks. He can become conscious of himself and as the doer, the psychic part of his Triune Self, by feeling and thinking of and as feeling-and-desire. He can become conscious of the thinker, the mental part, by feeling and thinking of rightness-and-reason. He can become conscious of the knower, the noetic part, by feeling and thinking of I-ness-and-selfness. All depends on what he desires to feel and to think about.
He may become conscious of any of these things, but there is that, by the becoming conscious of which, he will be enabled to reach all things through his thinking, because that is in and through all things and enables all things to function in whatever capacity: Consciousness. While still a human and far from the end of his journey, it is possible for one to become conscious of Consciousness by feeling and desiring and thinking of it.
A human does not last long. He appears and disappears. But the things which are his make-up continue after the combination has ceased to be visible. Each part, even to the least unit, has a continuity because of the presence of Consciousness. The unit changes, but it is never destroyed, because it is indivisible. It lasts as a unit until it has ceased to be an Intelligence and has become Conscious Sameness.
There is the same number of breath-form units as there are aia units and Triune Self units. The number of Intelligence units is greater, and the number of nature units is vastly greater. There is a steady slow progression all along the line which is no faster than the progress of the Triune Self in its course to become an Intelligence.
Thus nature units pass through human bodies and bring about the phenomena which give experiences to human beings. Units of the fire are present with units in the radiant state and enable the sense of sight to see, wood to burn, changes to occur. The presence of units of the air with units in the airy state enables the sense of hearing to hear, beings to fly and matter to take life. Water units with units in the fluid state enable the sense to taste, and matter to combine as a fluid, and to take form. Earth units with units in the solid state enable the sense to smell and to contact, and matter to concrete and to be tangible structure, and the breath-form unit to coordinate the functions of the body.
Nature units from the highest to the lowest never cease to function. If they are not active they function as the passive. There is no death for them. They cannot go back to where they came from.
Everything that is visible and tangible changes, but units remain the same units. They circulate from combination to combination, from phenomenon to phenomenon, as transient units. The structures of outside nature partake of the model of the human body and are built after it and specialize it in the various forms of animals and plants, all objectifying human thoughts.
The units which compose the four spheres and the four worlds are moving on, graduating, and becoming conscious in higher degrees, as their functions. But the spheres and worlds are permanent. They are permanent institutions, having a manifested side which remains always manifested. There are no periodic appearances of the spheres or the worlds.
The cyclic appearances and disappearances, called in Eastern literature manvantaras and pralayas, occur only in the four states of matter on the outer earth crust of the human world of change, (Fig. II-G). The objects there are made of the four kinds of compositors, here called causal, portal, form and structure units. They come from human bodies and are the builders of outside nature. These compositors compose transient fire, air, water and earth units which, if sufficiently massed together, make up the objects perceived by the senses. All these objects exist for a time only. The stars, the sun and the planets, the moon, and the land and water on the earth crust, are subject to this law of creation and dissolution or appearance and disappearance, as is a human body. The law is the law of thought. The fourfold earth remains, but the forms on the outer earth crust are according to the physical body of man, and that is determined by his thinking and his thoughts. The manvantaras and pralayas come and go only as long as the human body appears and dies. They are summations of the totality of human beings and exteriorizations of the thoughts of man. The visible world in which things appear and disappear, in which time signifies growth, decay and death, is surrounded and pervaded by permanence, (Fig. V-B, a). The nothingness, out of which visible things come and into which they go, means that the temporary combinations which made them visible, are dissolved for a time. The units that made them up and became visible because they were held as a mass in a form continue, though they are invisible as individual units, and can therefore not be traced into new combinations. The fact of a continuity as distinct from visibility escapes observation.
The run of human beings are acquainted with only a small part of the solid earth, the outer side of the earth crust and with those features there which they perceive through their four senses. They even perceive surfaces of units of the fourfold solid state only when these units are massed closely enough. If they are not so concreted there is nothing that can be seen, heard, tasted, smelled or contacted.
The four states of matter on the physical plane are arranged as follows, (Fig. I-E): Within a globe of radiant matter, there is the radiant-solid substate, which has in it the stars; within that globe is a globe of airy matter, which has in it the sun in the airy-solid state, and some planets; within the airy globe is a globe of fluid matter which has in it the moon in the fluid-solid state; and within the fluid globe is a globe of solid matter, which has in it the solid earth crust in the solid-solid state. The units of the solid state are penetrated by and are borne up by the units of the fluid state; the units of the fluid state are supported by those of the airy state and these by the units of the radiant state and these by units in the solid state of matter on the form plane. These bodies are not permanent; they will disappear when thinking and thoughts make them no longer necessary. The upheavals and destructions of large portions of the outer earth crust are the manvantaric days and nights mentioned in Eastern tradition.
