THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER XI

THE GREAT WAY

Section 6

The ongoer on the life path; on the light path, in the earth. He knows who he is. Another choice.

When the ongoer has announced his choice for the life path, the guide and he pass through a hall. The guide leads him to a crystal rock from which a fountain of clearest water falls in sparkling sheets and spray into a basin in the rock. The guide tells him that these are cleansing waters; that they will fit him to draw from the fountain of life or will dissolve his body and wash it away; that one who is prepared will have no fear. “Enter the water if you will and it will enter you.”

The ongoer walks into the pool under the fountain. His whole body drinks in the welcome draft. He feels himself gliding into the pool. The rock, the guide, the chamber disappear as he feels himself going out with the water into the great ocean where all the waters meet. He expands into the ocean, yet feels the current that carries him. The ocean is through the rocks, the water, the plants, the animal life and the bodies of all human beings. It is feeling, desiring and emotional humanity. He feels himself through it and as it, in the present and the past. He is conscious of mankind extending as the ocean to the stars. These are the crossings of the nerves of human beings. He is extended to the farthest stars. Mankind goes out to the stars and they come into mankind. They are like the crossings in a spider’s web. He sees the crossings but he does not see the lines, yet is conscious where they are. He draws himself together, after having been so spread out. He now feels the humanity which is in bodies on earth and that which is without bodies; these are the re-existing doers of Triune Selves. He went out to mankind, now mankind comes into him. He is conscious that he will continue on The Way. The feelings of human beings reaching into the form world rush into him and urge him to come to them, to help them and lead them out of their troubles. They show him that if he leaves them to themselves they will not find their way. The “ancient dead” in their nature prisons appeal to him to liberate them. “Lost” portions of doers are reminded by his presence in them that they are lost and that they want to get back. Their appeal is so strong and his desire to help so great that he would give himself to them. But the Light shows his duty to go on. He looks into the Light and affirms his choice for the life path. He is in the pool under the fountain, and steps out, cleansed. The guide is where he left him, and it is as if he had just stepped in and come out.

There is no effort in moving through the hall as the body has no weight and will go in the direction of the desire. Desire is its direct motive power, as it was the indirect motive power while he was on the earth. When the guide has taken him as far as he can he departs at the end of the form path and a teacher is there to meet the ongoer at the beginning of the life path.

The teacher is quite human in appearance, simple and unassuming, but there is the sublime in his presence. The color of his physical body is somewhat like that of a being of the form world, but he is a being of the form, life, and light worlds. Yet the teacher, notwithstanding his greatness, does not seem strange to the ongoer.

The life path, along which the ongoer now passes, continues within the earth crust and extends over the second third of half of the inner circumference of the crust. On the life path he so increases his power to think with his feeling-mind and desire-mind that he can use the speech of thinking to speak with the thinker of the Triune Self through the mind of rightness and the mind of reason. He achieves the powers to examine, penetrate, dissect, compare, construct, create and dissipate by speech with his body-mind. He learns how to use these powers, but he does not use them. Merely thinking of a subject now solves the problems which were only perceived before. He understands the causes of forms and of types, as prepared from age to age. He learns the law of thought, as destiny; he comprehends the cycling of thoughts and the causes and methods of their exteriorizations. During all this growth the teacher has not actually instructed him. By bringing up problems he has merely given him the opportunity to solve them himself; thus the ongoer learns how to find the solution of his own problems. In this way the ongoer has put himself into communication with rightness-and-reason. So he comes to the end of the life path.

As they are walking through a hall, the teacher sings: O-E-A-O-E-HA. Rushing wind descends, enfolds the ongoer and breathes into him. That air of life goes through his nerves, pervades him, and each unit of his body sings. It sings his own story from the beginning to the coming of the living air. It sings the songs of life. All nature units outside join in the songs. The doers in mortal bodies sing each its song of sorrow, bitterness and pain. He understands each sound and song. The air within him puts him in tune with all that lives, and he has understanding of that. He is conscious that the teacher knows that he can now hear and answer any call.

The teacher tells him that this is as far as he goes and asks if he will issue into the life world, a being of that world, or if he will go on to the light path, for if so he must go on alone. The ongoer says: “I will go on alone.”

What he has heretofore considered and solved has developed for him the mental power to know without the process of thinking, which is the connection to the knower of the Triune Self. When the ongoer said “I will go on alone,” he thereby found in himself a Light. That is the Light by which he knows The Way.

