THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER XI

THE GREAT WAY

Section 2

The Triune Self complete. The Threefold Way, and the three paths of each Way. The lunar, solar, and light germs. Divine, “immaculate” conception. The form, life, and light paths of The Way in the body.

When the doer will have reached its ultimate perfection, having lost itself and thereby found itself, it will be united with the thinker, who is in union with the knower.

These three parts then have absorbed their atmospheres and are a Triune Self complete, (Fig. V-B, a). This Triune Self complete has, besides the perfected physical body, three other bodies: a body for the doer in the form world, developed out of the fluid-solid body; a body for the thinker in the life world, developed out of the airy-solid body; and a body for the knower in the light world, developed out of the radiant-solid body, (Fig. III). These new bodies act through the perfected physical body and each may act in its own respective world. Thus the Triune Self complete has a perfected physical body, a form body, a life body and a light body, which may act together or separately. The three beings of a Triune Self are called: a being of the form world, a being of the life world and a being of the light world.

The physical body through which this has been done is a perfected, sexless and immortal body, through which the three inner bodies have issued.

In such a perfect physical body the three parts of the Triune Self complete can be and are fully embodied, (Fig. VI-D). They live in the spinal cord and in the voluntary nervous system, and there each operates its respective body from the center or station in which that being is; the form being from its abdominal brain, the life being from its thoracic brain, and the light being from its cephalic brain. The brain for the physical body is in the pelvis. From the centers, which have ceased to be common ground for nature and the Triune Self, the beings act through all parts of the body and thence on all planes of the physical world. The Light of the Intelligence is throughout.

Far from such perfection is the state of the doers banished to the outer crust of the earth. They are not even fully in the body; only a small portion of the doer is in the body, and the thinker and the knower merely contact the heart and lungs and the pituitary body, respectively.

From the state in which each doer is at present, it must go on until it opens and travels the path which will lead it to the end of its re-existences. To determine to find The Way is simple, but is a most momentous undertaking. Every doer must some day enter upon The Way. The Great Way is a name here given to a Threefold Way: a certain Way in the physical body; a Way of thinking for the development of the human by thinking; and a Way on which the human travels inside the earth during this development. These three Ways are traveled together and at the same time, not separately and at different times; but they will be treated here as though separate and distinct.

Each of these three Ways has three sections, called the form path, the life path, and the light path. On The Way in the body, the form path reaches from the end of the terminal filament to the beginning of the spinal cord proper; the life path reaches from there to the seventh cervical vertebra; and the light path reaches from there to the first cervical vertebra, (Fig. VI-D). On The Way of thinking, the form path ends with the ability to use the feeling-mind and the desire-mind; the life path ends with the ability to use the minds of rightness and of reason; and the light path is completed with the ability to use the minds of I-ness and of selfness. On The Way in the earth, the form path reaches from the entrance into the earth to the end of the first third of half the circumference of the inner crust; the life path ends when the second third has been traveled; the light path is the completion of half of the circumference of the inner earth.

The Way in the body, though it leads to immortal life, is a closed road and must be opened by a lunar germ bearing Light. The form path of The Way in the body is the hollow within the terminal filament, which at present is a tubular thread from the coccyx to the spinal cord proper. This tube is now choked and sealed wholly or in part and can be opened only by a light bearer, a lunar germ, (Fig. VI-A, d).

When a lunar germ, after descending on the right side, in the involuntary nervous system, generally speaking along the digestive tract, is not lost and has, by way of the coccygeal ganglion, ascended in the left side of the involuntary system to the region of the kidney, and passes upward, it will go to the head and complete its first round. As it descends again it is, if not lost, accompanied by the succeeding lunar germs, and is reinforced by the Light they carry and by Light of the solar germ. When the lunar germ returns to the head at the completion of its thirteenth round, Light issues from the solar into the lunar germ and there is a divine, a true “immaculate” conception. This is the initial step and factual basis of the development of the three embryonic bodies; it is analogous to the physical process, the lunar germ—in the female as well as the male—representing the ovum and the solar germ the spermatozoon. The lunar germ developing towards an embryonic form body, descends again in the right side of the involuntary nervous system along the digestive tract. After it has reached the lowest point in the pelvis it does not ascend on the left side to the region of the kidneys. It builds a bridge from what is now the coccygeal ganglion at the junction of the two cords of the involuntary nervous system, to the tip of the filament of the spinal cord, by way of nerves belonging to the voluntary system, goes across the bridge, opens the seal of the terminal filament and enters the filament through the opening, (Fig. VI-C).

The lunar germ then is on the form path and travels through the terminal filament. The path leads to the central canal of the spinal cord proper, about the junction of the first lumbar and twelfth dorsal vertebrae. When the lunar germ has reached that point, the solar germ which went down in the right hemisphere of the spinal cord, meets it and both germs blend and go through the central canal of the spinal cord to the head. When the lunar germ has entered the central canal of the spinal cord the human has eternal life, that is, obligatory deaths and rebirths are at an end.

What is here called the lunar germ ceases to be a mere germ after its impregnation in the head. In its descent along the nerves of the digestive system it begins to develop and when it enters through the opened seal into the filament it is ready to become the embryonic form body. So what was called the lunar germ traveling along the path, is a living embryonic form body traveling in the filament towards the central canal of the spinal cord, that is, towards eternal life. This will become in time the form body, the body of the doer, the psychic part of the Triune Self complete. When this embryonic body has reached the central canal of the spinal cord at about the upper level of the first lumbar vertebra, it has come to the end of the form path of The Way in the body. It is here that it is met by the solar germ. This is no longer a mere germ but it began to develop during its downward course in the right hemisphere of the spinal cord, and, after it had entered the central canal of the spinal cord and met there the form body, finally grew up into an embryonic life body, the body to be, of the thinker, the mental part of the Triune Self. Both these entities then ascend the central canal together, from the first lumbar to the seventh cervical vertebra.

When the embryonic form body and the embryonic life body enter the cervical part of the central canal of the spinal cord, they are met there at the seventh cervical vertebra by a light germ from the pituitary body, which is to the solar germ what the solar germ is to the lunar germ; this is the beginning of the light path in the body and of the embryonic light body. This light germ started from the pituitary body, descended through the third and fourth ventricles to the pons and medulla oblongata, and into the central canal of the spinal cord which runs through the canal of the vertebrae. The light germ is always there, but its descent and consequent development into the light body depend upon the rising and coming of the life and form bodies to meet it in the central canal of the spinal cord at the seventh cervical vertebra. The light germ developing into the embryonic light body, accompanied by the embryonic life and form bodies, advances through the medulla oblongata and pons to the pineal body, (Fig. VI-A, a).

At that time the pituitary sends a stream of Light through the canal of the infundibulum to the pineal body. The Light stream opens the pineal, the embryonic light body enters it and the head is filled with Light. Later, when the embryonic form, life and light bodies reach their full growth, are raised and issue, and the three parts of the Triune Self are in them, the doer has reached perfection, is of the complete Triune Self in a perfected, sexless, immortal, physical body and is at the end of The Great Way. The cause of these processes is the development of the doer, the psychic part of the Triune Self.