Because of the limitations of on-ness, human beings cannot perceive the earthy, fluid, airy and fiery globes of the states of physical matter, or these globes as being on the inside as well as on the outside of the crust, or that inside and outside of the crust each globe is one and the same; nor can they perceive the functioning of the celestial bodies in these globes.
The run of human beings do not understand the makeup of their own bodies, or how they are a part of nature, the impersoned part as distinct from outside nature, or how the units in their bodies pass from there into outside nature and from there back into human bodies, or how some of the units are identified as belonging to certain human bodies. They know not how the compositor units go after death into the kingdoms of nature and compose transient units into plants and animals and are back again at the proper time to set up a human body, or how these compositor units build up the human body with transient units, or how the compositors so maintain, tear down and reconstruct the body during life. They do not know that a human body is a constantly flowing stream of transient units, visible only while passing through the compositors; or how a human body extends into rocks, winds, trees, animals, the moon, the sun and the stars. They do not know that the units that pass through the kidneys and adrenals go through the moon, and those that pass through the heart and lungs go through the sun, and those that pass through the nerves go through the stars and those that pass through the sexual organs go into the earth crust and the things thereon; nor do they know what the functions of the planets are in relation to the sun, the moon and the earth.
They do not comprehend how the transient units while passing through the body get from the breath-form an imprint which is a symbolic, a magic line; how these units while still in the body make a record in the starry spaces by making a symbolic figure, composed of the marks on them; how they later come back from distant and various objects to be among those units that produce the acts, objects and events to a human which are the projection of the symbolic figure as which the prior act, object and event were preserved.
While the transient units are in the body and so partake of an act, an object or an event they are at the same time making in the starry limits the symbolic figure by transmitting from the breath-form to the starry limits the marks made on them; they can so transmit because other units are not obstructions to them and do not interfere with the transmission. The inability of human beings to conceive how this is done is due to their being limited to the conceptions of on-ness and distance. But distance exists only for the transient units in the solid state, it does not exist in the same way for those in the fluid, airy and radiant states. While the solid units are in the body and in the physical atmosphere, they transmit through the fluid, airy and radiant units in them the symbolic marks which they receive, and these units at once transfer these marks to a point in the starry spaces, where at once a corresponding, not identical, act, object or event is represented.
If this were seen it would not appear as an act, an object or an event, but as a symbolic figure, made up of the marks which were impressed by the breath-form on the units in it at the time of the occurrence.
From this symbol in a point is made an obligatory recomposition and projection into a physical act, object or event. This recomposition is made naturally, easily, unfailingly, because of the automatic, harmonious action of the units which compose the four states of matter on the physical plane, and because behind the physical world are the other worlds which in the light world are completed as one whole.
If the intent or aim with which an act is done is in line with the original, no record is made in the physical world; but if the intent does not so coincide, a record of it is made in the physical world, is preserved in symbols at the limits of the physical plane, and a recomposition of that record into a physical act, object or event is compelled. The record shows at once what the act was and what is required to bring the aim with which the act was done into line with the whole. The recomposition is made by the symbolic record so that eventually the aim or thought will agree with the original. The cause and effect, which are one, become separated in manifestation. What is one in an upper world may thus become many physical acts and events. These are, however, connected in sequence by the original intent. Its veering away does not cause a disturbance in the light world, where there is wholeness and eternity, but it does cause disturbances in the physical world. For there its essence and its value are expressed in matter which wars within the limitations of time and place. This conflict, brought about by the intent, is regulated by means of its symbolic record, from which subsequent recompositions of all those acts are made which perpetuate the first one, until there is an adjustment.
The acts, objects and events which come to human beings as the return projected from the symbolic record, which is in a point in starry matter, may appear unlike those that were recorded. From the point may go out a projection that may spread over a large region, a country, a large part of the earth, and may affect many more people than took part in the original act. In the projection there is made an exchange of transient units, so that while the acts done are substantially the same, the persons who do them are not, and the persons who are affected are not the same ones as before. The same transient units take part, but their places are reversed. One who assaulted another will be injured in turn by some one. The transient units which were in him then, will now be in the other. The transient units that were in one when he acted with intent to defraud, steal, rob or corrupt will now be in another who causes him to be the victim. The compositor units of the former actor affected the transient units in him and now these compositor units are affected by the same transient units, which now are in the other person. The transient units which are the means by which the symbolic figure in the starry point is made are those that are marked by the breath-form of the actor.