He finds the light path because he knows it when he comes to it. The path continues still within the earth crust for the remainder of the half of the circumference. To reach the end he goes through a white fire. When he enters it the remaining fabrics of illusion he has made by thinking are burnt away.

The partitions separating him from age to age, from life to life, from place to place, from state to state, are dissipated. The fire that burns down the veils within is the essential fire of the four elements in the earth sphere. He sees everywhere and is present in all parts of physical nature.

He knows himself as being that Triune Self which is identity-and-knowledge in the Eternal in the presence and in the Light of his Intelligence.

He knows himself, by that Light, to be the knower of a Triune Self in his noetic atmosphere within that Light. He knows himself to be the thinker, his mental part, within his mental atmosphere, and of the forming of the mental atmosphere by the thinking of his thinker. He knows of the processes of contemplation by his thinker concerning the things of the light world and of the life world. He knows of the feeling-and-desire of the psychic part, his doer, and of the forming of the psychic atmosphere, by the thinking of his thinker. He knows the twelve portions of his doer, that re-existed successively and yet were one.

He knows of the first existence of the doer in the body, of existence in it in a happy state within the earth, and of the apparent separation of feeling from desire at the putting forth of the twin body. He knows that that should have been the beginning of The Way and that he wandered off The Way with the twin. He knows of the flight to the outer crust, of the death of his body and of the twin, and of all his re-existences and their incidents. He knows of his present embodiment and the incidents attending his taking The Way, the same old Way that he once failed to take and which has led him through the three worlds to the end of his re-existences. He knows of the illusion of the separateness of the three parts of the Triune Self. He knows that the Triune Self is One. He knows that he has never left the Eternal, and that his re-embodiments were illusions in time thrown up by the thinking of his feeling-and-desire. When the fire has burnt out all that can be consumed, it has no further effect.

The knowledge he has gives him being into the Light. Now in his perfected physical body, he is at once in the form, the life, and the light worlds, and he is and knows himself to be a Triune Self complete; a being of the three worlds in the Light and the presence of his Intelligence, and in the presence of the Great Triune Self of the worlds.

Through the Great Triune Self of the worlds acts the Supreme Intelligence. The Supreme Intelligence needs such a Great Triune Self through which to act, a Triune Self which is all-feeling, all-thinking and all-knowing; a Triune Self that is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. The Great Triune Self feels through all grades of Triune Selves, from the beings of the light world down to the portions of doers in human bodies and even down to the portions of doers that are in the state that is called lost.

The Great Triune Self of the worlds thinks through all these, from the high to the low; and it knows all that they know. Its feeling, its thinking and its knowledge are one. It knows the state of each human being and the collective state of all human beings at any time, that is, the state of humanity. It knows also the states of the super-human doers, singly and together. Human beings are not conscious that the Great Triune Self feels and thinks with them and knows what they know. The beings of the form world can feel it, the beings of the life world can think it, but only a being of the light world, one who has stood in the presence of it and has been attuned to it, can know it. A being of the light world is always in communication with it and is a high officer, a conscious agent of the law of thought, as destiny. The Great Triune Self is the coordinator for the Intelligences and of the interactions of their doers on the physical plane.

The ongoer who has arrived before the Great Triune Self of the worlds knows that that was at one time a doer of its Triune Self, and knows that that has not given up its relation to humanity in order to pass on and become an Intelligence; and knows, further, that it has retained this relation so that it may be a link between all mankind. The ongoer knows that the Great Triune Self is the exemplification of relationship. He knows that there is this relation, the sameness in kind of all doers. They are actually related and connected by this sameness, on the unmanifested side of their knowers, though they appear as different when portions of them are in fleshly bodies. The difference is built up by thinking and feeling. During embodiments the differences are seen and thought about, but the sameness is unknown. Yet even there is found a semblance of sameness, because all have like feelings and desires and like thoughts, which make the general types in nature and fashion the world in which they live together.

The ongoer sees into the Light of his Intelligence, which is an Intelligence of the highest order, a Knower, an Intelligence of the sphere of fire, and through that Light sees into the Light of Supreme Intelligence, whose Light is Truth. Thus he stands in the presence of Truth. The Intelligences partake of that Light, and the Light of the Intelligence which is loaned to the Triune Self is Truth, though it is obscured and beclouded when it is in the mental atmosphere of the human. This is the Light used by the human being, and is all that he can stand of Truth. He sees that nothing that has anything to conceal can stand in the undimmed Light which is Truth, and which dissipates deceit and darkness and illusion.