Those units only are marked which take part in an act or an event which the doer intends or which is an exteriorization of a thought. If a routine thought, like that of brushing one’s hair or putting on one’s shoes, or a thought without attachment to results or its exteriorization, is balanced with the first exteriorization, the transient units are not marked by the breath-form and no record is transmitted by them.
A record on being made is drawn into a point. The point is a transient unit. From that point the former scene is again spread out at the proper time and in the new scene the same transient units are employed, which were marked by the symbol of the former act or event. If the reproduction is made during the same life, the point containing the symbol is breathed in by the person and that person is the source of the event which happens to him by the coming of the transient units. Not only is the lifetime of human beings filled with events which are the projections made from the symbolic figures of the record, but before a child is born its body in the womb is endowed with the records of former acts. These records are now points in breath units in brain and nerve cells, built in by the breath-form. At the conjunction of time, condition and place, from these points will spread out the scenes and events in which the physical body takes part. Time and distance as they exist for human beings, do not exist for these points. All of the above is the basis of astrology.
The destiny of human beings is thus written in points which are in the human beings themselves and, from the moment they become active, are in all the starry spaces. The whole physical universe with all its forces is thus behind destiny. No one who understands this can believe in the happening of anything by chance or by accident, nor can he believe that one can escape from the destiny he has made. Destiny like any day of reckoning may be postponed, but it cannot be prevented or avoided.
Destiny is brought on by that which commands elementals. The beings which command the nature-side are Intelligences and their Triune Selves on the intelligent-side, under Supreme Intelligence. They order it according to a law, the law of thought: Everything existing on the physical plane is an exteriorization of a thought which must be balanced through the one who issued it, in accordance with his responsibility, and at the conjunction of time, condition and place.
This law attaches to acts and omissions which are exteriorizations of thoughts and which are intended, not to such as are casual, automatic or incidental, like saying perfunctorily “how are you,” or where a thought is balanced at once at its first exteriorization.
When an act is done with intent, it is the exteriorization of the design of a thought, and a record of the act is made in a point in the starry spaces and a recomposition of the act follows as destiny. If it follows in the same life, the point containing the record comes into the human body through the breath; if it follows in a subsequent life, the point is built into the body before birth. With the recomposition of the act to the doer, who is now a recipient, the original record becomes inoperative. Though inoperative it remains as a record until the thought is balanced. The record shows how far the aim deviated from what it should have been, according to the thinker’s conscience. The record is always in a magnetic relation to the embodied doer, whose act it preserves.
There is another record of the act as an exteriorization of the thought and this record is not made by or in nature-matter. This record is in the thought itself. It is not even in a point and cannot be described in terms of matter; it is not a picture or even a symbolic representation. It causes a doer-memory, which appears as a feeling, as a desire or as a mental attitude.
Triune Selves who see the record in the starry spaces see also the record in the thought itself and thereafter must arrange the exteriorizations of the thought, when it cycles towards the physical plane, so that situations are created which present a duty of action or omission. These situations flow at the appropriate time out of the thought itself; they are created by exteriorizations of the thought. The duty which is thereby presented offers an opportunity to balance the thought.
To balance the thought the duty must be done without fear or hope. It must be done irrespective of results which may follow. If it is so done without attachment, the constituents of the thought, balancing factor, aim, design and the physical part which came in through one of the senses and caused first the desire and then the exteriorizations, are freed. These constituents are freed because there is nothing to hold them together. As long as there is attachment to the object or action they are held together by the attachment.
It is not necessary for one to know which of his thoughts he balances. All one can do is to balance some thought by doing the duty that offers itself. Even if he could choose he could not select a better thought than the one which a present duty allows him to balance. For the events in life are so marshalled that the lives and the duties of all people on the earth fit in together.
There will come to everyone a time in some life when he can be conscious of his outstanding thoughts as they come up before him, and when he can balance them consciously. At present human beings are not conscious of their thoughts as beings, nor of the duties of life as coming from exteriorizations of their past thoughts. All they can do is to do their present duties without attachment to results. Thereby they balance some thought and free Light that was bound up in the thought. So they achieve some knowledge, however little it may be, and receive a feeling of satisfaction, of lightness and of serenity. The present life, as the present day and the present duty, is that into which the past has melted and from which the future spreads out. The thoughts which are not balanced continue to exteriorize and make new existences necessary to the doer.
Life seems to be full of examples of injustice, where the wicked often prosper and the good meet with misfortune. It is the actively wicked who get things, not those who are wicked and passive. If the good were as active in their goodness, they would get practically the same results of prosperity. The mass of the people, who are traders and laborers, think towards knavery, hypocrisy and gain by fraud rather than by honesty. Therefore the thoughts and the efforts of the wicked find ready response, since they go with the tide, whereas the good have to fight against it. The atmosphere, that is, the elements permeated by the thoughts of human beings, is in constant confusion and conflict and is therefore more responsive to the wicked and the dishonest than to the good. The nature forces, the elementals, are more readily attracted to the aims of the crooked than to those of the honest, because they respond more to sensation and excitement.
There is under these conditions nothing unjust in material success of the wicked. They succeed because of greater interest, stronger desire, persistence, a favorable atmosphere and often because of greater ability and of likable personal qualities. Nor is it unjust when the good are far from prosperous for they have feebler impulses, less incentive for gain and scattered interests; they are passive and allow themselves to be preyed upon and often lack likable and sociable traits. Justice in material things is unnoticed, but an apparent injustice is remarked because it is striking.
If the good were persistently good no harm could come to them and they could stand up against anything. Nobody is entirely good or entirely bad, entirely active or entirely passive. In different lives different traits find expression. Those in whom wickedness had been suppressed may, obeying their promptings, become actively wicked, and those in whom goodness has not been manifest may become actively good. The goodness and the badness so-called are shown, the other side is not manifest. When the wicked prosper it is partly because they are enjoying benefits they have merited in the past, and often the good suffer because of their past carelessness or iniquities. These aspects of life are ephemeral, they bring to the surface what has been unseen in the past and what may soon disappear.
The outer conditions of riches, possessions, success, upon which some predicate injustice or caprice in human affairs, come to everyone in orderly turns. They are opportunities, opportunities for thinking honestly and for training and controlling feelings and desires. They are opportunities for acting with cheerfulness and goodwill, and yet without attachment. Laziness, selfishness and ill will do not loosen the chains that bind men to the treadmill of life. Vocations, possessions, power, admiration, adventures, failures and successes are not essential. A man must control his appetite whether he be rich or poor, he must think honestly whether he be famous or obscure, he must preserve the Light whatever his vocation.
Usually a cycle of twelve existences takes the human beings of a doer part through a round from affluence through poverty to affluence, from prominence through obscurity to prominence, from hazards to security and back to hazards and from variety through monotony to variety. These outward changes come about, determined under the law of cycles or succession of events. Thus are made the twelve steps or spokes of the treadwheel which takes one from poverty through wealth again to poverty. Incidental to this may be the course through monotony and change and through other opposites. The zenith and the nadir of some of these cycles may or may not coincide. These cyclic changes in the situations do not interfere with a man’s physical, psychic, mental and noetic destiny, but are so arranged that they fit in with the destiny and yet obey the law that the succession of events proceeds in four seasons, each with three aspects. Nearly everyone who today is swallowed up in the mass, poor in physique, in purse, in intellect and is ruled by his desires, has within twelve lives held possessions, been valiant in adventures and enjoyed pleasures in abundance, though his psychic and mental weakness may not have varied much from that of the herd of human beings of today. The twelve aspects of such a cycle present phases of life which are not essential; but the conditions or states of the doer which are the result of thinking, due to the feelings and desires of the human in these positions, are essential.
These conditions of the doer bring about other cycles which are independent of that cycle of twelve. These cycles may be for more or less than twelve lives. Among such cycles are those of sex, of persistence or lethargy in thinking, of intellectual attainments or their loss, and of associations and relations with others.
A change of sex may come through thinking and feeling. If the doer-in-the-body exists as a woman but thinks strongly on the line of desire its next embodiment is likely to be in a male body, or if the desire of the doer thinks positively on the line of feeling, its next body will probably be female, but this is not the order. The change from one sex to the other is the result of several, usually six, lives of thinking; it is not due to the thinking in one life alone. Feeling-and-desire as the doer, in series of six, re-exist alternately. There are six re-existing portions of feeling and six re-existing portions of desire in the make-up of the doer of the Triune Self. In the proper succession, six desire portions should re-exist in male bodies and the six portions of feeling should re-exist in female bodies. The successive existence of each of the six portions of feeling and of each of the six portions of desire constitutes the cycle of the twelve existences of the doer—and of re-existences.