The ongoer who has arrived before the Great Triune Self of the worlds knows the beauty in the law that works throughout the earth sphere adjusting the thoughts of each doer, its relations with other doers and the operation of all thoughts of all doers in nature. He comprehends the details of that law, and he feels it working through all doers. He knows, comprehends and feels the world as made by all doers and as kept in adjustment by the Great Triune Self of the worlds and its agents of the law. He knows he is free to do what he pleases, but comprehending the broad sweep of the action of the law, he chooses and desires to take part in the administration of affairs for the benefit of the doers who keep themselves in darkness.

He leaves the presence of the Great Triune Self of the worlds and returns to his perfected physical body through the light, the life, the form and the physical worlds, yet he is in them all, for he is conscious in them, being himself in the Light. It is during this return that the life body and the form body cease to be embryonic, and issue. The thinker and the doer enter in these inner bodies as a being of the life world and as a being of the form world. The knower is in the light body.

During these events, the perfect physical body had been left at the end of the path in the inner earth crust. The Triune Self enters through the top of the skull. It is a threefold being though One, in a perfected and immortal physical body. As a being of the form world he inhabits the abdominal region where there is now a brain in place of the suprarenals, the kidneys and the solar plexus. Below that, in the pelvis, is another brain for the perfect body and the physical world. As a being of the life world he lives in the thoracic region, where the heart and lungs have become a brain. As a being of the light world he is within the cervical vertebrae and the cephalic brain in the head. This is his embodiment.

When he has entered the body he finds the teacher whom he had left at the end of the life path, and who had, though unseen, accompanied him to the place where the ongoer had left his body. He recognizes the teacher as being a being of the three worlds who had before done what the ongoer has just accomplished.

The perfected physical body is brought to its high state so that it may be an instrument for the operation of the elemental forces in the four worlds of nature. All parts of nature can be reached through the nerves of such a body. Through the eye the doer that lives in such a body could set fire to a leaf or to a city. Anything that can be done by nature forces can be done by directing the forces through the nerves of such a body. The thoughts and the emotions of humans can also be reached through such a body, and so a riot, a war, a religious enthusiasm and a mental trend or attitude can be generated and sustained or abated. The four brains are the centers from which the nerves are operated.

A perfect body, always in the Realm of Permanence, affords to the units passing through it, a straight road of progress, according to the Eternal Order of Progression, (Fig. II-G, H). Each such unit eventually becomes an aia, then a Triune Self, and then an Intelligence. The doer part of every Triune Self must undergo the trial and test to bring its feeling-and-desire into balanced union, as heretofore mentioned. If it passes that test, as the majority of units do, the Triune Self is complete. If the doer fails in that test, it passes temporarily out of the straight road and takes a circuitous route by way of re-existences in human bodies in this world of change.

When a Triune Self complete in a perfect body acts in the physical world it acts through the pelvic brain. When the doer acts in the form world it acts through the brain in the abdominal region. In a similar way the thinker in such a body, when acting in the life world, uses the brain in the thorax. When acting in the light world the knower in such a body uses the brain in the upper spine and the head. Such a Triune Self can act in each of these worlds, independently of the body, but it uses the body when it wants to relate any one of these worlds to the physical world or to affect doers in human bodies, because its physical body is common ground for all the worlds and is perfectly aligned with them.

Such Triune Selves complete are high officers of the law of thought, as destiny. They have complied with its requirements concerning themselves, and are free from it. They have no motives similar to those of human beings. They feel the mass of human suffering; they desire only to act according to the law. They comprehend the thoughts, ideals and aspirations of human beings and carry out the law of thought in relation thereto. But they do not interfere with the choice or the responsibility of any human.

Having entered its perfect body the complete Triune Self is among other Triune Selves who are beings of the light, life and form worlds. They are in the noetic world, which is a term to designate the knowledge which is in the noetic atmospheres of all knowers and is common and available to each. They are beyond time and the changes which are time; they are in the state of permanence which persists through the changes of time.

Again a choice is open to and must now be made by the Triune Self. Its doer having balanced its thoughts and, therefore, being free from the necessity to re-exist; having reclaimed, freed and restored to its Intelligence the Light which had been loaned to it; having no claim upon or attachment to the Light of its Intelligence: the relation between it, as a Triune Self, and its Intelligence, is outgrown and ceases. The Triune Self may choose one of three courses. But the proper course, which it will choose, is: it becomes an Intelligence, evokes its own potential Light, raises its aia to be a Triune Self, and remains with that Triune Self in the earth sphere.