Another cycle in which the human beings of a doer rise and fall also depends on thinking, with the consequent mental attitudes and character of the mental atmosphere. This cycle may be complete in one life or it may cover several lives. When there is the impulse to go ahead in thinking, man is not strong enough to maintain the effort and the advance. Then there is a reaction of lethargy in thinking, brought about by a pull of desire in other directions. There is a pull-back, a sagging down, a giving way. The tendency of the other desires pulling against the rise, brings about a retrogression in thinking and the consequent drifting, superficial life.
The rise and fall in intellectual attainments in a line of lives is also due to cycles of thinking. Intellectual attainments which are mere sense-knowledge relating to the natural sciences, as well as to material philosophy, law, medicine and theology, are not brought over. Whatever is acquired by the four senses is lost at death, because the physical record made on the breath-form, is destroyed. There may be brought over what the thinking extracted and appropriated from these attainments. It does not appropriate anything from slight acquaintance or from superficial dealing. What the doer has acquired by intimate and thorough occupation with the sciences will be brought over as a tendency to take them up in the new life and as a ready understanding of them. The new form of expression will have to be learned as was the old form. If there should be a doer-memory of what one has gone through in the past, it will come as a flash of understanding, a stroke of genius.
Contact between people comes about by thinking on similar or opposed lines. The relation begins casually, grows closer and then moderates, weakens and at last disappears. If their feelings and desires and the consequent thinking are similar in some respects, people are drawn together and become comrades, friends or lovers and they may be held by marriage and family ties. People may also be held closely by ties of dislike. That former friends or enemies are husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister and so in situations where they meet continually, gives them an opportunity to work together on friendly and kindly lines or to work out or aggravate old troubles. Persons are so held together for a life or several lives by their feeling and desire and the consequent thinking. While it is not impossible for two or more doers to remain in close contact for the whole period of their doer development, this is most unusual. Generally human beings come together once or many times, contact and separate.
The cycles due to thinking are different from the cycles of an average of twelve re-existences which take the human beings of a doer portion through a round of worldly stations and conditions. A human makes his own cycles of thinking by his choice among his feelings and desires. Desire starts thinking and keeps it up until the desire is worn out or until the human turns to another desire. The cycle with the twelve spokes of existences is a general cycle; it is provided to put a human into positions in which he may have a variety of experiences from which to learn.
Things appear in time cycles because they are not permanent. Permanence is the background out of which all that is temporary reappears physically. These appearances recur cyclically, because they represent something permanent. Cycles are steps toward a permanent state, and continue until this is attained. Man is the midground on which the cyclic appearance of the nature units and of the doer occurs in conjunction until permanence is established for the perfect form of the breath-form. The form of the breath-form must be made permanent, immortal, and perfect, so that the physical body will not age and die. Through this permanent physical body forms, bodies, that are permanent must also be developed for the three parts of the Triune Self. Meanwhile, the doer must continue to live in temporary bodies and in each life pass through various cycles; the changes incident to the cycles are accompanied by glamour and illusion. The glamour they discover, but to the illusions they remain subject.
Because of their self-seeking human beings are often led by an initial glamour. If they could see things as they are they would see the emptiness of the objects of life. They would not be interested in situations which might demand from them the doing of duties. They would avoid getting into such situations and would so lack experiences from which they could learn and would incapacitate themselves for learning and for meeting their destiny. A glamour therefore serves to lead humans into situations where duties will be revealed to them or forced upon them, as it is used to lure them into situations where destiny can reach them.
Glamour is a state of the doer-in-the-body wrought by illusions which the four senses produce. Glamour is further made by thinking in answer to the pressure of feeling and desire. The senses report the physical world to feeling-and-desire. The doer portion, identifying itself with the four senses, calls upon the body-mind to obtain for it the thing desired.
The difference between things seen as they are and things seen in a glamour is the difference made by expectation, embellishment, exaggeration, astonishment or terror, as distinct from the physical facts as they are. It makes a paradise out of a farm, a heaven out of a marriage, a romance out of soldiering, an abundance out of an employment. They idealize common persons and things. After the humans are entrapped by the initial glamour, it falls away and they are confronted with the naked facts, the drudgery of winning a living from the soil, the trials of marriage, the hardships of a soldier’s life, the scantiness and affliction of servitude, and the disappointment in their comrades.
Man himself makes the glamour by his ignorance combined with self-interest and the desire to possess and to have pleasure. But his thinker engineers the situations around which he throws an enchantment, which then lures him into a future in which the realities of the thing will be much less pleasing than the alluring prospects which he fabricated for himself in his ignorance.
So people are induced to enter into engagements, if they have a choice, because they believe that out of them will come something that is more agreeable or something with fewer unpleasant features than the reality will be. Likewise they are sometimes kept out of temptation and trouble by apprehending fearful consequences. The creation of an initial glamour is aided by simple-mindedness and selfishness. A glamour is not necessary as an inducement when a person is willing to assume the duties of a situation and to take things with equanimity as they come.
The things that make life attractive or repellent, that give motives for thinking and aims to ensuing thoughts, that hold the doer to life on earth, are sensations and the objects from which they come. Sensations of hunger and of sex are overmastering. Sensations are illusions from the standpoint of the doer, but not from the standpoint of the earth. While the doer is under them they are not illusions, but are strong realities of life. Sensations are among the causes of the re-existences of a doer. As long as they remain realities to the doer, the doer cannot escape re-existence. When sensations are felt as elementals, and not felt as part of feeling, a beginning is made by which the necessity for re-existence will in time end.
Sensations are elementals, nature units; they are not part of the feeling of the doer, but the feeling of the doer feels them. Every sensation of light, of shade, of color and of form, of sounds, of the tastes of food and drink, of odors and of all touch, is an elemental or a stream of nature units, elementals. These are elementals coming into the body from without. The sensations of hunger for food and for drink, including alcoholic liquors, and for drugs and for sexual contact are elementals within the body itself. When one eats a strawberry, the desire for the strawberry is not an elemental, nor is the act of eating, nor is the strawberry, but that which starts the desire for the sensation of tasting the strawberry and the sensation of taste of the strawberry, are elementals. When one drinks wine, the sensations of taste and of intoxication are elementals as well as are the cravings in the cells of the body that started the desire for drink. At sexual union the sensations of sexual contact are elementals and so are the sights, sounds and odors that aroused sex desire, and so are the cravings in the sexual cells of the body that stimulated the desire. Sensations of craving and sensations of satisfaction, sensations of physical suffering and of physical enjoyment are all elementals.
The sensations are not feeling and not desire, nor are feeling or desire sensations. The doer cannot be hungry; feeling cannot be hungry. Hunger is a stream of elementals, which feeling feels as sensations. The elementals become sensations when they reach feeling or desire. It is as if a match were by a touch turned into a flame. A touch of human feeling transforms and vitalizes elementals, which are mere nature forces. Elementals become sensations only while in contact with feeling-and-desire. These forces are the active side of the units of the four elements and are sensations only as long as they remain in contact with feeling and with desire. The passive side is that in which the force manifests. The two sides are indivisible and inseparable. After the contact has ceased they are again mere elementals, nature forces; but they are impressed by that with which they have been in contact, and they will be attracted to repeat the same sensation.
Some of the elementals which become sensations are bound in the body, some are out of the body. Those that are in the body are cell units and want to be supplied with what they crave. They can reach feeling at any time. Those outside seek feeling because they have no feeling and cannot get into touch with feeling except by contact with the elementals in the body, which they arouse. The manner in which feeling is affected by the presence of elementals in the nerves is that feeling feels the elementals as sensations after it has made them such itself; and the elementals become sensations as soon as feeling feels them. They are then felt as sensations, which they become by contact with feeling. Feeling thus transforms the elemental into a sensation.
While it is a sensation an elemental partakes of the feeling that has enlivened it from a mere nature force into a sensation. By itself the elemental does not feel, even while it remains transformed into a sensation, in the manner in which humans feel or even as an animal feels. It never suffers, it never enjoys—it thrills. It seeks pain equally as pleasure, and it feels neither as such, but only as a thrill, and that only as long as it contacts feeling and as long as feeling feels it as a sensation.
The object seen, heard, tasted, smelled or contacted is not sensed as it is, or as a sensation, or as a feeling: it is an illusion. The illusion is actually an elemental which is temporarily transformed into a sensation. The whole world, and every object and every sensation in it are illusions; they are not seen as such and cannot be seen as such by an embodied doer until it distinguishes between itself as feeling, the sensation as an elemental, and the object as made up of elementals. When the doer can distinguish between sensations and itself, feeling-and-desire can remain unaffected by elementals; the illusions produced by objects and sensations will become transparent, and the realities producing the illusions can be perceived. All sights, sounds, tastes, smells and contacts, and all hunger and sexual cravings will lose their charm, power and terror for the doer that can distinguish between itself and the elementals.
Nature seeks the doer for several purposes. It tries to get Light of the Intelligence which the doer has the use of, and to get the doer into nature, so as to have an association with feeling-and-desire, and with thinking from which it gets forms. Nature seeks this association so as to keep its units in circulation. It does this by having the doer transform elementals into sensations and then identifying itself with them while they are sensations. Human beings would not allow themselves to be so used if they were conscious of the true state of facts and of the illusion under which they live. So the illusion is allowed to continue until the doer is sufficiently advanced to perform its duties to nature and raise it, without being under any illusion.
The illusion is produced by letting the doer feel that the four senses are part of itself and that other elementals either entering the body through these or already in the body are also part of itself, when it feels them as sensations.
All sights, sounds, tastes, smells and contacts are streams of elementals coming from outside nature to that part of nature that is the body. They come through the seven openings of the sense organs in the head and through the other five openings, and in case of contact, through the skin also. They travel along the nerves of the involuntary system, which like wires connect them, through the breath-form, with any part of the body, where they stimulate cells. Through the breath-form they reach the doer, which is in the kidneys and adrenals and in the voluntary nervous system. When they so reach the doer they, as well as the elementals of the cells in the body which they affect, become sensations. All are transformed from elementals into sensations by the contact they make with feeling through the breath-form. The doer-in-the-body, as the human being, then identifies itself with the senses and as the sensations and says: “I see,” “I hear,” “I taste,” “I smell,” “I touch,” “I am hungry,” taking the sensation as part of itself.
When one is hungry and food is taken, the stream of incoming elementals, which is hunger, is not satisfied by food; elementals do not eat. The more intense the hunger, the more intense their thrill. When food is eaten they thrill again. After the stomach is full they find no way to reach the nerves, because the nerves are not open to them and will not receive them. If they can induce overeating they thrill again at the ensuing discomfort.
Whether the human feels more or less intense sensations depends on the capacity of his organs and nerves to entertain the stream of elementals, and upon the volume of the stream. The sensations of pleasure are dulled when the nerves and organs that receive them as elementals are exhausted. Sensations of pain result in becoming unconscious if the volume of the elemental stream coming in is greater than the capacity of the organs and nerves to entertain it. Then the astral-airy-fluid bodies are made inactive and are expelled from the nerves by the overwhelming stream and so are no longer a medium of communication with the breath-form. Thus the doer is switched off from its connection with the involuntary nervous system. In this way elementals can be aided or hindered in becoming sensations. They can also be prevented.
This may be done by a process of unglamouring and disillusioning the doer-in-the-body from the senses. It is possible for the doer to be conscious of itself as distinct from the body in which it lives and from the elementals that make up the body. When the doer has found itself it need not feel hunger or the craving for sex, or the delights of sights and sounds, tastes and smells and contacts. Or it can feel these things, but distinguishes itself from the sensations. The hunger then is different from the hunger that one feels under the illusion that one hungers. It is as when one feels for one’s dog which is hungry. When one feels that his dog is hungry he is not under the illusion that he himself is hungry.
The life of human beings is made up of illusions. They often discover in the course of a life the illusions which they have made for themselves, by the disappearance of the glamour under which they entered into a relation. They do not discover the illusions of their sensations, and that they merely satisfy elementals as long as they believe that they are enjoying or suffering. From this illusion human beings do not know how to free themselves. Nor can they rid themselves of the conception that physical objects are as they are sensed, which also is an illusion. The four senses bring in everything of a material nature. But that means only that they bring in impressions of objects as they appear to be to the human. The objects are realities as appearances only. Matter is seen as an appearance, not as the matter is. The appearance is the outermost aspect, the surface aspect, and conceals the other parts and aspects.
What appears to the smoker to be a cigar made of brown, fragrant, tobacco leaves is such only as reported by the eye, the nose, the tongue and the touch which receive impressions from surfaces, that is, matter massed in the solid state on the physical plane. This cigar is in the other three states of matter on the physical plane, if they are perceived separately, unlike what is seen, tasted, smelled and touched as the burning cigar. In the solid state of the form plane of the physical world the cigar looks different, though the outline of its form is about the same. It looks finer, more colorful, its fragrance is more pronounced, its taste is more intense, and if it burns the smoker, the burn is more lasting and the mark of it remains. In the other three states of matter on the form plane, there are further differences. On the life and light planes of the physical world, the cigar as such does not exist; only a plan is there. In the form world, on the physical plane, there is the bare form or wraith of the cigar, in the life world even that does not exist, but there is a symbol or a certain value in place of what is the burning cigar in the smoker’s hand.
All solid objects on the physical plane are such only as long as they are perceived through the sense organs of the human body. In other states of matter they are no longer what they seem in the solid state. The appearance is lost in the other states. It is no longer the only reality, though it can have a reality as an appearance, the reality of appearing.
Because thinking is more real than the appearances of matter as the objects in life, it can demonstrate their relative unreality. It can deprive pain of its hurt, disease of its devastation and age of its withering. Thinking can call into existence objects, like money and possessions, and it can make circumstances, such as of employment and success. Such is the power of thinking. Many people are using it. They force themselves to think that their pain, disease, age, discomfort and poverty do not exist, are not realities, but are illusions. They are illusions, but people do not want to get rid of them because they are illusions, but because they are unpleasant; and they want to put in their place other illusions, not realities, which are more pleasant. Sometimes they succeed in driving the illusions away and putting others in place of them, because the power of thinking may overcome the power of the illusion, thinking being more real.
The result of such practices is a self-deception and increasing inability to distinguish not only illusions from realities, but generally the true from the false. While such people may intend to be honest, they blind themselves to the facts owing to prejudice and preference. They use the power of thought much as a burglar uses steel. There are such things as pain, disease, age, discomfort and poverty; they are very real to one who feels them. Even when they are known to be illusions they are real as illusions. To see them as they are and see what they are is legitimate. To force oneself to think they are not what and where they are, is untrue and wrong.
A human is beset, surrounded, submerged by illusions. All outside things are illusions. So are his appetites, pains and pleasures, dislikes and hatreds. They are elementals. His own feelings and desires, aside from these illusions, he does not know. He does not see the people he thinks he sees; he sees only the thoughts which he creates of them. Therefore if a thousand see a man, no two would see him alike, because no two out of the thousand thoughts would be alike.
Each one creates a thought of himself, as which he sees himself, yet no one else sees him or thinks of him as the person he sees and thinks himself to be. The thought of himself which he has created is an illusion, because he does not know himself to be that reality which he is. He thinks of himself as an identity, as “I,” whereas he is merely that portion of himself which feels the presence of his identity or “I.” He is under the illusion that he does the thinking and reasoning, whereas these are done by one of the three minds which he may have the use of, but of which he is not conscious.
Man believes he is conscious of time and of the passage of time. This is an illusion. Time is the passage of events in the field of the Eternal; the passage is noted as the past, the present and that which is to come. But the Eternal is unchanging, as related to time, and in the Eternal the past, the present and the future are a Now, without a past and without a future. Eternity has many varieties of time; among them is the variety ticked off by the celestial clock, with the sun and moon as its hands and the planets in its works. Every act, object and event that exists in physical time exists also in the Eternal, but it does not exist there in the same manner or in sequence. In the Eternal it is not an act, an object or an event, with a beginning, a middle and an end, but it is one, cause and result are one.
Time is ever devouring itself. It consumes itself and arises anew out of itself. Beginning, origin, first cause and end are only markers on the flow of time. In reality, the end is as much the beginning as the beginning is the end, but to humans they are opposites. Human beings cannot know the nature of time as long as their bodies are part of time and are the means by which they measure time, and as long as feeling-and-desire alternately dominate each other. For not until then will the doer be freed from the illusion of time.
In this mass of illusions the human exists as a combination that is drawn together for a time. He is conscious as an entity, but that is an illusion. To be conscious as anything is an illusion, though it is a reality relatively. To be conscious is a reality absolutely, but to be conscious as any being is only relatively real.
When a human is conscious as himself it means merely that he is conscious as feeling-and-desire. The grossest illusions are his supreme realities—the objects of his feelings and desires. The visible world in which he lives is the type in which he conceives his world after death. His own body is the type of his God and of his Devil. The things which he abhors and which terrify him, make up his hell, and the things he likes, his heaven. But his own doer appears fanciful, doubtful, unreal, except in so far as it is feelings and desires.
Yet under these unfavorable conditions man is being educated. He is being educated by doer-memories. Notwithstanding that he does not remember his past lives, that only a portion of the doer is in his body and that the highest conception of himself as a being, is an illusion, the false “I,” and notwithstanding that the world in which he exists is an illusion and all the objects he sees and the people he meets are illusions, he is being educated. The illusions educate him by doer-memories of them as realities, until he sees them as illusions.
The essential thing in life is to preserve, reclaim and free his Light and to think without creating thoughts, that is, without attachment. He must find out what he is not. He must find out what and who he is. He must rebuild his body into one that is deathless. He cannot be lost. He is never forgotten, never forsaken, never without the care and protection which he will allow himself to receive. He can feel and think of himself through all discomforts and troubles as being guarded and judged by his administrator, the thinker, known by his knower, guided by the Light of the Intelligence, and loved, cared for and supported by the Supreme Triune Self of the worlds under the Light of Supreme Intelligence.
Copyright 1974 by The Word Foundation, Inc.